The Hunt of the Blåbär

Narrator (in the voice of one of those animal safari nature documentaries):

Watch how the native berry picker hunts the noble blåbär, eyes quietly scanning the forest floor for blueberry plants. She stops, stands still, and then realizes the entire forest floor is covered in blueberry plants as far as the eye can see.

The delicate blåbär hides, slightly protected under it’s own leaves, hidden from clumsy eyes of bicyclists riding by too fast to notice.

The hunters instantly spring their traps, using their red blueberry pickers to comb the undersides of the leaves, harvesting the shy blåbär, while leaving it’s mother plant intact for the next season’s crop. It is backbreaking work for the hunters since the blueberry plants rise only to a modest 30cm above the ground. The picking becomes addictive. There are so many plants, with so many berries, the hunters are in a frenzy. Though tired, they don’t want to stop picking. They nearly pick more than they can eat or carry.

Tired and satisfied with their bounty, shoes and socks stained with the blood of the blåbär, the hunters begin their retreat.

Until one hunter eyes a sparkling ruby poking through verdant green underbrush, and the frenzy starts all over again.

Lingonberry season has begun.

no line on the horizon

Ok. Sweden is great, there are berries, mushrooms, trees, socialism. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I am missing home. Not just my family and friends, and not just having a house to sleep in which contains luxury items like sofas or wine glasses.

But I actually miss Canada.

I miss the prairies. I never realized that I would feel so closed in -living deep in the forests of Northern Sweden-

but sometimes I feel like I can’t see the landscape around me because all the trees are blocking the view.

I realized this is the prairies in me.

I need the wide open spaces.

I need to see the horizon.

We aren’t in Kansas anymore

On the surface, Northern Sweden is very much like Northern Alberta. Beautiful nature, low population density, long summer nights, cold dark winters. But as time goes on, we learn each place has its own distinct way of doing things. These are a few of the things that remind us -to quote Dorothy- we aren’t in Kansas anymore.

:: every grocery store has its own automated bottle depot. and you don’t get cash back, you get a coupon which counts as money in the grocery store.

:: stores close for “summer”.

:: you can’t “spontaneously” go to a movie. you have to book your tickets (and even pick your seats) in advance, and you need a Swedish credit card to do it (discrimination!). Foreign ones won’t work. I don’t think I’ll ever get to see “Harry Potter och Halvblodprinsen”.

:: you can pay for the bus over your mobile phone. then you show the bus driver the receipt you got by text message that says you paid.

:: Bus passes are also electronic and you can recharge online (this is life-changing! I can’t tell you the number of times in Edmonton we had to run around at 11pm the last day of the month to 3 different 7/11s just to find a bus pass)

:: you cannot put cash into an ATM. you can only take out. to deposit cash or cheque you must go to the branch. people thought I was crazy when I wanted to put cash into the machine.

:: since I have to go IN PERSON to put money in my account, I figured I might as well pay my bills while I was there. Bad idea. It costs substantially more to pay bills in person than to do it electronically. 80 SEK surcharge per bill.

:: showers have no shower rod or curtain. water just flies everywhere and there is a drain in the floor. we have to squeegee the floor. I hate it.

:: meat percentage legally must be listed on food. generally it is a good idea to buy meat with a high percentage of meat. hotdogs range from 45%-80% meat.

:: grocery stores sell instant grills that you can take anywhere for a picnic. It is an aluminum foil pan full of charcoal soaked in lighter fluid. They are so popular that there are special “instant grill” garbage cans in public places.

:: wild blueberries are everywhere

:: mushroom hunting is a legitimate hobby here

:: every single day I see more bicycles than cars

The Capital of Scandinavia

When we moved here, I thought… "it will be so awesome living in Europe, we can travel every weekend" and we made a huge list of all the places we wanted to see in Europe.

(Barcelona, Rome, Athens, Geneva, Brussels, Amsterdam, Monaco, Prague, Berlin)

It’s 3 months in now, and we are finally making our first trip, just one hour away by plane from Umeå, to Stockholm- “the capital of Scandinavia”.

Or at least that is what to tourism website says.

I, personally, didn’t know that Scandinavia had a capital, and I’m pretty sure that title really pisses off people in Copenhagen, Helsinki, and Oslo.

(Helsinki and Oslo are also on the list)

It is the most populous of all the Scandinavian capitals, so maybe that gives them the right to claim the title for themselves.

Stockholm consists of something like 14 different islands, and so is also called the “Venice of the North”. North? Yes. Venice? I’ll let you know.

(Add Venice to the list.)

I am so excited for this trip, we are going to relax, sight-see, eat delicious food (I’ll have to write another post soon about how I am falling madly in love with Swedish food -potatismjöl aside), sleep in a comfortable bed, and best of all – we are going to the Ikea in Stockholm to order some furniture for our apartment. Finally!!!

So, Stockholm here we come. May it be the first of many wonderful travels…

(Add Reykjavik, Lofoten, Bergen, Stavanger, Sognefjord, Oulu, Rovaniemi, Kiruna, Riga, Tallinn, St. Petersburg, Gdansk …)

Gotta go pack.

Sally and Vera

Finally! It took almost three months, but we finally have our own set of wheels!

I hadn’t really been missing having a car at all. Umeå is quite small, and as such everything you could possibly need is within walking distance: my work, groceries, H&M, kebabs, systembolaget (state-run liquor store), picnic grill sites (they are freaking EVERYWHERE here, I’m sure we live within walking distance of 500 of them and I am NOT exaggerating), beach volley (the fact that they have dropped the ‘ball’ out of the title does not indicate that there is any lost love for the sport: there are at least 4 outdoor, and 6 indoor beach volley courts within 10 minutes of where we live). So you might be wondering: what more could you possibly ask for?

Although everything is so nearby, we were still getting pretty burnt out from having to walk everywhere.

We would jealously watch as cyclists flew past us on their bikes, baskets full of groceries, moving places with an ease and rapidity we could only dream of. I would enviously check out bicycles as they passed me, critiquing whether or not it would pass my high standards for bicycle use (two wheels…a basket…air in the tires…chain attached). Having a bike started to symbolize freedom. Imagine getting places so much faster… being less tired… not having to carry

groceries…venturing further than our small little world consisting of Ålidhem, the river and the downtown.

So obsessed I became, that anytime we passed a parked bike, I would check whether the bicycle was locked or not. Not that I was going to steal one, but -much like the garbage room (see previous post)- I had heard that the national obsession with recycling also extended to bicycles. People, when moving away from Umeå, just ride their bike to the bus station and abandon it there, knowing that someone else will take and use it. Reduce, reuse, recycle..or at least that is what I had been told.

After trying with no avail to find second hand bikes (yes, I know everyone says use ‘blocket.se’ but it was hit and miss, and our search of three different second hand stores was fruitless as well) and not really willing to get the bad karma of actually stealing or ‘recycling’ a bicycle, a co-worker suggested that the ICA Maxi (Sweden’s equivalent of the Great Canadian Superstore) sells new bikes for only a couple hundred kroner more than a used bike.

So now we’ve got our matching mustangs… Scott named his ‘Sally’ and I named mine ‘Vera’ (I was catching up on Coronation Street episodes at the time).

So we’ve got freedom now. We have cycled around Nydala lake, and cycled down the river, and out of town in both directions. We are working ourselves up to take the 40km Umeleden trail along the river valley in Umeå, or else 40 km in the other direction to Täfteå to see the Gulf of Bothnia on the Baltic Sea.

We’ve got to get moving though, the days are getting noticeably shorter already.

Not yet sure though how well we will fare as winter cyclists.

I try not to think about it.

I saved the lamp.

I had a truly special moment here in Sweden. I was able to rescue “the lamp” that was, so many years ago, tossed aside like …well, a used lamp.

I’ll keep this short… in Sweden garbage-picking is just another form of recycling. At the end of the school term, people just dump stuff they don’t want anymore in the garbage room of our apartment block. Lots of people at my work were mentioning how they have found some of their current furniture in the garbage. (I’m not joking). So Scott and I took out the trash one day to scope out the garbage room. We found a lamp. We felt bad for the lamp. That is because we’re crazy.

We’ve given it a good home.

Midsummer’s Eve

“if we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended,

That you have but slumbered here, while these visions did appear”

-Puck, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’

At home, in Edmonton, I always loved the summer solstice. In Canada, the summer solstice is treated like a bit of trivia – (did you know it’s the longest day of the year today? the ‘official’ start of summer?) but in Sweden it is a holiday that is second only to Christmas (Jul in Swedish).

Since Scandinavia was one of the last places in Europe to become Christianized, the Nordic people still maintain the primarily pagan roots of many of the major religious holidays ie. celebrating Jul (or Yule) instead of ‘Christmas’, as well as the celebration of Midsummer. In many countries throughout the world, Midsummer is still celebrated as the Christianized celebration the Day of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist (think Saint-Jean-Baptiste day in Quebec), but Sweden remains one of the few countries that have maintained the name ‘Midsummer’ for this holiday, thus preserving it’s pagan roots.

Collectively called ‘Midsummer’ the Swedes celebrate Midsommarafton (Midsummer’s Eve) on the Friday before the solstice, and Midsommardagen (Midsummer’s Day) the following day. The main festivities take place on Friday for Midsommarafton.

In Umeå, we decided to take in the traditional celebration of Midsommarafton at the living museum ‘Gammlia’ (it’s Umeå’s version of Fort Edmonton). I think everyone in the entire city of Umeå was at Gammlia this afternoon. Families were sprinkled throughout the grounds, sitting on blankets having picnics, waiting for the midsommarstång (a maypole/fertility pole covered in wreaths of flowers and leaves) to be raised. It is tradition for women and small children to wear wreaths of leaves and flowers on their heads, so I course I made one and wore it most of the day! Once the pole was raised, everyone formed a circle around it and danced and sang songs. Mostly it was for small children, where the songs (although in Swedish) I think involved imitating a frog, a pig, an elephant etc.

Later that night, since it was the longest day of the year and our first solstice in Umeå, we definitely wanted to stay up all night long (night only lasts 3 hours! sunset at 11:07pm and sunrise at 2:14 am). So we joined some friends from my work for a bonfire at the lake Nydala just on the edge of Umeå. Bonfires are also a tradition of Midsummer, as is an evening meal of herring, new potatoes with sauce, and fresh strawberries. Our meal was semi-traditional: we had hotdogs, marshmallows, peppermint tea, fresh strawberries and melon. People were celebrating all around the lake, and some groups had even rented saunas (saunas are a big deal here), which look like little wooden houses floating out on the middle of the lake.

The best part of midsummer was staying up all night, and experiencing how it never gets dark here. It is not midnight sun, because the sun does technically go down, but it really only just dips below the horizon. (The picture of the tree was taken at 2 am). It has been like that here for at least a month now, so I guess that means now we have one more month of almost constant light before we start losing sunlight. We joked that the Swedish tradition of getting incredibly drunk on Midsummer’s Eve was a reaction to the thought that it is a rapid downhill slope from Midsummer into (almost) complete darkness for a few months.

I feel like Scott and I are ready for this decline though. Having weathered a lifetime of winters in Edmonton, the beautiful long nights of summer always seemed worth the price of suffering through a long, cold, dark winter. He who has never tasted what is bitter does not know what is sweet.

Besides, I really don’t know if I could ever live in a place where the sun sets at 6 o’clock all year round.