Day 2 - Angelholm
Today I woke up for the first time in Europe!
Aslaug had been a perfect host, taking care of me with a
large blow up mattress in her lounge room, and providing me with a Swedish babe to sleep with (a Pippy
Longstocking doll).
I arose before Aslaug did, took a shower, made a coffee
and had a cigarette.
When Aslaug joined me in the land of the living, we
decided to have some breakfast. She put some toast on for me while she made a bowl of yogurt and fruit. She put the toast back into the toaster for round 2, and it emerged
slightly blackened.
It wasn’t too bad, so I smothered it with butter and a
delightful berry jam which made it taste great (aside from one or two bites that were a little bit smokey).
I mentioned earlier in my blog that I hadn’t packed
everything that I needed - those things being shorts and thongs (flipflops for those of you that aren’t Aussies - not g-bangers).
Before moving on from Helsingborg, we took a short trip
to the local H&M store, where I was able to procure both.
There was one style of short in particular I would have
There was one style of short in particular I would have
liked, but they didn’t have them in my size (I triple
checked the pile of shorts), so I asked one of the staff members if they had them in my size.
She walked to the pile of shorts, looked through the same pile I had triple checked, then turned to me saying “No,
not in your size”.
I wasn’t sure whether to say that I had already checked
the pile, “Duh!” or to slap her in the face... so I just picked up my second favorite pair, and a pair of ‘flip flops’, which came to a surprisingly low price (well, not surprisingly -
this was Europe, where the goods had less distance to
travel).
I also wanted to pick up a Ukulele, as bringing mine from Australia would have involved a great deal of risk to the
Precious, and I was willing to spend up to $50 AUD to get another one for usage while in Europe.
There was one music store in Helsingborg that definitely sold ukuleles, but was only open from 12-4, and outside of that (actually, inside of that) it was best
to call the owners to confirm that they would be there at
the store.
They weren’t, so we went to another store that Heinz had recommended the night before, “Next to the Apple store”.
They sold ukuleles, and I managed to pick one up for
exactly my threshold, a beautiful black uke.
As I held it in my hand, I thought to myself “Self, you have beaten North Korea in obtaining a working uke.”
Yes... I know... that’s a terrible pun.
Aslaug and I were prepared to go onto the location we
would celebrate Midsummer, and as we had time before
we had to catch the train, she took me out to treated me to some local ice cream. Apparently each Swedish city takes pride in the ice cream they produce, so I was willing to see just how good this ice cream was going to be.
We took a walk along the water line, eyeing off those
pesky Danes on the opposite side of the water, and hit up the ice cream van (which had a school bus that would not have looked out of place in the Wonder Years or the
Simpsons had Otto been driving it).
Some of the flavours looked to be quite intriguing, but I
settled on getting 3 - Pannacotta, Vanilla & Passionfruit.
They were awesome... although, the Passionfruit, which
was on the bottom, was definitely the best!
After quaffing our ice creams, and saying fare thee well to Otto, we headed to the train station and traveled to
Angelholm, where we would be celebrating Midsummer.
Aslaug and I boarded the busy train, elbowing randoms
out of the way so that we could get seats.
It was a beautiful landscape that we traveled through -
Aslaug told me that many of the fields that we passed by were completely yellow during the spring with the flowers they made butter from. I tried to identify the flowers, but apparently failed dismally with the names that I threw out there... So I stopped.
When we arrived in Angelholm, we were picked up by
Aslaug’s cousin in law, Lagertha (who is actually an expat Aussie, but let’s stick with the same naming convention).
Lagertha took us on a quick trip to the supermarket where she picked up a few prosthetic bibs and bobs, while
Aslaug purchased a few items to bake a cake. At this point, I was not aware of just how good a cake it would be.
Lagertha drove us back to her home in Angelholm, which I shall dub Uppsala (c’mon, watch Vikings Season 1, folks). We started off by relaxing with a nice wine, and then
commenced the raising of the tents that we would be
eating under over the next couple of days.
Lagertha’s youngest boy assisted, but since he only stood as tall as a hobbit, his tasks were limited to fetching tent
poles and pegs, and using the frame of the tent as a
hurdles course.
Once the tents were up, we decided to sit back with
another cool refreshing beverage, and awaited the arrival of the other guests.
Lagertha’s sister-in-law and her husband arrived in the early evening (which
still looked like it was about 3pm due to the sun only
spending a couple of hours below the horizon), we feasted on a lovely spaghetti marinara, and Thursten (the
aforementioned husband) challenged me to a couple of
games of Pingers (Ping Pong - given what that term
means in Australia, I did raise my eyebrows at first given
that the number of children present had increased
dramatically).
He thoroughly thrashed me, but was quite content as he
normally had a challenge playing against Lagertha’s husband.
I used the excuse that I hadn’t played ‘Pingers’ in about 15 years.
About 9pm, when Aslaug, Lagertha, Thursten, Helga
(Thursten’s wife) were quite rosy with the alcomahol,
Lagertha’s brother-in-law (and twin brother of her husband), Floki, arrived with his wife and 3 kids.
We continued drinking until about 2am, as we were
waiting for Lagertha’s husband, Loki to come back from a motorcycling trip across the UK.
At that time we called too late to stay up, so headed off to bed.
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