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.