Thursday, May 13, 2010

Herr Svensson!!!

Idag, today, is Kristihimmelfärdsdag. Kristi = Christ, himmel = heaven, färd = journey, dag = day. I think the English name is Ascenscion Day, but it's interesting to think of it as Chirstheavenjourneyday. We have today and Friday off, so we took the opportunity to visit one of Skåne's most välkänd, well-known places: Smygehuk, Sweden's southernmost point. There were a lot of interesting things to see. Amongst other things, a statue, a chalk-kiln, a viking barrow, a point from which the distance to various European cities was measured and of course, the magnificent sea, Östersjön.

After that we had fika at a Kaffestuga on the way home where they had a buffet-setup. Lena taught me the traditional rule for eating fika-cakes. You start with the big "bullar", then move on to the cake-like things, and then finally you eat the smaller biscuits. The reason for that is that bullar were traditionally the cheapest to make, and then the cakes were a little more expensive, and the bisuits that required rarer ingredients like vanilla and butter were the most expensive. The idea was that you eat the cheapest first and then you are more full and eat less of the harder to get cakes.

After our nice fika/lunch and then continued back to Glemminge on the scenic way back from Smygehamn as evidenced by the tourist buses we passed on the way. There was also some construction on the side of the road where they were building a bike path. Skåne really is a beautiful province, by the sea with it's warm climates and old Danish castles, green fields and strange accents.

I only hope that the Kaffestuga we doesn't get burnt down. Apparently there have were two fires last night in Hammenhög, just three kilometers from Glemminge. He appears to target historical buildings and churches, things that can't be replaced. He was arrested again in Ystad today. Now the police have 14 days to find some damning evidence or else he will be released and be compensated by the state. This is probably his main source of income. Once, someone had enough of him and burned down his house while he was in prison, but the state replaced it. We heard on the radio that Soldatstorpet is back and open for business. Although the one of it's stugas has been totally destroyed, namely the old thatch-roofed one.

We got home and went out with the dogs while Rolf watched the Hockey VM, world championship on tv. Then I read a little bit in my Russian books and had a bit of dinner. We had picnic food, potato salad, tomatoes, chicken salad and a bit of cold korv, sausage.

The last thing planned for the day was Kuta & Kör, a farce that premiered at Ystads theater earlier this evening. It was really, really good. The story was about a taxi driver called Lasse Svensson who was happily married... to two different women. There were a hundred different missunderstandings: one wife thought the other was a nun, everyone else thought she was a transvestite. The police officer thought that Lasse and his friend Stefan were homosexuals, the other police officer thought that Lasse's wife was married to Stefan, Stefan tried to escape on a scooter... it was a hilarious play. I am happy to say that I understood most of what they were saying, which was Skånska(most Skåningar consider their dialect to be it's own language). We all had really good time, even Lena who thinks that farces are fjompiga, silly. The audience went crazy at the end.

Tomorrow we're going to visit Simrishamn, on the east side of Skåne, by the sea. But for now, I sit here and record my experiences on this little laptop that Rolf is scared to death that I will accidentally destroy, in a little living room where a tv is showing a documentary called Familjen Bernadotte about the royal family of Sweden, in a little town that I now call my home, all the way down in the south of a little country on the other side of the world.

1 comment:

  1. other side of the world?! Sounds like your center of gravity at the moment is locating itself in the New World. Probably the Old World folks would see things centering on their location - with North Americans being "on the other side of the world." A few people in our Michigan small town are traveling in FR and IT this season, so the world is not so distant these days.

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