Hornudden

It has been a little while since my last post, and I have moved in the meantime, so I feel that a quick recap is in order. I am now living and working at Hornudden which is about an hour from both Stockholm and Uppsala. Hornudden is very different from Bossgarden, primarily because Hornudden is a commercial venture on the part of Mats and Karin, rather than a way of life, which Bossgarden was for Jonas and Sanna. Thus, Hornudden has more land, more infrastructure in the way of greenhouses, houses, and fields, as well as many more WWOOFers. When I arrived there were 14 (7 of whom were French) WWOOFers here, as compared to 7 when I left Bossgarden. I have also been picking tomatoes...LOTS of tomatoes about 3-4 times a week for at least 3 hours at a time. Apparently I am exceptionally good at picking tomatoes, hence the frequency with which I am assigned this job. Other jobs I have done include picking lettuce, zucchini, tearing out cucumber plants, packing herbs to be sold, and cleaning. My favorite job is without a doubt packin herbs because it does not require contorting into any strange positions, and the plants all smell so nice.

The people here are a very interesting bunch. The French group left a week after I arrived and were briefly replaced by a group of Germans and now a group of English girls. I have really enjoyed seeing the way each of these groups interact with each other, but it has meant that I have been the butt of quite a few American jokes. For example, last night 8 of us decided to play Scrabble. There were 4 Britons, 2 Germans, 1 French, and myself. Well, one of the Britons began to split the teams he said, "Oh this is perfect, we have 4 native English speakers, and 4 who might need a little help with the language". To which I responded with a rather rude French phrase that the French WWOOFers taught me before they left. My current room-mate is a 19 year ol German girl named Judith. I quite like her, but unfortunately my German is non-existent and her English is only just fluent, so that our communications involve quite a bit of pantomime (which means I would have dominated the family Charades game I trust occured at the beach last week).

In the time that I have not been working we have been swimming in the lake on which Hornudden is situated. The water is the perfect temperature, very cold and refreshing when you first jump in but you quickly adjust to it and it is perfectly comfortable. We have our own little dock which pokes out the reeds and a paddle boat which we are allowed to use to explore the lake. As of yet, the only place I have gone is the the aptly named "Crap Island" which is little more than a poop covered rock with a few trees growing on it. It's very pretty from far away. I have also been getting back into running, which has been really nice not only because it's a nice way to explore the area a little bit, but also because all of the delicious rich food has been catching up with me (Small side note: I found out exactly how expensive all of the food that is grown here and that I am getting to eat is. A type of salad green called portlack costs $50 a pound, which means the green salad I ate for dinner tonight cost close to $30!). I have also learned how to make bread, and according to my house mates, make a very delicious honey whole wheat bread (I promise to make some when I get home). On the weekends we have been taking little day trips to nearby Strangnas and hopefully Mariefred tomorrow. Strangnas is a really cute town on the water with a beautiful medieval cathedral sitting on the highest hill in the town. It is really beautiful inside with a similar style of painted ceilings as I saw in Stockholm and Ostra Gerum. The center of the city consists of a few blocks of very typical Swedish low, red, wooden houses each of which has a little enclosed yard, and ususally an apple tree. I could definitely see myself living there (at least in the summer), it's beautiful.

I'm not sure there is actually much more to say for the moment. There have been some really nice moments here, and plenty of little anecdotes which were funny at the time at least, but they are tough to replicate in blog form.

Our dock and paddle boat

No matter how far from home you go...

Interior of Strangnas Cathedral


Looking up at the cathedral

Houses in the center of Strangnas

P.S. I lied, I have one more story I have to tell because it just happened right as I was finishing this post and was one of those experiences I want to always remember. Judith looked out our window and saw that the night was beautiful and clear, and there was a full moon. Upon discovering this, we all decided to go down to the lake and go skinny-dipping in the moonlight, because the reflection on the water was really amazing. So there we went six girls who had only know each other for a matter of weeks or days and we just swam and floated looking at the stars and the moon from a lake in Sweden. The water was quite cold, but I am so glad I did it.