Förlorad och Återfunnen (Lost & Found)

I love Swedish clouds

By the time I arrived in Copenhagen, I had been up and traveling for 19 hours and had not really slept well in several days. Off the plane I was met with a sea of languages and long lines of people.

There was a Danish child next to me in line who literally never stopped talking for the entire 45 minutes it took for all the passengers one by one to show their passports to the guard. I began to wonder if I really liked the sound of Scandinavian languages after all.

Waiting for my baggage, I looked around for the train ticket office, or a map of the airport, or someone who looked as if they worked there.

I had a map in my pocket, one I had drawn myself from looking at the Kastrup website earlier. However, both it and the wall map I eventually found made no sense; no red dot saying "You are here" and no little arrows pointing to know which direction was which.

Then suddenly there was the way and there was the ticket office. I managed to buy a ticket, to find the train platform, and to get on a train that more or less went where I wanted to go.

The Oresund Bridge

The train trip was an adventure in itself, going over the Oresund Bridge, chatting with elderly people from southern Sweden (who have a particular accent, Skånska), and looking at the pretty green countryside dotted with perfect little lakes and red houses with white trim, crowned by a bright blue sky with sweeping clouds-- the kind of sky I have seen every day in Sweden.

While on the train, I studied the train table and map and figured a way to shave an hour off my trip, but it required getting off the train in the middle of nowhere (Alvesta) and waiting for another one that I wasn't really sure would come.

The Oresund Sea

But it did. And I arrived in Kalmar, an hour early with no Swedish kroner and a useless cellphone.

I wanted to call my friend Anders and tell him I was early, since he was driving an hour from Oskarshamn to pick me up. There was a payphone in the station, but I didn't know how to use it.

Mysterious payphone

Up until then, when people found out I was American they spoke to me in English, broken rusty English sometimes, but English nevertheless. However, in Kalmar station, all three people I went up to said they didn't speak English.

But a nice woman at the ticket counter dialed Anders' house and I told Martin, his son, that I was at the station.

I hauled my luggage out onto the sidewalk, a cobblestone sidewalk, a European sidewalk, surrounded by European buildings, and up to some things I can only assume were benches (I hope).

I had no more time than to sit down and cross my legs, when Anders and his eldest son, Patric, zipped up in their Volvo, driving right up onto the sidewalk directly in front of my feet. He had left early on the hunch that I would be early too.

It was the best, best moment, which words can't even describe.

Next: odyssey of food