Malmö

After one amazing week in Stockholm, I took a night train south (back down south, that is) to Malmö, just to see the city, and it so happened that the family I am now staying by had a gig there last night, so the meeting was arranged perfectly. This is the family I will be wwoofing with for only a couple of days, they have 13 Icelandic horses, and they all play traditional Swedish tunes. The concert was a most excellent introduction to the family, after a long and lonely day wondering the streets of what I found to be a rather...boring...city. Malmö is mostly just shopping, and there is an old part which is nice. I was recommended to visit St. Peter's Catherdral, which I did and it was beautiful just like everyother Northern European Cathedral I've ever seen, and to have a coffee and cake at Konditori Hollander, which I did and it was regally ornamented, charming, and absolutely delicious. I walked around the city, alllll around the city several times, took a nap in the park, used the internet at the train station, and began my next book, Freakonomics, which I am enjoying with a potential newfound interest in some branch of economics. But since I had a rough and short sleep on the train the night before, and had 12 hours to occupy myself there in that small place, I did not enjoy it to its maximum capacity, feeling sad to have left familiar friends in Stockholm, and anticipating anxiously the next people I was to to meet. The train ride...I was in a compartment with a family with two small children, one of whom wet the bed before the train even left Stockholm Central. Perhaps it is a more well-known fact than I had previously assumed that children have a pleasant smell to them...maybe that's just babies. But it is very fortunate, I will tell you, that the human nose is capable of adapting to any odor, no matter how wretched, within a fairly short amount of time, so that we don't wander this earth vomiting all the time.

This farm is so far the most comfortable place I have traveled. Although I of course enjoy the cities a lot, I feel so much more at home here amongst the trees and the countryside and the animals, which I have not seen yet, but hopefully will a bit later. My task thus far has been to pick cherries from the tree outside, the huge cherrytree, with most deliciously dark red cherries. I picked the ones I could reach, but will need a ladder to get the others, and some help.

So, that's the update, I can't wait to be home, but it will be a wonderful final week abroad. Cheers.

Jazzzzz

Hejsan from Stockholm. This week happens to be the 25th annual Stockholm Jazz Festival, featuring Van Morrison and Mary J. Blige. Pontus and his friends will volunteer there, and I will absorb the music for at least one of the days. It takes place on Skeppsholmen, the island where the Modern Art Museum is located, which I saw last time I was here, and which featured a fantastic Dada exhibit. I'll check it out again this year.

And so I am here after my very first couchsurfing experience in Göteborg with a fellow named Karl, who plays a little bit of every type of music (from folk music to heavy metal) on a little bit of every type of instrument. He has a nykelharpa that his grandfather made, and I learned one tune on that, and then we went to a small folk festival south of the city, where I met a few fantastic Swedish fiddlers and recorded tons of tunes which I will try to learn before I see them next, at the Korrö festival in Småland next weekend. There were a lot of older folks at the little festival, playing mostly tunes that were easily fathomable and not as enticing to my ears as what these fellows, Roger and Erik were playing alone in what they called Logen, which is a barn, but a barn built and designed specifically for dancing in. I asked them what the difference was between their tunes and the other tunes, if it was a matter of region or time period or anything. They said it was simply that they prefer the more complicated tunes, the polskas or all varieties, particulary the Slängpolskas. So next week I will meet them again as well as a million more musicians and hopefully pick up something useful while there.

Karl plays in a bluegrass/country band as well, so last Saturday we went to the Nääsville Bluegrass festival, also south of Göteborg but a bit further. None of the musicians has a driver's lisence, though one had access to an old Volvo 740, so I had my first driving experience out of the states, the roads are so narrow! But driving is driving, and I think I'll rent a car next week to get to all the places I need to be, and to have a place to sleep at the festival (it's a camping fest), so I will have much more experience.

And before I got to Göteborg, I was in Helsingborg and Helsingör and staying with Leon in Copenhagen, at which time the Copenhagen Jazz fest was going on. So, needless to say, I am getting a little of my two MOST favorite kinds of music, traditional Swedish and jazz jazz jazz. In fact, now Pontus is rocking out on the piano right behind me, so I must get my fiddle out! Signing off for now, home July 28th.