Anyway, my friend Angie and I spontaneously decided to go on a road trip to Sweden a month ago!
I have been to a few places this lovely world offers us to see, but had actually never been to Scandinavia. Blame it on my parents. They always went to southern Europe for the school holidays.
But, now it was my time to travel up north with a prospect of catching up with some of my fantastic Swedish friends I mostly know from Melbourne last year.
Angie and I started one fine Sunday morning in Hamburg and efficient Germans as we are (yeah, right?!?) we thought we offered a lift to Copenhagen to share the petrol. You must know there is a German website for rideshare and everyone can offer or find a lift from one place to the other. The only thing is you just speak to the people over the phone before and sometimes you end up having some surprises. I’m aware of the fact that this sounds like another dodgy thing Steff would do but I must say I have saved a lot of money using this system so far.
In our Hamburg to Copenhagen case, we had the pleasure to pick up to elderly (around 40 to 50) looking Arabic guys, who could not speak any of languages we had in our repertoire and did not have any luggage apart from their small backpacks. For a minute or two, we were contemplating how to get out of this, distracting them and driving off but in the end we decided that they were not going to kidnap us or worse. At this point again I must mention it comes in handy to write this in English as my Mum would be way too worried reading this. In the end we found out that the two men were either from Syria or Iraq, traveling around Europe with their hand luggage and seemed to enjoy listening to Australian Weekend Session Music. Hey and we saved quite a bit of petrol money.
We arrived in Copenhagen in the late afternoon and drove straight to Giuliano’s place. Now we are looking at the second part of the title, the couch surfing. I admit, I have become member of another internet network thingy called couch surfing (I really do have a life, but it sounded like a good concept). And it is as we got the opportunity to stay at Casa Villa (Giuli’s flat) with two more couch surfers, Nam from Australia and Jenny from Germany.
Giuli is a laid-back Italian living in Denmark and he was kind enough to let us crash in his flatmate’s super comfy bed for two nights. Our time in Copenhagen was short-lived but nevertheless great. We got to meet more internationals and one token Danish (!), had yummy dinners together,taught Nam how to ride a bike, saw the little mermaid, went to Christiania which was a bit of a disappointment, and Angie and I personally did not mind at all looking the half naked, pretty Danish boys lazing around in one of the parks
. Unfortunately their language is not very sexy at all, and that says the German! All in all Copenhagen is a pretty city and definitely worth a visit.
From there the road led us over impressive Oresund Bridge to Vellinge where we stayed with my friend Tina, her boyfriend Martin and their cat Spalding. It was really great to catch up and thanks to Tina who also gave us a proper tour of the area. We went to Malmö, a beautiful beach in Falsterbo (one of the most southern places in Sweden) and even contemplated a swim in her parent’s pool. The next friend to see again after almost a year was Gustav in Lund who we met for breakfast before he had to go to work. Later that day, we were just walking around checking out the city I walked past a travel agent and remembered that on a dive boat in Thailand I had met a sweet girl and her boyfriend who said she was working for Kilroy travels. To make a long story short, I had lost their details and was now standing right in front of Marie and Patrik. It was such a freaky but wonderful coincidence and it is a small world after all. We met up for coffee the next day and I’m now tempted to meet up with them on the Philippines. Another long story…
In Lund, also lives my friend Hannes who I share a lot of fond memories with about Melbourne and other parts of Australia. Seeing him again was fantastic although he said that was weird for him meeting me in his usual environment. Well, I guess a lot of other people might feel similar when I come to visit them in their country. Watch out, guys!
After checking out a really cool museum that gave you an intro to Swedish history and showed old Swedish houses from the different provinces we had dinner at Hannes’ and got prepared for our camping adventure the next day. This is the really great thing about Sweden that you can pitch your tent anywhere for one night without having to pay for it! For some reason we did not get to leave Lund until 6 pm at night (Angie we really have to work on that efficiency) so all we could do was drive up north along the coast and find a secluded spot to camp right by the ocean. The sunset was amazing and I realized once again that sometimes I really enjoy being in the nature away from big city lights and traffic.
Not that I had an epiphany or anything similar, I just liked the feeling of lying on air mattress in the tent listening to nothing else but the noise that nature produces.
The next day we went for a walk along the beach in search of breakfast. The way led us past a golf ground, cows, farms and a campground before we reached the pretty seaside town. And it was just as I had pictured Sweden, full of pretty little cottages with flowers outside their door, tiny neat shops, bakeries where they sold yummy cinnamon rolls (had to import some back to Germany) and heaps of gorgeous, tall, blonde Swedes on their summer holiday. And us, the scruffy looking backpackers right in the middle of it
.
From there we went on another couch surfing mission and stayed with a sweet Greek guy called Haris in Gothenburg. He is working at the Botanical gardens, knowing all about plants, flowers and birds; hence his apartment is located smack in the middle of the Botanical gardens. Haris not only taught us what flowers we could eat or not, he fed us dinner (all Greek ingredients of course!) and took us on a night “sight seeing” tour of the city. There was some expensive wine/beer drinking involved…
And after three days of checking out Gothenburg and its sights I had to leave back to Berlin, in exchange for my flatmate Pauline who arrived and continued traveling with Angie, but they have to tell their own story…
x
Ev