11:22 surprised myself by getting up fairly smoothly at 0515 to catch the f�rje. Once about it was a mad rush to the breakfast buffet - the Swedes get as pissed off as the brits at people pushing in but they do a lot more of it. Buffet was: bread, cheese, salami, ham,rye bread, tomato, cucumber, pickled gherkin, yoghurt, muesli, herrings in tomato sauce, mushroom omelette, fruit salad, hard- and soft-boiled eggs, cereal, orange juice and coffee. Many people came close to having all the above. considering it was ~ukp4.50 and everything but the rye bread and cheese sucked, I don�t blame them.
Spent the rest of the trip feeling slightly sick and managed to catch a bit of Lattjo Lajban - the show whose website hosts the Bilbanen scalextric simulator - but didn’t see any parrot. 50 games of hMaki and one swedish-subtitled robot wars latre, and I�m on the express bus back to stockholm ready for my connection to Gothenburg. Where it willl be Monday, thus everything will be closed.
I will be giving the volvo museum a miss as you need a car to get there!
13:03 can you credit it? I booked the train to go to gothenburg and was asked if I wanted a return ticket. I asked how long it was valid to which she said I have to know the exact train I want and it’s no cheaper! I guess the main advantage is that you get a seat at all!
13:09 aarg! so I decide to plan ahead and find out about the sleeper train north from gothenburg. The office opens 14:45 today, 35 mins after my train departs!
16:08 urg. 2 hours down, 1.5 to go on this train and I swear if I get one more tall slim blond Swede’s pert little ass shoved in my face I�m going to grab it. And that�s just the lads.
19:09 Well THAT was a journey I intend to avoid in future. 13 hours after bounding out of be into yesterday’s clothes I arrive inGothenburg, ask the nice lady to explain the trams and make my way to the G�teborg mini-hotel, which is a hostel in the SVIF (the STF’s bastard half-brother) gborg reminds me of Londin, for the mixture of races and the slight shabbiness of the buildings and inhabitants (compared to Stockholm), and Amsterdam for the canals (made by dutch engineers) and the trams. The hostel was a shock at first, variuos aftricans hanging around outside and in, which in the movies would suggest a pending knifepoint mugging scene. It�s a funny feeling to be ashamed of your prejudice at the same time as fearing for your posessions. My mood was not really lifted by the fact that one of the two white people in my dorm of 8 put me in mind of Daffy from The Beach. To cap it all there are no lockers for dorm guests. After the initial shock, I switched to “travelling in asia” mode + moneybelt on, everything hidden, mugging money separate, and felt a bit better. The “mini hotel” is very clean - not quite as clean as the Khao San Guest House in Bangkok which was tiled up to the ceiling, presumably to facilitate hosing away all the blood, puke and other excreta. I got the felling here that bloodstains would stay on these walls, and I couldn�t see any so that was cool. Hmm. Does any of this relate to a 5am start?
Gburg is much more bohemian than the other places I�ve seen in Sweden - there are musical instrument shops dotted around, an art college, jazz clubs, a restaurant run by the Hare Krishnas and various arty characters including a transvestite who passed as I was ordering my food. He didn�t seem to be trying to be a woman, but was wearing a sheath skirt and lipstick.
I’m eating posh tonight - Smaka is the restaurant, doing Swedish cuisine with a nod towards haute cuisine and a backdrop of chilled jazz breaks. The starter of salmon with “stuwed” potatoes and mustard dressing was fantastic, and I finally got to have meatballs!
Score tally day 6
Skijump Noses: 220
meatballs: 6! woo! yay!
epic journeys: 1 x 13hrs
Prehistory: saw some way cool stuff from the train. After my CBT I may come again and just check out runestones, cairns et al.
13:08 a frustrating morning: up @ 7, packed @ 8, breakfasted by 9, hostell reception closed with a note in swedish about something 2 something something,,, so I try to find out about late trains from the ferry terminal on the mainland tonight. SJ has a machine speaking in Swedish, but I can press 6 for english. This explains I can press 1 for times, 2 for delays, 3 for bookings - but does not mention that this information is all in Swedish. Ho hum. Just spend 1 hour on the interweb failing to blog and planning the g�teborg trip for tomorrow instead - the 5pm ferry goes to nynashamn but then nothing leaves there until the next morning. Lucky me has an 0600 start tomorrow. Still, today should be cheap for food. I�m going to see if I can find some local prehistory and maybe a beach.
19:37 not an utter loss today. Bought a few necessaries including a tin of meatballs and some dried pasta. Cycled one hour to a famous church only to find it closed for 2002, then to a bronze age cairn which unfortunately just looks like a pile of rocks. Marching songs on the way home included the top 300 hit God My Arse Is Sore (”…but I wouldn’t change it for the world/cos this world is so damn big/it would break my favourite chair”) and How Can It Be (Uphill Both Ways)
Now showered, fed, and hanging in the botanical gardens mentally preparing for my 0515 alarm tomorrow, and feeling pretty buff after all this cycling.
20:43 strayed into the TV room and have spent more than 20 minutes transfixed by an excerpt from “Garbo - the musical” sung in Swedish. Urh. Time for bed.
Score Tally, Day 5
skijump noses: 752
meatballs: 8, from a tin
history: one church, closed
prehistory: one cairn. Rubbish :-)
km cycling (enjoyed): 19
km cycling (extra): 4
songs composed: 3
7:04 Today I will get wet. Either because of a dip in the sea whilst chilling on the beach, of because this rain continues. I�m on the bus to the north of Gotaland - the scenery is great but I’m a little queasy from the early start and I need to get more sleep.
10:25 got to f�r�sund but didn�t see a bike hire place. A japanese tourist had bruoght her rental bike from Visby (and was merrily coasting down the hill on the left+hand side of the road) so I thought I must have misunderstood the tourist info when he said I could rent a bike in “the town”. So I hopped on the ferry after explaining it was free to the fretting Japanese girl.
Arriving on the island, I noticed a distinct lack of… well, everything except trees and rocks really - and a dirty great asphalted road. So I began my hike to the town marked on my map, shortly to be overtaken by the japanese girl, still on the left. I decide to call her Yuko. A few km later I heard an engine behind me so I stuck out a thumb. “f�r�?” I asked, somewhat naively, to which came a possibly cheerful reply in Swedish which I took to mean “jump in”. Once we had established a more practical language of discourse, it turned out there was no town at the dot on my map, but as it was this was my lucky day. As we passed Yuko (now thankfully on the right) he explained he lived on the farm by the ferry and was on his way to work at the tourist office, which along with a churck, was all there was at the dot on my map. I could rent a cykel and to save a long walk back to the ferry I could drop it ayt his farm. Sorted!
Once one the bike I struck out and took far too many photos, bumping into Yuko from time to time. I am probably glad that I am here out of season as it would only take a dozen tourists to make it feel a little crowded.
A f�r� (”four-air”) is what you get when you take a big chunk of seabed and shove it up into the air to become an island. Spectacular rock formations on the west coast include the miniature canyon where I just stopped for a nectarine and to write this. There are fantastic dwarf trees here that look like mr.miyagi has been working overtime!
11:34 I am 1/4 though my island tour, 1/2 through my food and 3/4 water and 2/3 film gone. More pedalling required to make it to the beaches in good time!
14:37 ah me, a dip in the (pretty warm) Baltic after many trials and tribulations, during which I managed to cover a significant portion of The Hobbit by bicycle. If you don’t mind I’ll just sip my pop while my towel dries and I’ll tell you all about it when I’m less busy…
20:32 and to think I say York is dull: I came within a gnat’s chuff of hitting my original budget today, having got back to the hostel with one meal to get and 62kr to get it with. A quick shower (during which I disturbingly started singing “empires” with the hook line “bring me men”) and retrieve my laundry from where it has apparently been playing british bulldog in the hostel yard, and I’m out again looking for the small supermarket that I missed on the way back from the bus. En route I check out the restaurants I pass in case they are dirt cheap (61kr ~= UKP4.50). They’re not, and the shop is shut, but I remember a street with some bars and kebab shops on.
The kebab shops shut at the same time on a friday as any other night - 1800!! Ruh? So now I am in the Chinese restaurant that I was so proud of myself for not going to last night.
Score Tally, day 4:
Akijump noses: 7
meatballs: 0
History: groovy barn, old harbour
Prehistory: 0
Geology: 87
km cycling (enjoyed): 20ish
km cycling (extra): 11
marching songs composed: 7
11:20 it’s good to have all this time to myself - I’m starting to learn how my brain works, or more specifically how it fails to work. I am now on the train from Stockholm south to Nynashamn where there will be a mad dash to avoid an 11-hour wait for the next ferry to the island of Gotaland (goat land). Given that I was up at 0630 I could easily have been here 2 hours earlier, but something blocks me from thinking too far ahead and planning is a nightmare because I can�t hold facts and figures (and especially times) in my head. Had I bothered to find out the ferry times in advance I might have hurired a little - say packing my rucsack while waiting for the bathroom + but then when I hurry I make cock+ups like leaving my money behind or something. I don�t believe Nynashamn has 11 hours’ worth o fthings to do… Here’s hoping I make that ferry.
My approach to life seems about as un-Swedish as you can get. Tourist information seem bemused and even embarrassed for me when I ask about the chances of a last-minute dash for this (e.g. the ferry) or out-of-season entry to that. That said, I read in the paper on the train that a G�teborg Kanal trip (see day 0 18:09) sets off tomorrow so it seems the information bureaux are unnecessarily pessimistic.
13:54 ya boo sucks to the information people… The train arrived directly outside the ferry terminal with 20 mins to spare. After taking a queue number (a Swedish tradition) and waiting an agonising 7 minutes for the teller to count out huge wads of cash to the customer in front of me, I was told I was at the international counter and should go to the nearby domestic counter that had been vacant all along. At that counter I was told I could buy my ticket at the check-in desk (this seems to be another Swedish custom, the 3-counter manoevre) 170kr (~12quid) for a four+hour ferry trip and I was sorted. Bunged the backpack in a locker and took a fewphoties. The hostels’ phone reception doesn�t open till 1700 so for once I am busking it not because I am a slacker but because I have done everything I can do for now.
I bought a reasonably-priced coffee in the lounge and settled down to browsing the guidebook. Next to me were a middle-aged couple and an elderly uncle from Birmingham, talking about visiting York… so I barged in and had a pleasant hour-and-a-half’s chat about the island, where they have a second hmoe, and got some tips for my itinerary for the next few days.
14:14 I can tell I am entering rural Sweden now: a man with an improbably blond mullet plays the slot+machines, his blonde pig-tailed daughter begging for 5kr to play the mid-80’s jap-import pac man while vguns-n-roses blares from the jukebox.
14:22 urg. Swedish-language heavy rock on juke box. Time to find another room.
20:40 well here I am in Visby in a hostel for the first time in my life. I�m liking it so far - it�s in a converted (but not very converted) prison, but despite that it has a nice atmosphere. I nearly executed the itinerary I drew up on the ferry and hopefully got some wicked pictures of the old town. I can tell I am out of Stockholm: this morning I spent 64kr on a burger king ( and didn’t throw it down my front thatnks to the mangos’ help with the blood sugar - woo hoo!) yet just now I spent 98kr on tonight’s tea, tomorrow’s breakfast and stuff to make sandwiches for tomorrow’s lunch.
Spent the evening watching MTV with Erik who is studying computer game design at Visby U. One of his tutors is an Englishman called Richard White who goes on about what a great language english is - so I tipped hmi off about the whole countdown thing and especially the C_*NT____ tie in case he could get mileage out of it.
He was into thrash metal but had recently discovered Aphex Twin so I gave him a nudge in the Warp/Ninja Tune direction.
Score Tally, Day 3:
Skijump noses: 93
meatballs: 0
history: 1 great old walled town
brummies: one on ferry
mullets: 1
encounters with swedish rock music: 2
15:49 got into Stockholm Centralen @ about half eleven and threw more fast food down my front. Make a mental note to get out earlier so I can find somewhere to sit down and eat before blood sugar goes down and my judgement with it.
Spent the morning wandering the streets of Gamla Sta’n (old town) - saw plush moose - then took the Tunnelbanen to Kulturehuset to blog.
Kulturehuset (culture house) has some cool contemporary art and design. Bought mamphy a postcard - wonder if she’ll work out what it’s of -and saw lots of things I wanted to buy to furnish my imaginary playboy pad. At the entrance to the design shop, there were bits of paper and sticky tape and scissors, and there were people messing about in an apparently creative fashion. Turned out it was a present+wrapping facility as I saw the same thing in a toyshop later. You urbanites will probably tell me this is commonplace these days but to someone who normally lives in a sort of terrarium frozen in medieval times this was news OK?
I bought Lotta’s CD and some mangos for tomorrow’s breakfast, then after a mad dash to Lotta’s to change (waiting for your stop on a foreign bus has to be one of the MOST stressful things on earth) it’s back into Stockholm to La Isla for a salsa workshop and club. The Swedes seem to take it all a little more seriously than in York + we were taught a fixed routine, complete with the details on the hand+grip to be used. I guess it wasn� [typing in the dark on a swedish keyboard here, excuse mistakes like that one] t that different from back home but the language barrier put a different complexion on it.
After the class it was freestyle, and some blindingly good Swedes got up to dance, so I grabbed Lotta’s friend who I had been partnering and we had a go. A little while in she looked as if she was looking for a polite way out so we stopped dancing. It turned out Lotta & friend were leaving, having shown up only for the class, not the club. Ho hum. I downed a pear cider over ice (�3.50) and asked a few girls to adnce. My attempt at “talar du salsa?” - “do you speak salsa” - was met with a stony-faced incomprehension so I settled for asking very nicely in English with a slightly (but not too) desperate facial expression. Danced one-on-one with about 5 partners then they began a sort of game, which they announced in Swedish and then explained in Spanish. We all got in a circle in pairs and began dancing. Upon certain code words (in spanish) everybody would simultaneously do something cool. Except me. Or my partner. Boy that was a lesson in ‘letting go’ - no sooner had I FUBARed with one partner, than we would all change partners and I would begin the FUBAR again!
After this game I managed to acquire another stalker (see earlier salsa reports in this blog), this time I refused to buy her a drink saying she’d have to come to Britain where it’s more reasonably priced. [doh that was the chance to use the R.Feynman pulling method. Damn! ]
On the tube on the way home I saw a down-and-out, possibly Algerian, hassling some teenage girls. As best I could make out they replied “you can beg in English or Swedish but not in French!” Up yours frenchie :-)
Now on the train home, hoping I can find a better bus than earlier this evening. Tomorrow night I will be sleeping in a hostel, I know not where…
Score Tally, day 2
skijump noses: 752
meatballs: 0
moose: 5 varieties of plush toy including christmas moose with wee backpack
vikings: 3 varieties of pottery souvenir
royal buildings: 3
excellent salsa dancers: 28