Midsummers

One of my friend asked me the big deal about midsummer since I was talking about is for quite a while. Well technically speaking – nothing, since its nothing but the sun shining for 24 hrs. But it’s the biggest celebration here in Sweden, with people talking about their midsummer plans much in advance, not that it proves anything, since the Swedes talk about all their weekends and specially long weekends a lot, anyways point being Midsummer is big here.

The Indians (as we are called here) decided to go to Happaranda and Storforsen to celebrate midsummer and do some sight seeing ourselves. Happaranda is about a 3 hr drive north of Skelleftea on the Finland border. It’s a beautiful town no doubt just that everything was shut due to midsummer, and everything basically means everything, from restaurants to supermarkets to shops – everything! When we walked around in the town hunting for food it was almost like a ghost town, with just us five Indians walking on the street, something that we don’t see even during a curfew in India. We finally dashed our hopes of finding food, and managed to find a shop which sold chips etc. That was breakfast, the only plus being that we had the chips and ice-cream beside a really beautiful river. But being here now for 6 months, have started taking clean rivers, the greenery and nature beauty for granted!!

One of the major motivating factors to make the trip to Happaranda was the IKEA store there. The IKEA store in Happaranda is one of the largest IKEA stores in Sweden, and we were quite looking forward to seeing it. But Alas, I guess they were celebrating Midsummer too, and hence will need to look for some other time and place to finally get a chance to visit the famed Swedish furniture store.

From there we left early for Storforsen so that we could make it on time for lunch. The combination of antakshri and deers on the roads made it a nice drive to Storforsen. Storforsen is a place where the river Pite forms rapids which is one of the largest in Europe. Pite is also one of the only four unharnessed rivers in Sweden. For a country which is famous for its large number of lakes and rivers, 4 unharnessed rivers is quite a small number. We decided to refuel ourselves on some food before checking out the rapids, the noise of which we could hear far away in the restaurant. After waiting for a really long time the food thankfully arrived before some of us fainted with hunger!! The patience level that the Swedes have dumbfounds me everytime. They wait patiently while driving for their turn to overtake, almost never honk, never follow up on anything, and wonder of wonders they wait in queues for a waiting ticket in shops!!

Anyways back to my trip, the disappointment of Happaranda was compensated completely by just seeing the rapids. The sheer power of the river was amazing, just felt like getting into the water and go flowing away with the river (for how long I would be alive, is a different matter altogether). The river almost has three different colors in a short span of length - the absolute white where water crashed against the rocks and formed the rapids, the green some places where it took the color of some rocks, and the sky blue when the rocks got over and the river became silent in the delta – a true haven for a nature photography lover like me.

Since it was a holiday in Sweden, the place was crowded with around 200 to 250 people there, but unlike any tourist place in India, you almost felt you were alone there, thanks to the absence of the numerous amounts of roadside shops, very large and noisy groups of people and the presence of the quiet “in my own world” Swedes. Silence – its something that takes a little getting used to in Sweden, and when you do get used to it, you wonder why people talk as much - I haven’t reached that stage yet!!!

The trip back was uneventful with all of us, just absorbing the scenic beauty, got back to Skelleftea on time for dinner and to make the day perfect, had some really yummy Indian food. Or maybe I found it yummy (since I usually hate the place I went to that day) because I was really hungry and it was the first real food for the day.

With the Midsummer gone, its time for the Skelleftea festival on the weekend. Amazes me to see a country designed only around having fun!!... more about it soon