Digging up Sweden´s Secrets

Truth be told, I never really thought about travelling to Sweden before Jule asked me about it. Actually, we had wanted to go to  Tuscany and already had a wwoofer host set up and everything, until realization dawned upon us that is was going to be around 40°C there and working inland on a farm might not be exactly the best idea. So we searched for alternatives. I wanted to go to England (Scotland, Wales,…) and Jule suggested Sweden because she wanted to go wwoofing there before. So we went to Sweden.

It was without joke the hardest planning and getting there adventure I have ever EVER had in my whole 24-year-old life. I swear. It was as if everything that could go wrong did go wrong and why take the easy way when you can take the hard way? So we searched, planned, dismissed our plans, planned all over again, searched for busses and schedules via google maps for the Swedish middle-of-nowhere (because that´s where the cool farms usually are), booked overprized plane tickets to the middle of nowhere, left for the trip. Got the plane cancelled, rescheduled, herded onto other planes, arriving in the middle of the night, losing the backpacks, getting an airport hotel room paid by the airplane company, getting up again in the middle of the night for the connection flight. Upon arrival: searching bus stops  on a highway because middle of nowhere doesn´t feature decent public connections, walking around, calling help centers, wandering astray into wrong directions, getting on a few wrong busses and buying tickets for more wrong busses, and finally we were on the (wrong number) bus that got us just in time to where we wanted to go from where our host Niklas picked us up (by sheer coincidence because he hadn´t gotten our texts or calls since we had somehow saved the wrong number). Jeez! I have seriously never been so often so close to just giving up and calling it a day. Jule took it with more dignity than me, I have to admit to my shame. So eventually, finally, after all, we were there: Niklas´ Nyttos Gårdenin Österrå in Resele near Sollefteå near Kramfors near Sundsvall. Puh.

But the place itself was worth all the effort. It´s Sweden how you imagine it when you think of Sweden. Wooden houses painted in the typical falu red, a lot of trees in a tranquil and mostly untouched landscape  and friendly (and few) people. Especially Norrland, where we were, is very sparsely populated because the more north you go the less light you have in winter, which is also why almost every car has extra lights on the fronts.

But see what I´m talking about yourself:

Northern Sweden from above…Sweden is dominated by and interspersed with water, which is why nearly every Swede gets to live close to beautiful waterscape without big costs or fuss like in Germany.

The Wwoofer House

We were living in the Wwoofer House with another German wwoofer, and there were one full time and two half time employees on the farm.Nyttos Gården is actually an interesting concept of shareholders and the result of good facebook-marketing, full-on Swedish work drive and “google-farming” as Niklas calls it, who is mostly self-taught. In the short time span of three years he has built up his little empire consisting of about 70 shareholders he regularly gets paid by and delivers his organic deliciously yummy vegetable harvest to, a big flock of loud and friendly oinking pig (grisla in Swedish), chicken and turkey in the chicken house,  ducks that look like geese, a dog, a girlfriend and a 2-year old energetic son, and two big fields with crazy varieties of cabbages, potatoes, berries, and herbs and carrots and onions. He expands and is slowly buying up all the empty Osterrå houses for different uses. Until now, he has houses for himself, wwoofers, and his chicken. And wants more. This guy is full of ideas, I´m telling you.

The poultry celebrated our leftover soup so much, I think we spent half an hour watching them fight over the potato pieces. Better than TV!

One day old piggieees!

We came in the high time of harvesting season, so we got to do a little harvesting of everything, preparing for the deliveries, and also preparing the sunday annual shareholder dinner which was held in form of a bbq. I like doing something here and something there and never one thing too long, it was always a good mix of tasks, and in between Niklas driving around on his inevitable Quad bike which is considered the number one solution to everything in the Swedish countryside (transports flowers, clothes, sofas, wwoofers, vegetables, you name it).

The goody bag for the shareholders, filled with last weeks´ harvest of beans, eggs, cabbage, brokkoli and other leafy healthy greens

Preparing the flower bouquets for the shareholder dinner

Part of the buffet including homemade kale chips, homemade bread, and homemade sweet pickled cucumbers

Oh, and the food! I was in heaven. Niklas cooks fantastically and uses all his homegrown vegetables! Always before lönsch or dinner, somebody would turn up with freshly dug out potatoes (potatis) or carrots and then it would all be quickly fried in a lot of butter and freshly plucked thyme leaves bursting with flavor, accompanied by some oven roasted potatis and probably the best meat I have ever eaten. Niklas knew all the animals personally, so we ended up eating The Pig With the Broken Leg, the Rooster Who was Too Loud, the Cow He Visited Several Times and the Moose that His Friend Tommy Shot. I am a very cautious and picky meat eater, which has resulted in a big iron low about two months ago and me substituting poorly tolerable iron pills ever since. So having really good and well-prepared meat was a very welcome opportunity for me to health-boost naturally, and I don´t think I´ve ever felt so healthy in a long time, just by eating tons of organic vegetables and great meat without traces of any medicaments that you find in supermarket chicken nowadays. 

And this is my first encounter with a moose. Not dangerous, really, but rather juicy if I might say so:

And now the Part with the Swedish Secrets that I promised you. What have I learned about the Swedes?

The extra lights for long and cold winter nights/days

Kanelbulle – a Swedish cinnamon bun TO DIE FOR! I tried to recreate them today but I think I will have to practise some – a lot – more

Snus. The Swedish answer to smoking. They form little balls to stuff under their upper lip which makes them look very funny. If you ever want to imitate a Swede with Snus, put a chewing gum under your upper lip and pretend like its nothing. There you go.

This is how doors are locked in the countryside, i.e. not at all. Houses, cars, all left open, even when away and in the night.

And that Köttbullar are actually correctly pronounced “Schöttbullar”. At least that´s what one of the coworkers said. Very convincingly.

So we worked and then we ate and ate some more, and then we still had four hours to kill until a reasonable bed-time. Since we didn´t have internet in the wwoofer house, we did cool outdoor stuff like cycling along the little red houses and farms, stealing berries off the roadside for breakfast, swimming in the river when it got too hot, going kayaking:

with the borrowed canoes from our opposite-door neighbours, who we loved very much for their friendliness. The family husband also showed us the other side of the river with the view to our side one evening. He made us stumble over blueberry bushes and through spider webs for half an hour, showed us moose footsteps and bear droppings and thereby rewarded us with a real nature experience:

Mostly, I enjoyed how peaceful and quiet and beautiful it was. My maltreated country soul that has been stressed out by four years of living in one of the busiest strees of Neukölln, Berlin and has grown increasingly stressed out by every little thing and hypersensitive to noises already envisioned herself living there also and schemed little plans on how the life would be here like. By the river, in a cutie red house where the family can live, love and grow together, with the sister and parents and a bigger city for grocery shopping close by – why not? Day-dreaming old me. I´d teach in a country school and bake cinnamon buns for the kids and go cross-country-skiing in winter and drop by neighbors and family whenever I feel like it. And watch TV where they speak Swedish and enjoy it because the language sounds so funny and cute. Hach.

After one week, we set off to another two nights of Stockholm. I personally wasn´t too thrilled about it. Swedish souvenir shops on Gamla stan and the fact that everything was expensive soured my travel motivation, plus the fact that I was beginning to miss my hubbie very much. Technically it´s nice, has lots of parks and lots and lots of waterfront since it consists of 14 main islands. There´s an island where the rich and famous live (Östermalm), a normal one with great waterfront bars (Kungsholmen) and a worker´s quarter that´s just starting to be cool (Södermalm is like baby Kreuzberg, only in very expensive, queuing up in a fancy Falafel shop and then pay 7€ for it. No thanks). There´s a tree and beach island and a whole park island owned by the royal family for centuries where Stockholmers go to leisure professionally. It all looked nice, yes, and shopping is probably good (I pursued my newly found addiction to lush cosmetics, all organic and the dry shampoos make the hair SO SHINYYY, I don´t think my hair has ever looked this nice!) but 5€ for a 5 minute ferry drive? And 20€ for a shared pizza? There´s a little cheapskate inside me that shuts down with prizes like that. And tells me to just seize the opportunities more here in Berlin, with all its cool cheap food venues.

Tivoli aka Gröna Lund on Djurgården

Plus the cinnamon buns didn´t taste nearly as good as the homemade ones we had gotten before. Plus there were too many nicely styled blonde Swedish girls with glowing skin, which made me in my post-farming dirty clothes feel like a deranged potatis sack. So it was nice to have seen it but meh, I was also glad to go back on sunday.

So, now we are back home. This time the journey had been smooth and efficient (Aah! Highly appreciated!) and I already tried and failed my first set of self-made cinnamon buns. They are more bun than cinnamon. But it´s okay, I´m feeding them to everyone now who is near me and doesn´t say no fast enough. So I can make them again as soon as possible and bring them to the perfection they deserve.

And for now… I´ll close my eyes and dream some more of Swedish rivers and moose meals. And the smell of cinnamon.

How to Budget Sweden

Don´t go. Hahaha, just kidding, it´s way too beautiful not to do it because of money reasons. My tip is to do as we did, only not fly to the middle of nowhere but get a cheap flight to a Swedish big town (Stockholm, for example, or Gothenburg) and then travel onwards with bus companies such as ybuss. My tip is also to not visit any towns as we did, instead stay in places where you are being catered for (i.e. wwoofing). If you still can´t hold your hands off the cities, be very very cost-consious. Always buy food in the supermarkets (there prices are okay-ish) and have ready-made lunches and dinners on you. Plan your routes ahead so you are not dependant on costly forms of transportation.

Kanelbullar are also available for a third of the price in the coop-supermarkets, and just as good ;)

Or you do it like how our fellow wwoofer did it: subletted his room in his hometown and went to Sweden by car, drove around everywhere and slept in his tent (because in Sweden you are allowed to set up camp everywhere, wohoo!). The money he saved for his apartment he invested in fuel for his car – in the end he probably had a trip for zero costs.