Anyways,

So yeah today is sunday, last night we went to a party near the river.

It was ok there were a lot of foreigners and a lot of drinking.

People from Denmark sound like they are scousers or mancs. When there is a Danish tv show on, they have Swedish subtitles, although Martina says she can understand them anyway kinda sorta, their voices are distinct and nasal and they sound like they are about to start talking about how great Liam Gallagher is, and that Arsenal are a bunch of French poofs.

There were a couple of Danes there.

Watched Nosferatu (1922 version) this morning as a hangover cure. It worked. That film is serious.

The other day we made Smulpaj! (SMOOLPIE)

It went like this:

FROZEN BLACKCURRANTS

YEAH, ahrm, yeah, it was delicious.

We made some waffles too!

My stupid face

Waffle iron

Waffle

At the top of the road outside our gaff there is a lake, a ver nice big lake, with a very picturesque supermarket by it.

It has a ski slope on one side, which has no snow on it. Pretty pointless I know, you would have thought when they decided where to build the ski slope, they would choose somewhere that had some snow to ski on.

Am I missing something? No its just a bit of baked bean juice on my jumper... Never mind.

LUNCH TIME

This is the food of kings.

Get yourself some Wasa Krispbreads.

Add butter, cheese, and plenty of gherkin slices.

Then eat.

This is epic win.

SYSTEM BOLAGET

OFF LICENSES.

One of the greatest inventions ever.

There aren't any in Sweden. None.

There is however one place, which will cater for all your boozy needs.

A place, so fantastic and full of every different kind of booze you could imagine.

It caters for every taste, from beer to wine and spirits, believe it or not.

Just wandering into a SYSTEM BOLAGET (to be pronounced out loud in a monotone robot voice), can bring such fevered excitement, like that of a child walking into a candy supermarket. Shelves upon shelves of every different type of beer, champagne, and rum and everything else in between. You feel drunk just walking into one of these shops. The choices are endless. And it is all relatively cheap too.

So you are thinking 'Great!' and 'sounds like my kind of store!'.

But it has its drawbacks...

Its opening hours are so inconvenient. It is almost as though it is only open for about 5 minutes a day. Oh you just blinked? Yeah, SYSTEM BOLAGET is closed now.

Oh you just turned your head for a second? Yeah, SYSTEM BOLAGET is closed. Oh, its a Sunday? Yeah, SYSTEM BOLAGET is closed. What? It is half eleven and we are going to a house party? Shall we get some beers to take with us? Oh yeah, SYSTEM BOLAGET is closed.

The supermarkets sell beer, but only 3.5% lagers, crappy Swedish import versions of staropramen and carlsberg and a few ciders, all of which are brewed specially to 3.5%.The result of which is a beer which doesn't even taste like beer really, just kinda tastes like fizzy water. And good luck trying to get drunk off that stuff.

SYSTEM BOLAGET is a government scheme to keep the alcohol consumption of your average swede as low as possible, by making it so inconvenient to get your hands on that most people just fall into despair. Also, the ID policy is so strict that I have seen grown men with beards and grey hair, pushing prams, trying to buy a nice bottle of red to take to dinner for his wife's forty fifth birthday, get denied service because he didn't have his passport or drivers license.

How is a country supposed to raise a generation of hardened drinkers when there are no moody offies in town who turn a blind eye to selling a bunch of sixteen year-olds some smirnoff ices?

And another thing! If you think I am going to throw a party at our gaff after being at a pub or somewhere? And the guests and whoever else thinks they are going to share my 3 beers that I have in the fridge, they can forget it. So now I have to plan to have a party, and buy booze before hand? If so I will be bloody well charging a concession for entry, or run a bar, oh you are having another beer? Yeah 20Kr please because SYSTEM BOLAGET is closed.

And another thing! It wouldn't be so bad I suppose, if these SYSTEM BOLAGET joints were all over the place like normal off licenses, but they aren't! There is ONE SYSTEM BOLAGET in Sundsvall, the town where I live. ONE. And it takes ten minutes to ride a bike there, and 20 minutes to ride it back (because it is all uphill, plus the weight of booze). All that my new mate Henry, who runs the shop over the road, sells, is chocolate bars and cigarettes. No beer. None. So if you want to come over to mine and watch football, you have to have bought beer 3 hours earlier and put them in my fridge.

Anyways.

Here is a picture of the beast.

Right now, I am sitting in our flat in Sundsvall drinking a beer and occasionally glancing over at Martina who is in the corner to my right doing some yoga.

We have our own different ways of relaxing after a long day getting annoyed with trying to fix bicycles.

Anways.

Our time in Orebro came to an end, we got on a a train for four hours to a place called Sundsvall.

We picked up the keys for the flat, and dragged our cases up the long hill which is oscarsgatan.

View Larger Map

When we first got to the flat it was empty, but very clean.

This is student living done by people who eat krispbread and cucumber for breakfast.

You could eat off the floor.

No dodgy carpets, no manky wallpaper, no stained mattresses, no holes in the walls filled with empty baked bean cans. No, this place is straight plywood all over your face.

After two nights of sleeping on inflatable camping beds, Martina's parents turned up with all her gear from her old gaff, and a new bed, and a new tv. Which was quite exciting. Also, Martina's mumsie Annette had brought some food with her... YES! She is an amazing cook, and I will have to publish her recipe for spinach and sundried tomato pie which she gave me, because it is unreal.

So we ate the vegetarian moussaka and arranged the furniture. Mats put the television on the wall and we all rejoiced.

Enjoy the before and after pictures. Click on them to enlarge apparently.

Ok, they aren't that great, but you will see more soon.

The next day we went shopping.

ON the bikes!

The supermarket was full of your usual crap, but some certain swedish oddities caught my eye.

Seeing as my favourite thing to eat is gherkins dipped in mayonnaise, I couldn't resist this:

And this must be pretty correct too right? :

And the Noggers are back in full force, mint flavour this time, yay!

AND! I got a proper serious horn for the bicycle:

It is best used 2 foot from a small child's face.

Anyway so after a bunch of driving and stuff we got to a place called Örebro where Martina lives.

It is September now, and the sun seems to linger in the sky, and sunsets last for hours on end.

Next morning we had breakfast. I had marmite on toast while she had cucumber on cheese on ryvita.

Martina's step-father, Mats, gave me his old bicycle, which is basically the only way to get around this town. It is really too small to drive and too big to walk and it is very flat.

It was a typical pokemon moment: 'MUG received the Old Bike' yes! Result! Now I can go fast!

We cycled to the water tower which doubles as a skyscraper at 52 meters! It is also the highest point in the town, which is always good for getting ones bearings in a new place.