Sweden is looong

Place: Östersund

Tunes: Muse, Mansun, The Cult, Creed

Wikipedia tells us that: At 450,295 square kilometres, Sweden is the third largest country in the European Union by area, with a total population of about 9.4 million. 

Riding through it I can tell you that this is one big country. Two days driving from Nordkapp to Östersund with a stop in Gallivare. About 10h driving each day and we still have two days to go to Karlskrona, which is about as far south as you can go in Sweden. Driving can be a bit slow as there are small villages with over-enthusiastic traffic police and all sorts of nonsense on the road, like hunters and moose. And chicken.

In Finland moose hunters actually go into the forest and shoot the moose there and then get a tractor or something to get the dead moose on to a road. Here, it seems that the hunter's don't bother with all this running around in the woods business and they just stand on the side of the road with a radio, a mustache and a rifle.

It has been quite uneventful most of the time. Yesterday, we went through the same great roads in Norway to some nice not-quite-mountain roads in northern Sweden. After a bit of that, we have just driven through some woods. Some nice lakes in there occasionally and we did go through the Arctic Circle (again). 

The traffic in general is not too bad and the riding is probably as easy as it will ever get on this trip. The only thing that is tested is your patience.

The road in the north went through these kinds of cliffs. Nice.

Crossing the arctic circle.

This guy is in the official "coat of arms" of Lapland in Finland. I guess this is also the case in Sweden, but being in Sweden, he has to be a bit more bling and has this really gay gold pendant thing.

Lakes.

More lakes.

And more.

There was a big section of roadworks along the way with some really bad bits. Very loose gravel with big rocks. Very unstable. These bits could be anticipated when the speed limit went from 70 to 50 and to 30. Nasty looking bits with my very limited experience.   

Of course we drove through all of them at 70 kph. I saw Jukka go through in front of me and the back end of his bike started to sway from side by side in an increasingly violent manner. So, this was to happen to me also? Man, this was a mistake and I should have slowed down ... and then I reached the same bit. My first thoughts when the rear end of the bike started to thrash around were "I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die", but instead it was fine this time and every other time we went through a similar roadwork section, and I am still in one piece. 

Point the front wheel in the right direction and do not let go of the throttle. Who said you can't learn how to ride off-road by reading a book? Luckily in the first case (which was the worst bit), the tarmac started just in time before the back got completely out of control.

In Östersund it was a disco night. Gay disco as it seemed. 90% of the customers were men. But to offset this there was plenty of very feminine touchy-feely business around even if the people doing this were not actually gay (or who knows). You would not see this in Finland I assure you. Or maybe you need to go to the places with the rainbow stickers on the door. And man, I have never seen a more pathetic bouncer than in this place. Not far from home and I already feel like a foreigner.