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August 19 Saturday sunny Bicycle touring Sweden Sweden is the hottest place in Europe right now-even hotter than Greece. Everyone thinks it is unusual-everyone that is, except Arran and Rebecca, our Kiwi bicycle touring buddies, the sun makers. As we prepare to continue our Sweden bicycle tour, Henry and Ingrid's five year old brought us popsicles. His mom said they are his favorite. I had a Coke flavoured one. On our bicycle tour today, we saw more Swedish coastline than yesterday. At lunch we pulled our overloaded touring bicycles to a stop at a beach. Lots of little nude kids with hair so blonde it's nearly white. They scampered about, playing in the sand and water. They don't seem to burn even though all of them are stark blonde. The Swedish people at the beach are very calm. They all talk to their kids quietly. We never once heard anyone yell at their kids, let alone threaten to hit them. The Swedes are pretty calm when driving, too. Definitely a nice trait to run into when one is on a bicycle tour. The caution signs on corners are blue and yellow-Sweden's colours. Took a picture of Arran's loaded bike parked in the sand. That was as far as he got when he tried to ride his heavily loaded monster up a dune. Bought two litres of Tri Smak ice cream which I thought was the same as Neapolitan back home. It turned out to be vanilla, strawberry, and pear. Quite delightful. Bicycle tours in Sweden can be so educational. Found a camp spot by a small river. We went down beside the water to eat our ice cream. It was still frozen after being wrapped in a wet towel and my fuzzy fleece pullover. When Arran opened the ice cream container, he was greeted with a rainbow hue of green, white, and pink. Sharon and I tried to guess what the flavours were. Reading the ice cream container didn't help as it was entirely in Swedish. After Sharon and I pondered the colours, we asked Arran what he thought the pink was. In his soft New Zealand accent he replied, "I spent all my time worrying what the green was, I didn't even get to the pink." Arran told us of a time he and a friend went to a premier showing at a theatre. The seats were sold with numbers on them. They were in their seats, waiting for the show to start, when two people came along with the same seat numbers they had. The ushers asked Arran and his friend (or, rather, told them) to move to the back of the theatre because they were younger than the middle-aged ticket holders. Arran and his friend, being good well mannered Kiwis, moved. Of course the view from their newly assigned seats at the back of theatre were not nearly as good as the seats they had vacated. "Fuck," his friend says. The fellow in front of them turned around and said, "Let's not use that language." Whereupon Arran's friend replied, "Listen. I probably have a bigger vocabulary than you and I've decided that the word 'Fuck' describes the situation perfectly." |
