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The following is from my train ride from Östersund to Sveg (which is pronounced "swaa-ya." One of the reasons I chose to stop there was that I thought I knew how to say the name. Tricky Swedish).
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| The cafe the train stopped at for breafast. |
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| With Swedish fencing |
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| And neat posts |
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| And mystery items for sale |
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| What in the world is that? |
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| Decorated brooms |
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| My breakfast of a "Wilderness cake" |
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| I've crossed the spine of my book! |
August 22, 11:00
It looked like it was going to rain when I got to Sveg, so I went to set up my tent right away. I found a spot by the river (lake? I'm not really sure what it was. It looked riverish, but didn't seem to be flowing), kind of near some people's houses, but certainly far enough out of their living areas that I wouldn't be in the way. I was so close to the water's edge that I could see the refection of it on the inside walls of my tent.
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| View FROM my tent in one direction |
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| View OF my tent |
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| And view FROM my tent in the other direction |
If Storumen was the land of blueberries, then Sveg was the land of raspberries. So many raspberries, and all perfectly ripe! In all this berry picking I've been doing, and all my wandering around, I haven't seen one other single person picking berries. Maybe they've already gotten all that they can handle. Or maybe they know something I don't....
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| Raspberries |
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| Raspberries |
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| Where's the little gnome? |
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| And, of course, blueberries |
I still didn't have a map of the town or anything, and the tourist office (if you could call it that) in the train station was closed, but I did learn one thing from a little one sentence write up on Inlandsbanan's time table: Sveg is the home to the world's largest wooden bear. Well, there we go. My mission was to search the town (and since I didn't think it would take that long and I had a LOT of time to kill, I did it in a very systematic, street to street pattern) until I found the bear.
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| The train station |
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| No bank robbing allowed |
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| The main street |
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| Sand |
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| What most of the town looked like |
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| Curling! It really does exist! |
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| Mailboxes! |
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| Wild snapdragons! |
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| Sorry Iceland, I guess you didn't make the cut. |
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| A nursing home |
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| I just found this enjoyable for some reason |
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| Electric prices! |
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| The school |
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| Every single grave had beautiful flowers planted in front of it |
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| Even the really old ones |
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| Gardening supplies for the graves |
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| I spent a really long time just walking around, reading all of them. It was very peaceful. |
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| Then suddenly, out of the blue, I looked up and saw The World's Largest Wooden Bear. It kind of ruined my moment. |
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| There ya have it. The best use of trees I ever did see. |
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| Detail |
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| In case you wanted to know more |
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| A nice looking house |
At 2 o'clock I had already set up my tent, found the world's largest wooden bear and been down every single street in the town. What next?
I saw a poster for a soccer game, so I went to check it out.
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| I captured the slow decline of the Ball Boy's interest. In the beginning: alert and really to go. |
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| Still paying attention. |
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| Total lack of interest. I felt the same way. |
That was interesting for a good 5 minutes. I usually use watching sports as a means to hang out with people, but watching a game with no talking to entertain me, was not so fun. After trying to understand what people were saying when they yelled, and watching a little boy who's job it was to get the stray balls (until I felt like I was reaching the "creepster" level again), I set off to find something else to do.
There was a trail around the water's edge, so I hiked that. Slowly.
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| Some creepy "naturalized" statues |
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| Ah! A giant beaver! |
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| Big old pines |
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| Old pine |
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| This looks like it would be a nice place to go swimming... |
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| ...if the water didn't look disgusting |
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| Fungi |
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| More fungi |
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| And more... |
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| Someone's been busy! |
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| Lingonberries |
The lake/river was really nice and I really, really wished I had some kind of boat to go out on it in. I spent about an hour trying to find something I could build some kind of boat out of (what I was looking for, I'm not sure) or, miraculously, find some kind of perfect condition yet abandoned boat in the woods. Neither of those things worked out.
So what's the next best thing to boating on a lake/river? Fishing! I found an old hook and spinner with a little bit of line still attached to it, and made myself a fishing pole. Now I was ready to go fishing. I tried to find some bait, but there were absolutely no rocks to turn over in these woods to find worms. I dug around for a while, but it was just a peat layer and I couldn't get down to the soil. I tried everywhere else I thought creepy-crawlies might live (rotting logs,old mushrooms), but didn't find anything. I even tried to attach a mosquito to the hook. Oh well. At least I didn't take the life of anything unnecessarily, and at least I had a spinner. The lake/river turned out to be really shallow, and anywhere I could get to wasn't more than a foot deep. It was also really full of plants and algae too, so every 2 seconds my hook would get stuck on something and I'd have to reach in (because my line was so short and the water was so shallow it was never out of arm's length) and untangle it. Needless to say, I didn't catch anything.
What now? I went back into town and bought an ice cream. Then I sat on a bench and really wished I had brought a book with me on this trip. With all these train rides and "quiet relaxation" in little towns, I could have finished a dozen books by now.
It was now nearly eight. Nearly time for bed but still a few hours left to kill. I decided to build a fire, since you can draw that out pretty much indefinitely. I had seen a good spot on my walk around the lake/river that already had a fire circle built. So I went there, but there was some teenage Swedish hippie girl there playing her drum to the sunset. So I kept going. I found a spot that was safe (very sandy, free of trees), but not nearly as picturesque (far from the lake/river and under some high-tension power lines. Still, it gave me the opportunity of build my own fire ring (which killed some more time) and I got a nice fire going. When the moon came up it was nearly full and the refection on the lake/river was beautiful.
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| Sunset |
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| My fire |
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| Moonrise |
