June 26-29th Sweden:
Well, got behind on the old blog of course.. After Ven, we woke up the next morning and took a bus to Bilaberg about 15 minutes away. Small village on a weekend with absolutely nothing there. Bus drops off right at the cemetery so we wondered around until we found Jacob Anders something or other who I was named after. Kind of interesting, makes one think a little bit…..for about 60 seconds, then was ready to get out of there. Nice little cemetery though. We walked up the road to try and find another cemetery, but at this point we didn’t actually know where we were going or if people related to us were even burried there….just that they lived there. Some goofy Swedish guy with big lips gave us directions to go up the hill, across the railroad tracks, etc as if we spoke perfect Swedish. Didn’t know what the hell he was saying and he probably has some sort of speech impedament by the sound of it. He basically just pointed a direction so we walked. No cemetary, so we walked back to catch the bus as it only ran like every 2 hours and we didn’t want to get stuck in that shit ass village.
Back to Lanskrona, then caught a train up to Balsta which is a beach town on the west coast. Some 2nd cousin of my mom’s picked us up and drove us to their beach house which was quite nice. This was like a summer/weekend home for them and had an extra little guest house that mom and I stayed in. This place even had cable and all the TV there was in English so it was a nice chance to catch up with my old friend. After a nap, we walked down to the beach, then drove to some other resort town thing, then back down to the house for a BBQ. The thing I like about staying with adults/families is that they always cook for you. I’ve eaten like a champ in Belgium, Germany, and now in Sweden. Sausages, breads, wine, some other pork product, and lots of strawberry cake to finish it off. Swedes love coffee so there was never an empty cup. Nice evening chilling out in the old beach house…great to have that connection. They had a daughter which I guess would be my 3rd cousin (our grandparents were cousins?) and she was pretty cool, can’t remember her name at the moment, but she is a facebook friend. We at least got to talk about music and stuff with her boyfriend.
Next morning back to their normal house in Elsa (?) which is where the home to the first Ikea (drove by and took a picture). I slept in the back seat of the car during this 1-2 hours drive. Went to some old people’s houseI’m related to and had tea and more food (they just keep shoving it down you). They too lived on some lake thing. Other distant cousins/relatives came by and we all went to some more cemetaries and found a headstone or two I believe. All starting to run together at this point. Went back to the house for more tea and strawberry cake. Took off to the normal home of the people with the beach house and guess what…had more great food. Seems like they eat pork more than anything…I have not had any chicken in some time. Watched the football match and some crap show on MTV. The daughter and I hung out for a bit and looked at photos on facebook and talked music again…she showed me some bands on youtube that were popular in Sweden (other than Muse) and they all seemed not that great….but interestingly they all sang in English.
Next day….guess what, another freaking cemetary. I guess this was sort of the purpose of this trip, but at this point it was getting a bit old. Found the gravesite and checked out the church which was actually the one that spread to Littleton, Colorado where my Mom grew up and I guess her parents settled. So they had pictures of the church from colorado. Again , interesting but not exciting. Drove around to some other places (where they lady worked, bought a train ticket, etc) and eventually has Subway for lunch. Same exact stuff they have at home, only there was a hot Swedish girl with a lip piercing working there….you don’t really see that in America.
Back to the train that evening, and returned to Copenhagen and just stayed in a Best Western by the airport so that we could catch an early flight to Berlin in the morning. Looking back, should havce probably taken a night train or bus or something as it would have saved us the cost of a hotel with no air conditioning. They did have a little gym though so I did 20 minutes on the treadmill and a few sets of weights before giving up and crashing.
