I wrote this journal during the trip, to fix on paper what I wanted to keep memory of. It is not an exhaustive report nor an objective analysis of the country; just my green pocket book with a golden butterfly on the cover.
The visual part consists of six films, which I'll manage to scan (if someone lends me a scanner) and incorporate in the online edition of the journal (with my times, it'll be ready for the end of the century).
Have a nice reading
July 18
Rome – Amsterdam – Berlin
I leave with quite a small luggage stored in the brand-new Berghaus backpack, that looks less capacious as the usual bag I've been using for years. Sleeping bags, isolating mattress and tent are hung on the outside in a tangle of 2,5 mm ropes I managed to carefully tie. We'll see when it's time to undo the knots.
At Rome airport troubles with my ID, because I had it sealed in plastic. I desperately try to take the film off, but it's stuck. Eventually, anyway, I pass the customs without any problem.
From the plane I observe the sun below the aircraft, reflexing on the clouds; I scan the flight assistents Dutch faces, dolikokephalous or round-shaped.
In Berlin it's raining.
Dinner in a new Indian restaurant (on the Turmstraße?)
July 19
Berlin – Rostock
Just as we are leaving home, I'm left with the shoulder strap of my new and expensive Berghaus backpack in my hand: I guess it's just slipped off, but much to my astonishment and rather anger it's obviously torn off. We transship on the fly all the gear into an old backpack of B's. The knots come loose perfectly, and I also find out that the small cords I hold the rope ends in have a name: «English Trumpet». I like it, sounds nice.
At the station, B buys two golden earrings, for the holes she's had since a few days.
Rain in Rostock too.
I get to meet Mr and Ms Prof. Dr. K: they look at me inquisitively, but don't dare any indiscreet questions, more for prudence than for linguistical limits (they speak a fair English). Herr Prof. Dr. E.K. looks dreamy and always absent-minded, keeps on murmuring and nodding assent, hard to say whether directed to himself or someone else.
July 20
Rostock – Trelleborg – Malmö – Lund
Driven at dawn to Rostock harbour, we embark on the Skåne, a large Scandlines ferry run by seamen who speak few words if any, clad in blue and yellow (Sweden's national colours, that not even the less attentive ones may help noticing anywhere the eyes turn). We try to regain the sleep we were torn from, but I'm all ears to get Swedish words among the din made by blond brats running all over the ship.
The Baltic crossing takes us in the bleak midwinter (foggy, cold and grey), and I begin worrying: I'm already wearing all my warm clothes, what shall I do?
Yet in Sweden we find the sun on the red and yellow flags of the Skåne, the South-western region that was for a long time a Danish colony.
As soon as we put ashore, I engage my first conversation in Swedish: but the interviewees understand no word. My disappoint is slightly relieved when I find out the two are "from Holland". At the second attent, brought towards two natives, I fall into a correction onto the impossible sound of "sj" in the word station. And anyway there's no train station in Trelleborg!
We head for the desolate and shadeless bus station, there we wait and half melt, then inspire Scandinavian reeks on the bus.
In Malmö we have a hard time to find the Avis office: we march on with the heavy luggage on our backs, ask for information getting answers in strict Skåne Danish-Swedish (or at least that's how I try to comfort myself for not understanding), and eventually reach the office. We deal to give the car back in Stockholm, and finally take possess of our Volkswagen Polo, which turns out to be a Mitsubishi Space Star (well, whatever), with plenty of optionals as alloy rims, air conditioning, radio and cd-player (ha, if only I'd known!), electric windows, car computer (obstinately showing our speed as between 60 and 67 km/h, consumption as 17 km/l and fuel range as 538 km) and a lot of other gadgets that – I already know that – shall make this small car consume more fuel than a Jaguar.
Directed by the Avis clerk, we rush (in slow motion, in obedience to the notorious speed limits, though you can't see the shadow of a policeman) to a beach south of town, looking onto the majestic bridge that joins Sweden and Denmark (16 km, leaning here and there).
Nice bath and first symptoms of hypothermia for me (the cold breeze and the huge cloud taking place before the sun sure don't help me warm up).
We head for Lund, but postpone the city tour to the next day, while we look for a place for the night. Relying on the allmänsrätt («the right of everyone» to camp anywhere), we roam the surroundings of the small town considering every plot of lawn. We eventually get a nice field, sheltered and flat, with an easy access for the car. The only flaw is that a few people come and go with their dog, jog or just walk on a path running a hundred metres away. We're not particular about that yet, and take out our tent, hoping it proves better than the backpack's.
It's a beautiful blue tent, two layers, easy to set and cosy.
July 21
Lund – Landskrona – Kullen
The sky above us on awakening is not as clear as yesterday, but all in all the wather is still fair.
We pack the tent and set off for Lund city: a tiny, graceful and deserted college town, like Cambridge buy waaay smaller. We stop at a café for a breakfast and morning washings.
In St. Peter's church (with en-suite crypt where I take delight in reading Danish gravestones from the XVII century), a jovial old man explains for us in perfect German the astronomical clock, twin to the one in Rostock.
By the way of languages, we have noticed that many elderly people speak a perfect German (it's no secret that Scandinavia was in the area of German influence, and I seem to remember that Kierkegaard used to stuff with German words his Danish writings), but just everyone speaks English very well, yet they write it with lots of mistakes; now English orthography may be well whimsical, but we are surprised by this gap bwtween spoken and written language, likely due to English-speaking movie and tv-broadcasting with Swedish subtitles.
Under a cloudy sky we move towards the coast and take the E6 highway northwards. It's impressing how many Volvos there are here: of ten cars, seven are Volvos, two are Saab and the last one has a Danish or German numberplate.
Landskrona is even more deserted than Lund; and there is nothing worth seeing here. We do some shopping (cookies, brown bread, some potato sallad, yoghurts, orange and apple juice, and three cd's to listen to in the car: Sarah Vaughan, Muddy Waters e John Coltrane). To my satisfaction I prove able to deal the payment with my card in the native language.
We keep on to the north along the coast looking for a tentable spot. The Kullen peninsula is nearly all natural reserve, and a light rain has started to fall. There's still much light, but we give up searches and place the telt in a quiet spot (just a few goats around), unhappily next to a huge concrete cylinder, most likely an electric generator buzzing like a ten thousand liter fridge. We are eager to find out whether this tent is really waterproof, although according to B on the guide it's written that Swedish rains are heavy and quick.
It does rains hard, indeed it pours. But it doesn't seem to be quitting. During the night I awake several times for the deafening noise, afraid of finding myseld afloat. But the tent proves to be quite waterproof, and only from the bottom some condensate oozes.
July 22
Kullen Peninsula– Ängelholm – Falkenberg
At 10 o'clock it's still raining cats and dogs. Around twelve we take profit of moment when the bucketing softens to throw all in the car – the tent is of course soaked and we stretch it between the rear seats and the boot. We wallow off the mud and drive to Ängelholm (world UFO capital, since in 1946 a certain Gösta Carlsson got everybody to swallow a story where he was visited and caught by the usual small green men), where we have breakfast in a nice confectioner's shop, with a toilet that we exploit to all extents.
Always under the heavy rain we reach the next peninsula, Bjäre, quite striking according to the guide. We don't get the chance to admire the landscape, though, for it's all veiled in water. The B&B recommended on the guide (with «gourmet vegetarian cooking») is full, the only accommodation would be a six bed dorm to be shared with tennis youth in Båstad (an awesom town entirely devoted to the Wimbledon sport). Forcing B's fears, I insist to challenge the deluge, and at a snail's pace (50 km/h) on the highway, sedated by Sarah Vaughan's voice, we reach Falkenberg, deserted and desolate (we begin to wonder where are all the people who supposedly dwell in the houses), but endowed with a cheap (so to say: 440 crowns) hotel, the Steria, where we can at least take a shower and do some washing.
The evening walk confirms the absolute absence of any living being in town: closed are the few cafés, deserted the cobbled paved streets between the delightful small wooden houses in the warm hues of yellow, steel blue, red, gray and green.
We have noticed a constant and abundant presence in any town of two kinds of shops: 1) Begravningsbyrå (undertakers), with illuminated windows and special offers as well; 2) opticians, far beyond any reasonable proportion.
I try to give a ring to Andreas, a boy from Borås whom I hoped to meet, but he doesn't answer. He's probably frightened at the idea of his house being sieged by an Italian and a German, and his fright would not be groundless indeed.
July 23
Falkenberg – Varberg – Gothenburg – Marstrand
After the Pantagruelian breakfast (included in the price) we leave the Steria taking away two hard eggs, hangers to hang our wet clothes in the car (already beginning to look like the Gypsies caravan), and a bilingual (Swedish-English) New Testament kindly offered by the Gideons international, that already proved useful as a wedge to keep the window open.
In Varberg the only thing to see is the Danish-built fortress, on the rough sea blown by the wind. Quite hamletic, with high bastions and the greenest grass all over, fairly impressing. I require a walk on the pier, where we can take a look at the small island in front and pity the inhabitants of its three houses, bound to seal off even just to buy the newspaper.
Varberg is a touristical centre, and there's also a Body Shop, where I can finally buy a shampoo (obsessed by the need of keeping my gears tiny, I relied on female vanity, but B brought only a tiny bottle).
And off we go, to Gothenburg. Packed, urban and expensive. After some wondering between tourist offices and cafés, we decide to go and pitch our tent in a park to the south of town. Yet as we get there, and find the only available parking within a range of 15 kms, it turns out to be 1) rocky, 2) hilly, 3) swampy. I've had enough, so we set off for the northern coast again: Kungälv, where the road ends in a windswept harbour with a couple of houses and reserved parking places and nobody to ask to. The only one we run across is a sort of a mentally disabled who's busy mowing the lawn and is unable to supply any indication. We venture in a tiny road into the woods, looking for a meadow that isn't either marshy or closed to camping (nearly all land here is organized, you can't leave the car at random even in the middle of nowhere), but a short conversation (in Swedish, ha!) with a peasant persuades us to point to the island of Marstrad, where we arrive leaving behind us small fjords and wind-blown peninsulas. At ten PM we are before the small island, without any chance to pitch our tent. The ferry leaves us on the other shore, and we look for an accommodation. Yet in the hostel there's only a six bed (two of which already taken) dorm for the hardly reasonable price of 590 crowns.
In a fit of liberality, I enter and inquire at the Grand Hotel: the receptionist speaks with us in Spanish (she must be from South America) and, moved perhaps to pity or just by the sense for business (it's too late now to expect any more customers), lets us for 1000 crowns a room which went for 1750. And it is a real palace: veranda looking on the main square, with the unfailing Swedish flag (there is one on every house) on the pinnacle standing before us, an incredible bed, bath, bathrobes, fridge-bar and lots of chic things. Our dinner with the potatissallad and mandelpaprika leftovers and the hard eggs stolen this morning in Falkenberg makes it all the funnier.
July 24
Marstrand – Stenungsund – Orust – Vänersborg
Extra-sumptuous breakfast at the Grand Hotel (with the usual egg thefth), reading of the international newspapers, then excursion to the fortress-prison where was secluded for 25 years the thief en travesti Lasse Maja (Lars Molin, 1785-1845, who passed himself off as a maiden under the name of Maja, and robbed the families who employed him), and periplus of the island in quest of the lighthouse, that I reach (alone) beneath the lashes of rain cast by the wind with a thick white foam, after fording slimy sea poddles inhabitated by white and red jellyfish.
Totally wet we come back onto dry land, buy some food and fuel and leave (with the shoes under the heating openings) off to Stenungsund, whence a series of more and less impressive bridges links some islands on the fjord: Tjörn, Orust etc.
Then we make a detour inwards, and end up in Vänersborg, the counterpart on the southern shore of its opposite «Fucking» Åmal: at the tourist information office we're told that the great event in town these days is a rockabilly meeting in the central gardens, and we get an accommodation at the Youth Hostel (vandrarhem), looking rather as an old age home (and likely run by a christian association). In the evening we disdain the banana forelocks and their (amazing) American cars from the Fifties and Sixties (there's a lot of these in Sweden) and we bury us in a lousy cinema to watch Spiderman.
July 25
Vänersborg – Läckö Slott – Källby – Mariestad –
Storfors
After carefully sweeping the rum clean (as requested), we hurl ourselves onto the breakfast buffet. We don't steal any egg this time, but we fill the thermos flask with coffee and milk.
We leave this forlorn hole that was Vänersborg, driving along the southern shore of Lake Vänern. We pay a visit to the fairy-tale and rather boring castle in Läckö, pass the archaeological site of Källby where a couple of decorated and inscripted runestones («Harald and Knut erected this stone in memory of their father Olof» is more or less the standard text, mutatis mutandis nominibus) face each other in a severe sentinel-like look.
According to the Rough Guide, Mariestad is «small, pretty and welcoming». We begin to wonder whether the guide's writers are a bunch of lunatics. In the small town, however, we look for an internet point where I can check my mail. A very kind girl leads us to the library, chatting in English and German (and poses the fatal question: «Warum Mariestad?!»). In the library, courtesy of the clerk, I get to see that I have received a virus on my email.
At nightfall we venture in a totally deserted village (a girl sitting on a bench writes a text on her mobile, all shops are closed, three begravningsbyrå). On the outskirts of Storfors we store some food from a grocery shop run by German-speaking Arabs, then encamp among mosquitoes and other beasts in a glade in the deep of wood.
July 26
Filipstad – Dalarna – Orsa
«Tomgångskörning förbjuden / max 1 min.»
A road sign forbidding something and annotated as above welcomes the driver who enters any village in the country. My deep knowledge of the language makes me able to provide the following exegesis: «no idling / max 1 min.»: we suppose that in town it is forbidden to drive around to no definite destination, at all or for a time which may vary from 1 to 3 minutes. Yet this interpretation puzzles us.
When we've struck camp, a breakfast awaits us in Filipstad, another pleasant and desolate small town. The konditori lacks taste as well as its croissants (I gave up inquiries about lard, to avoid further complications), but has a huge toilet where we refresh ourselves from the harshness of camping.
We buy three more cd's, of baroque music. I have a hard time holding myself from purchasing discs of Astrid Lindgren's books read by the author – I'll wait for Stockholm.
While B sits on a bench with a statue of Nils Ferlin, I sneak in the library and check the other email adresses I couldn't read from Mariestad. We buy some more fuel when the odometer reads 1000 km.
We go on northwards, and eventually enter the celebrated region of Dalarna, where we meet at once a couple of deers or reindeers (most likely mother and son): according to the guide they use to take easily apples from man's hands, and I try to approach them holding a pome. Absolutely indifferent, they keep on grazing in the undergrowth and then leave. We stop for a delightful picnic on a wharf sitting on the black waters of a lake, and B just doesn't want to believe that that figure on the other shore is not a fisherman but a statue.
Accompanied by Albinoni's Adagio, we drive through the wonderful valleys of Dalarna (which means indeed «the dales»), passing on the road first the village of Syknäs (pronounced nearly as «sickness») and then Gesunda («Gesundheit» = «health» in German). The coincidence bemuses us.
Under a benignant sky we reach Lake Siljan, where the towns of Mora and Orsa (the latter with a plantigrades park) lie. A few km to the north, the «Hell's rapids» (Helvetefallet) where B gets dizzy, afraid of bears and sore for the light sandals quite unfit for the excursion. Yet this is a suggestive spot, and you expect to see Ronja Rövardotter just across the wobbly bridge over the rapids.
We pitch our tent in a fine musky wood; while B scans the neighbourhood scared to see hords of bears coming, I am way more worried about mosquitoes. Yet not these, but other tiny insects (so tiny they can get through the mosquito net) make it to spoil our sleep.
July 27
Orsa – Noppikoski – Vemdalen – Östersund
I wake up with a slight stiff neck, backache and ice cold feet.
We drive on north, leave Dalarna behind us and enter Hälsingland. We stop by the small market at Noppikoski, where many people look Saami; there's a fair in the village, and among junk and reindeer-hamburger, bear skins and elk antlers are on sale.
We have breakfast in a picturesque and quite rustic café, adorned with plenty of horns and many Finnish gadgets (ski, sledgehogs, snowshoes, cattle bells etc.). But the best comes inside the toilet: plastered allover with newspapers from the Thirties, decorated with a reindeer head whose velvet eyes stare at you while you do your business.
On the newspaper (we have been checking it everyday for the weather forecasts) the first page is totally dedicated to this headline: «Man of 69 lost in the wood while mushrooming». It's a hard life for journalists up here.
Past the mountain (Sweden is rather flat, and the name berg is liberally given to ranges frankly standing for hills, while fjäll seems to be reserved for the fierce heights next to Norway) called Pilkalampinoppi (644 mt), we reach the useless town of Sveg, where we fail to buy a film for the camera.
Thence we follow the state road n. 84 towards northwest, then turn right on the 315 that leads us on the mountains (Skovdallsfjäll, good 1009 mt). In Vemdalen we eventually buy a film, socks for me and we take a picture of the pleasant wooden church, the only thing worth seeing here. The sleepy athmosphere makes this place look like the deep south of the USA, and old dusty American cars seem to have just come out of the Dukes of Hazzard.
A few mountains further on I notice a windswept thumb, and malgré B we take on Mats, a researcher who lives in the forest studying the trees, and is going to the Östersund Festival. We are also going there, for tonight Fanfare Ciocărlia, the world famous gypsy brass band are playing, and they are friends to B.
As we chat with Mats I finally discover the meaning of the «tomgångskörning»: it is forbidden to leave the engine running when the car is not going! (These ecological freaks...)
Östersund is a desolate small town as well, that awakens just for two days in the year, right for this festival. Hords of drunken Swedes and Norwegians all around have already set me in a bad mood. When we find out that the concert tickets go for 370 crowns (about 40 Euros) each, I dig in my heels and vote resolutely against it.
We go and pay homage to the Fanfare, and beg for a pass from their manager Helmut. But there's no way. We roam then through the town, stemming the approaches of several drunkards feeling talkative or bothersom, eat a falafel and head off west to find a place for the tent.
Under the boreal glares, we set on a nice meadow in Västerkälen.
July 28
Västerkälen – Mattmar – Mörsil – Åre
I'm up early and set out for a stroll. The place we happened to stop in the darkness made clearer only by the light stripes in the northern sky (and the car's high beams) is quite nice. We set our tent a few metres from a small 19th century hut, that the local farmer had to keep available for a soldier.
We drive in search for a café with toilet, and end up in Mattmar, on a pleasant hill with old houses and a signalation tower, served by a waitress in costume and delighted by an accordion concert under the warm sun.
We coast the lake. In Mörsil a fresh bath in the dark, icy, crystal clear waters cleanses off three nights of camping, while four Norwegians, who looked like Mr and Miss Natural Born Killer and family, prove much less threatening when they ask for some toilet paper.
We finally reach Åre, a village sitting between the lake (Åresjön) and the mountain (Åreskutan, scoring 1420 mt).
At the tourist office we book a stuga (small country houses: every family owns one, and many are to let for holidays) by Herr Andersson, for as little as 200 crowns. When we get to the place, a battered old man comes out and points at our house, telling us that there we will find his father, who takes care after it! The two stink dreadfully of vodka and piss, but the house is perfect: tiny (I have to stay bent), on two storeys, with kitchen and cable-tv. The two old men insist that we should be careful not to let the cat in, otherwise she'll eat all our supplies: but the poor animal shows no interest at all in our food.
In a few minutes we've given the place a touch of gypsy, hanging our washed clothes in the veranda and spreading into the twin stuga.
We walk down to the village to buy pasta and tomatoes; as I stand by the stoves I realise we haven't thought about olive oil (which is not to be found in the larder with salt and sugar, of course), and with a slight embarrass I have to arrange the sauce using Bregott, a sort of half-vegetable butter, thick-fat and widely spread in Sweden.
By the evening rain has started to fall, and I'm very glad we found a roof and a bed. But my alpinistic plans for tomorrow are at risk.
On the telly we watch a program like "Surprise surprise", where a young Swede meets his father, who turns out to be no less than the Officina Zoè leader: funny scenes of comparate folklore.
July 29
Åreskutan – Storlien – Hell (Trondheim)
We wake up early, while a light drizzle veils all in grey. The clothes we washed yesterday, after one night in the showers hut, are damper than yesterday: I arm myself with the hairdryer and try to blow them dry.
Breakfast with the rapsberry from the back of the house.
I take my leave from Herr Andersson-father, entertaining him in an unlikely conversation in Swedish about the weather, and my purpose to climb the mountain. According to the venerable old man, who doesn't seem to speak a word of English, there is no problem and the sky will open.
I succeed and persuade B to come on the cableway (Sweden's only one) to the top of the mountain. Halfway up all is swallowed in the fog. As we touch land I wonder what the hell are we doing up here: the top is 200 mt above us, but totally invisible. It would be insane to venture blindly: even though we should reach it, how should we find the way back? A rowdy mob of daredevils with their downhill bicycles (large tyres, shock absorbers and disc brakes) head down at breackneck speed; a very alpinistic family goes another direction. We, dressed in our patched up k-ways, rush for shelter from the mist and the cold (8°C) in the cableway café. I realise our tickets are only valid for a one-way trip, so we have to consider the idea of descending by foot. We ask the waitres if this is possible in such a fog; she looks bemused and answer naturally it is.
We start to walk, scanning in the glimmering mist for the red signs painted on the rocks. Yet after a few hundred steps the sky breaks open onto a magnificent mountain landscape, with the lake at the bottom and clouds just above us. The bare moist rocks turn into musk, then grass and white and lilac flowers, and finally knee-high meadows in bloom.
We shoot the obvious pictures on the snow, have a picnic and enjoy the hike.
In three hours we are back at the village, tired but happy (though I'm restless because now there's a bright sun also on the top and you can probably see as far as Norway). I consider renting a bike, but time is money and also bike renting is money, and quite a lot (350 crowns).
More mountains, fairly wild, till Storlien, last village in Sweden on the boundary with Norway. While buying fuel we exchange some words with a couple of Swiss bikers (one on a scooter!) who just can't believe that "here they don't accept Euros!".
We cross the border and with the sun straight in our eyes we follow the course of the river Stjør until the road, approaching Trondheim, becomes pay-toll: we don't have any Norwegian money, so we head to the near airport to draw some from the cash dispenser. At the Avis counter I get a map of Norway.
Rather bittered for finding out that this trip was only my desire (B would lay down under the sun, whereas we're driving miles in these cold places), upset by the fees to enter Trondheim, I decide we're going to sleep out of town. In the outskirts of Hell (!) we find a nice field, pluck up courage and go ask the farm mistress (whom I get after a couple of sentences in makeshift Swedish with the offspring) if we can camp there. «Permission is rarely refused», said the guide: and so we get a comfortable pallet in the high wet grass.
July 30
Trondheim – Buvik – Orkander – Gauldalen
A light night rain leaves but a few drops on the tent, and early in the morning we make our way (on payment, alas) to Trondheim.
«Parking can be a pain», warned the unutterable guide, accurately describing the situation.
Parking fares are awesome and progressive (one hour costs 1, five hours cost 20): we share our disappoint with another couple of tourits getting mad with the paying automat.
In three hours we hasten to visit the impressing Nidaros Dome (Nidaros was Trondheim's ancient name), the archibishops palace (among the ancient junk, a Jew's harp from the fifteenth century) and the military and resistance museum (a dull gathering of crypto-nazi relics), and we even make it to attend a short organ concert in the cathedral. Then we beat it, with the aim to see a fjord before heading back to Sweden.
We stop in Buvik for a bath (B – I stay on the beach like Charlotte Rampling in Sous la sable), then coast the fjord, religiously keeping a snail sped (60 km/h on the straights) through the disgusting stench of a trash incinerator by the dreary small town of Orkander. As we drive on the other side of the fjord, we realise that the landscape is not going to change: thus we decide to turn back, along the Orkdal valley (fairy, bucolic and deadly boring) till Berkåk, where I swallow a coffee and a painkiller for my headache. We drive up the E6 till Støren, thence turn west-southwest on state road 30: another enchanted valley by the Gaula river. We cross a picturesque bridge (that B refuses to do by car) to ask two perplexed Norwegians if we can put our tent on their field. They think about it for a while, ask how many of us there are, and finally allow us, warning not to worry about the sheep that are possibly coming down from the mountain in the night. It's a perfect spot: high grass, soft rockless ground (for the first time I can stick all pegs straight without wrenching any), a river to wash in the morning.
Light night rain.
July 31
Gauldalen – Singsås – Røros – Brekken – Tännäs -
Högvålen
The river proves indeed excellent for a morning dip and some clothes washing, even though it's damn cold.
These rivers in Norway run on a cobble bed, at the end of narrow green valleys between high mountain crests, whereas in Sweden small streams unwind among swampy fields and the undulations of the ground certainly don't make it easier for the waters to flow away.
The first café we find is actually a kitschy boutique for pottery and leather stuff, in the forlorn village of Singsås; in the toilet I am able with some acrobatics to wash my feet.
The car slides silent along these endless valleys, that run from the windows slow as the baroque Largo's I'm growing to loathe.
The last place in Norway before the border is Røros, where we spend till the last cent of Norwegian currency in supermarket with surprisingly decent prices. We come out of the shop loaded with the usual sallads, fruit juices, yoghurt and cheap (yet unsliced) bread.
We stop by a still lake, broken by B when she decides to bathe.
And on towards the border, where I stop and finish off the film shooting pictures of the custom buildings and the border signs in both languages.
We say goodbye to the grass-roof huts of Norway and enter back in out good old (and still less expensive) Sweden; we have a break in Tännäs for a long coffee + hairwash, before we get in the state road 311 to Särna. Here a young deer (or was it a reindeer?) walks suddenly before our car: I rush out of the car holding an apple in my hand, calling me idiot for shooting all those pictures to border signs. The deer and its mother cheerfully ignore us, and after a quarter they disappear in the forest.
Not even one hour later, another (rein?)deer with musk antlers and a collar is grazing in the middle of the road, heedless of the cars patiently waiting in line (ours and a red Volvo after us). We pass by the animal, and from the Volvo comes out an arm to give an educational slap onto its rump, teaching it to stay out of the road.
We drive past Sweden's highest village Högvålen: 830 metres above sea level!
Eventually we find a river to pitch our tent nearby: I insist to set the rain-rods, hoping such care will prove useless. So it is, and the night is clear. B spots another deer, in the morning I come across three times, among the huge turves resembling tho one painted by Dürer in 1503, a sort of field hamster, and the tent is dry at last, so we can repack it.
August 1
Högvålen – Särna – Njupeskär – Åsbo
While the sky turns grey, we drive mile after mile southbound, and we don't find a café till nearly in Särna: we stop (lead by the sign "Café öppet") at the Wood Museum, where we stare astonished at the life-size pictures, the shoes (size 20) and the ring (3,3 cm diametre) of a giant lumberjack living here around, a certain Per Svensson; we read about Mors Lilla Olle, aka Jon Ersson, a child who in 1851 was found playing with some bear puppies and mother bear, then becoming the subject of a famour children ballad.
We stop in Särna to buy some films and fuel. When I go to the cash to pay, the clerk answers with a sentence I can't understand; after some more tries I give up and switch to English. Then she goes: "Oh, sorry, I thought you were Swedish". I come out of the shop with a huge smile to my ears.
We drive back up some km to visit the Njupeskär falls (Sweden's highest). On the road we come across a row of cars standing still, and people with cameras poiting at the wood: a couple of reindeers and their mother graze in the thin forest. We join the party of watchers, shoot a few pictures where the animals are likely to come out as undistinguishable stains amidst the bush.
As we reach the falls parking the first raindrops are falling. Along the two km of wood path, between musk and dead trees in dreadful shapes, we don't care for water from the sky.
By the waterfall (quite a leap, indeed: and you look at it from the valley floor, on a dell of huge stones crumbled from the sides) I get an extra share of humidity by coming too close to the waterfall and merging in its steam. Yet it's on the way back to the car that I definitely soak. We take a short cut signaled by a sign obviously placed by a troll: though walking rather quick it takes a good half hour longer. As we get to the car, as for magic, the rain stops.
With the heating blowing straight on our shoes, we move southwards, to Sälen. In Åsbo I see the first sign for Stugor and I don't think twice. For 250 crowns we have a complete house, with bath, shower and kitchen. And fridge and tv. Unlike the Anderssons' one in Åre, here the ceiling is high enough for me to stand – but I loudly bang my forehead on the door jamb. We amuse ourselves reading the guestbook, with the writings by Lars and Inga Unger, the houseowners.
Hoping to see another reindeer, after dinner (another pasta with bregott-tomato sauce, alas) we climb up the mountain. The soft musky ground is actually a marsh, and the only animals to be found here (and plenty of them) are hungry mosquitoes. At a few metres from our stuga, as we come out of the wood, we come across Mr Rune, a lumberjack who built with his own hands (and without a single nail) a gorgeous wood house, that he's eager to show us.
Rune is a bit feebleminded, but very friendly. He worked five years in the USA (Kansas City, then Seattle) as a carpenter, and bought the land we stand on in 1982. It took ten years to build the house. His wife came from Finland in 1942, during the war. They live near Örebro, and are here on holiday.
Tomorrow morning Rune is going to pluck jordbär (another variety of wood berries, I gave up the idea of finding all the matching names in Italian) in the swampy forests of Fulufjället.
August 2
Åsbo – Malung – Vansbro – Borlänge – Falun – Gävle –
Uppsala
Under a nice sun we leave the quite Åsbo garden.
We have a coffee break in a "cooperative" likely run by the local church, then on to the south. Forests become farmed land, and the landscape is quite less interesting.
Since this morning my right thumb has been aching, and the gum of the usual wisdom tooth is swelling.
While the road gets more and more boring and flat, I keep an eye open for a chemist's shop. We'll have to drive to Borlänge (whose name we decide is a mixture between "boring" and German "langweilig"), a dull industrial town with wide commercial alleys and the inhuman temple of consumption Kupolen, to finally buy a disinfectant (and pay 5 crowns for a toilet).
We flee to Falun, famous for the folk music festival, sausages and coppermines. The highway cuts a forest looking as fake as a Disney park, although we see a couple of huge reindeers grazing by the roadside. We stop in Ene, rather pissed off. The weather is fair and we should pitch our tent, but it's not a nice place to do it.
Gävle (pronounced as «djävle» with a touch of devilish) has nothing interesting to show, so we turn south-east, unable to spot the sea yet.
Out of the car it's moist, B feels cold and I decide to head to Uppsala and look for a bed. We wander across a pleasant country, among empty farms and isolated houses, until we end up on the E4 highway to Uppsala. It's getting dark, and I've got tired eyes. We can't find a bed before Uppsala. I take my lenses off and we enter the homeland of Joey Tempest, unforgotten singer with the band Europe.
The Hotel Basic charges 600 crowns without breakfast. I try to ring up other places, but the phone card credit expires while a man explains that if I want a room for this night I have to call tomorrow. We go to the Basic, where we even have to pay 100 crowns for the parking and 100 for the breakfast.
The room is quite basic, furnished in standard IKEA style, yet comfortable.
August 3
Uppsala – Stockholm – Haninge
I wake up early, and after the huge breakfast we go visit the Dome: built to be better than the one in Trondheim, it is more lavish and much less austere. The walls are mostly covered with an ugly tapistry reminding of an old aunt's (although on a vault, nestled in the meanders, a little devil is painted). A few colour glasses, more light than in Nidaros, some ordinary paintings on the life of Gustav Vasa, whose body rests here among a couple of wives. There are also Carl von Linné and Anders Celsius somewhere.
While I slumber on the lawn under runestones decorated with geometrical signs, B goes to have a look at the library; but the seventeenth century silver bible and the manuscript of Mozart's Zauberflöte are not worth the 20 crowns, so we sneak into the Gustavianum, a small but interesting collection of mummies (men, women, cats, crocodiles and other unidentified shapes), then physics and medicine laboratories, a dissection theatre built on behalf of enterprising doctor, professor, building speculator and ferry shipowner Olof Rudbeck. I can hardly keep myself from the temptation to lay on the dissection table, and turn my attention to the maps hanging on the wall: some from the seventeenth century show northern Europe, and we enjoy spotting the places we've been to.
Always under a postcard sun we move to the capital.
In Stockholm the Avis office is of course right in the centre, and closed. With much labour we get to leave our trustworthy Mitsubishi (2987 km) in the Sheraton parking. B goes and find a phone box to ring up our (possibly? hopefully?) hosts, a distant cousin she's never met and her husband. I sit and bivouac with the luggage, until she comes back and we head for the train station, where I buy two pricy tourist cards as we wait.
Our hosts come and pick us up with a cool red Volvo 740 Polar. Alexandra Lindholm and Hans are willing and totally friendly, they live rather far away from the centre, in a pleasant bucolic village, with Hans' Chevrolet Malibu 4500 in the garden. The house is huge and cosy.
Hans is like the Swede archetype: discreet but attentive, honest till naivety, quiet and always aware, with an environmental conscience but not too much; he works for the state agency that warrants contracts with foreign parties. And he's a noble too, a direct descendant to the Vasa's second wife we saw this morning lying in Uppsala's dome.
His wife Alexandra on the other hand is an ever-moving cyclone, way more extreme and sometimes extremist, she works in a bank but also for an animal-rights association, is vegetarian (yet, curiously, because of her job and not vice versa) but eats some animal here and there for mere aversion, she dreamt to be a private eye but is so astray that she can't tell whether her neighbour at work has a moustache, a beard or is perhaps a woman, she is the webmaster of a site but when I happen to mention HTML she frowns astounded. This formidable mixture maybe owes something to her mother's portuguese origins.
Affinities between the two couples members are funnily crossed: so Alexandra and I are the two die-hard animal-rights activists who look askance at carnivors; but Hans and I are much closer as for temperament (I am also, or at least so I believe, quiet, balanced and maybe slightly boring), whereas Alexandra and B are immediately confident with each other.
Bier before, during and after dinner, brandy, madeira and more libations make us even chattier. The menu lists also the umpteenth rödbetsallad, but it's a warm and vegan meal. We chat happily, with some boring exceptions when I drag Hans into discussing Sweden's development perspective inside the EU. Fairly drunk, we go to bed after 2 o'clock.
August 4
Stockholm
I wake up around eight, and record my miserable state of hangover. I sleep on until half past ten, when an apparition becomes socially necessary. Shower and breakfast relieve but can't take the hangover away, and during the car transfer downtown I don't quite feel in shape.
Stockholm welcomes us with a clear sky and impossible parkings even for the natives. We wander as proper tourists, even take a ferry (finally these tourits card prove useful).
The centre, all in all, is rather small, and in half a day we've walked across the whole Gamla Stan ("the old city"), a picturesque maze of alleys that's Stockholm's most ancient core (although some archaeologists point at another small island further off), with a couple of interesting churches (there's also the tyska kyrka, the church built by the German merchants in the seventeenth century), the royal palace, statues of some complete unknown, and a lot of people. For the first time I can hear familiar accents, from all over Italy, and then Spaniards, the ever-present Germans and Japanese, a mad crowd.
We pass through the main square, Stortorget, where in 1520 the Danish king Christian II gathered more or less all the Swedish nobility and enthusiastically practised a bloodbath of the imprudent aristocrats; yet he failed to get the famous Gustav Vasa, who happened to be in Dalarna, where he dealt with the wavering feelings of Swedes and Norwegians, who one day chased him and the next saved him, and in the end he gathered an army of loyal locals (and some thousands mercenaries from Europe, I'd guess) and became king, while Christian II was deposed.
After a long walk and half an hour of searching, we locate the entrance to the parking and drive back to the Lionheads' (thats how Hans' family name can be translated) manorhouse, just in time to wear our bathing suits and go to the near small lake in the wood. Frankly I'm tired and would be happy to spare this tour; but I don't want to pester and so I follow. I don't feel like a bath (after nearly freezing in Malmö I've become very cautious), and let down all invitations and insurances on the water's mild temperature. After a while I'm melting in the sun, however, I change my mind and dive. Water is indeed nice, but as usual quite dark. I swim back to the shore with a contact lens drifting in my eye, and while we all silently contemplate the sunset on the lake I am busy trying to fetch it back. Then I join and contemplate too.
Tonight we're eating inside the house, for out in the garden it's too cool. I make an unhappy remark on Hans' favourite fish dish, and then feel misplaced. I try to raise back my quotations, but at the end of the evening I sort of feel the stock is negative.
August 5
Stockholm – Dr. K
Despite our good intentions we wake up late (the two of us: the landlords sneak out quite early), and with breakfast and a washing the morning's over.
B rings up Dr Gregor K, an old child psychiatrist, who came here from Rostock ages ago.
He invites us for lunch, but B arranges for a coffee.
We pass through Stockholm in the underground, and for the first time we see ticket collectors: they just come in the wagon and stand in a corner, probably waiting for the honest Scandinavian traveller, who happens to be without a ticket, to come and spontaneously report his own misdeed.
We meet the lively, playful and polyglot shrink, and his wife, a gym teacher and a child shrink as well, who can understand German but prefers to speak in English, thus making it possible for me to take part in the conversation now and then – even though Dr K's German is so clear that I can get a good half of what he says, whereas when B is speaking I am suddenly deaf. Anyway there's not much I could say: the main subject is the K family and psychology schools.
We leave the K's (the old man is enthusiastic about B) and we realise we have no time to visit the town: I thoughtlessly promised an Italian dinner, and now I'm worried because I don't know what to prepare. We go to a supermarket where I buy the ingredients for a tomato sauce (this time olive oil too!) and even for a pesto (except for cheese, that I give up after summoning all the shop's clerks to inquire which sort of rennet is in every cheese on sale), leaving the final choice for later. Prey to panic, I also buy oranges and fennel for a sallad (a hard trial for Swedish palates). All this costs us as much as a dinner in a restaurant (in Italy), but luckily it's all on B, since my card as usual won't work, because the secret code has five digits and the Swedish POS only takes four.
We arrive back home to meet Hans setting off for his nine or ten km run, training for next Saturday's Midnatt Loppet.
We opt for the tomatoes, and I supervise leaving all the hard work to B. The sauce is not bad (a fair tomato sauce), but I cooked too much past: with the 1 kg pack I wasn't able to measure and I must have put down a good eighthundred grams.
On the sallad noone dares to comment, but I think it's good.
August 6
Stockholm – Vasa museum and lonely shopping
Not even this morning can we wake up early, and we don't reach downtown until twelve. We head straight to the Vasa Museum, where the tourist cards, needless to say, won't do. Yet it's well worth paying to admire this 69 metre, three mast and double-decker vessel, that for 333 years lay thirty metres away from everyone's look, buried in the mud after sinking on its launch day, AD 1628.
The museum is a good one, although the eyes always turn to the ship's dark wood, to me much nicer as it is than in the bright, flashy colours it was painted at its times.
Some movies are a bit naive though: the camera shooting the very moment when the only gold object found on board, a ring, is dug out of the mud.
The historical section about life in seventeenth century's Sweden lacks some verve (illustrated panel: «a bait was found in the king's wood. Evidence lead to Måns from Arlanda and his brother, who were fined»). However we hang around in the museum until four o'clock, and then we have to hasten towards the modern art museum, to find that – surprise! – it's moved somewhere else.
We turn then to the ancient art one, where I am told that the tourist card is not valid (what, is it valid for anything at all?!), but the girl at the cash, maybe touched by my disappointment, hands me a free ticket. B tries to repeat the trick, but she lacks my mediterranean charm. To console her I leave her my ticket, my mobile to keep in touch with Alexandra, and set out by myself, doing some shopping and heavy walking.
The town is in summer dress, but you can easily see how in the winter time all life is lead indoor, between galleries, palaces and underground stations hosting all sorts of commercial services. It's a beautiful northern capital, with all the statues, fountains and glass façades.
As it was easily predictable, in town you don't get the chance to find a toilet for free, and even when I force myself to a disgusting coffe by Burger King hoping to be able to brush my teeth, the toilet stays occupied beyond any reasonable wait, so I give up and make my way back home.
Meanwhile I've raided (for a high price, alas!) a music shop: Garmarna's Vedergällningen for our hosts, a Folk och Rackare compilation for me, an audiobook by Astrid Lindgren, and the long-desired double c.d. with medieval ballads.
I'd like to buy something for my friends, but all shops are closing already, to my scandal.
I reach the underground to go back home, and find out that the tourist card has expired by now. I walk till the central station (I like to walk anyway) where I pay an outrageous amount for the train back home.
At home I find Hans: alone, a bier in his hand, he's working at the pc after coming back from a vintage cars meeting, and then gives himself up to gardening.
We don't hear from the maidens until half past nine, where they show up after visiting Alexandra's mother (a peculiar portuguese woman who walks ten km per day with her two dogs and consumes a pair of trainers every year), they are hungry and ready to eat the past I haven't prepared.
I make up a quick pesto, getting a discreet success.
August 7
Stockholm
As usual we get in town around noon. The modern art museum, in its new premises near the station, has only a few useless and annoying contemporary artists on display; the bulk of Matisse, Picasso, Dalí, Miró and fellows are left in the repository (and the museum has been moved because the old building walls were mildewed!).
Relying (for the very last time) on the guide, we go to the medival museum, which turns out to be a poor children-aimed exposition, the only interesting pieces being the remains of a wall from the Late Middle Ages and a 20 metre barge from the fifteenth century fished out of the harbour.
We devote ourselves to souvenir shopping, and we also buy the train+bus tickets to Malmö-Trelleborg (which cost us as much as a flight to Rome).
Last evening by the Lionheads; we skip the packing to the next morning.
Our hosts look sincerely sad that we're leaving.
August 8
Stockholm – Malmö – Trelleborg
The incredible amount of clothes and various luggage gets stuffed in the two backpacks; in a burst of heroism I decide to carry B's one, a boulder lying on the ground with the menaceful calmness of a walrus. To raise the challenge I even tie up the tent and one sleeping bag: the result is a deadly mass, requiring wearisome manoeuvring to be lifted to my back. Yet once I start to walk it's not as heavy, at least till Alexandra's Toyota, that we borrow for the last time to the train station. We leave the keys on Hasse's Chevy tyre, and wait for the train, strangely late and standing on the rail for a quarter (likely the only inefficiency in the Swedish railways in the last ten years). It finally moves and takes us to Stockholm.
B lies on St. Klara's church lawn, while I cleverly buy (for an awesome price anyway) all Pippi Långstrumpor's books and the relative c.d.'s. I miscalculated and drew from the cash dispenser twice the money we need; we treat ourselves with a quick meal, a vegetable tunnbrödrulle (the Swedish version of a hot dog, a potato-flour bread roll usually filled with reindeer meat, I guess) before hopping on the X200 that will dump us in a four hours in Malmö.
We sit beside half a dozen draft soldiers telling loud military jokes. A few seats away four upper class offspring come back from a tennis vacation: Skåne's spoilt kids.
The train is very fast and makes me slightly sick, and in Malmö I am quite happy to walk (with the monster on my back). The bus takes us to Trelleborg, where we stride to the harbour.
Just before stepping in the boarding aread, I turn to give a last glance to the red and yellow Skåne flag against the blue sky, and stumble on a rail crumbling to the ground. Nothing hurt, but I am left there on my back like Gregor Samsa.
We get on board, and I decide to spend all our money for a cabin. And it was a good idea: in a flash the boat is full with noisy German brats, and we shelter inside our loculus, where we party with crisps and Danish bier, then let the innatural darkness wrap us up.
August 9
Rostock – Warnemünde
At twenty past six we tread onto Rostock ground.
We leave our luggage (the big backpack scored 21 kg on the scale) at the parents' place and go to Warnemünde. B shows me the house where Edvard Munch dwelled for some years; we enter the veranda with some other people, and suddenly an enthusiastic cicerone welcomes us and starts illustrating. He's standing just between us and the door, so we have to put up with the whole introductive talk, then with another speech held by a young scholar. I can't understand a word, and looking at myself, in bathng suit and the mat under my arm, I can hardly keep myself from laughing. As soon as there's a pause we beat it.
On the beach it's cold, and after a couple of hours it starts raining.
We go back to Rostock, in one afternoon we visit all that's worth: St. Nicholas' and St. Peter's churches, monastery with cloister, city walls and gates.
August 10 – 18
Vietgest – Nienhäger Hütte – Berlin – Amsterdam – Rome
We move to the small house by the lake, where we spend our time listening to medieval ballads, bathing with the snakes (we actually see only one swimming, and I'm very excited although they aren't venomous) and wandering the surroundings.
By August 17 we are back in Berlin, and at 6 o'clock in a Sunday morning I board on the aeroplane that takes me to Amsterdam, thence to Rome, where I'm struck down by the southern heat.