Northern Hemi Season Trip Report thingy - Sälen, Sweden

Thanks Azz, she was 97 in that pic, taken just before I went to Sweden for a year in 08. At that point you could easily still have conversations with her, she was up and about and you could have a game of scrabble, talk about the tennis & cricket and whatnot & she still did crosswords or sudoku.
Sadly, the last few years, you were lucky to get a word out of her and she went quite blind (as well as being quite deaf like she had always been!) & couldn’t get up out of bed anymore. Fred & I visited her just before we left a few weeks ago & I just held her hand which was just skin & bone and ran my fingers through her hair. She looked at me with her one good eye but it was a one-sided conversation apart from that.

Absolute trooper of a lady though, as you say - she played tennis until she was 82 and traveled to Canada to visit my cousin and her family in Calgary when she was 85, which I’m sure you’ll agree isn’t any sort of shabby effort!
She was always smiling and always happy & I can’t remember her ever raising her voice - except to say ‘AY???’ cos she hadn’t heard what you said. The most important lesson she taught all of us grandkids is that there is nothing more important than family. We were blessed & privileged to have her as our grandma.

Some pics!

The snow storm we encountered as we drove an hour south to check out the car we ended up buying. The houses all had 2ft of snow on the roof, where there had been none the day before - it was crazy! As you can see from the next pic after this one, none of that snow fell in Freddy’s home town!

Out the front of Fred’s parents house last tuesday morning. We went out for a walk & I saw 2 squirrels and a woodpecker! I was still getting used to feeling like a marshmallow wearing all the extra clothing to deal with -12ish temperatures. You can see the ladder on the roof ready for the chimney sweep to arrive. By law in Sweden, you have to have your chimney swept at least once a year.

Our new car and new digs & the view from our place in Tandådalen, Sälen.

Freddy last Friday in Pink Park, Lindvallen

Freddy last Saturday in Tandådalen. He went hunting for pow in the trees - not quite enough snow for that yet, though. I took the photo too early.

The view from the top of Tandådalen. Our house is somewhere smack bang in the middle of the trees on the hills opposite. Not sure how the pic will turn out when pasted from photobucket, but in the very background you can see a snow-capped mountain, which is over the border in Norway and the resort of Trysil is there. Its about 75kms away so definitely a decent view on a clear day! It was about -20 up the top of the hill and I nearly froze my hand off when I had to take my mitten off to get the camera out to take the photo!

Finally got a chance to get updated in here!!!!! (It’s been busy in the social section, and apart from that I’m at work with bugger all to do at the moment!!!!! )

Cool pics cords!!!!!

So envious now that ya postin pics of the snow!!!!! Love that last one!!!!!

And sorry to hear about ya Gran!!!!! She definitely had a great innings by the sounds of it!!!!!

travel reports like these make me want to travel soo bad!!!!

Keep it up cords, its awesome!

I love seeing and hearing about places I haven’t been to.  Keep up the good work, cords!

Thanks for the encouragement, guys. Its hard to know what sort of things people are interested in hearing about & I don’t really wanna bore people, so if there are things in particular you like or are keen to hear about or whatever then please let me know. I know I won’t please everyone & I am also doing this in part for my own memories - but I’m keen to please people where I can!

Yesterday (wednesday) we drove 100 odd kms to Mora so I could apply for my personal number at the tax office. It was -20 there

and Fred had convinced me that as we’d be mostly sitting in the car, so I didn’t need my ‘lång kalsong’ (direct translation: long undies. Normal language: thermal pants) and even said it was all the kids in school who always wore their lång kalsong all winter who were the ones who always got sick. So I just had socks and jeans (and normal undies obv!)
We ended up walking through the town to go to the bank as well & I freaking FROZE. I had also accidently left my beanie in the car & I was hating life! I should have known not to listen to him, seeing as he is the one who currently has a head cold & I am still completely frisk.

Swedish word for the day: FRISK (pronounced as in English) which means ‘healthy’.

Which brings me to Things that are bizarre about Sweden - entry 1

*You cannot deposit cash into the bank*

Explanation:
When we bought our car saturday before last, Fred had gotten a whole bunch of cash out the day before, so we could do the same again the next day & have enough to pay the bloke on the spot if we liked it. We did like the car, but he said he wasn’t keen for cash & so we went in to his house & deposited the money through internet banking and then he logged into his internet banking and saw that the moolah was there.
This meant that Fred had a few grand in cash (many thousand kronor) in his wallet. We used some on petrol (It costs over $100AUD) to fill our 60 litre petrol tank but thought we’d bank the rest. Fred had heard that Swedish banks had gone cashless & we’d laughed about it, but we didn’t really get it, how it worked, or what you are supposed to do instead…so we went to the bank. We figured there was some kind of machine like an ATM but that accepted cash instead.

I nearly died when the lady said that yes, that is right, they don’t accept cash deposits AT ALL anymore & that you can bank up to 10,000kr (bit under $2000) at a time at any StatOil Petrol Station. So off we went to the petrol station to bank the money, both thinking how mental sweden is.
We don’t know WHY it is like that, but suspect that the bank didn’t want the security risk anymore & that maybe they pay the petrol stations to do the collecting for them instead?

WEIRD!

After that, we went to devour some lunch as we were starving. We were looking for a cheap feed (as we always are) and one of my fave things to get in Sweden is a kebab plate from a Pizza shop. Kebab shops are always Pizza shops in Sweden. There is definitely a whole TR post to be written about these places, but I’ll save it for another time.

We found a nice looking one near the train station and we both ordered the kebab plate & a cola flavoured refreshment.
About 5 minutes later, the biggest plate of kebab radness I’ve ever seen was put in front of us.
Excuse me for looking like a freak in this photo, I’m afraid I was born that way so there is little I can do about it!

It was so freakin’ delicious and so filling that neither of us had the need for any dinner. There was no bacon in it, azz - but I promise you it was still amazing.

To cap off the day, we went to the premiere screening of The Hobbit in 3D. We’d been excited about it ever since it had been announced & managed to get tickets to see it on the first night at the cinema in Sälen, which only holds 55 people. Here is me being excited about it before we went in.

They may have a weird banking system, but they have their shiz together with their 3D glasses. They were official dolby ones and it is the first time I’ve seen a 3D movie without getting some kind of headache.

The movie was really, really good. I’d give it 16 out of a possible 17 potatoes.
If you liked LOTR, then definitely go and see it!

I’d like to say that I’m feelin “frisky” myself at the moment, but I reckon the boys at work might shun me if I do!!!!!

And yeah, I reckon it’s a great way to document a significant episode of ya life by doin this!!!!!

Look into makin an iBook (or the like) so ya have a hard copy to look at one day in the future?????

Killer write up so far! loving it. All educational and shit whilst being entertaining lol

Thanks, Deano.

I forgot to mention that the massive kebab plate feed and drink each (which also ended up being our dinner as we were so full) cost 130kr in total for both of us which is under $20AUD! Winning!

Awesome Cords! Great write up so far. Keep it comin’!

After spending a lot of the morning on the net watching the Bodyboarding World Title race unfold in pumping heavy waves in the Canary Islands, I went riding yesterday by myself again, cos Freddy still isn’t 100%.

Pleased to report that it feels like my riding is finally back in business. I was far from ripping & far from feeling confident, but i made 2 boxes that I’d been too scared to do the other days that have relatively decent (20-30cm) gaps onto them (a flat and a flat/down) and also got decent air on one of the jumps in Lindvallen.

I tried riding some switch first run down on a green run as a warm up, but I was so bad at it that I gave up half way down. Before doing that green run, I whipped my hand out of my glove to try and take a picture of how pretty it was with my phone. It was a bit windy up there & my hand froze so quickly. the first picture was crap & then somehow I switched the phone to video taking mode & then my fingers wouldn’t work to change it back. When I warmed them up so they worked, I took this bad boy quickly and then put everything away as fast as possible so I could get that hand properly warm again.

After sucking when trying switch even on a green run, I also stacked (again) onto my already bruised knees trying flat ground switch nose presses.

Getting decent air was the best feeling all day. The jump isn’t even close to big, but I’d either been landing on the noll (the flat before the landing starts) or only just on the landing all the other times & my last run of the day I finally got decent pop off the jump, had good balance (no winding the windows up) and landed half way down the landing.

Made me keen to ride again today (sat) but its pretty much a snowstorm out there now. First it was just windy and I think it was just all snow from the trees and the roof blowing around, now it looks like the wind has dropped a bit and there are proper fluffy snowflakes in the mix as well. Fred said the prediction is 7-10cm today. I hope we get that much - because we need it. Have to work tomorrow though

Things that are bizarre about Sweden - entry 2

On the way home from the slopes, I dropped into the ICA supermarket to do the grocery run. When getting the milk out of the fridge, I spied this out of the corner of my eye, which naturally appealed to my high levels of immaturity. I got a laugh out of it, thought I might get a giggle out of some of you, too.

But seriously - who came up with that name?

hehahah cords that has been around for years i remember drinking that as a kid in CRO ...

loving your reports

I had kinda forgotten about snow and have been quite happy surfing and doing other summer stuff the last few weeks.  Reading this thread has just wrecked that for me!

“Orangina”!!!!!

You obviously haven’t seen the bottles of “Pineapplenis” yet, have you?????