Velkommen Til Sverige, Home of the Sun-Worshippers.

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It was inevitable that the eight-month journey from Australia to India had to come to an end. I said a sombre farewell to the tropics and with my newly purchased replica Helly Hansen jacket under my arm boarded the plane to Sweden. Waiting for me at the airport was my angel who felt more like a stranger for the first few minutes. Acclimatising to Lisa was easy; acclimatising to 8 degrees was a little more difficult! Thankfully she’d brought shoes and a sweater to the airport for me, what a sweetheart.

It took some time to get acclimatised to the ‘sophisticated’ life again. Getting seats on buses and trains has been a real novelty, clean streets and quiet places another surprise and most striking of all is the return to an anonymous being! I am now officially just another face in the street not an article of amusement and wonder. I spent the first two months of my time in Sweden in Stockholm, definitely the most beautiful city I’ve seen in Scandinavia to date. Lisa’s parents have a very central apartment there with plenty of space for the new arrivals. Stockholm is uber cool and a little intimidating if you just rolled off the Thiruvananthapuram Express and you look like it too! The look here is less hobo meets ‘I’m a lumber-jack and I’m okay’ and more polished, chiselled, just stepped out of a Polo-Sport catalogue-ish. Still, everyone was extremely welcoming and friendly and eager to ask me, “So… What do you think of Sweden? I mean, coming from Australia and all?”

I was whisked off into the woods within a week and made to undertake the obligatory ‘nudie swim in the lake’ routine. Swedes will deny it but I’m pretty convinced most Swedes DO really enjoy being naked in the woods, just like the commercials we used to stay up late and watch as little kids on ‘Naughtiest Commercials # Four’. Of course the water was absolutely freaking freezing (which is why they only show the women in those commercials because the men cease to be men in such circumstances!) but you do feel alive doing it. I have no doubt I will be made to do the Sauna and Ice routine come wintertime so stay tuned for that at a later date!

The weather warmed up after my first week and I could safely walk around in my flip-flops, a lucky thing given that I’d brought a nice souvenir home with me from Sri Lanka, a nasty coral gash on my foot that was now infected causing me to limp like Verbal Kint and get strange stares from conservative folks not accustomed to seeing hairy lumberjacks in flip-flops strutting the street when its 8 degrees. I held off as long as I could hoping the gash would heal but in the end had to have it seen to.

Weeks in Sweden: Two
Visits to Hospital: One
Rating on Swedish Medical Service: 9.8/10

The visit to the hospital was a real learning curve. Lisa was working so it was all me and my best attempts to convey a complete lack of Svenska. Thankfully most people spoke English and I was very proud of myself when I came home to the family that night brandishing my bandaged foot and doctors report. I wasn’t so proud when Lisa read the report aloud to raucous laughter, apparently the doctor had made a remark about the peculiarity of a man walking into the hospital wearing ‘bathing shoes’.

More peculiar than a hairy man in bathing shoes is the phenomenon of the ‘sun-worshippers’ in Sweden. Ask any foreigner who arrives in Sweden in the springtime what they think of the place and they’ll all tell the same story, I did. On days where the sun was shining I’d take a walk through the streets and feel like I was in a scene from ‘Shaun of the Dead’, people had their eyes closed, arms raised and would often be groaning and moaning in a mixture of pleasure and gluttony. I seriously was getting a little freaked out when someone thankfully informed that they were perfectly normal, they were just catching some sun. Now I come from Australia, the land notorious for sun and for the associated cancer it can cause but I’d never seen this behaviour. The fact is that Scandinavians can go for months without the feeling of sun on their skin so as soon as the sun pokes it’s little head out the people stop everything and start worshipping. You honestly have to be very careful where you walk or you’re bound to run into someone and spoil their ‘moment’. This lack of sunlight has serious medical risks, a fact that a sun loving surfer from Australia finds hard to comprehend, during the winter where parts of Sweden receive zero sun for weeks at a time, suicide rates jump through the roof. Doctors encourage people to visit solariums to boost vitamin E levels and stave off depression. One thing this does ensure though is that when the sun does shine the people here make the most of it. Lisa made it impossible for me to sit still if the sun was out (even though she’d been in Australia for a year???), bbq’s here and walks there. Sweden really comes alive in the summer, which is a great thing to see, I’m just a little concerned at what the flip side will mean for quality of life.

I’d made a promise to myself to see the Foo Fighters the next time they were playing in a city where I was or close to, I didn’t expect that to happen in Sweden when I was kinda broke and pinching the juice from every penny, especially when a ticket was $160! Lisa’s ingenious mind soon had us on the right path when she signed us up to volunteer at the festival, we saw it all for free in exchange for a couple of hours of (laughable) labour. I managed to see all the acts I wanted but couldn’t quite grasp the atmosphere. Again, Swedes may deny, but it felt like in so many cases that people were being too polite to rock-out! Everyone was keeping there personal space around them and tapping to the beat while guys like Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) are rocking out and scratching their balls wondering why no one’s throwing panties. Thankfully when the crowd favourites appeared the inhibitions ran away and both The Hives and Foo Fighters brought the manners down a tad and the crowd to their feet.

Swedes have an affinity with cruises, not just because a big chunk of the country is water and the Baltic borders some beautiful countries but because cruises bring about a wonderful legal loophole that everyone wants to take advantage of. In Sweden you can only buy wine, spirits and full strength beer from the government run System Bolaget and not only is it taxed heavily but the stores are only open until 6pm weekdays, 1pm Saturday and closed Sunday and public holidays. Makes it very difficult to have a spontaneous party! Once you’re in the open water on these cruises it’s open season and everyone goes crazy for it! You can buy duty free alcohol and tobacco and party to your hearts content 24hrs a day! The popularity means that cruises are extremely cheap. Feeling like we needed a fix for the ‘cheaper things in life’ we booked a two day cruise to Estonia, (yes Stony was talking about a real country when in Encino Man he described Links homeland) it cost $60 for a cabin for two people, we could easily make that back buying copious amounts of vodka!

It was nice to wonder around the city of Talinn and shop for ex-soviet bits n pieces in the local markets and stock up on tasty cheeses, spicy salamis and of course cheap vodka! We even slotted in a visit to an Estonian health spa where we suppressed laughs as grumpy old men and women let there bodies be blasted by lukewarm jacuzzis and I blended in with the crowd, swimming in my boxer-briefs after being told that wearing board-shorts was strictly forbidden… go figure! From what I saw they should be encouraging everyone to wear as much as possible!

For the summer we spent the best part in a small fishing town on the south coast of Sweden called Simrishamn. It’s a quaint town that really only comes to life in the summer. Lisa’s parents have a summerhouse there that they have lovingly restored over the last seven years. It sits right on the beach and reminds me so much of my hometown whilst still lacking the thing that I love most, the waves. Occasionally the wind will blow enough to create something that gives me hope for a paddle but even them I’m face with the dilemma of no wetsuit and water that could freeze an Eskimo. Just being close to the water has given me therapy and I really don’t want to leave for Stockholm! I’ve been inspired by a friend from home, Joel to take up the sport of kite-surfing here. I haven’t started yet but will definitely soon. The conditions in Sweden can be ideal and there is no shortage of people involved in the sport, might have to ask Santa for a dry-suit this year (or I could just mug him for that big coat!)

The Swedish Dream is to build or renovate your own summerhouse so of course I was willing and ready to be apart of this. Lisa’s father had a long list of jobs to complete over the summer and we progressed extremely well with a balcony and new garden features. I had a minor set back when a terracotta pot I was carrying broke, slicing my finger badly. Six stitches later and the wait is still on for the thing to heal fully.

Months in Sweden: Two
Visits to Hospital: Two
Rating on Swedish Medical Service: 9.9/10 (I had 2 doctors this time!)

In between all this relaxing we’ve managed a nice trip down to Denmark for a week and another to Gothenborg on the west coast of Sweden and Malmö in the south for another week. So I feel like I can give a much more accurate view of Sweden now and you know what, I like it. It’s probably the cleanest country I’ve visited and everyone seems happy with their role in society. I particularly like the attitude the people in Sweden have toward the environment, embracing any opportunity to get into the wild, something Lisa and I have done often. Read my next post to learn all about a wonderful hike to Northern Sweden, home of the reindeer.

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Comments

[Lyndall]

Great reading
Tim, as another Aussie overseas who love to write and who loves to take photos congratulations, great reading and I really enjoy your photos as well. I wish you well for your travels and life Lyndall