Cruisin' in Åland

Earlier in the spring, our upstairs neighbor P., who is an enthusiast of America in general, told us that he wanted to do something nice for us, and take us somewhere (within driving distance, for reasons that will become clear) to see more of Sweden than we've been able to. After some debate, he decided to take us to one of his favorite places, which is not strictly speaking in Sweden at all. The Åland island chain lies between Sweden and Finland, and is politically a part of Finland, although the residents speak a dialect of Swedish, and the islands enjoy some degree of autonomy that includes a tax exemption on alcohol. Many of the Baltic ferries therefore are based in Åland, so that they can sell booze cheap in their large duty-free stores. The eastern edge of Åland is only about a 2 hour ferry ride away, and it is a popular place to go for a week or so on holiday, while day trips are also popular.

The islands are beautiful, inhabited but not crowded (due to draconian residency requirements— you cannot purchase property, but must inherit it, P. said), but shockingly primitive when it comes to public transportation, as most people come here with their own cars. Fortunately, P. likes to drive. Even better, he likes to drive slowly. Driving slowly is not only better for sight-seeing, but is also a comfort when one finds oneself in a 1959 Ford Fairlane with a V8 engine but no seat belts or head rests.

We managed to have darn near the perfect day for this trip: sunny on the 1.5 hour car ride through the countryside to the ferry at Grisslehamn, then quite warm but not too hot on the ferry (although we got a little sunburned), then warm and partially cloudy, which was quite welcome as we had a picnic lunch and lazed about on the sandy beach at Degersand, near the town of Eckerö. The beach was busy, but not overcrowded, and to my joy, I have finally managed to go swimming in the Baltic. The water was quite nice— salty of course, but not too bad, and quite clear.

Then we drove across the main island to the other town, Mariehamn, enjoying the views of the farms and fields and numerous inlets and bays. There are plenty of old churches here, all now land-locked, but originally built on the sea so that people could arrive by boat. We passed a sign to another town, Kattnäs. "Cat Nose?" I said out loud, confusedly remembering that nose is näsa. P. gave me a sort of sideways look. "Yes," he said, "but no. 'Näs' is just a place surrounded by water." (Swedish for peninsula is halvö, which for some reason I find charming.) We drove into and around Mariehamn, with the windows down, and the CCR CD blasting from the speakers. "What is more American than cruising?" asked P. proudly, and we couldn't think of anything.

We headed back across to Eckerö, stopping at a nice little wooded place on the main road that looked like an abandoned campground, where we could also admire the red granite that the island is made of, and smell the wonderful smell of pine trees in the sun. We had brought fika supplies— hot and cold coffee, and cookies— and we had our fika directly out of the trunk, complete with one of the old pink plastic camping cups that have been in the family for decades and hauled around to everywhere. Those old American cars surely do have large trunks. Most of the cars I've ridden around in in Sweden could almost fit in it...

We got back to the ferry terminal in plenty of time, and talked more about the car, and P.'s restoration work on it. He searches diligently for genuine parts, often finding them online from places in Finland, oddly. His restorations iare not entirely contemporary for the car— for instance, there's an electronic lock on the trunk— and of course the CD player and new speakers. We looked at the buttons and pulls and other half-remembered controls on the dashboard. Above the AM radio are two buttons, one that has a "T" on it and another with a "C." None of us could figure out what they meant, although I vaguely recall seeing something like that on Grandpa's Ford trucks. Anyone who remembers what they mean, please let me know.

When we got back to Grisslehamn, we had a little wait to get out of the terminal parking lot, since there were a fair number of cars leaving the boat. The motor was running. A middle aged man stepped out directly in front of us and stopped. He bent down, and cupped his ear at the engine. P. obligingly put the car in neutral and revved it high. The man stood up, nodded in complete satisfaction, and walked on, as some onlookers laughed. A middle aged woman standing on the sidewalk waved, and gave P. a smile and a thumbs-up sign. The car is clearly a magnet, attracting all sorts of attention.

So it was a really good outing, and a fun day, and well worth three hours in a car and four on a ferry in order to go to a sandy beach, on a new body of water, for a summer afternoon. I will only mention that the concept of "beach" is something I am well familiar with, and Degersand was very pleasant indeed: nevertheless, the scale of it pales in comparison to the beaches of Lake Michigan. Anyone reading this who does not have to travel seven hours to get to a beach... well, just know that I am envious.

Tibble Days

E. and family (the Dutch hosts of the World Cup Final party we attended a couple of weeks back) are having their summer vacation now, and very thoughtfully suggested that we might like to use their house some while they were away, as a sort of country holiday. Even though they're gone for a few of weeks, we're only able to take them up on their offer for a few days—the hamlet they live in, Tibble, is a good 23 km from our house as the jackdaw flies, and while there is a regional bus stop not 100 m from their front door the bus doesn't run during the summer. Nevertheless, we were able to hitch a ride out last night from a friend who is in the process of buying a house out this way, so we'll have a sort of four day weekend, albeit with both of working from home for parts of it.

Aside from remembering how to use an espresso machine, this morning's most important task was getting to the grocery store, which lies 6 km away in the outskirts of Rasbo (or possibly Gåvsta? The divisions between villages are a little abstract out this way…). So I hopped on board the rather cunning cargo bicycle parked out in the barn and headed off down the road. How was the bike? I've been rereading the Aubrey-Maturin books for the summer, so with apologies to Mr. O'Brian I'll sum up the experience thus:

By the time I'd made it to the edge of the village, I could tell that she was a slab-sided Dutch herringbus that griped something awful if you tried to put her within a few points of the wind. But with her hold stowed to bring her by the bow and the wind on her quarter she was a pretty smooth sailer. Still, I was happy to get her into port before the black squall whipping in from the east caught me.

The first drops of rain fell as I was pulling in to the drive, and a few minutes later we got a nice heavy rain (our first in a while, and perhaps enough that we won't need to water E.'s garden today). Unfortunately, it also took out the power (not an uncommon occurance in these parts, as Jennifer somewhat belatedly remembered), so our lunch was simple bread and cheese (there's a fridge full of Gouda, naturally), washed down with a bit of Trocadero (a local soda that's sort of like a fruity ginger ale). On the plus side, what was shaping up to be a hot, humid day, with a high around 30°C, has turned cool and breezy.

According to the Norwegian weather service, tomorrow will have a high of 17°C, proving yet again that we are incapable of packing correctly for even the shortest of trips in Scandinavia, having brought nothing but shorts and light-weight shirts. Sigh.

Bottling summer

It's that time of year again— sing hallelujah, the smultron are ripe! This year of course I have been keeping a careful eye on the smultron patch, noting the state of the flowers and early stage berries. Even so, it was my nose that let me know they were finally ready—their delicate sweet smell, wafting across the sidewalk on the early-evening breeze, mixed with the scent of warm pine trees in the sun... heavenly!

Last year, it seemed like they lasted for several weeks. This year has been quite hot, though, and so the berries are maturing quickly, and at a smaller size. Smultron seem far too small and fussy to contemplate making preserves out of, so this year I've decided instead to try to make some (very) small-batch aquavit out of them. The berries fit quite handily plastic tubes, convenient not only for carrying them back in your pocket, but they should also serve as a decent brewing vessel.

I have read that smultron are resistant to cultivation; other authorities seem to think that they are simply normal strawberries grown under wild conditions. In any event, I have never seen them for sale anywhere; one must pick them oneself. Linnaeus testified that eating smultron had cured his gout, and legend has it that he therefore ate two silver bowls of them per day, later in life; the bowl is carefully preserved in his museum, and has a volume of about a half liter. (For comparison, the tubes in the picture above are 15ml.) On the other hand, he also lobbied against the consumption of strong spirits. What he would make of my experiment?

Dutch disaster

The World Cup final between Holland and Spain was last Sunday, and E. had decided to throw a big party at his house, not only for the joy and comradeship, I suspect, but also perhaps as an offering to the Fates. You see, E. has played quite a bit of team sport in his past, and therefore is a little superstitious about these things. He stopped shaving after Holland's first win; he hadn't washed his Holland jersey since then either; he was initially contemptuous about Paul the Psychic Octopus, but then he became quite a bit apprehensive, when Paul predicted that Spain would win. (In sympathy, I had not washed my orange t-shirt since the first game, and I also confess that I was more than a little worried by Paul's prognostication.)

So it was perhaps a slightly smelly crowd that assembled at his house in the countryside, a house he shares with a girlfriend and two small boys. Every other Dutch friend that he has here came too, along with their children; some neighbors also showed up, and several people from work, with a final estimated attendance of 25-30 adults and maybe 8 kids under the age of 6. The weather has been fine, and almost hot, and we picnicked on cold vegetable soup (which in other circumstances might have been called gazpacho, but all things Spanish were forbidden) and various spreads and nibbles and hot dogs from the grill. Kickoff for the game was at 8.30, by which time the sun had sunk far enough behind their house that we could sit in the front year, and see the game projected onto a sheet that was stretched out on the porch.

The first half was not too exciting, with both teams playing carefully. The second half started on a more interesting note, as the two Dutch women seated beside me, tending 5 children between them, started humming and then singing a beautiful but sad-sounding tune. "What's that?" I asked. "Oh, just some songs from the 80 Years War," they said casually. There were a few moments when it seemed like the Dutch might score; being that we were outside, and most people with a few beers in their bellies, each close play was greeted with shrieks or cheers, and I think I may have learned a lot of swear words in Dutch. Extra time was played; a Dutch player was sent off in the dying minutes to howls of protest from the party. The Spanish scored, of course, right at the end; everyone was completely silent for a few moments. The game ended. The was not much post-game lingering; it was, after all, after 11pm by this time. As we were leaving, most everyone sought out our host E., offering their condolences. One fellow, though, tried reassure E. that it was okay, because "they had a great run anyway, didn't they?" This last was met with silence and a rather frosty look.

Well, the party was fun, even if the game was not particularly. E. and his family will be finding bits of orange balloons and other decorations in their yard for quite a while, I think. And my orange t-shirt is quite happy to be sitting in the laundry at last.

Horrible Revelation

Amazingly, we've been in Sweden for two and a half years now. How long is that? Well, last night our gregarious, raggare neighbor (a very nice fellow we've mentioned before) stopped by to surprise us with a "taste of home". He had been out waxing his recently acquired 1959 Ford Fairlane over the course of the long summer evening, and such a quintessentially American activity requires that most American of drinks, a self-proclaimed king of beers which shall otherwise remain nameless.

'Twould have been unneighborly to refuse, so I had a beer. Know what? After more than two years of being subjected to Swedish beer, which is (with very few exceptions) truly awful, this stuff (which I couldn't even bring myself to buy on the 4th of July)—it isn't so bad. I'm not saying that it's good, but it isn't actively bad.

What's next? A renewed appreciation for Oscar Meyer hot dogs?

Working the World Cup

The World Cup is going on right now, as some of you are doubtless aware. The exit of the United States from the tournament at the hands of Ghana is upsetting, but really, they didn't look so good anyway. Fortunately, plenty of soccer that does look good is still going on. The Dutch post-doc E. is a sporty fellow—he started the office betting pool, and knowing that he couldn't possibly concentrate on anything else while Holland was playing its quarterfinal match against Brazil, he decided that we'd just have to watch it at work. He brought in snacks and his family as well, with his two the young boys both wearing as much orange as possible (they spent most of the time playing with the orange balloons). And so at 4pm we gathered in the conference room and set up the streaming video, and had a very good time indeed as it turned out, as Holland beat Brazil 2-1, in a very entertaining match, to advance to the semifinals next week.

E. and I share some superstitions about sports; for instance, he will now absolutely not wash his orange shirt while the tournament is going on, and he is a little too disturbed to hear about Paul the Psychic Octopus who has correctly predicted every German win so far. Neither myself nor E. had chosen Holland to advance this far, and we are both pretty well out of contention for the small office pot. "It's worth it," he said, "if I have to lose the betting in order to win the Cup that's just fine."