Friday 17/5/2019.
Today’s our big day of talking to the press at Söderköping Bokhandel. We slept really well, only waking four times. Staying awake for 22 hours seems to be the answer. We didn’t have any kitty company but we’re hoping that will change tonight. We’re sleeping on Christina’s settees, which are really comfortable.
At 10:30a.m. we went to the Bokhandel. Three journalists and a photographer showed up. They all spoke excellent English, which meant we didn’t have to embarrass ourselves with our attempts at Swedish. Not sure our Duolingo phrases of “the bear likes the vegetarian” and “my parents don’t like that you eat ants” would have been much use. Anders said they often struggle to get the press to the shop, or only one shows up, so for three to come was very impressive. The journalists were fascinated with Wales and the different mythologies. Two of the journalists wanted to take us outside to do a mini photoshoot. That was fun.
We succumbed to temptation and bought books. There were some fantasy books in English, written by Swedish authors, so we bought those. The only Swedish author we’ve read is Stieg Larsson, so it will be nice to read more Swedish authors.
Day at the Museum
Our next stop was the Söderköping stadshistoriska museum. It was small but lovely. The volunteer had made a model of Söderköping, complete with tiny lawnmowers, bikes, and a man peeing in an alley. The volunteer was really nice and insisted on giving us a postcard and a book for free as memories, so we donated to the museum instead. We visited another church then saw the boat Pelle is handmaking. It’s incredible. We stopped at an ice cream shop, Glassbar, where they make their own ice cream and sorbet. They had two vegan sorbet – dark chocolate and blood orange. They were delicious. We managed to succeed at one mission – buying our mate, Dave, honey with lemon. Apparently you can only get it in Sweden, so when we told him we were coming here, he requested some. Mission: Elk is not going so well.
In the evening we watched the Swedish version of Millennium by Stieg Larsson, but there were no English subtitles, so we had the Swedish ones on, as we can read Swedish better than we can understand speech. We were thrilled when we were able to understand full sentences. Mostly we’d recognise a couple of words and get the gist. We finished the evening by listening to Swedish rock music.
DAY 2: Number of elk we’ve seen: 0.
Read Day 1.
Read Day 3.