Last evening we were convinced that we were the only folks at the hotel. We were proven wrong when in the morning a handful of other guests appeared at breakfast. We chose to eat outside on the patio and bask in the bright morning sun. Checking out the hotel deskman, a twenty-something hipster, saw us eying the moose brochures and postcards and said, \"you know, that is my mother,\" jokingly. I suppressed a laugh noting a family resemblence. We began our day over rolling hills through forests. Only difference this time is that there were big signs everywhere warning us not to take pictures.
We also passed by parking lots filled with scary looking tanks of chemicals and roads that weren't marked on our map. The path we were on was suspiciously wide, especially because we did not see another vehicle. The whole time we passed through this zone I had the uneasy feeling that we were being watched. We got a clue as to the use of the area when we passed a large and wide road that turned out to be an airstrip. Guns were camouflaged underneath green covers guarding what must be a military installation. Soon we passed through this zone and were again allowed to take pictures of the rolling hills covered with evergreens.
We were greeted by a gas station/supermarket at the next town where we stocked up on lunch goodies. The sky became increasingly more threatening as we exited the village. I noticed for the second or third time a sort of monument that I'd seen in other backwaters. A large flat sloping rock, perhaps 15 meters square, with a rustic stone pillar in the center, sort of a phallus. Still haven't figured the cultural significance of these monuments but vow to find out eventually. Andy called me pessimistic when I stopped to put on my rain covers over my bags. Within fifteen minutes of the act drizzle was falling from the sky and it looked like we were to have an endless day of rain.
Just as we entered the next village the sky was falling and we ducked onto the terrace of a closed café to snarf our lunch and stay out of the rain. An hour later the sky had cleared except for an occasional drizzle and we were on a roller coaster ride through the most lovely terrain I'd seen in Sweden. We were sure that we'd see a moose around any corner drinking from a lake or munching on some moss. (we were disappointed) One thing that did strike me about the Swedish countryside is how orderly it was. We would see a pond in the forest and wonder if it had been landscaped.
Every outdoor scene looked more like a Japanese garden than nature. Thinking about Swedish society we pondered whether life was imitating nature or the other way around. This day we discovered that anyone over the age of say 40 is a \"snecker don't.\" This is the term that Mars and Andy applied to folks who don't speak English in Norway. It came about because if you asked someone if they spoke a language you'd say \"Snecker du...?,\" hence \"don'ts\", speak no English. Our desire to see a moose up-close-and-personal was satisfied just as we began to enter the suburbs of our destination.
A pair of stuffed ones were being used as roadside attractions to draw folks into a snack shop. We powered through our final kilometers. It was the first time in the past days that I felt strong again on my bicycle. My shoulder was finally not interfering with my riding. Andy trailed in my airstream and we averaged 25kph plus in those final meters up and down hills. We went directly to the train station to arrange transport to Stockholm only to find yet again that the train to there would not accommodate our cycles. We went to the bus station to discover that the last bus for the capital had already left.
We decided to rest that night there and catch a bus or rent a car the next day (or worst case, take the boat the next day.) We checked out of our hotel and made our way to the bus station. This time I was truly pessimistic. The woman at the ticket office told me that it would be unlikely that the bus could accommodate our bikes. When the bus arrived I checked the baggage compartments only to find them really full. We decided to ask the driver anyway and he gladly pulled out a bike rack and we mounted Siegfried and Roy on the back and hopped on the bus.
The bus ride took us past more rolling hills, forests and spectacular coastlines. It stopped every two hundred meters to pick up anyone who happened to be standing by the road. Unlike bus travel in other countries, the passengers were gentile, moneyed and well-dressed. Many of them received constant calls on their cell phones. The woman just in front of us spent the entire 4 hour trip fixing her face. Andy surmised she must have made a date over the internet and was to see him/her for the first time upon arrival in Stockholm. When we finally made it there we booked passage on the night boat to Turku.
We whiled away the hours munching lunch, drinking coffee and playing backgammon. We went out to a gay café around dinner time and played some more backgammon including a game with George, the dude operating the café and a Berliner we met there. The Berliner kept complaining about the Swedish Water Festival. I knew we had nothing in common.