press interview
Meeting the press, buying books and not seeing any elk. Day two of our Swedish invasion went well.
We donned our finery, packed our Red Bull and at 10:30, went to the Bokhandel as Anders had arranged for us to meet with the press. We’re not used to this kind of attention! It’s like being famous. Press interviews we’ve done have either been in email or over the phone. We prefer email. It means we can think about what we want to say and not disgrace ourselves. Speaking never goes well. Surprisingly, we weren’t nervous. At home, we would’ve been shaking and wanting to cancel it. In Sweden, we’re relaxed and not at all anxious. Sweden is good for us! Three journalists and a photographer showed up.
Being photographed by the press
They were all lovely and spoke excellent English, which means we didn’t have to embarrass ourselves with our attempts at Swedish. Not sure our Duolingo phrases of ‘the bear likes the vegetarian’ and ‘my parents don’t like that you eat ants’ would have been much use. Anders said they often struggle to get the press, or only one shows up, so the fact that three came was very impressive. They were fascinated with Wales and the different mythologies. Two of the journalists, Patrick from Folkbladet and Elizabeth from the Norrkoping Tidning, then wanted to take us outside and do a mini photoshoot. That was fun. Again, it was like being celebrities. We could get used to this lifestyle! They were all really lovely. And the photos turned out decent. It’s rare we like photos of us.
We succumbed to temptation and bought books. Being in a bookshop, surrounded by beautiful books, there’s only so much self control we can muster. There were some fantasy books in English, written by Swedish authors, so we bought those. The only Swedish author we’ve read is Stieg Larsson, so it will be nice to read more Swedish authors. We were tempted by some of the others, but our Swedish isn’t quite up to standard. Maybe in a year or two we can come back and buy them. We did manage to read some Swedish children’s books, so impressed ourselves with that. We’re easily impressed. We bought our niece a book by Sweden’s famous children’s author, Astrid Lindgren.
one of Lars’s models
Our next stop was the museum. It was small but interesting. The volunteer, Lars, had made a model of Söderköping, complete with tiny lawnmowers, bikes, and a man peeing in the alley. It’s the little things that make it. Lars was lovely and insisted on giving us a postcard and a book for free as memories, so we donated to the museum instead. He seemed surprised that we wanted to take a photo of him with his models. And we discovered that Cat is the same height as a Penny Farthing bicycle.
We visited another church and saw the boat Pelle is making. It’s incredible. He’s very talented. We then stopped at an ice cream shop, where they make their own ice cream and sorbet. They had two vegan sorbets – dark chocolate and blood orange. They were delicious. We managed to succeed at one mission – buying Dave honey with lemon. You can only get it in Sweden, so when he found out we were going, he requested some. That mission was completed successfully. Mission: Elk is not going so well. Maybe they’re not so keen on towns and shops. We’d brought a lot of Krona with us as we heard that Sweden was expensive. So far, all we had really bought was ice cream and books. This is not a bad way to live.
Lars with his model
In the evening, we watched three episodes of the Swedish version of the Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson. However, there were no English subtitles, so we had the Swedish ones on. We can read Swedish better than we can understand speech. We were thrilled when we were able to understand full sentences. Mostly, we’d pick out a couple of words and work out what it said. We finished the evening by listening to some Swedish music.
Day: 2. Number of elks we’ve seen: 0.
Raven's Retreat 