Day 64

Woke up around nine this morning.  Had a simple breakfast of green tea and bread with cheese and cucumber.  Around 11am Mats came and picked us up and we headed to the shops to get supplies.

The first thing I noticed when we got to the supermarket (apart from it being much bigger than what I’ve been used to) was that they have a whole display of these ‘personal’ barcode scanners at the entrance.  If you have an ICA supermarket card you can take one of these devices with you while you shop and use it to scan each item as you put it into your trolley.  Once you’ve finished shopping there’s a kind of express checkout where all you have to do is pay and you’re done.  Much better than our ‘self-checkouts’ at Coles/Safeway!

We bought some soy sausages (because Mats and Emma don’t eat meat), hot dog rolls, cookies, some Bostongurka and – most importantly – a disposable BBQ.  Bostongurka is a pickled cucumber relish made with spices like paprika and mustard seeds.  Kind of like pickle relish from the US.

We drove out to a place called Jonsered, where Emma had grown up.  It was only about 10 or 15kms from the center of Gothenburg but was basically what we would consider ‘the country’.  We met Åse and Tresse there and all hiked to our picnic spot.  The area was beautiful!  There was a big lake called Aspensjö close to where we parked the car.  We walked through magnificent forest landscapes for about 10 minutes (up some quite steep hills) before arriving at a clearing with a few buildings known as Freden croft. 

Apart from the buildings (one of which was a café that was closed for Easter) there was a hiker’s shelter.  Two small wooden huts and a permanent stove/campfire area between them – perfect for our picnic.  We fired up the BBQ and within 10 minutes were munching down hot dogs with tomato sauce, mustard, Bostongurka and dried onions.  Delicious!

Our BBQ

We went for a short walk to another lake that was close by – Stora Rammsjön – before heading back for tea/coffee (which we’d brought in thermoses) and cookies.  Talk about a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Emma and I stopped at the supermarket on the way home to pick up supplies for dinner.  Being the good house guest that I am, I offered to cook.  Given the vegetarian restrictions I decided to cook pasta primavera (pasta with vegetables).  For dessert we cooked Kladdkaka – a fantastic kind of gooey chocolate cake – topped with M&Ms and whipped cream.