The Ugliest Girl in Sweden Still Has Big Boobs

Scandinavia 2008 - Day 8

Part 1:

My Friday began by riding the bus to the Swedish outdoor cultural center and zoo: Skansen. It was gray and rainy, but the air was fresh and it felt great to inhale large lung-fulls of air. After paying and looking out over the city from the rose garden, I continued up the hill to the collection of rural farm buildings where I wondered from hut to hut looking at the simple but effective heavy timber construction. Inside one particular hut I encountered two beautiful girls who were dressed in period garments and who were churning butter and cooking over a small wood fire. We talked for a while and they showed me many of the traditional tools and utensils they had around. It was cozy and warm inside the cabin, and the air smelled of sweet smoke and salty butter cream. The girls offered me the churn and I took a turn pounding and twisting the butter inside the old wooden barrel. After I finished making the butter I tasted it as well as the cheese one of the girls had been boiling in a kettle over the fire. Everything was rich and tasty. From the hut I explored some of the nearby animal exhibits, I especially liked the bear exhibit with the three rambunctious young cubs that ran all around the exhibit and were very entertaining.

It began to rain a little more heavily, and I had seen most of Skansen, so I walked to the bottom of the hill and rode the bus to the Modern Museum. With the exception of one thing, I liked nothing I saw on display in the museum. The only thing that caught my imagination was a series of cubes stacked one on another that were the complete living quarters for the artist. Each activity of article had its own space inside the modular system. I spent most of my time in the very well stocked art and architecture book section of the museum shop.

From the museum I took the train to Gamla Stan where I took a nice refreshing walk through the old city. Like the modern museum, Gamla Stan too failed to hold my attention. It was decent, but for some reason it had no real magic, maybe it was that day, or my mood, but it was a nearly forgettable walk. After circling through the old city several times, my feet really began to hurt, so I walked across the bridge to the other side of the river to where my hostel boat was docked.

At my hostel I showered, changed, and gathered my things from the luggage storage shed out front. I watched an hour of the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics before walking to the metro. It was evening and once again there was a steady stream of extremely gorgeous women running and biking up and down the boardwalk along the river. Sitting on the metro train I was admiring the many gorgeous women when I saw one that was actually quite ugly. While looking at her and thinking about how tragic it must be to be so ugly in a country such as this, I formulated the idea for a song called “The Ugliest Girl in Sweden Still Has Big Boobs.”

Part 2:

On the train to CPH I discovered I had real beds in my train car. My roomies were all mutes. So I put my shit away and was the last in my car to go to bed. When I finally settled in they turned off the lights. I wasn't even tired. In the morning the train stopped in Malmo.