quidnovis61

Two Sundays back....
I woke up around 6 am....made my coffee (Yes Instant Nescafé from the store downstairs that Mummy sent me in the last parcel) and wandered to my computer.... and looked out of the sitting room window...
GUESS what I saw in my garden???
Lara and Lea!!



(Yes...at the risk of hearing you burst into laughter all the way to Sweden...let me tell you: ALL MY WILD ANIMALS HAVE NAMES.... there!!! now I have said it...)

I dont need to write more on this...the pictures speak for themselves.....

And all of a sudden something frightened them away and they were gone in a flash......!!!


Signing off for now!

CS

Yes, Sweden....... ...it really is a lot more than Bofors, blondes, ABBA, Björn Borg, Uppsala University , Olof Palme et al.

For those interested in statistics of this tiny country let me, as a layman in this field tell you:
It is the size of Madhya Pradesh
Its entire population is less than Kolkata
Someone has worked out that 7½ "Swedens' will fit into one India
There are statistics on how many cows there are in the country
People don't honk their cars unless in greeting (tut-tut-tut) or the Swedish version of road-rage (a long tooooooot-tooooooot). That is how far these taciturn Swedes go when really angry in traffic quite defying their boisterous, raging looting ancestors The Vikings. And oh yes, five cars and three motorbikes standing still constitutes a traffic jam. Might even be a picture in the newspaper the next day.
The water in all the lakes, streams, rivers are safe, so much so that a walk from the Old Town to the city centre in Stockholm will find anglers sitting on the many bridges that join the islands of Stockholm....enjoying a quiet meditative moment of fishing and yes, catching fish as well.

There are any number of such pleasant and important statistics ...!

But let me take you with me to my favourite town.....

Everyone I have met has heard of Gothenburg, Stockholm, Malmö and so on. Beautiful big cities, well laid out, clean like the rest of the country, museums and culture galore, well maintained architecture from the middle ages and so on and so forth. So...I am not taking you to these big cities but rather to a small beautiful town called Skara.
(Yup! You guessed right....I live there...)

No casual visitor has heard of this charming town, I am sure. It is located between Stockholm and Gothenburg and sandwiched between the two enormous lakes of Sweden: The Vänern and The Vättern (just "below" the town Mariestad on this map) . In the flatlands of this agricultural part of Sweden with fertile fields, enchanting countryside, white birches, blue lakes and golden corn fields (in the summer of course) ...it is a treat for sore eyes.

Skara celebrated its 1000^th birthday in 1988. But compared to Rome, Bonn etc which celebrated their 2000^th birthday around the same time, Skara is just a baby of course! The main landmark is the Cathedral in the centre of the town. Sweden has thirteen dioceses and Skara is one of them - hence the cathedral. (of which I will tell you more some other day) A beautiful High Gothic church built in the 11^th century with natural acoustics in the high vaulted space that beats any Bose, Bang Olufsen or Philips.

But this sort of historical stuff isn't really what I want to tell you about. I would rather tell you about the things that most tourists miss. A visit - of all places - to the pharmacy is really worth it...built in the turn of the century; it has the most amazing teak carpentry, medicinal bottles with old labels and astonishingly, a turquoise tiled sink with a lion's head that spouts water. The kind I have seen all over Italy and while one waits for ones electronic number to come up with a soft "pling' it is worth looking around to marvel at the influence of Italian art in Europe - even as far away as this tiny northern town of Skara.

For those of you silently wondering about my clothes size ...let me tell you  the reason....Cafés and bakeries (yummmmy!) abound. In Skara alone there are six of them!! The cafés all range from the traditional to the modern Barista like cafeterias, selling coffee and breads with Italian names that is all the rage.

The traditional ones however are an experience in themselves. Swedes drink enormous amounts of coffee - I cannot tell you the exact stats on that but sufficeth to know that in Europe they consume the maximum amount of rich strong dark coffee (South American brands) and they also hold the European record on.... bananas. (These kinds of useless facts are what make Sweden Swedish). A traditional cafeteria is really beautiful - with velvet upholstery on Gustavian furniture, old style structured wall paper and art (that one actually understands) hanging on the walls, pastries and cakes (like one would recognise from books and magazines) generously feeding the Swedes' penchant for whipped cream. They say it is because of the sub zero climate. I leave such judgements out...they are delicious no matter the climate - especially creamy vanilla sponge cakes topped with fresh strawberries.  A delight to the taste buds. The bakeries have breads and other goodies that one can smell when parking the car! A Swedish meatball sandwich with beetroot mayonnaise, salad and boiled eggs on rye bread may not be something for the very figure conscious but is well worth the SEK 40 . (Yes, Sweden is part of the EU but has retained its currency)

What one should really do is invest in a good pair of walking shoes (no need to go overboard with Gore-Tex...just simple jogging shoes will do...)  and walk the cobbled stoned roads, alleys, side lanes. There are the most amazing discoveries to be made. Take "the time to stand and stare" at the street lights that once ran on lamp oil and on warm summer evenings when the sun sets long after midnight, I promise you, you will hear the clip clop of horse hooves and the clattering of carriages as they round the bend to where the church is and the beautiful Gothic school built in the mid 1800s. You will hear the gentle hiss of the light as the town watchman lights street-lamps. A Dickensian sight conjured up in all its beauty. The side lanes are dotted with houses a few hundred years old, wrought iron gates and gardens well laid out with the heady perfume of roses, lilacs and honeysuckle - like a Chopin Nocturne for the olfactory senses, the library with its musty smell of books from the early 1500s is a pleasure, the old chestnut trees that tell you of the changing seasons by their very colours, the ruins of the old wall...all are worth taking in on a slow unhurried walk.

One should however take the time to have a break at the tiny shop next to the Town Hall and the fountain selling the most divine tasting ice cream you have ever eaten...well, it is Italian of course...and the chocolate is superb!!!

 Sit in the mild Scandinavian sun on benches in the square, listen to the fountain, the church bells, the quiet sounds of the town weaving through its day at its own unhurried pace. And actually enjoy the sight and sound of traffic sans blaring honks....the sound of a robust V8 engine, the superb design of an unusual Maserati, the sight of a maroon MX5 Miata cruising gently past, roof down, a V70 Volvo full of dogs and children.

The museum has a collection of 3000 year old bronze Viking shields that is amazing. They were found in a nearby field by the farmer when ploughing. Just imagine sitting on your tractor and ploughing and finding something glinting in the sun....!! Archaeologists swarmed his fields and made the most astounding discovery from the Viking Age. The shields and ornaments are minutely restored; a film about the find is beautifully made with Viking music and history spun in between the bee-hive diggings of archaeologists. It is stunning and worth the time spent there. Behind the museum is the Open Air museum where an entire village has been reconstructed with houses, barns, a herbarium, live farmyard animals of that time, a shop and a church that has been brought in from villages around Skara so one may see what a village looked like in the mid 1800s. It is a pleasure to walk there and dream away to another world...another time.....

The lake and botanical gardens is a part of any visit of course.The flora and fauna are of course very Nordic and it is pleasant to sit on the clean green grass and rest awhile. I could go on....but let this be a short introduction to a future self discovery of an old world charm that does not exist in the big cities.

And oh, yes, I quite forgot! Skara boasts of three delightful things:
1.Free parking - no P-meters or meter maids.
2. A delicious Pancake festival when you can eat any amount of it with strawberry jam (and naturally whipped cream!) and
3. The most exotic of all things -. a competition with great prizes on "Cherry-Pips-Spitting"....try and beat that!

Of course there are "worse" ones in Sweden - like Axe Throwing on Tree Trunks competitions.

Is that how the English came up with the (comparatively...) sedate art of playing darts - from the Vikings....
I wonder.

So.......When are you coming for a visit? I will fetch you in Gothenburg...book your ticket and send a mail....

Signing off fo now!
CS

There are sun worshippers.... and then there are sun worshippers. And as we all know - everything is relative.      Be it two-legged sun worshippers on the Sandy beaches.... the four-legged kind. in the pastures..... Or indeed,
yes.....the third kind..........

On my recent visit to India, I saw this young man almost every morning, early as the sun rose, in the same posture....

One late evening when I was talking on the mobile in my balcony he came out too and we.... waved. Hesitantly. But with a smile.  When I had finished on the phone, we got talking..."Hello!" he said,  "Better reception from the balcony isn't it?" I said "Yeah...right!" (What I did not say was I also enjoyed watching the bats in the gourd tree below. I haven't seen bats since I was a little girl...) And so we got friendly across the space that divided our 3^rd floor balconies. He is 22 and studying law. His father is an advocate and he is going to be the same and join his father's firm.

And so my curiosity got the better of me - I asked him about his morning ritual....and yes, it is true...they are sun worshippers....amazing ...I didn't realise there were still "proper" sun worshippers - as a religion so to speak.

And so this boy, Chandra, woke up every morning, had his bath and as soon as he had finished, he would come out and say his prayers facing the sun and ask for his blessings....chanting verses from the Rig Veda in Sanskrit. (Imagine that...) He told me a lot about it and what he prayed for, why, and that their family had been sun worshippers since time immemorial...

While on a visit to Benaras many years ago I saw the Sadhus, yogis, sages with ash on their foreheads and beards and flowers in their hands, stand naked in the holy Ganges facing the sun...(fortunately that is not the case everywhere...!)

Then....Chandra goes in. His Mum calls for his breakfast of hot toast and butter and jam. He dons on Wranglers jeans and Nike t shirt and Adidas shoes. He takes the plastic Microwave-safe box with sandwiches that his Mum has made for his lunch. He kick-starts his motorbike (an Indian 123 cc Bajaj Pulsar) shattering the subdued early morning sounds of a neighbourhood awakening and roars off into the chaos of Hyderabadi traffic....leaving me smiling on my balcony.

And so, in a flash he becomes a part of the modern world and continues his life... The past meets the present. East meets West. Spirituality meets materialism. There is no conflict in this meeting of different worlds. There is, in fact, a soothing sense of continuity and co-existence. A lesson learned indeed. One does not have to give up one for the other. Sun worship and Adidas jogging shoes - they can coexist.- as India seems to prove constantly. 

I found this simply enchanting. It was just so primeval, so ancient, so "core" - it is the kind of things that one has read in our old religious Hindu mythologies, in Greek mythology the sun god Ra, and yes even the Vikings...as one has seen in the film about the shields in Skara Museum. Even though we all more or less believe in the powers of the sun we are not using the sun as our deity .... It was lovely.

I told him I had seen him every morning and liked the aura of peace and faith he exuded and asked him if I may photograph him one day....without his knowing which day. He said it was fine and ?no problems'. So I did....No, I do not take photos paparazzi - style... specially when performing such a personal ritual. Without permission to do so, it is indecent... And since we were so far away he neither heard nor was he distracted by the whirring sound of my Olympus zoom as it captured and preserved these moments of peace as he prayed. His father says his prayers too but he sits on the floor just by the door opening.

Is it a coincidence, I wonder, that his name is Chandra...?

(It is the masculine form of Moon in Hindi.)

When the sun disappears for days in the cold Scandinavian winter I can believe the Vikings worshipped the sun... 

Signing off for now!

CS

"Since golden October declined into sombre November / And the apples were gathered and stored, and the land became brown sharp points of death in a waste of water and mud."....TS Eliot

 Det är tidig vår när jag skriver detta. Snödropparna är ute. Domherrar med sina flickvänner besöker flitigt vårt solrosfröförsedda fågelbord. Det rings samtal för att boka tid för sommarbil besiktningar. För att byta däck. Semester-listor cirkulerar på kontoren. Lediga platser annonserar om sommar vik. Sommardrömmar och planer diskuteras. Och fram kommer de äntligen.... upptinade känslor om frihet, om våren och naturligtvis.....cyklar!!!

Hundratals barn i hela Sverige får äntligen ta fram sina cyklar. Man jublar! Nu är våren här!!! Glädjen lyser i barnens ögon och man känner friheten genom deras ögon. Jag läste i Aftonbladet om våra barn som blir fetare, tjockare, sitter stilla, spelar dataspel, tittar på tv....de ska UT!! Och leka...och dessutom borde man uppmuntra barnen att cykla till och från skolan. Det är PRECIS sådant man borde läsa inför våren. Då kommer man i gång med motion och sunda vanor som har legat på hyllan under de kalla gråmulna vintermånaderna.

Jag har en dotter. Hon och kompisen bestämmer sig för att....just det...cykla till skolan. Jag jublar! Tänk...så bra jag har det som mamma att inte behöva tjata! Jag småmyser hela kvällen...

På morgonen är jag så glad att tjejerna fått en sådan strålande morgon för vårens första cykelfärd. Sen kommer kallduschen: Mamma jag vill inte ha hjälm på mig! Hörde jag rätt? Kan det stämma? En ny dyr hjälm, köpt i höstas i moderiktig färg, fartränder, streamlined vinge i bak och hon vill inte ha den...Den ser inte ens ut som en upp- och nedvänd risskål i kinarestaurangerna....Varför, frågar jag med darrande röst.

Svaret är ännu mer häpnadsväckande....Då blir man retad. Det är mesigt.

Retad? Mesigt? Som förälder som månar om sitt barns säkerhet, som har sett vilka skador "hjälmlöshet" kan åstadkomma, som har en nära vän som har råkat ut just för en så'n olycka och lider än idag fast det har gått många år, som tycker att lagar och ordningar är bra att ha, som tycker om att ha bilbälte... är hjälm en självklarhet.

Var är de vuxna som tar sitt ansvar? Var är politikerna som ska se till att en lag om obligatorisk hjälm (även efter 15 års ålder) är lika självklar som att köra bil med bilbälte? Var är lärarna som ska se till att våra ungdomar är säkra i trafiken till och från skolan? Var är alla cykelförbunden som ska se till att en sån fråga drivs igenom? Varför är det så att man inte kör ens till stan och tillbaka utan bilbälte eller att spänna fast ett barn ordentligt?

Vad är det som gör det "mesigare" senare i livet? Är huvudet plötsligt så starkt att man inte behöver skydda det? Är cyklister och bilförare så duktiga på gatorna så att olyckor aldrig händer? Var är de vuxna som cyklar med hjälm på? Finns det inte hjälmar som passar huvudstorlekarna? Eller tror man verkligen på Norge-skämtet: när man slängde ner en mössa och en hjälm från ett högt torn så blev det ingen spricka i mössan men däremot blev det på hjälmen .....och därmed är en mössa säkrare?

Jag såg min dotter cykla iväg denna soldränkta vårlika morgon. Med hjälm på. Dock utan ett leende. Ska ansvarsfulla föräldrar behöva handskas med sån't varje gång man är konsekvent vad gäller säkerhet? Jag skrek till hennes snabbt försvinnande ryggtavla: Var stark! Det är okej att vara annorlunda! Det är DITT huvud vi pratar om!!

Okeeeejdå! kom ett litet irriterat svar med vinden.

Signing off for now!
CS
= (Cresat Scientia - May knowledge grow/ Må kunskapen växa)