The ARC, Part 2

...(If you haven’t read part 1, I highly suggest starting there, if only to become familiar with the characters involved, read the disclaimer, and see some epic photos).

(This photo does not factor into the story, however, it does warn you to beware of Extreme Dancers. I think it means Ricky Martin.)

(Oh, this is what it warns you not to throw your children into. Though the tiger also does not factor into the story below, I betcha didn't know there were tigers in Sweden, didya? Didya didya?)

Now, it’s time to tell you all about Midsummer’s Eve! Waking up particularly hungover the morning (okay, it may have been early afternoon) of the festivities, we tucked into a giant breakfast and wandered down to the center of the village, less than 5 minutes away. There, we discovered the most interesting sight – a giant, naked maypole laying on the ground; a huge pile of young birch trees, recently cut down; and a ton of villagers, busily stripping small branches adorned by pretty green leaves off of the trees, making neat piles which other villagers were attaching to the maypole using metal wire. We immediately joined in, the Aussies adapting their method to allow for simultaneous beer drinking, Bjorn stripping entire trees with his Swedish efficiency (and tree clippers) at the same rate that it took the team of 3 foreigners to strip half a tree, and Mikael decorating the pole in very questionable positions. We returned home once we got bored to drink more beer and eat more food and shower and take part in a fun Swedish game we had learned called Kubb, whose basic rules were to toss round sticks at square sticks and knock them over. Our own private festivities lasted until we heard music from far off, and Lena (Mikael’s sister) ran off down the lane in a traditional Swedish dress, disappearing around the corner carrying a violin. We assembled on the edge of the road, when around the corner appeared… a tractor, pulling a platform, on which a minimum of 20 villagers sat playing instruments, while hundreds of villagers paraded behind them. They passed us and called out various Swedish greetings, cousins we had met waving and shouting “edge”, some in Swedish garb and some in jeans, everyone heading to the center of town. We joined the end of the procession, and found our previously-spacious center square packed with the entire village come to view the raising of the maypole, socialize, and listen to music. Beers in hand, we watched as the men of the village employed long sticks in an ingenious method to raise the even longer maypole; and when raised, a call went out for dancers to complete the festivities. Sara and I joined the children and other grown-ups holding hands around the maypole, and I followed clumsily along to 10 or 12 dances that everyone in the village had been doing since childhood (my favorite one required us to act like tadpoles and frogs and skip about). The entire village then dispersed, heading to set up big house parties all over the village that would go on all night, the old and young alike drinking, dancing, and generally celebrating the summer’s arrival!

(The Village. Looks like a horror movie mixed with halloween mixed with a ren fair.)

(The Aussie method. Hold the tree between your legs. Help a friend out. Done and done.)

(Bjorn, a picture of Swedish Efficiency.)

(Mikael, decorating. Good Swede.)

(The village, raising the maypole. Cool.)

On to Peace and Love, then – sadly, Bjorn and Sara and Dannyboy had to leave us prior the festival, jobs and a very pregnant wife requiring the ARC to break up. However, Sperm and Mikael and I pulled ourselves together, and after a day of rest (and watching “How To Train Your Dragon”, a particularly cute movie) headed to the city of Borlange, each year home to the Peace and Love Festival, Sweden’s biggest musical event. The festival took over the main streets of the city – 7 music stages were arrayed all over town, food trucks of every variety were everywhere, and a rather sparse array of beer tents were accompanied by tons of porter potties and 50,000 scantily clad youth, this year’s festival bringing with it the most amazing weather. Sperm was around for the first 2 days of the 5 day festival, and seeing Kings of Leon play was the highlight of his festival experience. Mikael and I stayed on, and over the course of 5 days saw Volbeat, MIA, 30 Seconds to Mars, Deadmau5, The Ark, Kings of Leon, Jimmy Eat World, Ziggy Marley, All Time Low, Social Distortion, The Strokes, Soilwork (ick), Petter, Looptroop, Architects, Bob Dylan, Foreigner, Journey, TwinFlower Band, Engel (bah), Mimickry, Bad Religion, and The Haunted (ew). We were both super excited to see one of our musical idols, Bob Dylan, but as my sister correctly pointed out a few days before he played: “Bob Dylan sounds and looks like he’s going to die. You’re better off taking some ‘shrooms and hallucinating that you’re back in the day when he was good.” His performance was disappointing, but hey, we saw Bob Dylan in Sweden, so I’m not complaining.

(Crowd at Kings of Leon.)

(Volbeat. Isn't the stage sweet? We're in the front.)

(MIA, on video screen, because we were NOT right up front. She's crazy, you know.)

(Deadmau5. He's not dead, but he is a mouse DJ.)

(THE STROKES. Single coolest stage set-up at entire festival. Yummy.)

So, that brings me to somewhere around the past week or so. We’ve been using Garsas as a homebase to drive all over Sweden with Mikael’s trucking job (and to spend a very boring day in an office, which reminded me why I’ll never have an office job). The most interesting trip was this past weekend, where we drove a truck a million hours down to the south of the country, but got to stay 2 days and visit before returning. I even managed to get a sunburn during the picnic we had on the coast, which probably doesn’t bode well for my time in Africa, if I sunburn in Scandinavia. And now I’ve spent a quiet two days in Garsas, typing this blog (4 pages takes a long time to write, you know) and waiting… waiting… waiting… until Thursday (that’s tomorrow), when we’ll start our travels down to Malawi!! That’s right – by 9am tomorrow morning, Mikael and I will bid this lovely village adieu, and head back to Stockholm where we will catch “the party boat”, an overnight cruise-ship-turned-ferry destined for Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia. We will visit Tartu, a city about 270km south of Tallinn, where I’ll meet with members of the Semiotics Department at the University of Tartu to learn more about their international masters program (and specifically the ecosemiotics research currently underway – I’ll let you look that one up yourself). We’ll then spend 3 days couchsurfing and exploring Tallinn, which I’m happy to say is about a million times cheaper than Sweden. We fly to Istanbul on the 19th, to reconnect with some couchsurfers Em and I stayed with at the end of 2009 and spend 4 days sightseeing and eating mountains of baklava. And on the 23rd, we leave for Africa – flying to Dar Es Salaam in my most-favorite Tanzania, spending anywhere between 2 and 5 days there trying to catch the train to Mbeya, a small town in the south of the country located conveniently near the Malawian border. A few busses later, and we’ll be at our home for the next 9 months – The Mushroom Farm! Am I excited? You bet your a** I am! 

Well, that pretty much does it for now folks – if you made it to the end, I’m proud of you, and if you just skimmed the photos, that’s cool too! You’re all welcome in Malawi anytime before April – if you’re considering making the trip, let me know and I’ll advise you on travel details (and be super, super excited to hear from you). There IS a mailing address in Malawi, which I will post once I learn the details, in case anyone wishes to send us anything J. And, as always, I appreciate reading your comments, answering your questions, and am happy to dedicate an entire blog to anything ya’ll request – so please, please, pretty please let me know what YOU want to know more about!

Until next time, your faithful servant,

Jess Face (WTS)

A few more photos that haven't yet made the cut...

(This family sized kebab pizza was meant to feed 3 of us. We ate it for 3 meals.)

(Awww. I made all of the headgear with Sara's help decorating. We're a cute gang.)

(In the words of Dannyboy: "Nice scenery much, Sweden?")

(Rock. On.)

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)!

Holland, Belgium, and Sweden begins...

Hey there, people I know! Totally awesome of you to keep checking in, when I’ve been so remiss in posting blog updates. Not as remiss as I could have been, of course – I’ve been posting links to my “real real blogs” (as I call them) whenever they go up on Pink Pangea, this ultra-sweet women’s-traveling website I’ve been writing for.  Those blogs, you’ll probably notice, are from my travels earlier on this trip – I’ve been waiting until they get posted on Pink to link them here, and Pink is a little slow, as it turns out. However, I assume you’ve been enjoying them as you’ve so patiently waited for me to get around to sending you a real real update (I respectfully recommend reading them if you haven’t, if only because you might find it interesting to see how my writing “voice” changes depending on who my audience is). So here it is, complete with pictures – see, I DO love you!

 (Me, loving you guys, Amsterdam)

Um… brief pause while I scroll back and see when I last wrote an update for you kids, and how much I have to cover in this one… maybe you should listen to a little music and grab a snack, I recommend a cheese-on-cheese sandwich…ok, there we go. 

So, last time I wrote I was hanging out with my amazingly cool friend Rian in Holland! Spoiler alert – when my next blog gets posted on Pink, you’ll find out that I attended a big gay festival which involved dancing on a canal – and I actually mean on a canal, because they built a platform spanning the canal to dance on, and put the DJ on a floating platform of his own. It was epic – pink boas were obtained, beautiful men and women were all around (did you know that the Dutch, after the Maasai in E Africa, are the tallest people in the world?), and it was all organized by one of Rian’s good friends! We also attended this great musical event called Student Fest in the university town of Leiden. 3 musical performances occurred in the gardens of student houses, the outdoor version of an event that occurs in student dorm rooms during the winter. Hundreds of people mill about drinking beer, dancing, and watching small musical groups perform in intimate spaces. It was good fun, hanging out with more of Rian’s friends currently attending university in this town.  We visited Rian’s family in a small village in the north of Holland called “Hair” in Dutch; and went to Den Haag and Amsterdam, a trip which included a rather exciting boat ride courtesy of her uncle, a grey-haired retired dancer who has a penchant for speeding through the “lake” in the center of Amsterdam, a penchant that got us stopped once by a police boat… and nearly a second time less than 10 minutes later. We ended up really wet and a little cold, but with happy spirits as we wandered around Amsterdam a little more, finding free raspberries to spice up our next few breakfasts and having a warm dinner in a delicious Turkish-ish restaurant.  The day I left, Rian was also leaving, heading to a music festival on a small island with her best friend. Well, she was supposed to anyway… but due to my leaving, we got a little intoxicated the evening before, and she didn’t quite make it to the island that day, hangover be damned J. It was amazing to spend so much time with my most-favorite Dutchie, and with a little luck and a lot of planning, she’ll be visiting Malawi before I leave next year! 

 (Rian and I, being cool, in a shoe, Amsterdam)

 (Cute boat, Amsterdam. I want one.)

 (People. Gay festival. On water.)

Moving on… was hard. Not because I minded leaving Rian (which I did, but we both had our own adventures to pursue, and being seasoned travelers we toughed it out), but because I’m cheap.  Yep, friends, I don’t like spending money, especially when I’m not making any. So, I spent a few horribly unproductive hours trying to organize the cheapest possible combination of flights, trains, and busses to get to some country whereupon my departure to Sweden a few days later would also be the cheapest possible.  It got to be 11pm the night before I left, and I hadn’t yet booked anything – so I closed my eyes and pushed a button that resulted in my visiting Belgium! Seeing as that I hadn’t ever been to Belgium, this turned out to be a good decision – and I only had 3 days to kill, so seeing as that Belgium was right next door it also proved to be a rather practical decision. 

I visited Brussels and Ghent in Belgium, but we’re going to skip any boring details because of a much more interesting story (in my opinion).  It began one evening as I sipped my first coffee of the day at a café in Brussels and wrote some of you postcards. Sitting alone at a table in a courtyard adjacent to the main mussel-selling district of Brussels (my plan for dinner), I was looking around aimlessly when an extremely tall man came up and asked, in French, if he could sit at my table. Agreeing, I continued to write postcards, assuming that since I was one at a table for four, it was only polite to share my table. However, as happens, we started chatting, and it was then that I met Jeroen de Ridder, floral-artist extraordinaire, member of a random Belgian band, inhabitant of a town with two (no three, no four) castles, friends with Two Many DJs, and owner of 8 cases of a very exclusive Belgian trappist beer called Westvleteren. Interesting side story -- the monastery that brews this beer only sells 30 cases of it a day, and to get a case you have to call (like a thousand times), and if you happen to get through, can only order one case, the make-up of which is determined by the monastery (there are 3 different types of beer), as is the day and time you must arrive to collect your case (if you’re not there next Thursday at 3pm, too bad). Additionally, you must provide your license plate number to the monastery, in order to ensure that you don’t get more than one case per month.  A side story to a side story – just the evening before, while Rian and I drank copiously at the café she works at, her coworker Paul had expounded the qualities of this rare and delicious brew to great length – so funny that I was now hearing about it for a second time in 2 days. Anyway, back to the facts, Jereon clearly had been working on his collection for a while -- but this was all a side note as we chatted about Belgian food and beers and such. I learned he was a Couchsurfing host, and was rather bummed I hadn’t been able to stay in his small village and see the castles – I love castles --but seeing as I didn’t know I was coming to Brussels prior to 11pm the night before, it had been impossible to organize a hosting situation. Anyhow, we decided to have dinner together and keep chatting, as he knew the best place for mussels on the nearby street. Due to my luck (I’m like a rabbit’s foot, but you don’t have to keep me in your pocket or rub me, both of which would be weird), we managed to get the last table in the place without waiting, which was awesome because these mussels were out of this world. A few beers at a few sweet local bars later and I had made a new best friend and plans to visit his village the next day so that I wouldn’t have to miss the castles after all!

Now, let’s be honest – Jereon was full of stories chock-full of outrageous facts and experiences, and I’m quite sure they weren’t all true (if they were, he’s probably the coolest person I’ve ever met). However, I have pretty good sketchy-dar (that’s like radar for sketchiness), and he didn’t set mine off at all. So the next evening I arrived by train in his village, and we spent a few fun-packed hours exploring the gorgeous countryside, listening to music, and partaking in this most-exclusive and extremely delicious beer. We laughed at each other’s traveling stories, and on the way back to the train station Jereon gave me a bottle of Westvleteren as a gift from one traveller to another. It was a wonderful chance encounter, which happen quite frequently as I travel. All you need is a smile and an empty chair at your table, and who knows who you could meet?

 (Sweet Graffiti in Brussels, for WTK)

(Castle, because I love castles, in Ghent)

 (Seriously gigantic church)

Onward, to page 3 of blogging, we arrive in my potentially favorite country ever – Sweden! After a night of no sleep (I had chosen to spend the evening in the train station rather than getting a hostel, because my flight left at 7am and I had to be at the airport early anyway – remember, cheap), I flew Ryanair to Sweden (an experience I don’t necessarily suggest), and arrived in Stockholm to be greeted by one of the 3 Swedes I traveled with last year through Africa! Per, the Swede who lost his passport in Egypt and had to return home for a while, spent 5 days showing me around his city and guaranteeing that I had a good time doing traditionally Swedish things. Things like eating meatballs for dinner at Ikea, where, to my amazement, they employ people to lounge in bedroom gear on Ikea beds or in outdoor attire on Ikea patio furniture – YES, you get PAID to relax all day in a bathrobe and sunglasses.  (Side note – I think Ikea in foreign countries should rent Swedes to others to complete tasks with Swedish efficiency – tasks like assembling your Ikea furniture – and then to stand around and look pretty. They would call it Rent-a-Svensk. It would be a hit). Where was I… oh right, things like eating meatballs and watching a season and a half of the American TV series the Big Bang Theory and attending a Flogging Molly concert at an amusement park and taking a boat to a small island (the archipelago of which Stockholm is part contains upwards of 3000 islands) and, of course, exploring Stockholm.  My departure came too soon, but I was off to a town further north, Garsas, for an Africa reunion of epic proportions…

(Changing of the guards at the Palace in Stockholm)

 (Church-type thing on one of Stockholm's tiny islands)

(This rabbit looks innocent. Sure it does...)

 (Really, really nice district in Stockholm)

Whew. I need to stop there. I’m going to write another blog, maybe tomorrow, about the party that has since ensued in Garsas, so do check it out. But this post is definitely long enough.  Take it easy, and as they say in Sweden: "Denn här skottkärra är skit."

‘Til 5 minutes from now, and/or next time, this is 

W(orld) T(raveler) S(cott)

signing off

Sweden, in brief

Hey friends! I write from the beautiful country of Sweden, but only to say hello and pass on another semi-professional blog post! This one dates back from Australia, and you can find it on Pink Pangea's website, here! I'm sure it will keep you amused until I get back from the Peace and Love festival, happening right now in Borlange, Sweden!!

Lots of loves,
Jess Face