schweden - united colors of ?IKEA?
I'am out of the train in Malmö - it just took about 30 Minutes to let the waves of the sea under the Öresund bridge pass by. Needed to go up from the subway - the escalator is near.
Sometimes when im with a heavy bikepacking bike on an escalator I misjudge how many stairs I need to be behind the bike to get an good angle, so that the force of the bike points towards the ground and not pushing myself. ery uncomfortable with sudden appearing steps under you feet. This time all went fine, just as it is told to in the stories to drive the spear in the bear and let its weight drive the spear in the ground - Some call it Physics 📐🐻😁 others might say the elevator is back there my friend.
Malmö station is very quiet, it is not too late - about 18:00. Just two or three people around. With that it instantly feels a lot diffrent from the crowded Copenhagen.
In this vast emptiness, that dessert of concrete is where you feel it - I have to pee. As with the escalator find a quick and safe space to stow away the bike and find a toilett. So you quickly drive. There it is, the perfect solution in sight, watered plant pods out of metall - huge ones about a meter high and places so that theres a small edge – What a feeling! – 300 meters from central station Malmö.
I hope your all comfortable with me talking about simple things 😉💦
From here the path continues along the coast towards Göteborg. At first along industrial port areas, shippment snd train hubs and and slowly Malmö opens up and fields and a coastline appears.
Ahh sweeden, now the party is on:
Jedermansrechten - a law that roughly states that everybody is allowed to enjoy nature in the way he likes. So your into sports - have fun, camping your thing – just look for a nice place where you don't bother anyone and your fine. Scandinavians enjoy beeing outdoors and with that comes a certain knowledge - for example a lot of them know how it is to look for a camping spot or that at one point your just exhausted and need to sleep.
The first night in sweden, it is time to sleep. I check my map and looked on the satelite view for forrests nearby with clearings that are far away enough from peoples houses. There is one nearby, a single trail leads through the forrest. Always fun to bike through a dense forrest at night – Hat-lamp on. I get to the clearing. This time a little surprise, sometimes there are things you won't see on a satelite picture, like a horse jump track. I'll place my tent at a corner, so they can see me from further away without the horse thinking – what the fuck is this, whats wrong with my hay.
After a assesment what can happen I felt okay with a horse head looking me in theeyes through the tent entrance🐴.
Sleeped very well, maybe dreamsheeps use the horse jump track at night as a kind of dual use agreement – I'am a bit disapointed about not making a new horse friend.
None the less, a new day a new coffee. Drove a while and made pause at a small kiosk.
Got used to the HAHAAHA of Seagulls by now. The kiosk does sell burgers and Hot dogs. A seagull, lets call him Sully for now landed on my bag observing the other customers. Eyes always on the food. Hotdog placed on the table. Sully shoots at the hot dog and grabs it and as it would do with a fish – swallows the hotdog whole. Sully is happy and smeard in mustard.
Pedal, pedal, glide - pedal, glide, pedal, pedal – round it goes. Some cyclist describe it as a kind of loneliness, your sitting on your bike having intrinsic conversations with yourself. As most humans we love social interaction and even if your an introvert it brings out that craving of hearning voices, listening to somebody talking. So it is time to plug in the headphones. I listen to a lot of music, I always do.
Take music away from me even for a few days there is something huge missing. It helps me staying calm and relaxed. Imagine your surrounding everything that happens, every sound and action unfiltered takes my attention. Like a constant rain all around you and your tring to take account of every little drop. Now imagine the puddles getting hit by the drops. As longer as this goes on the ripples overlap, the texture on the water surface gets more and more displaced and distorted. As this goes on it can totally overwhelm – Add music and the puddles quiet 🧘♂️
At one stage I might tell you how it feels if the ripples turn to waves and the storm rises ⛈️🙂
So I continued to listen to the excellent TerraX podcast series - one to point out (all are great) was the one with Friederieke Otto and her field of attribution science. She looks at which climate events are connected to what influence. What can be "attributed" to what – amongst others she helps to create the evidence that helps to sue ignorant and manipulative (mega) companies that decided for decades to market or hide their destructive influence on our planet. Heard about the Peruvian farmer that sues RWE?
Time for a snack: Swedens supermarkets got a nice snack section with a wide selection of nuts. One thing I love is the mix – they have salty and sweet nuts mixed together. Sometimes in combination with sweets like coconut chocolate cubes mixed in.
A bikepacking powerfood 😋
Further up the coast you get to a place they call the swedish riviera. Add to that the perfect weather we're having – actually it should not be that hot in sweden that time of year. 27 degrees! And the sun up here has another kind of pressure. Even tempratures of 22-23 feel hotter.
Time for a break to take in the beach. Hardly anyone is here – offseason 😁.
On the way to Gotebord the bike route passes throu a few nature reserves. Nice forrests blending into sandy beaches and gravel double tracks to ride on. On exit of one of them passed a field and landes on a beach with the first large slaps of rock that got polished by the waves over thousands of years.
Saw a fellow bikepacker sitting in the sun on a bench taking in the ocean – on being close to him he taps two times on the free spot on the bench and invites me for a talk – it's Mauro. So we sat there talked and shared stories about bikepackin, bikes and life for quite some time.
Who is Mauro? A very nice and kind swiss italian Telecom engineer on a bikepacking trip to Oslo to meet a friend his.
We decideds to ride a while together and it was nice. Our speeds matched and having somebody to talk or just let each other drag in the wind shade of feels great. In the evening we has coffee together and Mauro rode on. I had to charge my powebank / phone for a while and stayed – auf wiedersehen.
Getting water in sweden is so easy. Not thst you have a nice swlection of good spings, flowing streams the infrastructure of public accesible water taps is nice too – heres an example on a market square.
Lets talk about food. Not only because I love good food and eating bir also getting that nurtrition in is important. My go to travel food – bread (whole grain prefered 😋) with a good local cheese and vegetables and as snack or on the side nuts. If you get the chance to go to a restaurant – go for it 🙃. A good bowl of Rahmen works like magic to the personal fuel tank after sweating all day.
Stopped at Tønsberg family camping to take a break, shower and wash my clothes. A nice litte family owned campsite with friendly people. I sat down to eat something at the tables outside the reception. Few other bikepackers are there and we had a chat - amongst them Jasmin with her son.
She is on a dropbar bike with kids seat in the back and a follow me (attachment to create a makeshift tandem) with her sons little bike. So the whole bike has a length of about four meters, packed with a few dry bags.With that the two travel across the world. Her four year old son visited 12 countries so far and amongst their journey was Istambul and now a trip to cape north from their homebase of Frankfurt. They are a great team with great stories to tell – was amazing to watch and talk with them.
Good morning sea, good morning seagull – good morning Stephan, a smiling face looked through the open tent door. It was Mauro again, he took the same campsite and spotted my bike as he was leaving. You see, while bikepacking your never really alone 😊
Dear Sweden I have a bone with you to pick!!! Your IKEA densitiy is very underwhelming. Hope to see the soothing colors of blue and yellow a lot. What if i needed a a Bjorn for my tent?
On to Göteborg and borg(s) there were a few, the landacape is getting steeper. I enjoy the view of rock formations sticking out of the ground. That rough beauty, covered in small ecosystems of mosses, grasses growing in the cracks and water seaching for its way down guided by gravity.
A invisible force dragged me to the french italian place at the corner. Smells of backery goods, nice food and people having coffee outside in the sun, while the city life flows by. Delicious pasta, fine salads, as they called them (thick pasty creams of taste) – one of it reminded me of a turkish dish: Ezme
One of my hobbies while traveling is hijacking drive ins. It's fun to roll in to the order terminal in a bike. This time the exotic drive in of Viking Grill – One softice please 😋 The happy kid in me drives cirkles on the parkeing lot while while licking the delicious ice cream🍦 – not a figure of speech 😁
Here at the Sea close to Udevalla Islands not far off shore are connected via bridges - one of thm looked like the Golden Gate Bridge. The sunset worked in the briges favour too.
Once reached Udevalla - a medium sized city in the region, formerly known for its boat building industry is home to a little highlight: The viking hotel, an old family owned hotel that felt like fallen out of time. White tiled glass windows, a lounge with old leather chairs and books that might not be read anymore but shout we survived time. The dining area, with an i would calm it old english look, you could also say its interior design was done by people designing puppet houses. A bit strange but cosy, the owner – so nice and trying to make you feel welcome. All in all a nice package and a good hotel to bring your girlfriend or wife. To quote the owner: I have many guests they come here on a work trip and return again with their wife.
Shower, eat, sleep – Im tired. Just right in time for a well needed break.
As contrast to what the days usually look like – The gas station curb snack.
Next destination Tanum (Tanumsleden) was so looking forward to this place. It is home to stone carvings made by our grand, grand...they are about 5000 years old. In a time where our ancestors roamed their territories as hunter gatherer communities.
The road leads through rural areas, loads of fields and smaller forrests spread over hills and a farm every few kilometers. Theres not so much traffic and in the evening hours im all alone on big roads with fast rolling tar.
Parallel to it runs a very old road, that was still used around the wars. It is more of a better double track, that nowadays turned into a singel track on some spots. Was looking for a place fo sleep and so I went on that old road to look for a spot. On a crossing with a forrest I used a small clearing next to blockade stones to pitch my tent – a nice spot, quiet, nobody there and you hear just the birds chirping their songs and the great smell of pine trees - good night 😴
Followed the old road through the forrest the next day and next to Lur theres a house built next to old tank bockades. I find these old structures impressive, they are from a time not to long ago and still it is so calm now, the thought of war so far away. Guess the wars of my and the next generations might look diffrent if we did not allready loose them without even taking notice.
What do I mean with that? Climate crisis, global warming, loss of biodiversity, connected to that melting of the eternal ice – nature phenomena from drought, to floods, rising of the oceans that unroots millions of people and we cannot even handle a few thousand refugees and the same time we want to play god in an unregulated field of AI and want to have more unregulated freedom when it comes to manipipulating DNA.
Lets continue to ignore it, I see the headlights of the truck to run us over – shall we continue talking fluffy things?! 😅
Slowly but surely we get close to the Norwegian border via Strömstadt, took the Königsweg(e) – there are three roads to norway: the very old one for horses, a normal road and the highway. Please head left – a rough double track leads behind a house up a mountain into the forrest. It is partially overgrown and you can tell it does not see much traffic besides a few hikers - lets takes this old road then.
Was quite steep and had to push the bike a part of it but it was worth every meter. Instead of a road you drive through an old forest with farns and moss and huge bolders. At the beginning I was not sure if it would lead to the border or land me at a fence but it ended up just before the border to norway at the Svinessund bridge.
Welcome to norge!