I got up and it was raining, so I procrastinated around Sarpsborg till mid-morning and then set out along the western coast to Sweden. It was still forbidden to ride the coastal highway, so I had to follow the cycle path that was nearer the coastline but with a poorer surface and no indications. I arrived at Stromstad in the middle of the afternoon and called it a day.

The Swedish are friendlier than the Norwegians and I quickly got into conversations with the locals. Later, doing a grocery, I was pleased to see that beer and food were cheaper here than in Norway.

I continued south, cycling in the rain all day. It appeared that I now could ride on the highway and decided to get to Uddevalla, but midway, I had to get off the highway and ride along small roads that weren't on my map, still basically following the coastline south but with few signposts, deep in a sparsely sprinkled cottage country. In the early evening, I had enough of riding in the rain, wasn't inclined to camp out because of the rain but there was nothing around for accommodations. In the vicinity of Rorback, I spotted an opened, large, garbage shed (there wasn't much garbage, just a bunch of empty bins) and decided to spend the night there.

In the morning, the weather was nicer. Hazy, but not raining, and you could tell that the sun would be out soon. Today, I would get to Goteborg. So I started cycling on the roads when I could and on the cycle paths when I had to.

The first sizeable place that I passed through was Sunnunrund. It appeared to be a touristy resort for boat owners and didn't appeal too much but I had cycled 60 kms or so and stopped over, bought some pastries and milk and had a snack. Then went on my way.

A bit further on, just north of Goteborg at Kongalv, I passed by this old castle. Sweden, like Norway, has been a monarchy since forever and there are many old and current castles.

At Goteborg, I settled in the local Youth Hostel, bought groceries, ate and crashed.

Goteborg's a pretty small town with few highrises above 3 or 4 stories. Lots of quaint areas with wooden buildings. The people, at least the younger ones, were a throwback to the North American sixties. Many "macho" guys with souped-up cars screeching their tires on the road, and the young women, beautiful, but all painted up with a lot of make-up... I spent a couple of days here resting and taking in the sights.

Wandering around the city, I took pictures of these traditional Swedish wooden houses while strolling in Slottskogs Park.

I also spent some time at the Hasselblad Center and Museum of Fine Arts. I was surprised to find that many of the interesting Swedish and Scandinavian painters were crazy. I guess that a relatively large proportion of the population suffers from depressions caused by the very short daytime through the long winters. To me, this translated itself in artists compensating with wild (and often surreal) luminosities in their paintings. Quite interesting !

I got up early and was on the road by 8 AM following the cycle path down the western coast through more "cottage country". It was nice and sunny, so my cycling was more relaxed and I could better enjoy the scenery and took these pictures near Jarhoven.

The road was relatively flat, in fact most of Sweden is low hills and forests, and I made good progress, reaching Falkenburg by late afternoon. It looked like rain for the evening and night, so I headed towards the Youth Hostel. It was full... End of July is vacation time for everybody. Nevertheless, the Youth Hostel manager found me a place for the night in someone’s backyard "spruced up" shed. It was OK.

By 7h30 AM I was on the road. The day started out cold, grey and humid... It was sindy on the coast which is probably why the Swedes have a such a long tradition of using the wind for power. But it warmed up and by noon the sun was shining. The road was pretty flat up until Bastad were it got seriously hilly. I stopped at Bastad (a tourist village in what passes for mountain country in Sweden, with lots of shops and crafts and loads of visitors touring around) for a rest and snack. I then continued on to Helsingborg.

Helsingborg's pretty big, and I quickly got lost. So I stopped an older gentleman who was strolling on the sidewalk and asked for directions to downtown. The old guy must have been lonely and in need of an ear, cause he never stopped talking. Now retired, he used to be a mechanical engineer and worked for a while in Edmonton, Canada doing industrial plumbing. He ended up walking me downtown and paying for my dinner and a beautiful one at that. Smoked salmon with caviar and a mayonnaise sauce, followed by some kind of flat fish with veggies and beer... By the time we finished talking and parted it was 11 PM. Well, it was too late to look for a camping area and the local Youth Hostel was closed for the night, so I started looking for hotel rooms and all I could find was a vacancy in a pretty expensive hotel and ending up paying the equivalent of about Can$100 for the room... Ah well, I did have caviar at dinner...

In the morning, I investigated the ferries and decided to go directly to Copenhagen, Denmark from Helsingborg across the Ore Sund straights. I had a couple of hours to wait for the ferry and walked around downtown and took this picture of Helsingborg Castle and town hall.

After Norway, Sweden was quite a contrast... about the only commonalities are the pretty girls and labour inefficiencies...

On the economic side, consumables, though still quite expensive by North American standards, are certainly more reasonable than in Norway... However it appeared to me that the people don't like to work much... with everything opening late, closing early and staying closed for most of the weekend if not all... Some relatively large stores even close for a whole month in the summer, for vacations. You wouldn't see that in North America.

From another point-of-vue... after visiting museums featuring Scandinavian artists and reading their bios, a lot of them where mentally ill... and talking with Swedes, I learned that they have quite a problem with young suicides... Apparently the very short periods of daylight during the long winter months creates a lot of depression...

On the scenic front, Sweden is relatively featureless compared to Norway... only rolling hills with evergreen (for the most part) forests. About the only interesting landscapes are the strings of little islands in southwestern Sweden... and it seems that's where all the Swedes migrate to in the summer weekends.