3 Swedish miles

We found a hiking trail called the Upplandsleden, which is 40 Swedish miles.

Last Saturday we did 3, which left us with sore muscles, blisters on our feet, aching legs and a bit of sunburn. It may be worthwhile to mention here that a Swedish mile is 10 kilometers. Our journey was from our house to Fjällnora.

Much of the trail was through forested areas. Here we stopped to reapply mosquito repellent since the Swedish mosquito's are superior in number and stinger length.

Approximately 9 km into the hike we hiked past the Lunsen cottage. This cottage was build in the 1800's but are now used mainly as an overnight resting place for hikers. Here we also had our first lunch.

There are a number of marches and bogs throughout the trail. However the trail is very well maintained and boardwalks are found across the deeper waters.

Much much later in the day we hiked through the country side where small villages are interspersed with farms.

We stopped at a rune stone to have our second lunch.

Finally we reached the lake at Fjällnora. We pitched our tent next to the lake and had a very quick dip in the cold water.

We made supper on our gas stove and went to bed.

The next morning we awoke to a beautiful sight as the sun shone on the lake.

We set our to find a bus back home but we needed to hike another 5 km alongside the lake.

Just before we reached the bus stop, Kurd (this is his name) from Kurdistan (someone who we haven't met before), gave us a lift all the way back to Uppsala.

This was the longest hike that we did in one day and although it was hard work it was a lot of fun. We are looking forward to at least one more hike during this summer but it will have to wait until Carina comes back from France (more detail will follow her return).

R&C

Midsummer Madness

We heard that Midsummer in Sweden is as big (if not bigger) an event than Christmas. Therefore we decided to partake in the festivities. The Midsummer festival is celebrated the first Friday afternoon following the solstice (see previous post). Like proper Swedes we slept late on Friday and started our 10 km cycle journey into the countryside at 10h30. Our destination... Hammarskogs Herrgård (see our previous post on how we got there on ice skates during prior trip). On arrival there were relatively few people.


However, the whole lawn in front of the mansion (herrgård) soon filled with families on picnic blankets.



At 14:00, the Maypole, a symbol of fertility, was erected. Not surprising - there is a peak in the Swedish birthrate in March.



Traditional folk dancing around the Maypole were accompanied by singing.


(Lead singer in traditional folk dress and children with flower wreaths on their heads)

After a short nap, we snacked on the last of our picnic food and started our journey homewards.

R&C

Midsommar

Today is midsummer in the northern hemisphere. For Uppsala this means that the sun will set at 10:16 tonight and rise 3:26 tomorrow. However we have not seen complete darkness for quite a while now. Even in the middle of the night the sun hovers just below the horizon and you can track the movement of the light and watch it go from where the sun set to where it rise again with no clear boundary between dusk and dawn. Below are pictures taken on our balcony of Ronnie at 21:oo roughly an hour before sunset. This weekend we will go to see the midsummer celebrations where people dance around a huge Maypole.


C&R

Kungliga Bröllop i Sverige (Royal Wedding in Sweden)

Today we sat the whole day in front of the television to watch the crown princess get married. This event has been building up steam for quite a while with media hype and all kinds of memorabelia for sale in shops. In this egalitarian country the first-born is first in line for the crown whether she is female or not. Thus even though the crown-princess Victoria has a younger brother she will inherit the crown from her father Kung Carl XVI Gustav of Sweden. We were weighing the option of going to Stockholm for the day but then decided we will see more on TV. Indeed two of the channels showed live coverage of the event the whole day long. It was really nice to see all the nobby people gathering and the wedding itself was also very nice. Victoria married her gym instructor that she met 10 years ago. Yes... maybe its a bit lame to watch a royal wedding... but we enjoyed it, and it really looked if the coupled loves each other.... very nice. Below are some pics and links to more pics and stories. Enjoy. Four hurrahs for Sweden...



Links:
Sky
Gallery
Wikipedia

C&R

Springing into summer

The last few weeks everything have grown really really fast. This has happened to such an extent that we even think plants in South Africa are lazy. The surroundings have transformed completely and are very beautiful with wonderful colours. The sun never properly sets anymore and days are almost endless. Below are a few photos of a bike trip to the lake (around 8 o’clock in the evening).



C&R

Poznań

This week I went to Poland for a conference. The city Poznań, to which we went, was established in the 8th century. The city had a turbulent history, involved in multiple wars. Below is an image of the city in 1617 just before the Swedes invaded it (and burned and pillaged it quite extensively).

As with the rest of Poland, Poznań, was invaded, occupied, looted, recaptured and burned by a variety of other European countries (apparently this is why the rest of Europe, including the now peaceful Swedes, think of Poland as the doormat of Europe). However, the city has survived and traces of its history is a observable in its buildings and statues.

Communist architecture.

Statue commemorating the famous enigma machine (note the statistician and computational biologist to the right).

The town hall in the square with the clockwork goats, fighting every day at 12pm (again some computational biologist in the foreground).

More pictres of the old town and some computational biologists.
An interesting fact is that the farm where Carina grew up, Posen, was named after the town Poznań. Posen is the German name for Poznań. A polish citizen came to South Africa and named the farm when he owned the land. Later Carina's great-grandfather, Karel Krause, rode more than 60km with his bicycle on dirt roads to buy the farm in 1916.

Please let us know if we should continue the blog and if the material is still interresting with regular comments on our posts.

R&C

Maybe not the bestest news after all... but some new unfailable bestest news!

Everyone have been asking about how the Boerewors project turned out. Well.. I suppose I expected to much. Let the pictures tell the story...

On our way to a real boerewors braai picnic in the forest:

Armed with our new acquisition:

And this ingenious little device sold in supermarkets - a forest grill (Skogen means forest):

And all the necessary picnic 'bykosse':

Preparing the grill:


And braai-ing our wors:

... but something looks awfully wrong about this wors:

OH NO!!





Our verdict:

To be fair to the company (Ronnie even emailed them to thank them), the sausage was very tasty, like a Russian with lots of paprika and a little chilly - really very tasty, but its just not boerewors (Dis nou maar wors ouens... :-) )


But now for the newest bestest news that will for sure not disappoint... I was walking in the local supermarket and what did I see...


Yes indeed, Mrs Balls has come to Sweden! Swedish people rejoice!


And to all South Africans...

MAY THE WORS BE WITH YOU


:-C