I spent the weekend in Sweden again....you'd think I like it or something lol
This time I went with DIS on a weekend trip to southern Sweden, to hiking and canoeing. Its seems like I can never have a completely normal adventure however, something always seems to come up lol. The group met near DIS and took a bus north to Helsingor to catch a ferry over to Helsingborg, just across the water in Sweden. Since I live North of Copenhagen it made more sense for me to just catch a train up to Helsingor and meet the group before the ferry. I sent the leaders and email and I was told to meet them outside the ferry, seems simple enough. I got there Saturday morning about 8, so I chill around the station for a couple of minutes waiting for them to call me, I run into two other people who are meeting the group at the ferry too. We get a call and the leader tells us to go over to the bus, in the car lanes, only problem is that there was a LONG security fence in between us and the bus. We told her that and she told us that we might just have to buy our own ferry tickets and meet them on the ferry, not gonna happen! We had all already paid for this trip and were not gonna pay more! She sent another leader out to try and find us, her solution to our problem was to climb the security gate, so guess what we did...we climbed a security gate at a ferry station and ran to get on the bus. Quite an interesting way to start my weekend off lol, I kept thinking that someone was going to come chase us down and arrest us for doing that lol.
We got over to Sweden and set off for the Ronnes A, the river we would canoe down. It was such a beautiful day! Slight chill, but its Scandinavia what can you expect. We put our life vests on and grabbed a canoe and paddles and took off down the river. I went with this guy Noah who I know from a class and we paddled near our friends Kara and Jen. Noah and I were both left handed, how is that of the entire group two leftys ended up in the same canoe lol. We had some directional problems which landed us in some trees a few times, and crashing into the bank a few more times. That poor canoe lol! We connected with Kara's canoe and rafted for a bit while singing a little Pocahontas..."Just around the river bend!" After awhile Noah and I got really lazy so we connected with a third canoe and rafted more. Me and Noah were in the middle of the three canoes so our job was just to hold onto the other two and keep us all connected....such grueling work :] I was in the back so I just laid down with my arms stretched out so I could keep hold of the other two boats. Then we swapped places and let Kara and Jen be in the middle, then after awhile the third canoe had its chance in the middle. Rearranging canoes is like playing leap frog in a river lol, i'm sure it would have been interesting to watch!
It took us a little over two hours to canoe down the river, I was quite thankful when it was over, plastic canoe seats do a number on your rear-end! One person was crazy enough to go swimming, he jumped off a bridge into the freezing cold river....like I said crazy! The river was really beautiful, the banks were full of trees and there were ducks everywhere, we also saw shopping cart lol. The Ronnes A runs through a neighborhood so there were pretty houses and docks along the sides and we saw lots of people, one older couple standing on a bridge tried to talk to us in swedish, we just yelled "hey hey" back at them lol. I would not mind moving to Sweden if I could live on this river! After our canoe adventure we got back on the bus and headed for the hostel. The hostel was sorta in the middle of nowhere, there were farms all around us but it was nice scenery. We had lunch at the hostel, which was DELICIOUS! I have no idea what it was, some sort of stew or beef soup or something, but I was more than delighted to have a second helping :]
After lunch we went on a hike to Nimis. Which is this fantastic complex of wooden structures, like a castle made out of drift wood, the walkway to it was an enclosed wood tunnel and then there are sets of tall towers made of driftwood that you can climb up. Basically the guy who created this was insane and amazing, I think they go hand in hand sometimes lol. So the artist who created Nimis made the pathway to get there ridiculous and long, because he was hiding it from the Swedish authorities, who after two years finally found it. They sued him for building a structure in a national park, so he declared the area surrounding Nimis to be the nation of Ladonia. So basically I got to go into another country while I was hiking, pretty awesome :] You can go online and become a citizen of Ladonia for free, and if you're feeling royal you can pay twelve dollars to become some sort of Ladonian royalty! I contemplated becoming a duchess, how cool would that be on a job application "well I graduated from PLU and I am also the reigning duchess of Ladonia" no big deal or anything lol :]
Since Nimis is on the beach we had to hike down to get there, so after we were all tired and what not we had to hike up to get back to the bus, I was definitely huffin and puffin the whole way up lol.
We got back to the hostel and were exhausted so the girls in my room and I just headed straight for our beds and passed out until dinner. Eventually we got up when we smelled the food :] It was like a Swedish version of an american barbecue, grilled chicken and brats with pasta salad and potato salad and then a scandanavian version of smores, I was just a little happy! We spent the rest of the night just hanging around the living room and chatting before we headed off to bed.
The next day we headed to the coast to have a day of repelling and orienteering. Saturday was beautiful, but apparently we didn't get to have a repeat, Sunday was fairly awful, rain and wind and thunder and what not. I can usually handle wind, rain and thunder, its a typical day in Western Washington, but I've never encountered such elements when repelling of the side of a cliff lol. We repelled two cliffs, a baby and a momma, a big momma! The long one was something like 30 meters or something. I was so excited to get my repel on! Nobody wanted to go first for the short repel so I was just like "I'll do it" when really inside I was screaming "Let me at it!!!" The short one was just a teaser I couldn't wait to get at the longer one. Sitting on the mountain waiting to repel the long cliff was almost unbearable, because it was just pouring rain and hail on us! But in the end it was totally worth it, It felt so surreal to be bouncing off a cliff side next to an ocean!
After repelling we headed back to the bus to eat lunch then we took a shot at orienteering. So we had a little trouble navigating but had a lot of fun on the way because it finally stopped being so miserable outside. We didn't make it to all the points because we were trying to be responsible college students for once and show up on time...we shoulda been irresponsible! We got back on time and no one else showed up for another half an hour, but the adults said we couldn't leave :[ Oh well we got to sit on the bus and sleep for an extra half and hour lol. Once everyone got back it was time to leave Sweden and travel back to Denmark. It was a long bus ride back to the ferry but I got some good rest in :] When I finally got home that evening I had a delicious dinner at home with the family...I love having a host family :]
More to come about my exciting travel break!
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