Bananafish are not real - but I forget this from time to time

Before I write about my short foray into another part of Sweden, I will just rant for a minute or two about the things that are irritating me at the moment. Perhaps in list form?
1. Darkness. It's dark at 4pm, and then I feel like going home. I never noticed how much beauty light adds to any situation until now.
2. The "how do you like it here" question. Absolutely everyone I meet wants a Sweden-USA comparison/analysis, which is fun to talk about the first 50 times, but now, not so much.
3. The "aren't you going home for break?!" question. One of the other study abroad students today told me very seriously that I should really consider going home, because I will be getting lonely by that time. I told her that if I could I would, but she seemed to think I was just being stubborn, trying to hold out in Europe to show how tough I am :D This ties into my earlier and ongoing frustration at people who treat you like a spoil-sport if you can't spend money as freely as they do. Its not that I don't enjoy doing spontaneous, impractical things, and its not that I don't like sharing, and its definitely not that I want to hoard my money. I wish that people would be a little more sensitive about this, but they just sort of don't understand.

Ooookey. I think that is enough ranting for the moment.

I really enjoyed my trip to Falun, Sundborn, Mora and Uppsala. It was nice to just go with just a basic idea of where I would stay and what I would do, because it gave me the opportunity to realize that I can improvise and survive all by myself in a strange place. Also, I had 4 balls of yarn and an idea for a scarf, which is just such a good way to venture out into the world. "Here I come world! And I've got for balls of yarn!" This is really the only way to travel.

I think the best part of the trip was by far on Wednesday night and Thursday during the day when I was in Falun and Sundborn, where Carl Larsson's house is. I love Carl Larsson's house. I would definitely live there, and the walls are covered with Karin Larsson's weavings, Carl's paintings, and cute little sayings here and there like "Tell you what: Be good and happy!". The only other person on the tour was an economic anthropologist from New Mexico who at first alarmed me by the size of the fur poofs on her gloves (never trust a lady with fur poofs! I thought) but she was very funny and interesting and we had a fika together back in Falun. The "Central Cafe" in Falun was another great part of the trip. I really liked the guy that ran the shop; he was dressed in red plaid, and whistled along to the radio all afternoon, and in general was just incredibly good humored and friendly. We talked about Swedish music, and he invited me to come listen to a folk music festival in Falun on Saturday, but unfortunately I had a ticket back to Stockholm. Wednesday night when I first arrived in Falun I went to a local pub and met two guys there and had a good time talking to them for a long time. Then I went back to my hostel which was an old jail, and went to sleep behind iron-barred windows. Ha ha! Funny! I almost forgot it was a prison until I read the cleaning instructions, which referred to the room as a "cell".

The biggest crisis of the trip was probably my first night in Mora (Thursday night) where I met a really nice cat outside my hostel. We played for a long time, and then I went inside to presumably go to sleep but the cat came around to my window and meowed and beat on the window with its little kitty paws and generally made itself seem totally desperate and sad!!! I can't stand that sort of thing!!! Plus it was snowing. I REALLY wanted to let the cat inside but I felt like I would be betraying the trust of the nice lady who own the hostel who was giving me access to a nice kitchen, laundry room and sauna. It was a big dilemma, and the thought of the cat out in the cold made me so anxious I couldn't sleep. Also I had had 5 cups of coffee that day.

Also in Mora I decided to give myself a nice warm lunch rather than continue to eat my fruit and hard bread. It was good, but they did something to the potatoes, like put them through a grinder, that made them look like rice which confused me for a long while. I ordered curry with banana fish, and was surprised to find a plate full of bananas and fish and not a banana fish. At this point I realized that banana fish is the very sad fish in a J.D. Salinger story called "A Perfect Day for Bananafish"
"Miss Carpenter. Please. I know my business," the young man said. "You just keep your eyes open for any bananafish. This is a perfect day for bananafish."

"I don't see any," Sybil said.

"That's understandable. Their habits are very peculiar." He kept pushing the float. The water was not quite up to his chest. "They lead a very tragic life," he said. "You know what they do, Sybil?"

She shook her head.

"Well, they swim into a hole where there's a lot of bananas. They're very ordinary-looking fish when they swim in. But once they get in, they behave like pigs. Why, I've known some bananafish to swim into a banana hole and eat as many as seventy-eight bananas." He edged the float and its passenger a foot closer to the horizon. "Naturally, after that they're so fat they can't get out of the hole again. Can't fit through the door."

"Not too far out," Sybil said. "What happens to them?"

"What happens to who?"

"The bananafish."

"Oh, you mean after they eat so many bananas they can't get out of the banana hole?"

"Yes," said Sybil.

"Well, I hate to tell you, Sybil. They die."

"Why?" asked Sybil.

"Well, they get banana fever. It's a terrible disease."

Here are pictures from Wednesday night and Thursday morning in Falun.
I will post a new post in like 5 minutes with the rest of the pictures :)