An Aussie day out in Fagersta31 Mar 2007
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Chris, Sofie & Ian
They make the Dalarna Horses REAL big up here
Yep - wouldn't mess with this horsey
| A little while ago Ian and I were enjoying our Friday night 'cheap-n-cheerful' i.e. pizza after work, when a fellow Aussie at the table next to us heard our accents. This is how we met Chris and Sofie. Chris left Australia many years ago (grew up in Adelaide) and worked in London for a few years - that's where he met Swedish Sofie. They've been living in Fagersta, about an hour north of here (where Sofie grew up) for about six years now, and they invited us to visit - so we did! Fagersta is also part of the lakes district here in Sweden and once you get past the abandoned industrial buildings is extremely beautiful (it was a boom metals town for hundreds of years - only went bad in the 60s). It was at Engelsberg the adjacent town that iron was first discovered in Sweden in the 1300s (hope I got that right) and the original iron ore foundry is still there - check out the photos. Chris and Sofie took us to see Sweden's biggest Dalarna Horse - they're quite the souvenir here and apparently were originally a traditional child's toy in Dalarna (the district north of here). They gradually spread throughout Sweden and became a bit of a souvenir icon. Traditionally they were this red colour and also a bright blue, but different areas have adopted different colours. We saw it all on our scenic tour of the area with Chris and Sofie - a gorgeous old coffee house where they treated us to fika (cake and coffee), an 'original' boat house (think caravan on pontoon), the cookoo house as Sofie cutely called it seeking the right english word - no - not clocks - the other variety. We also called by Sofie's parents house but they were out. The other house we visited was hard to ascertain if the owner was home - an original beaver house at the lake where Sofie and her family would swim in summer. These crazy beavers chew trees down at the base, feed off the foliage then use the branches to build their home. Apparently they enter via the water so you rarely get to see them, but newly felled trees indicates he's still going strong. I wondered how beaver didn't run out of teeth for such antics, but Chris tells us their teeth continue to grow - eek - gross! We ended the day at Fagersta with a trip to the local pizza joint - some very friendly chaps who have Chris' regular vege order on a sheet of paper next to the register! After negotiating the local crazy person who was asking for money, we enjoyed our pizza back at Chris and Sofie's apartment and were entertained by the hilarious antics of one of their two cats - very funny and heaps of personality! Not as much as Angus of course, but good fun all the same :-) So all in all we had a great day with these guys and looking forward to catching up with them next time they're down in Vasteras. |
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