After driving and looking most of
the day, I'll have to say the country was beautiful, lots of lakes
and forests. Parts of it had tons of wheat fields, too, and I must
say they looked sorta short and scrawny. But it was mostly all the
same, as far as scenery goes, so I see no need to tell you that over
and over. Let's just stick to the people, mostly. We called and found
a B&B, then started looking for it. The man spoke little English
but he did say he had a spot, so we headed there, stopping at a
grocery store near it for help on the directions part. I showed the
owner the phone number, and he agreed to call it. It didn't take
long. Then he said, “The man said he had no room for Americans”
Well, I never! And here we drove 40 miles to find him. I asked if
there was any other lodging, in this small town. He first said no,
then told us of a hostel, sounding doubtful we would want to stay
there. But about anything beats sleeping in our little car, so I went
for it, with Barbara beginning to look very doubtful.
It turned out to be a huge
building, 3 floors, but nobody was home. After waiting a while, we
started to just go on when a woman drove up. Her name was Barbro,
Barbara in Swedish. Yes, she had a room to spare. Turns out, all of
them to spare. We fit in between the busy seasons for hostels, and we
had it all to ourselves. She took our money, and left. We never saw
another person, until Barbro came back to collect for the next day. I
figured out about that time that I had given the grocery owner the
wrong phone number for that B&B, and the one we reserved is, I
guess, still looking for us. I felt bad about that.
The thing was, with most hostels,
you bring your own sheets, cook your own meals, haul out your own
trash, sweep before you leave, and lock the door behind yourselves.
As were every one of our stays, it was spotless, and we left it that
way. Couldn't have all these civilized Swedes thinking badly about
Americans. The only Americans they will see all year are the ones we
are all judged by. So we made them think highly of all you other
Americans, too. No need to thank us. You can do the same for us some
day, at least you other weird ones who travel around alone like we
love to do.
Since it is getting cooler, we
went around to other rooms and picked up an extra blanket or two. I
don't mind sleeping on a bare mattress, but Barbara did, so she slept
in one of my long shirts and her pants.
Barbro was very nice to Barbara
the next day, she had finally made the name connection.
Barbro-Barbara. And she loved our money for another night, since that
was all she would get. Alone again, Barbara insisted on leaving a lot
of lights on, she was getting pretty spooked by this quiet place out
in the woods.
Looking at more of the countryside
I have already described for you, we stopped for lunch at a
McDonalds. One of the guys was just in love with American Indians,
and I had to describe them in detail. Wanted to know if we had
actually seen one. Seen any Cherokees? What were they like? On and
on. He should have matched up with the woman at our last stay before
flying out. She actually had teepees in her yard, but unlike him, she
regularly traveled to America to see them, and gave them money.
We went on and looked around in
more small towns than I can count. Finally, we found a tourist info
site, and she booked us a B&B a ways out of town. Arriving at a
house that looked exactly like what she had described, we knew we had
found it. She had said nobody would be home, just go on in the cabin
and make ourselves at home. But the cabin was locked. We knocked
everywhere, but no luck. After a while, we just sat in our car and
waited. Finally, a very timid little woman stuck her head out the
door, and asked what we wanted. Wrong house. Next one down. It was
unlocked, so we made ourselves at home. Turned out to be the right
place, and a good stay, but we had to walk across the yard in the
rain to the toilet in the main house.
The next day, we came across a
very large event, boat races. Most of them seemed to be a bit smaller
and slower, driven by young drivers, many not old enough to drive a
car. They sure could drive those speed boats, though. After we looked
that and the town over good, we started looking for the hostel (Do
you get the idea we spent a lot of time looking for a place to
sleep?) that we knew was in here somewhere. It turned out to be a
series of Railway cars remodeled, and strung together. They turned
out to be right in the middle of the crowd. And they had openings,
the price was right, but the sleeper cars were pretty small and
crowded. Barbara finally put her foot down here, so we headed on. The
hotel we found later was more expensive, but did have a place to wash
clothes. There just seems to be no public laundries in Sweden. We
figured out that a loppis was a second hand store, and we bought used
sheets, since it seemed we would need them often.
We angled off toward Norway. The
next hotel we found was nice, owned by a very young man, 25,
and Barbara just had to know how he got
to that position so early. He said he had been on his own, working,
since 13. He worked in a grocery, then bought it, then bought others.
Finally, he sold them all and bought the hotel. He said all he did
was work, though. And that seemed to be the case.
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