a visitor

Who's a lucky boy? Ja ha... That'd be me. I recently had a visitor drop in for a couple of weeks. My girlfriend, Belle, visited me in Göteborg.

It was time to share my knowledge of Swedish customs (lunch at 11:30am), language (tjena! hur är läget?), and food (inlagd sill). Of course it was a lot of fun showing off the city I'd been living in for the past four months, so far away from her and Melbourne.

First of all I had to serve some traditional Swedish foods. I served a mid-summer's style meal of inlagd sill, otherwise known as picked herring in English. Remember it's sill, and definitely not seal! Also served up with some fresh potatoes, boiled. Some of the herring was excellent, some of it not so.

Typically during the day we'd meet each other for lunch, as I was still working during the day. Something different in Göteborg compared to Melbourne is the ferry across the river, so typically we'd be catching that to meet in either Lindholmen or Järntorget. During the first week the weather looked pretty threatening, but usually it kept from raining too much.

It didn't stop us from checking out the sights around town, including walks along the canal, visiting the animals in Slottskogen (a large park) and going for after work drinks along über-trendy Avenyn.

Although the weather isn't always this cooperative in summer, in Sweden, luckily for us the weather did improve. The second week of Belle's stay was sunny and, would you believe it, hot!? Now it was time to get out an enjoy the best Göteborg has to offer. Personally I think the best activities are the outdoors ones too:

• cruising in the archipelago
• a picnic next at Delsjön
• outdoor dining in Haga
• drinks in the sunshine along Avenyn

We went on a cruise in the archipelago. It combined the lovely views of Göteborg's southern islands at sunset, and a wonderful summer meal: salmon, mussels, and as much shrimp as you could fit in (or be bothered shelling!). Highly recommended when in Göteborg (in summer... with good weather).

midsummer's eve

Midsummer in Sweden is a big deal. It's the holiday of the year. Celebrations usually involve friends, family and lots and lots of spirits.

There can be nothing more Swedish than raising a May Pole, dancing around it singing about little frogs, then settling in for a hearty lunch of pickled herring, new season potatoes, and strawberry cake. Lunch should be punctuated with frequent drinking and singing.

Luckily for me, I was able to get involved thanks to a work mate, Anders, hosting some of us for midsummer's eve. I had company as well, Carmen joined me in Göteborg from London. Also from work there was a couple of Spaniards, a couple of Chinese, and a few more Swedes just to make sure it was a Swedish enough day!

Did I mention the May Pole?

What's it look like? Squint a bit and use only the slightest bit of imagination. Yup, that's right. It symbolises a giant cock being shoved into mother earth, hence kick starting another year of fertile ground, good crops, etc.

After the raising of the May Pole, kids and parents are encouraged to dance around the pole. One of the more popular songs is Små Grodorna, or Small Frog. Basically it goes something along the lines of: small frogs are funny to see, the have no ears, and no tail. And they go kvack ack ack, kvack ack ack.

That's a funny conversation to have over a few drinks: what do animals "say" in other languages. In Swedish, frogs say kvack, kvack, and definitely not ribbit! I forget some of the others now, but commonly ducks, dogs, pigs and birds say things other than quack, woof, oink and tweet in Spanish, Swedish and Chinese. Cats seem to be the only animal that is the same in all: meow.

It was hungry work standing in a park on a Friday afternoon, so soon enough we headed back to Anders' place for a traditional midsummer's eve lunch.

Note: when a Swede offers you "seal" don't jump to conclusions. They do not slaughter baby seals in celebration of midsummer... There's a nicer explanation, as we found out. The Swedish word for herring is sill... Actually the English speakers were fine, as the Swede's told us sill is herring, but the Spanish call herring, aringa, (which is actually an Italian word!). No wonder we were all a bit confused! But don't worry: if you are in Norway, and they offer you seal, then it's a good chance it actually is seal!

After a lunch and a few Aquavit's: O. P. Andersen, and Skåne, to name just two. We headed outside for a game of Kubb. This is an old Swedish game, where you take turns to throw sticks at each other... sort of...

The game is played informally in back yards and parks all over the country whenever the sun is out. The playing field is set up with six kubbs either side, and one king in the middle (pictured). There are six throwing sticks, and two opposting teams. The teams throws all six sticks in a turn to attempt to knock over the kubbs. Once one teams' kubbs are all knocked over, it's time to knock over the king. The king should not be knocked over until the very end, otherwise you lose instantly (kind of like the black ball in pool).

Kubb was really enjoyable. Standing around in the sunshine, talking, and occasionally throwing sticks (and insults). All in all midsummer's eve was really enjoyable! Thanks to Anders for hosting us.

pining for the fjords

What better to do on Sweden Day long weekend, than to bugger off to Norway. Land of fjords, and the lovely Norwegian Blue parrot. My plan was to hitch a ride to Oslo, catch the train to Flåm, then a ferry to Gudvangen, a bus to Voss, and a train to Bergen. Stay a couple of nights in Bergen, fly back to Oslo, and then hitch a ride home again. Nice plan, but I had to make a few alterations along the way.

A friend from Swedish language classes, Marcos, works as an engineer for Volvo. He was visiting some friends near Oslo, and offered to drive me up there. Either half of Oslo commutes to Göteborg, or there quite a few others had the same idea. The traffic was quite heavy crossing the border.

We got to Oslo about an hour later than predicted by the Portuguese speaking GPS receiver. The awesome thing about Scandinavian summer is, however, it was only just dusk; at 11pm! I checked into my hostel and hit the sack, I was getting the early train to Bergen.

The next morning I had breakfast with some Norwegian troops who were also staying at the hostel. Breakfast was very Nordic: boiled eggs, cheese, ham and bread.

As I settled in on the train, I realised that I should travel this way more often. The train station was in the centre of town, only a short walk away from the hostel. There was no stringent security, the seat was large and comfortable, and of course the window is massive compared to an aeroplane!

Soon we were scooting through scenery that later, when showing Carmen the photos, she exclaimed that it must be fake, as if I'd made the photo up! I assure you it's real :-)

Unfortunately my pleasant train journey was interrupted by an announcement: The train is cancelled between Gol and Bergen due to fires in the mountains. This threw a spanner in the works!

The train company organised bus replacements, and gladly it was quite well organised. The buses were at the station waiting for us. Sadly I didn't get to the descend from Myrdal to Flåm, which is reported to have wonderful views, and for an interested engineer like me, also some interesting engineering to get the train down the steep decent. However, the bus ride did have it's highlights with some impressive hairpin bends in the road, and similarly steep descents. There were also a very long road tunnel. Twenty-four kilometres long. Until I just looked it up on Wikipedia then, I didn't realise that it is the worlds longest road tunnel! It's called Lærdalstunnelen.

Flåm was tourist central. Lunch was very expensive (but then, so was the rest of Norway). Surrounded by a number of snow capped mountains, and positioned on the edge of the water, it was very pretty.

I would have liked to spend more time there to climb a mountain or two. Instead I had to make a detour to a tourist office overrun by people from the cancelled train. The train wasn't running from Myrdal, or Voss, so no one could go to Oslo or Bergen from Flåm without catching a ferry or a bus. I opted to catch the "express" ferry to Bergen.

While it was labelled "express", the ferry still stopped at a few villages along the way, and took five hours to reach Bergen. When the countryside is as beautiful as World Heritage Aurlandsfjorden and Sognefjorden, there's no need to rush. Below is one of the villages we stopped at:

As you can see I fluked a sunny day. Western Norway is a bit like Tasmania: expect around 280 days of rain a year, and many more cloudy days on top of that. While it was a bit chilly in the wind outside on the boat, the days were warm and calm, with great visibility.

After a while I went inside and had a nap. At this time of year in Bergen, the sun sets at 11pm, and dusk lasts well past midnight, so I needed a daytime nap! Here's the view we were leaving behind:

No matter, Bergen was equally as good... but more on that later.