Losing memories and Nordic Culture Coastline

After watching Inside Out,which I cried while watching, I realised that memories are really precious. We lose some of our memories all the time. And I bet I probably lost so many of my memories already. Especially for people like me who are not big fans of the camera, I realised that sometimes I lose the memories and probably have no way of remembering it. So I came back to this good old blog and decided to pen down things I remember so that if I ever lose some of the most interesting memories, I will remember them here. Although I think it would not have been as effective as if I wrote them down when the memories were fresh, but better than nothing.

This especially, applies to the time when I was away on exchange. More than a year has passed and I realise that I have forgotten things. Some things that used to be so crystal clear has started to become blurred. I think I will be really sad if I no longer remember my time there. :(

So, I will talk about my favourite and worst memories not in any particular order. 

#1 Nordic Culture Coastline 

This trip happened during the end-Spring. We went there in May and it was one of the most memorable for me because I had a huge meal of salmon. The entire meal was made literally of salmon and it was one of the most amazing trips ever because I know that it is truly unique and not many people would be able to experience it as it was done with the school, without any tour guides. The teachers were the ones that brought us around, and they were locals. We could ask them anything under the sun and it was amazing. 

For this trip, the class was split into two groups and I decided to go with Si Rui because I had my Swedish oral during the other period. The people who went with us were the french guys, Li Yu from Taiwan, Zhang Xie from China, and some others. Si Rui and I were in a group for the group presentation with Matej as our group leader, Zhuang Xie, Li Yu and ourselves. Somehow, the Asians always end up sticking together. We stayed in this house built a century ago and we took a 4 bed room with Zhuang Xie and Li Yu.

Here's the picture of the farmhouse on a sunny day in May

Here's the image of the house next to the farmhouse. It used to be a school.

When I first saw the house, I was very excited to be in it because it was a farmhouse in the countryside and it was built a very very long time a ago. According to the teacher, it was built to  be a school house for the kids in the countryside and they had to travel very long distances to come to school. Which was pretty cool. The other building also had an old-school stove that used coals. That was very interesting too!

A modern stove added next to an ancient one. 

On strange thing which baffled me was the design on the house. The only toilet in the 3 storey house was attached to the house, but in order to go into the toilet, you have to walk around the house and the entrance to the toilet is outside the house. That means that if you have to pee at night, you have to walk out in the dark cold night and walk to the toilet. And if there is someone there, you have to wait outside in the cold. I know, because being someone with a small bladder, I had to wait outside in the cold. Hahahhaa. It was quite serene to do so actually, and I did not mind that much. Because there are not many lights around the house, you could see a sky full of stars while waiting for your turn to pee. The view was very spectacular. In the day, if you walked behind the house, there is a backyard overrun with plants. There, there were edible plants which I was more than happy to forage. I was not the only one. I spied the teacher picking some of those rhubarbs. >:) I was very happy with some chives we picked around the house, Si Rui helped me in my endeavour. I was fun trying to spot the chives.

Look at my loot! 

Other than the fun times in the house, we also had day trips outside which I really enjoyed too. Hmmm. I enjoyed everything. One of the first things we did on the trip was to go to the Overum museum. Basically, it was very old adorable men telling us about the history of the area. The area is an aging one with not many young people left, as we can tell from the demographics of the guides. The told us about the area and how it used to be an economically important one because they produced ploughs for farming. This is especially important in that era because those were the farming times. They also had relatively advanced technology for that age. It was very interesting to learn from these very passionate old men. Their Swedish accents were a little strong, but I would like to think I have mastered Swedish accented English comprehension by then.

The museum and some of the guides in blue

The guide talking about how iron was transported, I think. 

The trip to the museum was a relatively short one. We also went to another museum of sorts, where we saw the equipment people in the past used to kill pigs. That was a very crampy museum, but it was interesting to see a butter churner in real life. After all these years of reading historical fiction, I finally have a churner in my head to complete the scene! Whee! We also went to someone's house (in the past, now a museum) to  look around.

Tools of the trade (for the butcher)

Guess what is this! This is like a thing in which you put coins in. 

TATTING!!! So pretty, I wanna try! :')

Then, we went fishing. FISHING. The thought of fishing my own food makes my heart pump so hard of excitement. But alas. All I did for the fishing was to sit in my boat and see the other group with the experienced fisherman put the net to the sea. I did nothing but wait in the boat. The boat ride was very enjoyable though. The temperature was cool, about 26 degrees and the sun was shining. I happily forgot to bring sunblock for my entire exchange,but I did not have any issues with the sun until this trip. Totally forgot that the sun will come back again after a hiatus during winter. As a result, as much as I enjoyed my boat ride, I got terribly terribly burnt. I brought a cardigan and I dared not remove it for the fear that my arms will get burnt too. The colour change was hilarious. But the sun also made me a bit crazy like always. Tried to sing songs about fishing, but no one other than Li Yu knew the Chinese fishing song. Catching the fish the next day was just as uneventful because I was once again in the boat that was the bystander. We literally used our eye power to fish. But it was quite exciting to see the myriad of colours reflected on the fishes when they first caught the fish. The colours was due to the fish scales. What fish? Why, we only caught herrings. Oh herrings. Herrings and I have a history.

If I could go fishing in the Baltic sea again, I would smile that happily in the sun minus the sunblock. Hahaha. 

The other boat, which did the fishing. Hahaha.

Smoking thing, the thing you use to smoke fishes. 

After catching the fishes, we had to remove the fishes from the nets. It was a fun and tiring activity, but I think I got the hang of it. I quite like doing it. Some of the other classmates, like Sebastian, my "subordinate" quite failed at it. I became his "supervisor". Hahaha. That was quite funny. The scales will detach from the fish once it dies, which is quite soon after you pull it up from the net. This was interesting, because it means that the fish would not be scaly! Yay. I don't eat the skin of the fish for the fear of the scales. The teacher asked us to bring back some of the fish. Some people decided to bring back 2 or 4 or none. Guess how many greedy Rebecca decided to get? 6! On top of that, I asked Si Rui to also get 6. So we have more fishes to play with when we get back. We learned how to clean the fish by pulling the tongue or something to remove the intestines of the fish. That was fun too. We went to to the Lax Boa to clean the fishes. I remember that the toilet in that area was the old school type with a hole as a toilet bowl. It was surprising clean for such a rustic model. Hahaha. There was a wooden house that only housed the toilet. Or a toilet that was in the shape of a mini house with mini curtains and all. But it was cute. Hahaha.

SALMON FARM! 

 We went to feed the salmon in the farm, owned by the owner of Laxboa. You can hear the splashing the salmon made when the food was thrown to them. Boy, were they happy. I would be happy too if those salmon went into my tummy. >:)

I look so happy! Hahaha. 

Ducks on the wall

I guess the owner caught them and filled them?

Feast of SALMON!

 This was hands-down one of the most memorable meals in the enitre exchange. When can you ever ever eat home-smoked salmon, marinated eel, and the whole salmon is there for you to see and it is FREE-FLOW. It is just super crazy and I felt super happy looking at the food. The owner was very nice because he heard that we were from Singapore and his daughter went to Singapore for exchange. So he let us go take our food first. It was crazy hard to take a picture before everyone started.

Look at my crazy happy burnt face >.<

Fishes stuck in the net. 

I realised that it took some practice and technique to remove the fishes from the nets. You have to untangle the net from the gills and pull it out head first. I thought it was fun. Even if the fishes were herring.

One of the other things we did was to take a walk along the coastline. We were walking when we saw a family of baby squirrels running about. The squirrels were not afraid of us at all! They just kept following us and Nina had to chase them away. I quite like walking in the countryside, I realised. Never knew that part of me existed. But it was really beautiful. I even tasted the lake water and it was cold and crisp. So yummy! Apparently it is okay to drink it because the water just melted from the ice, but not a good idea to do so in summer. It will be contaminated.

Wild flowers!

Legless lizard? Worm? Snake?

One of the large summer houses along the coastline. #houseofdreams

Only in Sweden, you drink beer with your lunch on school trips.

 I have to say that I did not really drink the beer because beer makes you pee. Which is a bad idea when you are walking along the coast with no toilet in sight. Hahaha.

So many of these rocks around. 

Wild flower #2

Wild flower #3

A panorama of the coastline

Such beautiful sights, how can I not fall in love with the place? *poignant smile*

Falukorv, pasta, peas and tomato sauce and cheese for dinner.

Oats, cornflakes, milk and apple sauce and lingonberry jam and raisins for breakfast.

Ham, lingonbrod, ghurka och ost pa lunch 

Ol, ham, tomat, ost och polarbrod pa lunch

Best ever lunch: Smoked salmon with and without cheese, marinated herring, gravlax, fake sashimi (haha), salad and potato for lunch

Rhubarb pie and raspberry panna cotta for dessert

Brunch for the last day

Scrumptious feast of leftovers for bunch on the last day. :')

Attempted herring again. 

Notes to self: herring is more palatable with sour cream.

Reflections:

This trip was more distinct in my mind maybe because it was the last Nordic culture trip, and also the latest since I left Sweden. In this trip, we got to talk to the other students more, ref. Florian and Sebastian and I really enjoyed myself. It could be that there were fewer of us (Singaporeans) so we found ways to interact with others. But I really enjoyed myself and learnt a lot in the process. Maybe because it was my last 2 weeks in Sweden, so everything felt so surreal. I am not sure. But I really do miss the place and I also know that I will never be there in the same circumstance again. It is devastating to think of it that way, but I figured that's life. So I promise myself. Savour all opportunities. You will never know where life brings you. 

Of course, there is a lot more to the story about the herrings, and I think I will talk about it next time. That's a embarrassing and funny story to tell. :')