Leaving on a jet plane

I finally got down to packing yesterday and that’s when it started sinking in; I was leaving Sweden for good. I am catching my flight tonight and all sorts of mixed feelings are running through my mind at this moment. I am happy that am finally heading back home to India, but am sad too.

While saying my goodbyes to everyone here, I realized that I will miss this country and these people a lot more than I had thought. I have so many memories of this last one year and each one so different from the other that all of them together will make this year unforgettable. A friend of mine told me once that it was very important to learn to live alone and be happy about it. After being here for a year, I have learnt to truly live alone and enjoy my own company. I know now that if I talk to, or spend time with someone then it’s not because I have to, but because I want to. I rediscovered my writing here not to mention taking photography up seriously – happens when you have a lot of time during the weekend and few people to interact with. Strange as it may sound, I have lived for a year in a hotel and its home to me and the people working there my family. To my pleasant surprise I learnt that a country could survive on trust, and thank God for that or else would be stuck a million times without any form of transportation!! I learnt the meanings of words like “hit the wall” “unmarried wife/husband” and “plastic kids” or “plastic parents” and am no longer surprised by a completely new concept of family. I learnt that the meaning of the word "OK" could range from "alright", to "I understand" to "I don't think so"!!I learnt a whole new way of working – from being highly objective to having being forced to develop relationships to get work done. And speaking of relationships – I learnt that you don’t necessarily need to show how much you care when you really do.I discovered that it is possible for more than 50 people to be sitting somewhere and still there being pin drop silence!! I saw some of the most beautiful places here, and was awed by Mother Nature and all that she had to offer. I also realized how much I loved India and everything Indian – the food specially!!

I could go on and on, but in short I think Sweden and the last year opened my mind up to various things and whether it be good or bad – will not forget the last year.

PS: Having written all of the above, I am still looking forward to heading back to India – Home is home and no other place could be better

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Its official now - The winters are here

Skelleftea had its first proper snowfall today!

It was a pleasant surprise to wake up in the morning and find everything white... It reminded me of the time when I first came to this place sometime in Feb. I woke up a desi who hadn't seen the snow and ended up going for a nice long walk with him and my camera for company. His enthusiasm was infectious to say the least. I took some pictures of the snow and me in the snow (Something I didn't do even when I first came here). For a change, I resisted the temptation of practicing my photography skills and just let someone else take pictures of me... It also made me realise that I should myself a normal digicam to make it easy for people to take decent pictures of me ( The SLR gets a little too complicated for normal people!!)-- Any volunteers-- Donations are most welcome :-)

Skelleftea is back to the normal, dark days with the snow almost melting now...Today was a glimpse of the winter wonderland this place will turn into - hopefully sooner than later.....

Here's to the season of Winter Jackets, never ending nights and the subzero temperatures!!

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The story of 14 islands

Just before I came to Sweden for the first time, someone told me that Stockholm was the most beautiful city that he had visited. Since he is a very well traveled person, my expectations hit the roof!!

My first visit to Stockholm was sometime in March for a day – and I was thoroughly disappointed. It was pretty no doubt, but definitely not out of the world. I couldn’t understand what was that special in the city. It could be because the weather was terrible, it wasn’t all that cold in terms of the temperature but I didn’t really appreciate the cold winds and the rain. This is why I decided, to visit Stockholm in all its glory before the winters came in - And finally, I understood the magic of Stockholm.

Stockholm has a lot of water channels since this is where the Baltic Sea meets the lake Malaren. It’s very common to see regular ferries connecting the 14 islands that form Stockholm. I decided to ditch the regular sight seeing by bus kind of stuff and travel by boat to all the places I wanted to visit. Though it takes a little more time to see the place as compared to taking the bus or even walking, I really felt that the whole experience made it worthwhile.

The first place I went to was the Vasa museum. This is where the sunken ship Vasa is restored and kept. Vasa was a famed ship of Sweden which sank just after sailing for 1300 mtrs. It was found after 300 years, restored and kept in the museum. It was all that, the Swedes had promised it would be- it’s a massive ship (for the day and age it was built it) and the carvings on the ship are intricate and beautiful. You almost end up feeling sorry for the people who made the ship with so much of care. The whole museum is darkened and the effect of the yellow light highlighting just the ship is brilliant. From there I walked to the Nordic museum, which gave a quick snapshot of the culture of the ancient Vikings. The Nordic museum also had an exhibit of private collectors going on. It was good to see people being encouraged to display their collection of coins, stamps, matchboxes, openers, dolls etc. You name it and they had it there!!

Stockholm is often called the museum city since it has more than 70 museums, but lack of time meant I had to choose between museums and other flavours of Stockholm. Hence I decided that the next stop would be Gamla Stan or the old town. The old town is basically the original Stockholm area sometime in the 17th century or earlier. Just walking in the streets of the old town, takes you into a completely different world – the small open cafes, the numerous antique shops, and the street musicians whose music you can hear everywhere you go, just wove a spell around me. I saw one of the most enthusiastic and fun street musician group there. They were just so full of energy and amazing music that the half and hour I spent listening to them seemed like just a few minutes. It was time then to break away from the magic cast on me to see the world’s first Ice bar in the hotel that I was staying. While walking towards the main Stockholm center, the change of architecture was dramatic that I could almost feel the transition between the old and the new.

The ice bar is a bar where everything, from the tables, to the chairs to even the glasses are made of ice. The temperature of the bar is maintained at a -5 degrees Celsius all year round and its quite a popular tourist destination that appointments are needed to get inside, since they do not allow more than 30 people at one time. It was good to see something so different and so crazy. I had my drink served in a glass made of ice… Cheers or Skall as the Swedish say to crazy ideas!!!!

The next day was reserved for the famed archipelagos of Stockholm. Stockholm has around a 1000 small islands surrounding it. A trip to Stockholm is definitely incomplete without visiting at least one of these archipelagos. It takes quite a while to get to even the nearest of the archipelago and get back. But it’s a trip was well worth it, some of the views were just out of this world. I got down at one of the archipelago called Grindo, walked around and then had a cup of coffee in one of the most beautiful restaurants I have come across – I could spend the entire day, just sitting there and gazing at the sea, however reality sunk in and I caught my ferry to the mainland.

Before I set out for Helsinki, my Swedish colleague asked me to tell him, which capital was prettier – Stockholm or Helsinki. He also assured me that I would be killed either by him or my Finnish colleague!!! ( the Swedes and the Finns share a love hate relationship and its good fun to see them joke about it – a more tamed version of India and Pak). But coming back to his question – I really don’t know....each had its charm – Helsinki was small but fun, and Stockholm enchanting, comparing them would be unfair to both… I told my colleague the same, he wasn’t too convinced though!!!

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Sleepless nights

I have been meaning to write about the summer festival in Skelleftea which happened last week but have been extremely busy working, getting ready to go India and trying to catch up on the Harry Potter mania. The Potter bug caught me a little to late in life, with me finding it extremely boring and childish the first time I tried to read it. This time, it truly caught me (me thinks its just coz I haven’t read a book in a really long time). Anyways, almost all nights were spent trying to finish the books, and have finally managed to finish all the seven books (at least I hope the 7th one is the same as what’s given on the internet).

Getting back to the festival – Skelleftea has a summer fest every year for 3 days to celebrate the coming of the summer and the start of the summer semesta (vacation). We could actually notice the transformation in the city square which suddenly came to life. There were rock shows, a lot of games, shops on the roads and bungee jumping too. For the first time in the 6 months I have been here, I got to see so many people in one tiny place for an extended period of time. Malmia (the hotel I call home now) which usually has a deserted look was taken over by the neighbouring Norwegians and some others from nearby towns, there were people buzzling around just everywhere. Skelleftea underwent a complete metamorphosis – was good since it reminded me a bit of India. It was good to see some life coming into the otherwise drowsy town. Though beyond a point in the nights, I just wanted to get some sleep, which was almost impossible with all the loud music and people shouting downstairs (imagine sleeping in a pub with the loudspeaker next to your ear!!). That’s when the Potter bug caught me, and I had something to do in the nights over the weekend. Didn’t really think it would go on for the whole week. Anyways Harry potter is done with now and am on my way to India.

Yippee!!! That’s what I thought at first. But that was before I saw my itinerary to get to India. I have almost 10 hrs of waiting – 5 each in Frankfurt and Dubai airports. I am sure that by the time I finish this travel, airports and planes would feel like home to me!! Have managed to kill 30 mins at the Frankfurt airport writing this completely uncoordinated piece – I guess it’s a reflection of my tired mind….

PS: this is written sitting in the Frankfurt airport about 10 days back....managed to post it only today

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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

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Cravings

I crave for the sun to set and then to rise,
I crave for colours other than black, grey and white,
I crave for my morning paper and chai,
I crave to go out and eat dinner at nine,
I crave to see people just everywhere,
I crave to see more than five cars at one time,
I crave for what people here call noise,
I crave for the time when weekends were fun,
I crave for the time when days were spent with movies and friends,
I crave for when life was more than just being online,
Its funny I crave for things I never thought I'd think of anytime...

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My retirement plan Ver 100.1 :-)

One of my Swedish colleague took pity on me (I am in the south of Sweden in another plant right now) and took me boating on his speed boat in the lake nearby. He did warn me though, since it was windy and drizzling, that we might come across rough waters, and that his boat was small, so if I was scared, I needed to rethink.

My love for water, and the sense of adventure, just couldn’t stop me. The combination of the cold wind on my hair, ice cold water splashing all over my face, the waves which were small to look at but gave us a scare more than a couple of times and the fact that we didn’t have our life jackets on made it an experience I will never forget. My thoughtful colleague also brought along with him some coffee which we had on one of the islands – as the Swedish say, it was "Perfekt".

While sipping our cups of coffee, amidst all that beauty, we decided to go try and see some moose. So after the sailing adventure, we drove a little away into the woods, to see if we could get lucky. Didn’t get lucky with the moose, but saw a deer, and witnessed the country side, which was good enough for me. The respect and love that the Swedes have for the environment is something that I am still getting used to. In anything they do, they take into account the effect of it on the environment. No wonder this place is breathtakingly beautiful (not forgetting that there are far less people here).

After experiencing a little bit of the Swedish adventure, I plan to quit working when I am 40, buy a cottage on one of the islands here and spend the rest of my life pursuing wildlife photography. That way I guess I’ll have enough food for my never ending appetite of the nature, good photographs added with a lot of fun!

What’s the harm in dreaming!!....

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Billiards anyone?

I still remember the day I landed here in Sweden sometime in February, to a small place called Skellefteå( pronounced as Shell-ef-teo). Everything I saw was white, from the ground to the trees to even the sea and the rivers!! I couldn't’ imagine as much snow anywhere and what amazed me more is people going outdoors to have fun in all that snow. I remember while driving to Bodo (North of Norway), where all I could see were mountains covered with snow, and amidst all that snow, far away, I would find a tiny “thing” moving, and would discover it’s a person skiing, fishing or simply taking a walk! At first I did think they were crazy! But then I realized that it was simply a way of life...

The Swedes are sports, nature and outdoor lovers, and six months of winter gives them no other option but to welcome the winters and the snow with open arms. And that’s precisely what they do – skiing, ice hockey, snow mobiles, dog sledging, curling, you name it and they have it. I didn’t even know of the existence of a game called curling, let alone there being an Olympic championship for it. Coming from a country where cricket is (or should I say was after the world cup debacle) an obsession and where Rediff till very recently had different sections for sports and cricket, how could I be blamed for my ignorance!

It’s a different experience to be among people, who give sports and outdoors as much importance as the Swedes do. It’s amazing to see how children are encouraged by their parents to be a part of at least one sport along with their studies. I guess it’s the fact that the parents know that the children do not need to worry about their future and that the government will take care of him, and the fact that the child will not be looked down upon, if he is not as good in studies but plays ice hockey, or soccer or something else. I am sure that there are exceptions in India as well, but they sure are few and far, and that too in very few sports. I guess its all a matter of security and what the future holds for people in sports, especially when the media of the country goes ballistic over the highs and the lows of the Indian Cricket team, and is obsessed with Sania Mirza’s T-Shirts, but doesn’t really bother about the likes of Viswanathan Anand, Rajyavardhan Rathore and Joshna Chinappa (does anyone even know where Geet Sethi is??).

Yet while I am here I cannot help but wonder and feel despondent, on why amongst a population of over a billion, we cannot consistently produce a world class team or a sportsman, be it in cricket, soccer, hockey or anything else.

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From Chai to Kaffe

Being from an army family and having traveled to different places in India, I always prided myself on being able to adjust quickly to any place. After all I shifted from Goa to Mathura and was equally happy in both places (people who have stayed in both these places would appreciate my sense of achievement better). So when I decided to go to Sweden that’s what I thought - How different could it be from India?

And well that was what struck me first when I landed here in Sweden – How different it is from India!! There is not one similarity between India and Sweden. Well no similarity is an understatement. It is safe to say that the two countries are opposite of each other in every possible way.

My life has changed in every possible way - from drinking strong, milky tea to having strong black coffee; from the various vibrant colours in India to the white, grey and black of Sweden; from people just about everywhere to actually hunting for people; from all the traffic jams to not crossing a single car for an hour while driving; from cursing yourself for being a pedestrian while trying to cross roads for nearly an hour to just walking across and making the car wait for you; from the famous summers of India to the harsh winters of Sweden, from the sun rising and setting on time to it either never rising or never setting; from the chatty, emotional, loud, inquisitive Indians to the reserved, calm, “we mind our own business” Swedes (except for when they are drunk); from “I have no time to eat because I have work”, to “ I need an hour for lunch, the world’s not going to end”, the list just goes on and on.

I have been here for almost three months now, and somehow this place still surprises me. I can safely say that I am still getting acclimatized and maybe I will continue to do so till the day I get back!

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