Trollhättan was once a home to Saab, but as it goes in the postindustrial society production of tangible goods has shifted to cheaper parts of the world. Nowadays Trollhättan is a base to Swedish movie industry, which promptly earned the city the Trollywood nickname. The main attraction of the city is the system of channels, locks, waterfalls, floodgates and other contraptions I do not know names of. Set over the stunning rocky landscape, covered with moss and rust with running water everywhere, it is a truly stunning sight. All for an unknown purpose (at least to me). All this reminded me of Miyazaki’s Laputa, never mind the absence of rusty robots or flying castles. A unique place, well worth a visit.
Category Archives: Epic Journey 3
Horrors of 47
After the initial disappointment with cycling routes, I decided to choose regular roads instead. Straight, fast and there is no room for getting lost. That is until I hit the road 47 on the route from Jönkoping to Falköping: about 70km of heavy traffic with occasional showers. Passing by trucks surrounded by water mist triggered a mental picture of something in between medieval knights and raging demons. On a brighter side, a truck going to the same direction created a warm wind tunnel resulting in a turbo boost just like in video games. Alas like in the computer world the boost lasted only a little while bringing the misery back. To crown this horror the entry to Falköping was marked by a long uphill that just seemed to never end. When I finally saw the golden gates of McDonalds in the outskirts of Falköping, I felt like Harold & Kumar, when they reached The White Castle.
Falköping was an utter disappointment – the McDonalds did not have wi-fi. I felt adventurous and ordered a coffee with a strawberry pie. The pie took a long time to come, so they offered me a free ice-cream. And what is without complaining or asking. Both the pie and the ice-cream turned out to be complete crap. Good coffee and even better custom service, though. After getting my sugar, water and electricity fix, I spent some time war-driving around Falköping, but no wi-fi was located, so I continued further on the road 47 to Trollhättan. This time traffic and rain were too much for me, so given a first opportunity I turned to a side-road. Even weather agreed with my choice, the rain stopped and sun started shining. Not so long after I hit a small village, maybe some 300m across, which is not even marked on Google Maps, where I was greeted by these cows.
They stood there in an astonishment gazing at a shrouded traveller on a bicycle. More and more cows kept coming and I was totally flabbergasted by all this attention. The rest of the day was spent cycling the idyllic country-side in the rays of the setting sun. Lesson learnt: the straightest route is not necessarily the best one.
Husqvarna and Jönkoping.
There is nothing interesting about Husqvarna except its fascinating name, which gave the name to the company. There is something about Swedish language or rather city/town names, which make them good candidates as brand or product names. To name a few: Dingle, Tomten, Smögen, Tanum, Morup, Kvia, Floby, Demore etc. There is actually a company named Demore, something I learned only later. So if you ever need to come up for a catchy name for your brand, just take a look at the map of Sweden. Zoom in to the level of villages for real gems. In case you want to make it sound more exotic with a touch of Scandinavian aesthetics, just pick a name with umlauts. No need for such aberrations, as Häagen-Dazs.
The setting of Jönkoping reminded me of Geneve with the long lake and neatness everywhere. Similarities end here though. The town did not seem to be any exciting, apart from the fact that it is a birthplace of a matchstick. There is even a museum dedicated to matchsticks there, which was promptly skipped. The area around Jönkoping is much more interesting with it lush forests, swamps, gnomes, trolls and fairies. None were seen, but maybe another time.
The vipassana festival (Part 3 of 3)
Meditation is hard. I would say mastering own’s mind is the most difficult thing in the world. It is so hard that most people do not see any point in even starting sitting quietly observing own breathe. It took me 26 years to realise the caliber of the problem with human’s mind and how meditation can help. Progress in meditation is slow and mostly unnoticeable, which can be very frustrating. A retreat like this can really speed things up. A daily meditation practice is like walking from Moscow to Beijing. A 10 days retreat would be akin to taking a train on the way. Granted finishing the retreat is not an easy feat and I cannot say that it gets easier with time, but the benefit from such a course is enormous, no matter what your meditation background is (if any).
Having said that concentration meditation is relatively easy. You observe your breathe or any other object, get lost in those seductive thoughts, and return to observing the object. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat again. Do it about 173478233 times and eventually it will become easier. On the other hand vipassana or insight meditation is much more subtle. Concentration is no longer the point, but a tool. Instead you develop equanimity and awareness. Equanimity goes by many different names: accepting what it is, being in the moment, not giving a fuck and so on. It is basically accepting the reality as it is this very moment instead of escaping to the world of past and future. A very tricky business, especially when you have a huge emotional storm or waves of pure bliss coming onto you. How not react to that, indeed? The second tool of vipassana is awareness. Awareness is the knowledge of what is going on inside your body, mind and outside world from moment to moment. More specifically it is the momentary knowledge of five aggregates, but a discussion of those goes way beyond the scope of this short blog post. Can you feel the touch of your body and the surface you are sitting on? Did you moments ago? This is what awareness is all about, but on a much deeper level.
These are the intellectual facts, but understanding them on a deeper level is a whole different matter. Knowledge and experience are two different beasts and vipassana is all about your personal experience. Seeing and experiencing things for yourself deep inside. Simple as that.
Gränna
Grännä is a small resort town one the bank of the lake Vätten known for its petite water falls and lollipops. It made an impression of a nice enough place. One could easily spend a couple of days here, visit all the dubious sights, eat overpriced restaurant food, buy China produced souvenirs, get totally bored and be glad to be out of there. I did none of these things, though. The most fascinating thing about Gränna was this lawn mower robot, which finally convinced me that we live in the future. Like whoa dude.
There are hippies and anarchists in Gränna too.
