Sweden: From Prince to Pauper, Coffee Surprise, and Pictures

Backpacking across China and Southeast Asia certainly has its rewards: the beautiful landscape, the exotic cultures, the tasty curries and spicy Sichuan cuisine, the pristine beaches on secluded islands… the list goes on and on. Upon arriving in Scandinavia, however, the advantage of Asian travel I appreciate the most is that it’s dirt cheap.

Going from Thailand or Malaysia to Sweden is like taking a giant leap from Target cargo pants to Diesel jeans. Your average hostel in Bangkok is going to run you about $8 a night for a double room (don’t even get me started on the more remote areas… Matt and I were paying $2.50 for a riverside Bungalow in Laos, and I had a single room on the River Kwai for $1.50). Compare that with the $30 I was paying in Sweden for a place in an 11-bed dorm and you’ll start to get an idea of the financial shock I underwent.

Perhaps the saddest consequence of my fall from fiscal grace was the blow to my culinary experience. I’ve found that after traveling for an extended period of time, it’s not the sites, but the food that begin to excite you. I’d take a spicy Thai red curry or a plate of dumplings and wanton soup over a visit to another wat any day of the week. It appeared now, much to my chagrin, that my magical food tour would have to be put on hiatus in Scandinavia. Whereas in Asia I had been eating out for every meal, in my 2 weeks in Sweden I never once even sat at a restaurant.

I found myself forced to navigate the aisles of many a Swedish grocery store. Going to a grocery store in a new country is always a bit of a shock. Once you cross a border, everything from the sections to the labels to the languages to the foods themselves magically change in an instant. Having just gotten used to the stores in Southeast Asia, I was again cast into an unknown culinary world in Europe. I don’t know why it is, but to me the foods in the grocery stores of European countries are so much weirder and more intimidating than those of Asian countries. Maybe it’s the massive sections of belly-sized cheese wedges that smell like gym socks or maybe it’s the rows and rows of sausages the size and shape of which I can’t imagine came from any one particular animal. There aren’t as many familiar name brands either. The biggest kicker, though, is the lack of English anywhere on the packaging. As you may have guessed, I haven’t totally mastered Swedish yet, so I just had to guess at what everything was.

On my first trip to a grocer, I was looking for milk and found a paper carton with a picture of a cow on it. The brand name was ‘Milkjo’ or something absurdly close to ‘milk’ like that. It even said 3%, which I correctly took to be the fat content. I didn’t worry about what ‘Fil’ – which was written in bigger letters than the brand name – meant. It just had to be milk. I returned to the hostel and brewed myself (poured hot water into freeze dried crystals) a cup of coffee, which I was aching to have after my long day of travel. I tipped the carton of ‘milkjo’ and out came a much thicker liquid than I remember milk being. I stared for a long moment at the goop in the mug. ‘Well, it’s 3% and I usually drink 1% at home so maybe it’s just supposed to be thicker,’ I thought. I gave the carton a whiff and jumped back halfway across the kitchen. It smelled like spoiled yogurt. It turns out that I had bought ‘Sour Milk’ (that’s what ‘Fil’ means), a Swedish favorite. Surprises are the last thing I like with my coffee.

CLICK HERE for some pictures of my 2 weeks in Sweden, which I promise were better than how I just made them sound.

Midsummer: Drunk Swedes and Maypoles

‘You’ve come for Midsummer? You will get to see a lot of really drunk Swedes,’ was the first thing that Erik – the Vandrarhem (youth hostel) owner, no slouch at imbibing himself – said to me upon my arrival in Leksand.

Leksand is a modest, 80s mid-American suburbs-looking town lying at the southeastern corner of Sweden’s Lake Siljan. There’s not much in Leksand, one grocery store, a handful of Italian and Chinese restaurants, the state-run alcohol shop, a movie theatre that operates only seasonally. On any other week – and indeed in the days prior to the event – it’s a serene place surrounded by villages of red wooden cottages with baby blue shutters and barn doors – the colors are mandated by local law – but now it was preparing for a raucous implosion of guests from all over the country. For Midsummer weekend, the Swedes all but evacuate the major cities and flock to the countryside; Leksand alone balloons to well over twice its normal population (an estimated 20,000 people come to watch the maypole rising on Midsummer’s Eve). Suffice it to say, I was in the right place to celebrate with the drunken Swedes.

A fertility festival of pagan origins, Midsummer’s Eve is the most important – or at least most zealously celebrated – weekend on Scandinavia’s yearly calendars. It takes place annually on the Friday following the 21^st of June, the longest day of the year (It never actually gets dark in most of Sweden during the summer. In Leksand, the sun sets somewhere around midnight. One night, I rode a bike home from a party in a neighboring village at 2am and had no need for a lamp, as there was still plenty of light out).

Midsummer celebrations center on the rising of a maypole. Symbolically the maypole is meant to be a phallus and, accordingly, its erecting is a fertility ritual. The Swedes go the extra mile in decorating the dried pine tree trunk with a pair of wreaths positioned like testicles, just in case you had difficulty deducing the symbolism. Each town in Sweden has its own maypole and its own erecting (stop giggling) ceremony. It’s a lot more difficult than it sounds. Leksand’s maypole is the biggest in the country at just over 28m in length, or about a third of a football field. Check out the picture above to get an idea of the scale (this one is from another village and is considered a small maypole).

A big part of the fun in watching the maypole rising is the interlude between stages. While the supporting sticks are undergoing strategic repositioning, a band of violinists dressed like a roaming tribe of Quakers play a speedy Swedish ditty that sounds like the Scandinavian combination of folk and bluegrass. The song is always the same (or at least it sounds exactly the same to me), so the team hoisting the maypole knows when the end of the number is near, and they prepare for the next big cry of “HAAAIIILLL” and accompanying heave.

After the maypole is finally up and standing, a circle of people several bodies thick forms around it and a series of dances commence. At the big rising in Leksand, thousands of people held hands and danced (ran) frantically around the circle, kicking up a cloud of dust that obscured the view of all but the very top of the maypole.

Then come the big parties and the drunken Swedes, but that’s a whole nother story.

Pictures: Malaysia and Singapore

After a brief encounter with Islamic extremists in Southern Thailand, I ambled my way through the Malaysian peninsula down into Singapore. En route I found myself in the middle of the rustic markets of Muslim Kota Bharu, Diving in the pristine marine parks near the road-less island of Pulau Perenthian (the only place I've ever been without land transport), jaunting through the world's oldest rainforest in Taman Negara, and eating non-stopped ethnic cuisines at Kuala Lampur's Little India and China Town. Malaysia was pretty amazing, but with just under 2 weeks to spend there, I barely scratched the surface.

I knew I was going to like Malaysia. Singapore was the real shocker. Far from the boring, sterile, strict metropolis that I - along with most people - imagined, it's a vibrant city packed full with charm and character. City planners here all deserve sashes of medals for the effective way in which they fused colonial and modern architectural elements, laid out streets and shopping districts without a trace of anonymity, and created the magnificent water promenade that runs along the Quays of the Singapore River.

Check out the pictures when you get a chance.

Click HERE