Today I travelled from the train station in Moss over the Norwegian border into Sweden!
This morning Frank had prepared a bacon and eggs breakfast for me and got ready for my departure around noon. Frank goes to his Sunday’s swimming training in Moss, and he offered me to bring me there, as I had to get my train to Sweden from this train station.
Before leaving me, Frank also gave me a heavy handful of Swedish Kroner (the Swedish currency), saying that I could need it more than he. Wow, thanks!
Now I am in Moss again I just can’t deny it: Moss is the worst smelling city I have ever smelled before!
Someway the Peterson paper mill factory, where Frank works and where carton is produced, spreads this certain odor around the town.
Even though the steam pipes are 65 meters tall and presenting the skyline of Moss, I really wouldn’t not want to live here.
Everywhere on the street I smelled this… smell; which I can compare with the fumes of washing machines – or if you cook vegetables for a long time with all the windows closed. Very humid too. Or like some bones have been stuck in a soup for too long.
It was satisfied when the train arrived at 1.45pm and took me over the Norwegian border into Sweden.
Now, I have written before that I would not visit Sweden, because I have not received enough invitations from Swedish people to have a nice tour around, or into Finland.
From the 4 invitations in Sweden (no, actually 3, as I called one potential host and when he asked his mum if I could come she said no…) I could use the one in Malmö, all the way in the south of Sweden, because this is where a plane will take off in a few days to take me to London, UK.
The train journeyed through a landscape teeming with forests and farmland. After a few hours of rattling along in the steadfast old locomotive, it finally arrived in Göteborg (also known as Gothenburg).
If I was invited by somebody in this town, I could have seen the world’s largest floating maritime museum, or photograph one of the street sweeping machines with the world’s lowest known values for noise and emissions (I bet you wanted to see a picture of that, wouldn’t you?).
I could have strolled through the largest shopping centre in northern Europe, Nordstan.
If I got ill I could have visited the Sahlgrenska University Hospital, northern Europe’s largest hospital. There are about 2,700 beds in the hospital and 16,900 employees. About 2700 visits to doctors are made every day and 175 larger operations are performed. And they are in the Guinness Book of Records with that.
Göteborg is also worldwide known because of Ace of Base. Their music album “Happy Nation” has sold about 23 million copies worldwide. As a result of this, Ace of Base can be found in the Guinness Book of Records (Sweden is doing well in there) for the most successful selling debut album ever.
That’s all I know about this place where I will not stay.
The train arrived in Göteborg and I had five minutes to switch to my connecting train to Malmö. So I ran out of the train station, took some shots of the city centre where everything is supposed to happen and ran back again towards my train.
Göteborg in 5 minutes. I did it.
The supersonic X2000 train swiftly carried me to Malmö, where I arrived after spending a total of over 8 hours on the train.
I was pretty worn out, as you can imagine. There’s nothing on a train that can truly exhaust you, but the monotony of the constant movements and sounds can wear you down and leave you feeling drained.
Luckily, my Swedish host Patric, came to pick me up at the Malmö train station, accompanied by his American girlfriend Sandy.
Both Patric and Sandy work from home in internet programming, but they’re planning to embark on a world tour soon. “We keep postponing it whenever new projects come up, but it’s about time we go,” Sandy confided to me.
It was Patric who stumbled upon my website once, though he couldn’t quite remember how. He envied me because I was doing what everyone else dreams of but often can’t achieve.
During the train journey to Malmö, I had a spaghetti bolognese meal and a lunch package from Frank in Rygge, so I wasn’t very hungry. However, there was always room for the salmon sandwich cake that Patric had prepared. I had never tried it before—it was incredibly rich!
Patric and Sandy first met when Sandy was studying in Malmö as an American exchange student, and Patric was a judge at the local paintball tracks. They quickly developed strong feelings for each other, leading to frequent trips between California, Sandy’s home state, and Malmö.
Ultimately, they both decided to settle in Sweden. Patric, especially, had reservations about what he had experienced in the USA. “A lot of things felt artificial, and Americans seem to prefer it that way,” Patric remarked. “I prefer Sweden, where people treat you normally and aren’t overly friendly or in-your-face.”
And maybe that is a Swedish thing, because Swedish are known to be very laid back.
There is this joke about people of different nationalities who get stranded on a remote island. They have to work together to survive on the island and most of them can go along with each other pretty well. After a few days this Swedish person comes up and introduces himself by saying – just – “Hi.”.
Patric admits that Swedish are really like that. Maybe that is a reason why the Swedish are not that easy in inviting a stranger with a website over to stay for a day.
Patric is by the way also one of the 50 or more people who have been helping me to get to stay longer in Sweden. Sending emails to the media, contacting people there. But, like Patric said the common words: “They were not interested at all.”
Fine with me… I will only stay here in Malmö the coming days…
Good night Malmö!
Ramon.
