As I headed through the woods this morning, on my way to the ICA, I accidentally followed a leveret. The young hare slowly crossed the lit path before heading along the MTB track for a bit before stopping and looking back at me. It was as if it was waiting for me to catch up. It then went haring off. Maybe it thought I was a tortoise.
Rather than some sort of Greek race, today was strangely dominated by speaking. Okay, I realize how silly that sounds, after all, most days have a lot of speaking in them. But, when I look back on today, it seemed strangely different.
There was Mirinda and her excellent Swedish for starters. We visited the handicraft fair at Trostorp and she indulged in conversation with most of the stallholders.
To be fair, a lot of it was in English but, then, she also had a go at Swedish a few times. She’s really very good.
She’s also very good at buying stuff and we came away with a number of things we don’t exactly need.
My Swedish, on the other hand, is appalling.
For instance, the young fellow on the checkout at ICA said something after I’d paid. It wasn’t any of the usual things I’m getting used to and, subsequently, I looked at him quizzically. He then pointed at my t-shirt and said “Cadiz!” I grunted something in agreement and then said thanks.
For all I know he could have said that Cadiz was his favourite football team. Or that he was born in Cadiz. Or that he was in Cadiz last week visiting his best mate who has moved there after marrying a Spanish woman.
I had even less luck while I was walking home when a woman spoke to me in Swedish. I said I was sorry, but I didn’t speak Swedish…in English. She shrugged and walked on. She then stopped and came back to say something else in Swedish. I wanted to say that my language skills had not improved in the 4 seconds since she’d spoken to me before but…well, my language skills had not improved in the 4 seconds since she’d spoken to me before.
I said, in my worst Swedish “Jag pratar inte svenska. Förlåt.” Which seemed to satisfy her. She said something else, which could have been “Stupid foreigner,” then continued on her way.
Things took a turn for the better when I ran into Magnus while he was walking his dog. He likes to practice his English (which is already very good) so we chatted about the MTB track. He told me that he’d had a lot of problems getting approval and had ended up talking to other MTB people in places like Canada, Germany and the UK.
He had wanted to build it for the kids, which is why it goes by Vitalis School. His idea was to provide something for them that would make them put away their screens and go outside. I experienced a bit of a paradigm shift. I now completely approve of the MTB track and hope it’s a big success. According to Magnus, there have already been a few kids using it.
All chat aside, the best bit of today was seeing the carriages at Trostorp. Previously, everything’s been closed and I hadn’t seen them. Today, however, they were on glorious show.
In the meanwhilst, Jason went on a five-hour hike into the woods.
