On the farm

The trip is winding down and my motivation along with it. Which basically means that on overcast days I don't feel a pull from the mountains to come and hike. But I have filled up my time here nonetheless.

After Kiruna, I took an overnight train south towards Ostersund (and that o has umlauts, but I don't know how to put them on on this computer). The train ride reminded me of my Europe trip with Mckenna and Liza. The bench I slept on that evening was comfortable, but there was no silly session of pretend-to-be-asleep picture taking or any late night giggling. The train personnel knocked on the cabin door at 4.15am to wake me up so I could leave the train at Bracke (again, umlauts on that one). The sky was light, of course, which makes such an earlier transfer more palatable. That night in the train I had dreamed that I pulled back the curtain in the compartment and the sky had actually grown dark, which meant that I could rest easy. I guess the midnight sun has made me a bit uneasy. A bus took me 2 hours east to Ostersund, where I waited for another local bus to Oviken. The landscape around there is farmland, with lakes and forests and some rounded hills. At least I think it is. I finally napped again on that ride. I got out 2km short of Oviken town at Side (and that is pronounced see-deh) where Bertil was waiting for me.

I was lucky to get an invitation to the farm from Bertil Sivertsson because Carolyn and her sister Sarah visited this distant family relation 2 years ago when they were in Europe. So I gave Bertil a call, said I was a friend of Carolyn's, and he said come over anytime. As promised, Bertil and his father Helge had breakfast ready when I got there around 10. We had hard boiled eggs, cheese and crackers, and a big bowl each of yogurt (from the milk carton sized container) with berry jam on it for flavor. Also on the farm (a dairy farm, actually) was Sergei, a teenager from Ukraine who was working 6 months there because of some government initiative between the two countries. Sergei hustled off after breakfast in the big tractor to bring hay to the silo, while Helge took off in a little tractor and Bertil went directly to the silo to help with the loading. Not needing to do any farm work myself, I streched out in a comfy chair on the front lawn, put my feet up, and took a much needed nap.

I woke up to the sound of some kind of bells, the pleasant indication of an ice cream truck pulling up the long dirt driveway. Now that is the way to wake up. You could buy single bars, of course, like at home, but Bertil said this was the first visit of the summer so he bought two big boxes of ice cream bars. Just right for that sunny day, where I even sought out shade because it was so warm (and of course Mom I was worried about being sunburned). As Carolyn had warned, eating on the farm is big, so no sooner than I finished my ice cream it seemed like it was time for coffee. Afternoon coffee, outside again naturally, was not just a take a sip and go affair. We got out strawberry cake and crackers with mesmer (a local dairy product that is a brown sweey whey spread) along with the coffee. Then we ran out of milk. Bertil assures us that only happens once or twice in a year. He said the milk truck had come that morning and so there wasn't any milk. I didn't understand that for a minute because in my mind milk trucks always deliver milk, but then I realized that of course this milk truck picks up the milk produced on the farm. And so we had none. But the rest of the time there were big buckets of it, so I think that made up for it.

Dinner of pickled herring and potatoes came too quickly, but I managed to down a few. After dinner, Bertil, Sergei, and I took the car 1 or 2km to the big lake for a swim. The water temp was around 18C, which is too cold of course, but the sun was just setting (complete with a smudge of a rainbow) and so we jumped in. The water wasn't cold enough to take my breath away so I managed to stay in long enough to get used to it. We were jumping and diving from a pier at least 4 ft above the water, which forced me to be braver than I normally am. After drying off, I joined Sergei back at the house watching I, Robot, a nice end to the evening. Communal meals, a friend to watch a movie with... those are the things I have been missing during this year.

My room was a big one at the front end of the house on the second floor . I fell into bed and slept until Bertil knocked on my door at 10.30 to say that breakfast was ready. Oops. Downstairs, they were all waiting for me to dig into the graham meal porridge. There was a new face at the table, Louise, a 13 year old friend of Bertil's niece. We plopped homemade red currant jam on the porridge before dousing it all in milk (see, I told you milk would show up in generous quantities). The milk was in a jug that Helge kept refilling from a 2 gallon blue bucket on the bottom shelf in the fridge. Louise was full of energy and she decided she wanted to bake, so I appointed myself as her helper (since the recipe was in Swedish) and together we made chocolate cake. That was a good plan because people kept dropping in at the farm. The man with barley in a dump truck. The neighbors for a visit. Bertil's niece Anna. The descendants of the previous owners of the farm over 100 years ago. The usual. The latter stayed for coffee, so we cut the cake into smaller pieces and served it round. Louise and I went to Oviken to pick up key ingrediants like powdered sugar and blue food coloring, then we started to make donuts. This seemed a bit ambitious to me but we were successfull in the end. The first batch we made tiny little donuts, yummy when they were hot out of the oil but Louise realized she forgot one ingrediant... not my fault since of course I couldn't read the Swedish. We made made round too, shaping the dough more generously this time. I busied myself making the frosting in bright shades of blue, purple, and pink. We added sprinkles too. In the end the was a large tray, with some nicely frosted mini donuts that didn't taste so hot, along with the fatter, flakier yummy donuts with the dregs of the frosting slopped on. As I said, a success. I didn't feel too hungry since I was doing quality control all afternoon, but I managed to lick my lips a couple times when watching Chocolat that evening with Louise. I went to sleep tired, with a dash of blue food coloring on my nose, happy with the busy, noisy day.

Louise and I headed down to swim at the lake the next day, packing a big thermos of hot chocolate to take with us. I automatically put on water to boil for the hot choc and Helge and Louise looked at my funny and said they only use milk to make hot chocolate. Of course. The day was sunny but windy. We were protected from the wind by the old building out on the pier. We dove in and out, taking longer to get used to the water this time. The usual jumping pictures were attempted. Louise scared me when she yelled watch out for the fish. Guess I still don't like the idea of little fishies nibbling at my toes. After showers back at the house, I packed up so I could stay the night at Bitte's house before an early morning train to Trondheim. Bitte is one of Bertil's sisters. She had planned out an excellent dinner of grilled meat and potatoes and salad and sauces. By the time the meat got itself grilled, we were all so hungry. While we were eating, the boat pulled up to the dock (the house itself being only 30 ft from the water) and Bitte's husband and his two fishing buddies came back from a week-long fishing trip. I said my goodbyes later that evening and took up my quarters in the hunting and fishing trophy room, where a pull-out couch is.

Morning came way too soon, especially considering I woke up and realize I had forgotten my hiking boots back at Bertil's. Oops. So Bitte said we should all go back to sleep, and figure out all that later. Later, we said goodbye to the fishing troops who were off for a third week of fishing, then Bitte and I checked the train schedules and I called Hanne to let her know I wasn't on that morning train. Bitte drove me back to grab the boots, then stopped at the moose farm so I could go pet the babies. They were tame, so no worries. I fed the young moose long leafy branches then we head over to the big moose, with fuzzy, oily antlers I got to pet too. Bitte treated me to a fish lunch in town before hustling over to the train station for the 4.21 to Trondheim. We made it with 6 minutes to spare, no sweat. I had only 3.5 days in central Sweden with this family, but I felt like I knew quite a few members of the family by then. Rain and then hail pelted the train as I head over the mountains and down into Norway.

Anita's friend Ruth met me at the train station that evening and took me out to an excellent sushi dinner... one cuisine I haven't had at all this year, in fact. It was so comforting to hear her English, the intonations so very American after the years that she spent living there. We took a late evening walk around town. The wooden warehouses-turned restaurants on the waterfront (of which there is a lot) impressed me--this is the first city in Scandinavia I have seen with really interesting, attractive buildings. (But that is me just judging). I am staying at Hanne and Sten's house while I am here. I like the view they have of the city, the river, and the fjord. Just saying the word fjord makes me feel cool, in fact. We've had some cloud and rain since my arrival, but I still count myself as lucky on the weather front.