Svensk sommar

My, it's been an intense week, and completely in a good way. I'm sitting here in my room on the second floor at Delphi, refreshed by a shower and wearing clean clothes. It's just after eight in the evening and it's still bright with sunlight outside, a bit subdued now that the sun is on the other side of the building. I suppose that means my window faces East. A cool breeze is drifting in through the window, and it's just another pleasant Swedish summer day in the Skane, which is the name given to this area of southern Sweden.

Yes, it's warm here. By Farenheit's scale, it's been in the 80's during the days. Today I slept in, and at 11:30 I met up with Daniel Ek, who is one of our "mentors" and also a friend of Kristen's, and with the other Americans Rose (UCB) and Anna (UCSD). We went to the beach.

Daniel last month purchased a beautiful white 1987 VW Golf CL, and he had invited us to go with him to the beach at Malm?. Malm? is the third largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Goteborg, and is a few minutes drive to the South. It was downright hot by the time we reached the beach, and we certainly weren't the only ones with beach-going urges. The shore was packed with thousands of others enjoying the warm summer weather at the beach.

We've been wondering what Swedes do over the weekend, and we've come to have some idea. All the shops in town close at 15:00 on Saturdays (and few are open at all on Sundays), and the bustle quickly evaporates into a mysterious silence. Evidently, amoung other things, they go to the beach. They also take naps and then have afternoon barbeques.

The coast is a bit odd here, as the water is uniformly shallow out for maybe a hundred yards. There it begins sloping down from its knee-height depth to a neck-height depth and presumably continues the trend for a few miles before rising up to meet Denmark. Anyway, because there's so much shallow area, there's plenty of room for everyone, and the water isn't too crowded. There weren't really any waves, and we could see the coast of Denmark in the distance, and the newly completed ?resundbron (the bridge from Sweden to Denmark) as well. After our little beach excursion, we visited IKEA in Malm? for some authentic Swedish food, and where Rose and Anna procured miscellaneous items (a small tree, mirrors, picture frames).