Kabelvåg - Stockholm Continued

From the sureal nature of my morning on Bodo, I returned to relative normality. Bodo isn't the most architectually beautiful of places, in fact it is rather ugly, but this small downside was made redundant by the kindness of the people I met there. By lunchtime I had made my way to a popular coffee shop with Torstein (an excellent name), who had responded to a plea of mine on CSing (couchsurf = CS) to spend some time with a local.  He had spent time in Leeds and, as a keen sportsman, was happy to talk football with me.. an opportunity that hadn't arisen often in Norway. Not only is he a football fan but also a keen floor-ball player... but an injured floor-ball player. This meant he was spending time coaching the disabled floor-ball team in Bodo and he invited me along to their training session that evening. So, once again, I dropped my plans to take the train that evening to Oslo and joined in the session.

Me with some of the El-Innebandy squad.

The sport is called El-Innebandy and was created, and is widely played, in Denmark. 'Start with gear 2 or 3 to keep your speed down' Torstein told me as I strapped myself in to one of the buggies the sport is played in, 'and then move up to 4 and the highest 5 when you get the feel for it'. Naturally, I started in gear 5 and was whisked straight across the sports hall with little, if any control. After a while, after reducing the gear down to 1, I managed to get a little control over the buggy and was taught how to pass. The can be described as go-cart hockey, where two competing teams attempt to encourage a stubborn ball into a goal 10 cm short and 2 m wide goal (roughly speaking). When playing the game my attempts at passing and shooting were easily mopped up by the opposing players who could show refined control of the buggies. It was refreshing to see people who had difficulty to enter the seat of the buggy confidently manoeuvre round me in control of the ball.

Torstein was unable to host me that night but had been in contact with a friend of his, who is also a CSer, who had agreed to host me.. Jan. He lives at home and studies at the city university and has CSed China.. meaning he had plenty of stories and advice to share. The family were used to CSers staying and has a comfortable room in the basement for me to stay in.. and after an extremely long day (remember, as I struggled to as I laid my head on the pillow, the day started at 2am wandering in the city after leaving the Hurtigruten) I fell asleep and continued to do so for the next 13 hours.

'Where did all my matches go?'

Jan had returned from uni by the time I had awaken and showed me a good spot out of town to walk to. After 45 minutes I arrived at the coastline and was greeted by a setting sun of the Norwegian mountains. I sat down on  a bench for lunch only to notice a small boy and his puppy setting alight a bundle of dead grasses in a small fire place. The fire flared up intensely and during this brief period of light and warmth the boy invited me over to warm up at the fire. The boy was exhilarated in his creation but had little foresight and by the time I had sat down next to him the grasses had burnt out. He was surprised and disappointed but I explained that he need some pieces of more substantial wood that the grasses could set alight to.. I also said I would help him and instantly he went running off, with a knife he pulled out of his bag, to cut branches and twigs off trees. I feared the live wood would not work but with little else to use as firewood I could see no reason to dampen his spirits. We tried in vain for about an hour to get a good fire going but resources were scarce and the boy had used all of his box of matches in his first attempt at lighting the grasses.

I returned to Jan's with numb hands but found out I'd be enjoying a traditional Norwegian dinner called rommegrot before I left for the train station. The meal was porridge, topped with sugar and cinnamon, and femalar, cured lamb thigh, accompanied with a shot of Aquavit. I hoped the strangeness of having such a sweet main meal and the strangeness of shotting 41% alcohol with dinner would counter act each other but the in fact the strangeness synergised into something very odd. The lamb was very tasty though.. I ate a lot of it. After dinner I left for the train station where I met my train for the 17 hour trip to Oslo.

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Despite sleeping most of the train journey.. I did get a glimpse at the reason why Norway is regarded to have some of the best train rides. The railway travelled through and above the valleys of mountains, along the sides of vast lakes and even to ski resorts. My next host was to be Ingrid, a student at the university in Oslo. I felt unease at being back in a busy city, Tromso and Bodo wouldn't come close to classifying as cities in Britain, but I was glad to be in a place where the sunlight hours extended for more than a few hours. The first thing I noted as I stepped foot in Ingrid's apartment was a stack of cross-country skis in the corridor, I made a mental note and thought how Scandinavian this sight was. Ingrid is a politics student but also an aspiring journalist which meant she had to spend some of the time I was surfing with her working on the university paper, which, I am told, has the largest circulation in Europe. Despite this she found time to take me out for dinner and (dodgy in my case) dancing.

The one picture I look stable in.

I had expressed interest in cross-country skiing whilst in the North but had not found anybody able to show me how its done.. but Ingrid and a friend of hers took me up into the hills surrounding Oslo for an afternoon skiing in the forest. The hills offered downhill slopes too and being half an hour away from a skiing area is a fantastic aspect to city life in Oslo (mental note for a future place to live). I was confident that I would pick it up very quickly, due to previous skiing experience, but my experience was more similar to Bambi on ice than the confident carving turns I am more used to when donning a pair of skis. To be frank.. I never really got any better at the technique than what ever awkward and energy wasting movements I made to make myself move forwards. I was playing constant catch up with my guides and could barely appreciate the forest around me and the brief, panoramic glimpses of Oslo I was intermittently gifted as we made our way around. I was exhausted by the end of the day and, thankfully, spent the evening watching a film with Ingrid and some more of her friends.. although most of the time we spent eating popcorn and Swedish pick 'n' mix. We also spent some time discussing Norwegian language and I was told of a Norwegian phrase equivalent to 'the cherry on top' which I've taken a liking to - the raisin in the sausage.

After a well deserved lay-in, my body still protesting about the previous days skiing, I took myself for a brief sight seeing tour of Oslo before I to catch the train to Stockholm. Whilst waiting for the train I reflected on my time in Norway. The land.. stunning, completely stunning. The impression from the people was trusting, honest and treat each other as equals. I have many stories of incidences of a lot of trust installed in strangers from Norwegians.. I admire this side of the people perhaps the most. I speculated this quality my roam across Scandinavia, well.. there was only one way to find out.

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'I've got to head to the lab tomorrow to carry out some western blots and analyse some proteins' - not a sentence uttered by me, but my host in Stockholm, Kelly. A Columbian molecular biology student carrying out a ERASMUS in Stockholm from a Danish university, Kelly is studying for a PhD. In her spare time she teaches herself German, is learning to play the guitar and participates in the CSing community in Stockholm.. truly an inspiration for us all. Despite all of this, she found the time to accept my request for a place to stay for the night as I had arrived in Stockholm with little option for acommodation. In fact, I ended up sharing her small flat with her, and later two other CSers, for 4 nights.

As she had to work in the lab during the week.. I spent the next day, Tuesday, with a Dutch traveller and a Pakistani 'serial entrepreneur' - in his own words. The entrepreneur has been living in Stockholm for over a year so provided myself and Gerda with some knowledge about the city as we went on a walking tour towards the modern art gallery. After the gallery I left their company and met a Bangladeshi guy called Benozir to go ice skating.. he warned me he was a beginner and he lived up to his assessment with the accuracy of an engineering student.. he is, in fact, an engineering student. The next day I met the two other CSers before-mentioned that I would be sharing Kelly's flat with. Two girls from Brussels.. Lotte and Carmel were fun to explore the city with and I by days end I had been convinced to visit Belgium just for the beer.

Swedish reggae in a impressive theatre venue.

You may have noticed that everyone I had been spending time with was not from Sweden. This trend continued as Kelly took me and the two Belgians to a Mexican restaurant and a reggae club. However, at the reggae club a Swedish band were playing. There is something odd about an indie looking band consisting of blond Scandinavians playing reggae, but none the less I had good fun. The international theme continued as I had to leave Kelly's on Friday to find myself meeting a Norwegian friend of Filipe's - Tanja - who was to me my next, and current host, and her god-daughter named Liv. Tanja was taking Liv to a competition called street star - an international dance competition mainly concerning street dance.

My favourite competition, by far, was the break dancing and I will do my best to describe it:
-two crews of around half a dozen people (mainly males) face each other over an area of about 3 m acting rather cocky and with as much swagger as they can muster.

A particularly tame moment in a breaking contest.

-one person, the process of this decision remains a mystery to me, steps forward, seemingly to taunt the opposing crew, gestures boisterously to signal that what he is about to do will be the greatest thing the opposing crew has ever witnessed and continues to fall to the floor in a flurry or arms, legs and outrageous poses many of which he is upside down for.
-after 30 seconds of flurrying, he rises to his feet triumphantly and with his own crew reaching near insanity with the plaudits they give towards his performance of flurrying.
-meanwhile, the opposing crew laugh of the attempts of the performer to show them up and proceed to show them how 'it' is done. It being more outrageous flurrying, poses and attempts to show their opposition up.
-this repeats for 10 minutes during which time the competition almost becomes a fight on a number of occasions but finally ends when the music stops.. at which point the crews become best friends - hugging and showing a lot of respect to each other as if the whole competition was merely a choreographed performance.
-a decision on which crew won is made by the judges, presumably based on who can out-flurry who, and one of the crews proceed to the next round.

I watched this competition for hours, entertained constantly.

A deer running as I approached to closely for its liking.

We left to Tanja's place which is on an island called Tranholmen in the north of Stockholm. On the sign that is by the only bridge to the island - a foot bridge - it reads 'the community here on Tranholmen say hello to each other'. There are around 50 plots of land on the island amongst the forests here.. most of which have a main house, a guest house and, if bordering the water, a jetty. Tanja lives in the small guest hose (15 sq m) of one of the plot owners here. It is rather intimate but, in her words, koselig. This morning I went on a walk round the island enjoying the sound a ice sheets creaking together on the shoreline and being surprised by deer and a playful kitten. I could most definitely get used to life here.

The remainder of my time in Sweden will be spent trying to spend some time getting to know some Swedish people.. a task that has been surprisingly tricky in Stockholm. I'll attempt to do this by taking a train on Monday to a less multi-cultural city called Vasteras where I've already arranged to stay with some Swedish people. Other than this I have no idea what I'll be doing for the foreseeable future.. a prospect I relish.

 Hey då!