Damn, do I suck! Months without an update.

Bad news. My laptop died the other day, and until I can get it repaired and the data restored, it will take longer for me to post all the pictures from my trip to Poland, Slovakia, Austria, Germany, and Denmark.

I made it back to Sweden in time for a few bike rides, trips to Malmo, lots of ice cream, and packing up.

Then I hung out in San Diego for a spell, with pictures to follow.

Then I moved to San Francisco, and my camera died of old age. So no pictures yet. Sorry.

So it all worked out – except that I’m still unemployed in one of the most expensive cities in North America at a time when the economy is NOT AT ITS STRONGEST. At least my car totally bit the dust, so now I am not saddled with car insurance bills or pump prices. TO BE CONTINUED!!!!!!

WHAT’S UP DUDES, CAN’T TALK NOW, I’M IN KRAKOW. EVERYTHING IS IN POLISH HERE. GOTTA RUN AND TAKE TOURISTY PICTURES OF THINGS.

Come July I’ll be doing more travelling. Plane flight and hostel accomodations = booked. I plan on spending a good 3-4 days in Krakow enjoying meaty fare, affordable Polish porters, and hopefully some Miód Pitny (baltic mead) just to feel like a viking. Then I might go to Slovakia to eat more cheap food, Austria to look at mountains and eat ice cream, and Bavaria because Germany’s really cool. I don’t know if seeing Belgium (well, mostly their beer) would be feasible on my budget/timeframe, but man, that would be great as well.

I don’t speak (any of) the language in any of these countries, but I’ll look into basic Polish, Slovakian, and German phrases before I go. I’d also like to add that Wikitravel is an absolutely amazing tool for travel planning. I’ll never take a touristy vacation ever again without its (hopefully accurate) wisdom.

What have I been up to lately? For the most part, trying to get by on as little as possible – Stockholm ate up a surprising bit of this vacation’s budget. I’ve been watching a lot of movies lately, the highlights including Street Trash, North By Northwest, and of course, Meatballs. Here’s some pictures and news from the past few slow weeks.

You may have noticed I haven’t been posting pictures from recent bike rides. The reason is two fold – one, the weather has been pretty bad the past few weeks. There are some nice long stretches of dryness, but those are in between windstorms and thunderstorms, and general moist greyness.

The second reason is that I put my bike up for sale and sold it – I didn’t think it was going to be that hot on the market, but it’s gone now. I thought culling it would save me some hassle, making it one less thing I have to check in on the return trip, but as it turns out, I really missed having a bike. I began reading classifieds for used bikes, and a rediculously awesome Eddy Merckx Corsa Extra pops up one day, just over in Malmö. I might be overextending my unemployed ass a bit, but I:

• was going to buy a bike back home anyways
• would kick myself for letting this deal go (it’s worth more than I paid for it)
• need transportation here in Sweden
• missed going on bike rides. I never made it to Helsingborg Smygehuk, or Falsterbo.

So I pulled the trigger and this amazing machine is now mine.

It fits great now, but I’m going to put a shorter stem on it back home. I don’t have clipless shoes here, so I’m going to find some cages and straps. The front brake is too small, and squeezes the rim AND the tire, which is no good – so I’m on the lookout for a longer reach brake, ASAP. Those are the only things holding it back from being perfect, which is pretty amazing. Components are a strange mix of Shimano 600/Dura Ace and Campagnolo, along with those ill-fitting Universal brakes. I’m going to need one or two of these (1,2) if I bring it to the Bay Area with me.

A week or two ago was the high-schooler’s graduation. I saw this in Stockholm, too. It’s pretty traditional for graduates to rent gigantic trucks with their friends, loaded with rediculous stereos, blasting trashy Euro-trance loud enough to get Satan dancing, and drive in endless circles around town. The girls are all in blazers or dresses, the guys all wear traditional “student” captain’s hats, and everyone is completely hammered, and all of downtown smells like cheap beer. I wish the US had a tradition like that.

The wasted 18-y.o. girls are all blowing on obnoxious whistles, waving and screaming so that passerby on the sidewalk acknowledge their accomplishments. Any OTHER time that you publicly acknowledge another person’s existence in public, it’s considered rude and crazy, so you better believe I waved to every single truckload of girls that passed.

Here’s Petter and his 4 goats (it’s clever because his sign rhymes in Swedish).

I’ve also been marvelling at how light it is (even on cloudy days like lately) at night, and how impossibly early dawn comes. Here’s a picture from a few weeks ago taken around midnight.

Here’s a shot of my apartment complex around 2:45AM at Midsommar, the longest day of the year. It might not compare to the last picture on my last post from Stockholm, but it’s still surprising to us southerners.

Even with blinds closed, my room is light enough to read by, by 4:15AM every day. I can’t imagine what it must be like in northern Sweden now (well, actually, I can guess that a lot of reading gets done up there).

The one nice day last week, I went downtown to Mårtenstorget to buy sorbet, and a local bank-sponsored soccer team was inexplicably having a beach-soccer expo.

Here’s the bike racks across from the train station. When travelling from Lund a few years ago, I’d bike to the station, lock up, and come back a week later to spend half an hour searching for my bike.

Here’s a pretty sweet chainguard.

Here’s a button sitting around in a thrift store, making no sense.

The ICA Qvantum near Lund’s Central Station has a pretty sweet chocolate selection (in addition to the sorbet that I couldn’t find anywhere else).

Then I saw a couple dogs.

And then there was some bitter-ass graffiti. I don’t know what kind of luck this dude has, I mean I’ve met nice cops before, jeez. I just wasn’t holding an armful of Krylon when it happened.

Here’s what my friends ask me about when they hear I like Sweden. OK, I guess they exist (kinda hard to find even)…

…but I feel bad for Swedish tourists to the US – “oh, you guys have such amazing candy – I bet you eat tons of Swedish Fish”. A German traveller on his US vacation might ask “oh, you Americans have such amazing music – I bet your favorite artist is David Hasselhoff; he’s mine!” The thing is, we do claim the Hoff, but there’s so much better stuff that we should be known for.

Here’s what Sweden should be known for:

Blood Orange and Ginger sorbet. I’m officially buying an ice cream maker when I move into my next place. 100%.

I also made some rad-ass ginger beer using Swedish clover honey, Äppelmust (fresh-pressed apple cider) from nearby Österlen, brown sugar and cinnamon, and had the bright idea of freezing the bottles of my un-fermented ginger brew. Thaw, dilute (the stuff turned out way too concentrated), pitch yeast, carbonate, refridgerate, enjoy the best ginger beer ever created. I’m going to have to peg down a recipe and let fame and fortune follow.

Here’s assorted pictures from my four days or so in Stockholm.

For uninitiated, Stockholm is built on an archipelago of islands. The islands generally have a different feel – I’ll try and use California neighborhood equivalents to compare, from what I saw. Södermalm to the south is the dirtier, “hipper” island with more immigrants, bars and things to do. Think Mission/Lower Haight. Gamla Stan (“old town”) is the touristy, picturesque, cobblestoned, narrow-alleyed, crowded island with the royal palace. Like Fisherman’s Wharf. Norrmalm, technically not an island, is a downtown-esque area with finance buildings, transit hubs (the train and subway main stations), and super-lame clubs – you know, the ones that cost tons of money to get into to and have bouncers kicking out people who aren’t dressed “right”? It’s totally San Diego’s Gaslamp. Kungsholmen is a quiet island with a lot of historical and government buildings, and quiet well-to-do neighborhoods filled with old and other boring people. It’s total Presidio/Pacific Heights over there. That’s about all my pictures show, at least.

Starting with Södermalm!

It’s quite hilly here.

It’s a 5-store designer-label mall with a lounge area for people who are easily exhausted by looking at 300 dollar cardigans.

Turkish fat food!

This is a walkway to an toll elevator operated by a hotel. It offers quite the view.

This is a view of Södermalm from Gamla Stan.

Here’s a boat called “Rambo”.

Here’s the nice hostel I stayed at nights 1 and 4 of my stay in Stockholm (it was booked solid nights 2 and 3, I stayed at yet another boat down the way). The receptionists were 100% babes.

Götgatan is pretty big-time. It’s to Södermalm what Valencia St. is to the Mission. Most of it is for pedestrians and cyclists only. Some rad thrift stores and boutiques, and even a Tully’s Coffee, so Seattle expats don’t get homesick.

I’m not explicitly trying to take pictures of babe’s asses, but point a camera in any direction on Götgatan and try to take a picture without a total babe’s ass in it.

I really liked the cool SoFo neighborhood (South of Folkungagatan, obviously). This neighborhood really reminds me of Lower Haight, where I hope to move to in a few months. There’s a well known store, Grandpa, that just sells designer-y “stuff” – like a small Urban Outfitters if it didn’t suck. I wanted to buy everything in there. Dangerous. Here’s the nearby Vitabergs Parken.

And check out this suggestive advertisement for a magazine with “more on the inside”.

Here’s some pictures from Norrmalm.

Much of the shopping areas around here remind me of Market St. in San Francisco. I’m embarassed to say that a couple people at the hostel got a group of us to go into the Stockholm Ice Bar one night to drink rediculous vodka drinks served in glasses carved out of ice while wearing heavy jackets provided at the door and big gloves.

Shopping central:

That Åhléns back there is the spitting image of Macy’s in SF – I swear, all the flagship, big-city department stores from the in the 50s were all built by the same guy.

Tupperware salespeople.

It’s a Saluhallen – every big city has one (or more). It’s like a mall food court, only filled with upscale butchers, seafood stands, pizzerias, spice shops, a mini-Systembolaget, and anything you’d need to make a nice 5-course meal.

Here’s Gamla Stan:

…the Fisherman’s Wharf equivalent of Stockholm, but with less annoying sea lions. Here’s a picture I took from my boat hostel of Riddarholmskyrkan.

Here’s the cool way the freeway and bike paths are laid out on the eastern side of the island.

I took the obligatory tourist photos of the main touristy street, Västerlånggatan.

I ended up having a nice dinner here – elk carpaccio, walnut pesto, and Parmigiano-Reggiano at the Glenfiddich Warehouse, which was recommended as a Swedish craft-beer destination.

I had a smoked ale ($11!) from Örebro Bryggeri. Not that exciting. The food was excellent, however. Later in the week, I’d come with a group of Swedish people and more Australians after bar-hopping to a place here because last call was at 3AM. When we left, it was easily bright enough outside to drive a car, and it looked as if the sun would come up any minute – just being that much further north of Lund makes that much of a difference, I guess.

Here’s a view from Gamla Stan of Riddarholm (a seperate island considered part of Gamla Stan) and Kungsholmen.

See that big tower in the distance? I wanted to visit Kungsholmen, as I’d never been. LET’S GO TO…

Kungsholmen:

Here’s that tower, up close and in your face. It’s part of the city hall.

Here’s a city hall archway.

Here’s some kayakers rocking the turbulent eddies of Lake Mälaren.

And that’s all.

OH! I’ll leave you with a picture that I stole from the blog of an Aussie, Ryan, I was hanging out with (I’m sure as hell not going to bring my crappy camera out drinking), showing how retardedly bright the mornings are:

This was taken after we got out of the bars, around or a little before 4 fucking AM. WRAP YOUR HEAD AROUND THAT. LOOK HOW LIGHT IT IS.

Last day. It was supposed to be a short little morning cruise, but turned into a 60km frustration-fest. I arrived at 3pm, only about 5 hours later than I had hoped. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

I found my way on some windy foresty roads into Södertälje. It appeared to be a nice enough city, once I manuevered my way in through the suburbs.

But you can’t leave! TRY and find a signed bike route taking you outside of city limits. I circled around a water tower, found myself shooting down a singletrack mountain bike path, spooked a whole community of retirees, and went around and around a gigantic, dirty shopping area. It reminded me of the crappy parts of Denver, or maybe Sacramento, for some reason. They built a huge shopping mall where the flagship store was a GROCERY STORE. This is like having Nordstroms go out of business to be replaced by Smart and Final. Get me out of here!

I finally chanced a 20km-ride (keep in mind I still had NO MAP, and was under the false impression that Södertälje was right next to Stockholm, a Emeryville to its Oakland). It turned out to be more or less the right way, though it spit me out towards Botkyrka on some way-too-heavy traffic roads. I had to stop by a super-giant Walmart-esque ICA MAXI store to study a map in the book section. Didn’t help too much. I did eventually find a road connecting Tumba up to Stockholm, but the traffic was INSANE and there was no seperate bike path like every other developed area in Sweden, so I had to ride my bike on the sidewalk quite a ways. Finally, I reached a biotech area. It was like your average Sorrento Valley, Cambridge, South San Francisco, or Bethesda, only in Sweden. Here’s a division of the Karolinska Institute, who was heading up the clinical trials of my last employers’ product. I’d love to work in an area like this!

Where there is Vag, a Bro can’t be too far behind – ask the guys in your frat. (Bridge and Road, for those curious).

Then I saw a rad, garish apartment complex.

Biking north, I got stopped by some pedestrian traffic organizers who told me that I have to stay put for “7 seconds”. After 5 seconds, there was a big muffled explosion – they were demolishing some old pipes underground, I guess. Rad! I got lost trying to find the Skanstull bridge into Södermalm, and ended up in Hammerby. I carried my bike up a big set of stairs to a drawbridge, so I could enter Stockholm’s Södermalm island. Rad!

I biked through Södermalm, Slussen, Gamla Stan, and onto Skeppsholmen island to see if the last hostel (af Chapman) I had stayed at was available. It wasn’t, so I played the call-around game and found another boat hostel back on Södermalm. Rad! I got over there, checked in, and drank a fair amount of beer with my nice Aussie roomate, Pete before both exhausted parties called it a night. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

Rollin’ up the east side of Sverige.

Leaving Norrköping, I pass the harbor. One of those boats was the old, newsworthy, restored boat I mentioned in the previous day’s post.

Outside of Norrköping was a very ugly shopping mall. Say what you want about Orange County, but at least their shopping centers look good. In Sweden, it’s all of the mall, all of the sprawl, yet they’ve hit a foul ball.

I made my way out of the commerical area and biked with a nice dude into Åby, (not to be confused with the million other, smaller Åby-s), where there was this AWESOME walkway under the train tracks. I wanted to hang out under it until a train came, but I’m on a deadline (not really, I just didn’t want to wait).

Finally, rapeseed fields reappear. I hadn’t seen them since Skåne.

I decided I had no time for Sandwich Table Sundays, or calling to make a table reservation.

But I did have time to stop for a water break by Bråviken, a saltwater bay connected to the Baltic which is connected to the Atlantic, which means I really AM on the east coast.

My steed rests.

Going up a fun steep hill, a cycling club passed me (only because I was riding a totally loaded touring rig on the small chainring). One guy hung around and chatted about my trip (in Swedish, of course) and suggested I stop with them for coffee up the road. I was in a groove though, so I kept on, and wished them luck on their ride to Mariefred.

Sayonara, Östergötland. Konichiwa, Södermansland.

In Stavsjöbruk, I went to a loppis market with a mean old man behind the counter. They were selling millions of 100 year old screwdrivers and wrenches, so I bought one to tighten things on the ol’ bike and to use at home to turn the shower on and off (the knob is broken). Leaving the market, I saw this decidedly evil-looking building.

Coming into Nyköping, I somehow was surrounded by other cyclists. They were in a race that ended just before the city limits. People at the finish line looked at me weird when I didn’t stop, but they just didn’t understand that I’m not out for a sport or to beat other people.

Who the hell decided to throw up palm trees in the middle of Sweden? I didn’t leave southern California to see these, that’s for sure.

Here’s the city hall.

And some old building.

I ate a hamburger, and decided to get outta Nyköping. It was spookily empty and everything was closed save for the hamburger shop. I was a bit worried as I didn’t have a map, but like Bowie’s space oddity, my spaceship seemed to know where to go. Stockholm was in one direction, and I was just gonna keep on pedalling that way until I the Globen rose over the horizon. Right. In the meantime though, I passed some TOTALLY GANGSTA TAGZ YO in the middle of a field. COMPTON WATCH OUT.

And then there was another field.

Finally I reached a cave/old mine. It was called: Alsgruvan.

It cut clear through a hillside, and was filled with water and flies.

Not an ideal place to camp, so I kept moving into Gnesta.

Jellyfish farm? *Chuckle* – You sorry, dumb piece of crap. The sign clearly says that canoeing can be had further down that path.

Gnesta had a fun looking library as well.

I did some grocery shopping (they played some new Radiohead songs in the store rather than muzak, badass). I skipped the PRE MADE PANCAKES (why is this necessary when this exists?) and forwent the American Ginger Ale. I picked up a gigantic lunch salami (fat and protein!) and a chicken salad instead.

Gnesta – pretty sweet little town. I called my parents collect on the payphone for a bit and then tried to leave town. I found a crudely-printed-out-from-googlemaps map of the area hanging up in a real estate office window, and took a close-up picture of it. Now I had a fairly crude idea of where I was going, by referencing my camera. The 57 road to Södertälje was NOT HAPPENING (no shoulder at all, crazy traffic, big trucks), but I decided to head down some back roads to see if they went anywhere. Before long, I saw a sign saying that Södertälje was indeed reachable! Though it was a bit longer than the 57 route, it was really nice. Here’s a field and house and lake. Very Sweden.

Then it was kilometer after kilometer of enjoyable rolling hills, clear-cut forests, dense uncut forests, lakes, and vacation houses. I decided on a new camping strategy as it grew darker – I’d been passing all these private dirt roads for the past 400 kilometers, right? I just realized that some of them had mailboxes and others didn’t. Obviously, the ones without mailboxes had no residences attached. They were more than likely old logging roads. I found one with overgrown grass (no trucks had come down that way in months at least) and set up a nice tent spot right in the middle of the overgrown road. Worked great, and I’m officially a genius. There was a even a nice brook next to my spot.

I made it to the east coast. You tend to do that when you RULE. Read more and see pictures by clicking on the link below.

I got an early start around Rumma. The first half hour of biking was on a nice lake. Pretty!

And then the wind started. Holy crap. I was beaten back – every time the road changed direction, so did the wind to make sure I was getting the full headwind. I stopped in Valla as the church bell rung and set my digital camera clock to it. 11:00AM after an hour or so of biking? I DID get a head start, and more importantly, without a power-able cell phone, I now had a means of knowing what time it was. No more guessing to see if I’ll get into a town before the ICA closes. I also had a bite to eat and waved at a very old gentleman totally killing it on a rad 70’s steel road bike. Never did catch up to him.

The “cycle route” I had found myself on told me, counterintuitively, to go the opposite direction that my map said. Fuck that cycle route sign. From Opphem, it led me on a 20km scramble on a crappy dirt road in the middle of nowhere, with small hills so rolling that I felt like I was on the Pukemaster ride at the county fair. AND the wind wasn’t letting up. At one point, I liked the hills and trees enough to take a picture.

And then I reached a paved road after Sätra, just happy that I didn’t have to patch any tires.

The countryside finally turned from pine forest into one of a more oaky variety around Björka-Saby, with nice streams and houses and rivers.

I didn’t get to enjoy it too much, because the road was really busy and there wasn’t much shoulder. Disconcerting. Either way, after a while I made it into Linköping. It’s a classy town as you can see. I can’t believe this car exists.

I proceeded to get my ten dollar hamburger. It was OK, but had some strange spices on it that I couldn’t place. I walked around town for a little bit.

Linköping is fairly unimpressive except for the very nice library. I couldn’t find any maps of Södermansland, which I’d need the next day, though. Here’s the library.

The average age inside the library was 108. And that was with my 24 years bringing down the average.

Forget God, knowledge is the real alpha and the omega! Go books!

There are also some neat bike services around town. These are the interesting bike racks outside the library:

Here’s a free air pump, just hanging out by the train station.

Here’s a bike sensor counting the number of people riding by. 1217 riders by 2PM!

Overall, people don’t seem as friendly here as in the smaller towns (outside of a nice old lady asking me about my trip at the library), even to strangers covered in sweat and dirt, so I decided to keep moving. This is where the wind sucked. At one point I had to pedal in the small chainring to go DOWNHILL. It wasn’t too pretty either, just flat farmland.

What do you do when you live in the middle of a wheat field outside of Sweden’s 7th largest city? TOTAL GANGSTA GRAFFITI TAGGING, HOMEY.

I rode through Gist(ad). I really hoped the town would be cooler.

Finally I reached this perplexing sign. Linköping is… where? How far? Which way?

Here’s a rad water tower. I was focusing on big shiny things on the horizon because the wind was killing me and the scenery wasn’t too scenic, and gigantic metal things were the only beacon to keep me going in my bad mood. When I reached the hill it was perched on, some of the wind was blocked and let up a bit.

Here’s the Göta Kanal. It goes the long way across Sweden via a complicated system of locks. It’s like the Panama Canal, except the associated palindromes aren’t as catchy.

Totally cruised into Norrköping. Here’s the town. Kinda nice.

Art Museum. (closed).

Nice library – from one side, it reminded me of the library in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Street view.

I decided to spring and get a hostel bed. I paid the bartender(!) at the bar below for a bed in a 5-bed room ($50! think about that!), took a shower, and then paid the bartender 10 dollars for a beer (!). And then 12 dollars for a whiskey coke (!!). Who do they think they are, Stockholm? I found a pizzeria that was open and talked with an old immigrant guy in Swedish about pizza and some old restored boat that had just landed in Norrköping. The only other store that was open was a candy store, so I picked up some candy and the following ice cream bar which will probably not ever be imported to the US.

Why does a bed in a hostel cost $50? Because you pay for elegance. Look at the chandelier!

And here’s my room. Guess what? Nobody showed up, so I had a decent sized hotel room to myself, for about the same cost as a shitty US highway motel room.

Day 3 had some monster hills. Very diverse. Chicken salads. Read and see pictures.

I carefully extracted myself from my camping spot and cruised easy into Vetlanda, which is a pretty nice town. I went grocery shopping at a surprisingly upscale Willy’s and braved the birds hiding in the signage at Cecil’s Bakery.

I treated myself to my first kanelbulle in years. THAT MEANS CINAMMON ROLL. Here’s what I had to choose from.

I ate the crap out of that bulle, had some coffee and yogurt, and visited the tourist center to score some sweet free maps, now that I was almost clear through Jönköpings län and nearing Kalmar län. I refrained from buying 45kr baskets of fresh strawberries. That’s about $8 worth, for a little more than a handful. Christ!

UNAMERICAN SMASH NAZI! The picture doesn’t do a good job of showing that the Nazi symbol here is appropriately crossed out. Just go home, dumkopf Adolf!

Up to Ekekull, the road just went up and up and up for kilometers. I ate a lot of candy halfway through and being somehow determined and thusly fueled, totally destroyed the hell out of the hills. Here’s what was on the other side! A BARN. REWARD!

Somehow, my genius route planning landed me not only on the Småland cycle path, but also on the Astrid Lindgren path. Her Pippi Longstocking books are set in this area of Småland.I didn’t see Pippi Longstocking anywhere.

I stopped by Stora Bellen lake to eat more junk food and recline on some nice rotting furniture.

Logging is pretty big in this area of Sweden in general. Here’s a lumberyard. I saw a lot of these dusty yards on the way, but riding my bike past this one, a group of 4 or 5 surly-ass looking old dudes on a smoke break totally waved and shook their fist in a “fuck yeah!” type way at me as I passed, so I chose to immortalize their freshly planed wooden handywork.

I then rolled into Hjältevad (loosely translated, “HERO WHAT?!“), which was a small and stupid town. Ugly too! An old lady scowled at me. And then, the shoulder ended and any roads or paths off of highway 33 stopped. I had to bike for about 4 harrowing kilometers on a rediculous shoulder (luckily, traffic was light and there were not many trucks) until I reached INGATORP! They even made a sign welcoming me to “Highway 33’s pearl”. Yeesh.

I rode up a short but rediculously steep hill. As always, my point and shoot camera will not do the grade justice, but check out this ski slope, Valbacka, (at least a quadruple black diamond) with lifts and snow-makers. It’s basically vertical. In the late spring thaw, apparently, billy goats and horses come and feast on the preserved remains of unfortunate skiers. My theory, anyways.

Here’s some typical Småland rural residences at the top of the little mountain. When Småland was first settled, all the wide open spaces were dotted with thousands of rocks left embedded in the ground by ancient glaciers. To make the soil arable and provide grazing room, agriculturalists all over this area built stone embankments to clear out rocks and section off their property. Now you know!

I biked through some really desolate areas that totally reminded me of the High Sierra. Lots of pine trees, low brush and gravel-dirt.

And then after a rediculously fast descent where I lost almost all the elevation I had climbed all day, I was in Kalmar län. Feelin’ good.

Here’s a church in Rumskulla. There was a nice pond behind it, but we all know what they look like.

I found a birth-defect fawn. Mother: horse. Father: Dalmation. Unholy.

I made it to Södra Vi, and was totally feelin’ some Kebab action. Unfortunately, the town was totally shut down, so I had no choice but to soldier on. I rocked through this little hillside neighborhood with tacky folk-art mailboxes.

The road straightened out and all of a sudden, dramatic stone cliffs rose up from the road on either side of me and everything was dark and green and lonely and rad. Stone cliffs don’t really exist in Skåne or Småland, so I know I must be getting close to…

Right about the time that last picture was taken, I forgot about kebabs and had an uncontrollable urge for a gigantic freakin’ hamburger. I haven’t had a hamburger in Sweden, so how do they stack up, you know? It’s all I could think about for the next 20km into Horn. Where the only restaraunt in town was totally closed. DAMNIT! I made do with a surprisingly delicious chicken pasta salad from an ICA grocery store, took some pictures of the nice lake and then moved on to try to find a camp spot.

My camping spot was rad! It was on top of a hill, so I couldn’t be seen by any houses or cars on the road below. It was also the first “open” area that I got to set my tent up in, so I could see stars instead of trees through my tent.

If you’re totally interested in what my living sitch’ was looking like that week, here’s my domicile when all done up. Not too shabby.

There was also a slug.

I decided to keep going. Here’s what I saw between Loshult and Vetlanda.

Everything’s all packed up! On the way out of the forest, I stepped in mud and my entire shoe was covered in mud. If I had SPD pedals and real biking shoes instead of toeclips and straps, I might have been held up some. Not today.

Getting into Älmhult, we see an IKEA distribution warehouse, just like the one right over the Grapevine. Officially in Kronobergs Län (part of Småland), and out of Skåne.

And then, some IKEA corporate buildings. Yes, that’s a gigantic Allen Wrench next to all those flags.

What’s with all the IKEA stuff in this medium-sized town? Could I be close to? What? The worlds’ first IKEA ever? The one I visited on my 21st birthday? This is where it all started for minimally designed, affordable flat-packed furniture?

Alphabet soup must not agree with someone’s stomach here in Älmhult.

This is my breakfast! I bought the almond pastry from a nice bakery; the cute girl working there said she didn’t know what anything in the pastry case was because it was only her third day. She did, however, know that there was no pastries with apple, blasphemers.

Then I picked my bicycle up and holy dove down the road into FUCKIN’ DIO!!!!!!

Hell yes he does! \m/

Here’s a loppis. Loppis is slang for loppmarknad, obviously, you dumbwit. A loppmarknad is obviously a used-item sale, and descibes anything from thrift stores, to yard sales, to businesses like this one pictured that have permanent yard sales just like the crackheads that used to live up the street from me, to dimly-lit rooms with 3 tables of sour-faced 90-year-old women selling crappy tea sets for way too much money, to gigantic swap meets. Obviously.

This is a total field south of Alvesta.

I stopped in Alvesta for a hawaiian ‘za. It was one greasy pie! I didn’t really care too much for this town, gotta say. They did have the first of many runestones to be seen (I ended up seeing so many I stopped looking, so there will be no more pictures of runestones AFTER THIS ONE).

This is me posing by the Helgasjön.

Here’s a church after a grueling set of crazy-hills northeast of Åby (seriously a nice little town, looked like a Norman Rockefeller painting with streams and trees and grass and canoes everywhere). Being that there are about 5039 little towns named Åby in Sweden, the one I’m talking about is in the Växjö Kommun. Just to clarify.

Here’s a lake. Sorry bro, no time to swim now!

The road here was pretty boring – it looked like this for about 30 miles. I saw maybe 2 cars the whole time…

I found a place to stay, about ten minutes outside Vetlanda in Myresjö. I don’t know why, but since the campsite was near where the road was just beginning to get busy, I kept passing the spot I wanted and backtracking when traffic lightened up, as if pulling over and setting up a clandestine tent was illegal in Sweden. Maybe I just didn’t want any hicks finding me and bashing my head in in the middle of the night, Easy Rider style.

I realized after setting up the tent that I could have done at least another hour of biking. The sun was still out, but twilight is rediculous here and lasts forever. Oh well, this was a good spot, and you never know if down the road, there will be no more forest to camp in (yeah, right).

By the way, it was today that I realized that when my cell phone turns off, it needs a PIN code to turn back on! I sure as hell didn’t have the PIN code, so now I don’t have a working phone OR access to any of my phone numbers. So my roomate will probably think I’m dead. Oh well (it turned out to not be a problem)!