Umeå, 26.07.2017

Wow, that was a night. Thanks to the so-called "right of public access" we set up our tent somewhere in the middle of nowhere and, as announced yesterday, disappeared into it after dinner to play Kniffel. The later it got, the more our fear increased and not even Kniffel could distract us. Leon tried to hide his uneasy feeling from me, but when he asked me to bury my business to cover our tracks, I knew what was going on. We could hardly stand it, yet resisted the temptation to pack everything back into the car and sleep somewhere else. Suddenly, we heard rustling and cracking from all directions. I preferred to keep in mind that the area around Stockholm is one of the richest in bears for this night. In the end, it was a very short night with little sleep and a pounding heart throughout. The next morning, before breakfast, we cleared our camp and disappeared. As I am writing about the past night, I am once again feeling uneasy. It was only when we had breakfast half an hour further north in a beautiful spot that our bodies started to relax. I'm afraid you have to have been in such a situation yourself to understand our feelings. That's how it is with dear fear. On the E4 towards Sundsvall, we saw the village of Danmark from the motorway at the level of the student city Uppsala ("...a student from Uppsalalala lalalalala lalalalala...") and decided to pay a spontaneous visit. A narrow road led into the collection of red wooden houses, in the middle of which stood the village church and next to it the parish hall and the kindergarten. The musician parks next to the pastor here. Kindly, a resident of Danmark allowed us to take some photos of the unique landscape from her driveway. Mile after mile, the landscape increasingly corresponds to what one imagines of rugged Scandinavia. Deep blue lakes surrounded by rocky hills and dense pine and birch forests. Today, I even saw a moose in the distance. Maybe it was a deer. Or a tree stump. After 600 km of nothing but forest, a moose is a welcome change. Instead of endless fast food restaurants on the side of the road in southern Sweden, rest areas are becoming increasingly rare. That's where the truck drivers and campers gather. It seems somewhat absurd when you consider how little traffic there is on the roads. - And they are getting emptier and emptier. After a total of 3200 km driven, this is a significant insight. By the way, the Volvo has never been better. Tires, oil, everything tip-top. To digest the shock of last night, we treat ourselves to a camping site just outside the university town of Umeå, which we want to explore fresh and rested tomorrow morning.