The African Reunion Crew (ARC), part 1

Disclaimer: The story that is about to follow will probably contain mild amounts of profanity, debauchery, and some potentially poor decision making. In other words, it should be entertaining :).

(The crew, minus me, in front of a giant dala horse, which does not feature in this story. Can you see Cory?)

(Sara and I -- and a crazy Mikael -- holding two freshly carved dala horses, mine named "Hippity Skippity Dalahest", who also does not feature in this story.)

Welcome to Garsas, a tiny little village near a giant lake in Sweden. It reminds me in one very important way of a very, very pretty version of a town I grew up near in NH, called Winchester. The thing about Winchester was, it had about 400 people in it… and they were all related, earning it the nickname of “Incester” (we’re very creative in NH). Garsas is similar – nearly everyone who walks by the red farmhouse that Mikael’s family owns in is a cousin of some type or another, and Mikael is a local celebrity for being the 2nd tallest person ever produced by Garsas, his 6’ tall frame towering over the rest of the inhabitants (in case you were wondering, no one from Garsas has ever taken up basketball as a career). To remind you, Mikael is one of the Swedes I traveled with from Sudan to Kenya last year (check their trip out at www.2cape.com).

(The crew, again, by the giant lake. I wanted to push them in, but saved that for a warmer day. Smart, considering that they're all bigger than me.)

(Bjorn is a professional stone skipper. He can skip anything. Even Dannyboy.)

(Garsas. Isn't it cute? This picture is particularly important because in the background you see the only yellow house in the entire village. Everything else -- everything -- is red.)

When I last left you, I had spent 5 days in Stockholm, enough time to thoroughly explore, watch TV, and arrange my departure. This included a trip to the airport, though I wouldn’t fly – I was heading there to meet Mikael, who was heading there to meet the rest of the Africa Reunion Crew (the ARC, if you will). You see, not only was this Americanska visiting Sweden, but at the same time (organized on purpose, thank you Swedish Efficiency) two Aussies, also met in Africa on a trip of their own (http://www.bunduwalkabout.com/) , were joining the ARC. Dannyboy had just moved with his very preggers wife to Germany, so it was a short trip for him – but Cory, affectionately nicknamed Sperm (try shouting that one out in a bar without any context for the rest of the customers), was joining us all the way from ‘Down Under’. Bjorn (the 3rd Swede I met) would drive nearly 8 hours with his girlfriend Sara to meet us in Garsas; and the crew would be complimented by occasional visits from Mikael’s sisters (and of course a dozen or two cousins, parents, and a really annoying boy we nicknamed Elvis – what is it with the oil-slick-back hairdo making a comeback? Gross).

When Mikael met us all at the airport and greetings were exchanged, we eagerly asked him what the plans were for the next week – leaving it all up to the Swede, none of us had thought beyond that moment. Looking suspiciously pleased with himself, he responded with “we’ll see”, and we knew an epic reunion week was about to ensue. The drive home only confirmed how epic it would be, as we made two extremely important stops, stops that would inform the entire nature of the reunion. The first stop – to pick up a tour bus from Mikael’s job (he drives this bus, and fixes things, for a racing team in Sweden). He had borrowed the bus for us to live in (it had fridges, bunks, a kitchen, seating areas, etc), and was planning to park it in the driveway of his parent’s house. A bus hostel of our very own? Uh huh, awesome. The second stop was of specific importance to the Aussies, who since arriving at the airport 2-6 hours before, had been without alcohol. I don’t know if you know this about Australians, but in order to remain awake and active, they must maintain a BAC above the legal driving limit of most countries, or they dry up and turn into raisins. This is why stop two, at Mikael’s other job (he drives trucks for DHL), was to pick up ridiculous quantities of bootlegged beer, bought on a recent trip to Germany from a friend and resold at a small profit to our Swede. I’m talking a minimum of 15 cases of Spendrups Gold and Thor (the greatest name for a beer ever) – which the Aussies immediately began consuming, busting out their very own beer cozies (or stubby coolers, as they insisted on calling them). I think the nice people of Garsas think that Aussies are born with beer cozies attached to their bodies, because they never were spotted without them.

(The bus, our home. Clearly, Sperm loves it.)

(The bus, view 2, parked in the driveway. We definitely did NOT manage to get the bus's trailer hitch stuck in the driveway, requiring large amounts of wood and ingenuity to remove it because our faithful leader couldn't figure out the compressed air button. Definitely not.)

(Bussy's interior. That's a large leather couch in the front window. The weird head gear will come into play later.)

So, a few points to note: First, we had all arrived in Garsas at this time of the year for the most famous Midsummer’s celebration in Sweden – the region around Garsas is well know as THE PLACE to be on this, the longest day of the year. While that single day may have been the longest, it’s been light every night since I arrived – the darkest it gets is dusk, and only for about 3 hours each evening (and none on Midsummers) – which makes it really easy to stay up all night. Probably too easy, based on the number of times we did it. Second, Sperm would stay longer than Dannyboy and, together with Mikael and I (and his sisters, we would all attend the biggest music festival in Sweden, the Peace and Love Festival. With a line-up including Jimmy Eat World, Kings of Leon, Volbeat, Bob Dylan, MIA, and a bunch of other bands (including some screaming-yelling-banging stuff I’m not into), as well as 50,000 other attractive people (the females of which Sperm would constantly try to acquire), this festival would occur AFTER the other festivities. Finally, this is just funny – both Bjorn and Sara had recently started this diet whose main rules were this: eat as much fat and protein as possible, and little-to-none of everything else. This lead to moments of hilarity for the rest of us, when Bjorn would spread a ton of butter directly on a piece of sausage and pop it into his mouth (forget those nasty carbs), or would refuse fruit juice on the premise that it was unhealthy while consuming 6 eggs and even more butter. I hope it works out for them!

(Midsummer, a preview. That weird looking guy is one of Mikael's cousins)

(Peace and Love, a preview.)

(Bjorn and Sara, a preview.)

Now, I think it’s time for a SwedLish lesson, necessary to explain the two words heard most often from the mouths of the ARC – “Edge” (a variation of which was “wedge”), and “Sold-Out” (you may wish to tune out if you are one of my grandparents, or really anyone who has grown out of the capacity to understand humor of the 14-18yr old male variety). First, we non-Swedish speakers found it simply hilarious to listen to Mikael on the phone, chatting with his family, or cursing at us in Swedish. Reminded of the most-famous Swedish Chef (a la The Muppets), we would constantly translate what we heard into our version of Swedish: “goo-ba-de goo-ba-de herb-a-de herb-a-de goo”. However, one word kept catching our attention – Kant, the Swedish word for “edge”. Here’s where that humor comes in. You see, the reason this word kept catching our attention is because it is pronounced just like an inappropriate English word used to describe a certain part of the female anatomy (usually in negative terms, unless you’re a feminist familiar with the Vagina Monologues); or, as the Australians informed us, used to describe practically everything in their homeland (as in “you’re a good ____”, “Did you see that ____ on TV last week? Hilarious.”, and of course the more traditional “Get me a beer, be a good ____”). Now, after receiving explanation that Mikael was not calling his mother/sister/father/cousin this word’s English equivalent, we adopted the English word “edge” as the nickname we would now use to refer to each other (or Elvis)(I’ll let you figure out the “wedge” variety for yourself, it’s not hard). It was a feat of Swedish – English transliteration that we were confident no one would ever understand (until Mikael’s sister began taking pleasure in explaining it to Swedish speakers, including her mother). In similar vein was the term “sold-out” (or “sell-out”). One day, as we left a store, Dannyboy started laughing and pointed at a picture of children playing in a swimming pool, next to which, in big red letters, was the word slut. Again, with Mikael’s intervention, we learned that the children in the pool were not considered negatively sexually promiscuous, but that the Swedish word for “sold-out” was this rather hilarious (if you’re a 14-18 year old boy) English word. It takes no great leap of imagination to guess that we began to refer to each other as “sell-outs” as well, or the combination reserved for especially grand proclamations – “you sold-out (w)edge”....

...For the rest of the story and more photos, see "The ARC, part 2" (my most recent post)!