A Swedish Shindig

Sunset over Norway from the window of my plane to Oslo

Roland: my good friend Stephan who I know since kindergarten days turned 50 recently, and as he lives in Sweden in the middle of the woods he invited something like 50 of his best friends to join him for a long weekend with nature, food, beer, music and a lot of fresh air! Unfortunately Sonja did not get any vacation, so I had to do the trip all by myself...

So after a journey from Strasbourg via Amsterdam Stephan picked my up from Oslo airport at 11pm on Wednesday nigh at broad daylight! We had another 2.5 hours to drive back to his house in Sweden, but it never got fully dark during the journey. Amazing! We arrived at 1:30 AM, and I fell to sleep as soon as I went horizontal.

The next day I had the opportunity to have a look around (it has been two years since I had been here the last time). Stephan is extremely handy, and where a few years ago there used to be an old hut without electricity or running water there now is a palace with heated floors, satellite TV and Internet, a couple of guest houses and a hot tub built from an old milk tank and heated to 40C/105F by log-fire.

One of the guest houses (I stayed in this one)

Backstage view on the pool with its heating system

Of course there is also a boat: right before we launched it

This one will not be launched in the foreseeable future

A view from the hill

At some point during the day my other friends arrived from Cologne area (also by plane, and Stephan had to do another tour to Oslo for picking them up). Right away we hiked to the nearest lake where two of the boys turned into men and jumped into the ice-cold water.

On our way back we lost our trail, but managed to get to the house using our superb pathfinder skills and my iPhone's GPS software. Just in time for the start of the party!

Serious men in suits...

Stephan had arranged a live band for the evening. Although the band consisted only of two guitar players plus some MIDI equipment the guys did a fantastic set playing lots and lots of 70s, 80s and 90s rock and pop music with their own twist. The lead guitarist managed to sound better than Knopfler and Gilmour when he played Dire Straits and Pink Floyd! 

Rocking all over the World!

Some food matching the occasion

The weekend was a full success, and all of us were having a blast! We only lacked one thing, and that was sleep. Sunday afternoon Stephan made one more trip to the airport, this time for dropping us off. Which in my case led right to my next adventure, but this is a story for another day!