Southern Sweden road trip to Dan's place

Kalmar, Sweden

14th September 2007

Anja and I got up at 4am this morning and caught a flight to Malmo, Sweden. We got our car at the airport and slowly made our way up to Kalmar, on the Eastern Coast of the country. We didn't choose to make our way up slowly, it's just that there are a number of 1 lane roads, 50KM/h sections, farm equiptment blocking our way and Anja had about 2 hours of sleep last night.

Along the way we stopped at a few places. In McDonalds, there were 3 blonde, lingerie model-looking girls working happily away. At the gas station there was a Claudia Schiffer look-alike who was a bit suspiciously happy to be speaking to me in English and said fair well to me multiple times. In another gas station there was an old woman who spoke better English than most Americans I've met; which was strange because I had this belief from being in Denmark too often that most people over 50 in Scandinavia didn't usually speak much English; I guess I was wrong.

We met up with Dan and Oxana outside Kalmar Castle after about 4 hours of driving through Sweden's southern coastline. We had a nice lunch on the grass outside the Castle before walking around and having a quick look inside.

Afterward, we made our way back to Dan's Parent's place near Backebo, which is about 35KM from Kalmar. It's very nice and peaceful here. It has the nice bits of Northern Germany and Denmark but feels much more cooler and not so isolated from the rest of the world. I probably have that opinion because English is being spoken here and Sweden's prominent image of offering something to the world rather than trying to take it over.