It’s a rainy Monday and I think I have come to terms with this. It rains in Malmö — a lot. I don’t know if this is true all year or just summer, fall and winter. We have been here almost 7 months, and so far it has rained constantly. Hardly two days in a row pass without rain.
My friend who visited us from the UK last week said it was similar there too. We both lived in California for a decade and we are intimately aware of our need for sunshine. While we were walking through Malmö, the sun burst through the cloud cover, and I got excited.
“I haven’t seen the sun in weeks!” It might have been a gross exaggeration for the benefit of someone who would understand, but it had been days at least.
But as I have mentioned in this blog before, weather is not a show stopper in Sweden. People bike, walk, run, and even push baby strollers through the wind, rain and drizzle. I have even heard of people jumping into the ocean in January. It is a bit of a macho Viking thing, but still, it happens. I have seen pictures.
While weather is not a show stopper, observing correct activities for correct seasons might be.
It is kind of like an LA friend once told me, “There is beach season and hiking season in southern California.” You can go to the beach in winter, but it will be too cold to swim, and you can hike in the heat of summer, but that can be hot, dry and miserable too. In Sweden it seems to be both a matter of practicality and tradition. Seasons are not just for weather. Swedish life is organized into seasons for work and food and apparently, motorcycling too.
Saturday I dropped Kip and River off near a known motorcross trail, which was really a series of dirt roads, in Skåne. I drove the car up to Markaryd, left it there and caught a couple of trains back to Malmö. It was great for me to get out of the city, drive through farmland and deep woods, and remember that Sweden is much bigger than our beloved grey Malmö. It is rural with small towns and mid-sized cities, connected by roads and trains.
It was also great for me to navigate the trains myself. Kip commutes by train several times a week to Älmhult, but I rarely use them as we live and work in Malmö. On the weekends we use the car if we need to get somewhere further away than our feet will carry us in 20 minutes.
When the train stopped in Hässleholm I walked around to get a look-and-see at this charming mid-sized city. Its the last weekend of January and it still looks like Christmas there.
I like using public transit, even if no one speaks to each other, it brings people together in a way that traveling in cars cannot. As we sit, side by side, we are traveling together, a common goal of moving through space and time, a common need to commute spawned by an infinite number of personal needs – to go to work, to shop, to get to school, to visit someone in the hospital, to get out.
It gives me time to be philosophical about people riding in trains.
The men found the car where I left it, and made it back home hungry and cold; and when I told my Swedish friend later Saturday night, she laughed.
“You know, in Sweden we have a saying, ‘When you hear motorcycles, its time for spring.’”
Kip seemed to agree. It was fun, but too cold, too soon. It might be a couple of months before the bikes make it back on the trail. In the meantime I have seen him scoping out the possibilities of a summer, Baja style, European motorcross trip.
