Falun, Sweden
Copper, crayfish, clubbing and cars. It's been a brilliant couple of days.
I'm now in Falun, about a third of the way up Sweden and in the sort of stereotypical scenery people associate with this country - rolling forest interspersed with many lakes and small towns. I'm staying for a week with Nicolas and Maria Rolander, and their young daughters Winnie and Vera.
Nic is the brother of Ingeborg; our family friend who I've been staying with this past couple of weeks. He is a cabinet maker by trade, a qualified diving instructor and runs a business selling an engineering gel, but when I asked him originally what he did, he said none of those - I'm a sailor. He's absolutely mad on sailing, and it's taken him all over the world. He often competes in competitions, and plans one day to sail the family round the world on a 65ft yacht.
Maria has also done all sorts including studying abroad and working ski seasons in France, and now manages a company that promotes trade between local businesses, teaches a fitness class and sells the 'Forever' range of personal care products.
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They live in an old wooden village school which Nic is transforming into a beautifully crafted and very personal home, often with a naughtical theme. It's a real labour of love, and has so many clever touches - hidden drawers, fold down this, hand carved that. I'll take some pics. As you might have guessed they are very cool people and interesting to be around.
On Saturday, thanks to Ingeborg I went to Falun Copper Mine. Now a museum, with a huge open pit as well as shafts, and at one point produced two-thirds of the world's copper. We had an underground tour in English and a look around outside - it would have been a horrible and dangerous place to work, but has however made the country's economy what it is today. It turns out the reason most houses in Sweden are painted red is because the paint is produced with copper from this mine, a very good preservative.
It was a busy afternoon as Ingeborg then kindly picked us (Carl- her son and Constant- The French exchange student) up from the mine and took us straight to the local yacht club. Here we met the Rolanders, put on some waterproofs and hopped in a small motor boat. Nic then took us a mile or two across the local lake to a small tree covered island of no more than 100m diameter owned by the yacht club which they're members of. We were at a crayfish party- a Swedish summer tradition, though not many do it on an island. It was so cool, I really couldn't believe my luck!
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We were greeted with champagne, and met about 30 others from the yacht club who were all very friendly and chatty. I was shown how to eat crayfish, encouraged to drink loads of homemade snaps (not to my taste!) and there was loads of singing and toasts followed by a small band of club members performing. A fantastic evening I'll remember for a long time. To finish the night, back on land, Maria drove us chaps in style in the Jag to a nightclub in the town. Great fun, even if it was £7.50 a pint!
After a fantastic couple of weeks with the Pålssons, yesterday I said goodbye to Ingeborg for a few weeks and she drove back to Krageholm, I plan to return again soon. I then got my hands dirty...
Nic is a big Range River fan and has one 1993 model running and one for parts. It's just failed the MOT (though you can still drive it for a month here), so I spent most of yesterday stripping parts with him from the spare to fix the good one. Great fun for both of us but definitely not something I expected to do on my travels!
When you go with the flow, anything can happen.
Nicolas at home with his handywork
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