Welcome to the land of red barns: The things I learned on my first days in Sweden

August 10, 2013

Arriving in Sweden gave me a rush of excitement. It was my first 'new' country of the trip (one that I had never been to before) It was a nice feeling, I had no idea what to expect. Well, that's not true - I was expecting lots of Ikea and Volvos and beautiful blonde women that were too tall for me. My expectations were not entirely fulfilled in Helsingborg. What I found instead was a very nice looking town with very clean streets and everything very neat and tidy. I looked at the people with great interest, but they were just people, most of them weren't that tall or that blonde. Well, quite a few of them were blonde. I withdrew some money at an ATM but I had no idea how much to get, I had to ask some people how many Kroner to a Euro. Then I went to a supermarket and discovered that I could afford to buy very little because unfortunately Sweden is very expensive.

Suspicious rabbit in the otherwise very nice town

The next thing I learned about Sweden is that it is very easy to get lost, especially when cycling, especially when cycling without a proper map. Until now I had been relying on the very fantastic and well-signposted cycle routes in Germany and Denmark, but Sweden wasn't quite in the same league. There were some signs for bikes but they generally led nowhere or pointed to towns that weren't on my large scale map and so I got quite lost out in the countryside. Eventually I found a railway line which I knew must go towards Angelholm, which I needed to get to, and followed the roads nearest that. Even then, the next day as I cycled into Angelholm, I somehow managed to make a wrong turn on the way towards the centre and ended up at a beach surrounded by woodland miles away from where I wanted to be. I shrugged and took the chance to go for a swim before cycling back.

The beach I accidently had to swim at (Its a tough life)

When I did eventually get into the centre of Angelholm I found a market with international stalls. Lots of countries had stalls representing produce from that country. The French stall had cheese and wine, the Italian stall had pasta, the German stall had sausage. It was all very interesting but of course I could afford nothing. Not even a very typical British truffle, which I eat all the time in Britain. On a more positive note, I did find the information centre, and I did find that the information centres in Sweden provide very detailed maps of the region for free. Yay Sweden, no more getting lost.

The Australian stall. I'm going there don't you know? I'm not going to eat kangaroo though, or crocodile burger

Another thing that I discovered about Sweden, at least while cycling near to the coast, is that the weather is extremely variable and liable to change very quickly. And when it decides to rain, it rains very hard. But it is not so bad because ten minutes later it will be sunny again.

The final thing that I learned about Sweden is that it is very red and yellow. A lot of the fields are yellow and all of the barns and farmhouses in the fields are red. It is most peculiar. They are almost all exactly the same shade of red. And there was no sign of Ikea.

9/8/13 - 99km (39km in Sweden)

10/8/13 - 126km

Today's ride: 165 km (102 miles)
Total: 2,215 km (1,376 miles)

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