Trip Day 7: Shooting Blanks

My on-again-off-again relationship with the rain is no more. We are now a confirmed couple, I am ready to change my status on facebook, and declare to the world that yes: the wet from the sky and I are one. I have dissolved into it, relaxed in its embrace, and it has filled me and consumed me and now we are expecting little tiny drops. We are very happy together.

But you know, when a relationship goes on for that lenght of time, you start to wonder. Take stock of your life. As you hear the monotonous sound of your life partners pitter patter, the drooning noice of it, and you feel, yet again, its cold cold fingers fondling your neck at really rather the wrong moment, you start to wonder. Is this really what I want? Is this all there is in life? Could there be someone out there for me, not as wet, surely, but perhaps slightly warmer?

Today has been the type of day the most conductive to a measured, critical analysis of weather this bloody fucking trip was a good idea to begin with or no. My thoughts have focused on two main issues, both rather high on the Maslovic Pyramid.

1. No Food Is Worse Food than Bad Food, When You Are Hungry

Jereome K. has already explained to us the faith of a packed lunch in rain. I will not borrow, nor steal, from him, and only say that I wish he could have been around today, to bring his comic genious to bear on the concept of an orange-filling danish, and three slices of smoked salmon, travelling together down a bumpy road in a paper bag in a tropical downpour. Leaving you to imagine the rest: I will instead go discuss the more general aspects of food on this trip.

Far be it from me to kick someone who is down (barring that Caravan-owning member of the Furtherancers I met in a back alley last night). Which explains why I have written so scantily about the joys of eating – there has been nothing to eat – and by default, precious little to be praised. 

As I write this, I have journeyed some 800 odd k of Swedish road. And I have been able to procure exactly two cups of coffee. In towns, luckily, you do find some “shops”. Their vegetable departments have ranged from banana – in singular – to potatoes – uncooked, not ideal for a sensitive stomach such as mine. This has left me subsisting on stale bread, packs of unidentifiable conserved meats and the occasional ice-cream – frosted of course, being a left-over from summers past. Now, I know that a slow death of scurvy is not the fate of travellers in all lands.

Walking in France? I can give you the adress of a great farm, at the back of nowhere, where a man lives with his pigs and his goats and his live in Russian he-lover: they serve a divine meal, complete with little toxic rocks he calls, affectionately, cheese. Wandering the wilds of Spain? Well, stay away from the chilled red, but please have your fill of the Pulpo and the extra dry cider; to be had at your convenience, climbing every mountain.

Of course I know that these delicacies have probably been flown in from Quaint Local Produce Ltd outside Austin, Texas. Of course you can’t expect Swedish yokels, who see one passing tourist ever ten months, to be standing at the ready with the skillet or the spit. But a cracker, perhaps?

2. No Company is Better Company than Bad Company, But Still Kinda Sad on Day Seven

Yes, I’ll admit it. There is something about standing in the middle of nowhere, drenched to the bone, with six hours of heavy uphellish road before you, that sort of makes me wish I had someone to share my impressions with. (This goes also for the breathtaking scenic views, the quaint villages, the cute houses and the Downhills). Explaining it to others later will never quite capture the gashtlyness/grandness of the occasion.

This lack of company became extra evident today when I looked through my camera. I had promised my sister to document my adventure (she thinks I have secretly taken the train and am booked into some SPA or other). But so far I had taken one picture. Of a road going uphill.

(Being a not very good photographer is only made bearable if you have people, some human interest, in your pictures. The nearest I have come to human interaction in the past few days was saying a guarded hello to a one-legged Finnish lady who was sharing my bathroom this morning.  And I couldn’t really snap a shot of that, I mean, her.)

Suffice to say, bar the snippets I can give posterity (and the Radio Surveillance unit of the Swedish Military) on this page; no one will ever really know what I have been through. And that means, I am afraid, no medal, no oohs or aahs and no later doubling over laughing Together With Someone thinking about that time we (that is, the rain and I) missed the ferry crossing the sound.

Once I got to thinking about this, I felt sort of down. I mean, the rain was pouring, my stomach was rumbling, and that was it for human sounds. So I did what any girl does when she is in need: I called my brother. Having ensured that I will arrive tomorrow to a large cooked dinner, a large glass of wine and then a large party full of debauched artists I feel better.

And I guess I can face on more day of downing in love.