Wednesday June 28 – Friday June 30 – Soderhamn, Sweden
Idyllic pastures. Cheery red and yellow farmhouses with potted flowers dotting the porches. Trees so green you can smell the freshness of them. Horses grazing, their coats glossy and freshly brushed. All this I spy from the bus window, eager for my first sight of town. The drapes swaying with the rhythm of the road are like theater curtains, framing the view in a dramatic flair. It even makes the golden arches of a highwayside McDonald’s look dramatic. I have to wonder who in town actually goes there, as a) it’s in the middle of nowhere, and b) looked absolutely deserted.
With a few days of gardening under my belt, I am enjoying the work stay immensely. With no previous workstay to compare it with, I was more than a little nervous about what I would find. (In retrospect, I think all of my previous jobs working with degenerates and/or carnies, combined with a reality television-fueled imagination has really skewed what I expect from others.) I told Olle I had gardening and animal care experience from my family’s farm, but really I would just do whatever as long as I had instructions on expectations. That has led me to gardening duty as the boys have been mending fences, and with the sultry sun, there’s no other job I would rather have, stinging nettles and all.
Somehow my background working with flowers has made me qualified enough to be in charge of gardening when Olle is gone. Which is scary, considering the plants I have inadvertently killed in my own garden could be considered a number ranking in mass casualty.
As per my agreement, I work 5 hours for every 5 days out of 7. This week has flown by so far, and while my biggest apprehension before coming here was if I would get along with my teammates, I now see I couldn’t have chosen a better team even if I’d tried. Take Francesco, for instance: an endless well of positive, his lanky tanned form and curly dark hair don’t do justice to his Italian expanse of optimism and cheerfulness he radiates. By day he is jazzed to do anything but garden, even building fences, which to me looks absolutely miserable in this humidity. By night he volunteers for dish duty, happily humming and scrubbing. Victor is always smiling and in for a laugh. He strikes me as a young professional, which shows in his dedication to his remote job he faithfully does every night after working and cooking for the crew. A Sao Paolo native, his English is impeccable, as are his manners: he always offers to take carry heavy things or grab a glass of water for me. Then there’s Ellie, whom I haven’t had much interaction with, since she takes the early morning shift caring for the cattle. I know she’s English, is a vegetarian, and ventures out by bicycle most days. I’ve made a mental note to ask her about which routes go where, and for want of something to explore, learned from her that a local secondhand thrift shop is not too far in town. So I hopped the bus to the town of Soderhamn, thirsty for some thrift.
For those of you who don’t know, I am a hardcore bargain hunter. I once flew from Barcelona to Mallorca because the Ryanair fare was $7. For a chance to experience a Mediterranean island, who was I to deny a good deal?
But anyway, my card wasn’t registering on the bus’s card reader, so the bus driver let me ride for free. (Later when I caught the bus home, it was the same bus driver, who waved me through a second time.)
It was a nice jaunt through town. With a canal on one side and a quaint main street, the whole place was giving me Capeside, Massachussetts vibes. Which gives me hope: If Capeside exists, then it stands to reason that Pacey Witter himself translates into real life as well.
Sigh. A girl can dream.
. . .
Besides the town center excursion, today was educational for many small reasons, the biggest being these:
- I am, as of now, 35 years old, and just discovering how unpleasant stinging nettles can be. My only real experience with the plants were through stories like the tale of The Seven Swans. In the story a princess’ brothers are cursed and transformed into swans. To reverse the magic, she must sew shirts for them out of nettles. Through perseverance and sacrifice, she finishes (most of) the shirts and saves her beloved brothers. Reading that story, I always thought it was neat that though her fingers were sore, her love for her family gave her determination to save the day. Now, having personally dealt with the sting of those little bastards, I say maybe her brothers should have loved her enough to be like, “Hey it’s cool, we’ll stay swans just so you don’t have to deal with those agonizing stings that last for hours on end. We’ll do you this solid, lil sis.”
- I’ve been calling Olle the wrong name this whole time. Because it is Olle with an uh, not Olov with an uv, like I thought. I went back and looked at the Worldpackers application, just to double check, and yep, I really dyslexia-ed that one.
- Apparently Lollapalooza, one of the largest traveling music festivals in the world was coming to Stockholm, starting Thursday (the next day). And I had no idea.
When I panic-messaged Andy about it, he was like, “I told you I was going.” Had to admit I didn’t remember that small yet juicy nugget of detail. to which he replied, “How did you come to Stockholm and not know this was going on??” For a girl who’s living out of her backpack who brought her own fuzzy slippers yet still managed to forget stuff like a laptop charger. . .really, anything is game.
I interrupted the group study time to ask for the boys’ advice: should I buy a ticket and go see Kygo? He would be a headliner for Lolla, and while I may have seen him perform in Croatia last year, he did not do his standard acoustic piano performance. And I, for one, feel gypped, and will use that as an excuse to justifying going to the show.
Saturday seemed a valid attendance day, since Thursday was soon and was obviously down and out for the count.
Thursday June 29
I’ll be honest, I don’t really remember much of Thursday. Mostly I remember Andy messaging me that Sandro Cavazza performed with Kygo, and hot jealousy poured all over my face.
Friday June 30
Nothing warms the soul quite like pizza. When I asked my housemates about going to town for one of those infamous kebab pizzas, they were dubious at best. Sampling surstromming for laughs was one thing. But purchasing unfamiliar pizza? Or we could just make it, I suggested. So we were agreed on a Friday night pizza night to start the weekend off right.
Ellie was already back from her daily excursion, so when I asked her about the best way to bike to town without risking imminent death on the narrow road shoulder, she was kind enough to show me the bike trail, and ultimately the way. Turns out there’s gravel road leading to the neighborhood I never knew existed, just past the eastern tree line. About two miles past the houses, a bike trail runs parallel to the highway, going out and out to the town itself. Or so I’m told – I’ve never made it past the grocery or dollar store on the bike.
After getting supplies, it was dough time. I’d been proofing the doughs since the early morning. I was go time.
The oven makes me nervous as a baker for this foremost reason: you don’t know the temperature. The dial has long since fallen off, so to adjust the heat you grab pliers and hope for the best. I had gotten lucky getting the temp for cinnamon rolls and cookies just fine, but didn’t want to mess up the pizza. Because pizza isn’t just a delicious snack, it’s a way of life. After all, boys can break your heart and leave you high and dry. But I’ve yet to meet a pizza that has broken my heart or betrayed me. If it’s between a boy and a pizza, well – Y’all know right now where my loyalty lies.
Highlights:
-Made pesto pizza since there was no tomato sauce.
-Turns out there was sauce. I just had no idea it was in the red tube. I explained all of our American spaghetti sauce came in glass jars, hence my utter and complete confusion.
-How our style of eating differs: properly using a knife and fork vs. maneuvering with bread, then there’s me, who eats with her hands like a caveman.
-We’re a diverse group, but it’s so nice coming together, especially at a mealtime, and simply describing our different lives. Our views on love was interesting. I for one say I love people or places or things. Where for Francesco and Victor, their literal and figurative Romantic languages have very clear disparate definitions and verbs for like, and loves plural. Similar to Spanish, there are different verb assignments for objects that delight you versus a person you have love for.
-Olle came back from Uppsala. It’s kinda like when a father comes home from work and gets all the tea from the children.
-The song Que sera, sera played while we talked and ate. In a way, we are all in the middle of things. What brought us all here to this particular farm seems so long ago. And the ever-nearing future is just at bay, as a boat through a sea fog, coming though we see it not, and when we do well, it’s already upon us.
Meals:
-Leftover tortilla. Wherever I go, I seem to be the psychopath that enjoys their leftovers cold. But there’s a niceness to cold potatoes that I find refreshing.
-Sandwich. The breakfast (and lunch, and dinner) of champions.
-Rice with chicken and vegetable stir fry. This I made for dinner, because I wanted to contribute to the others making and sharing dinner.