I am an omnivore. An omnivore who is always prepared to taste pretty much any kind of food. An attitude that practically always returns positive experiences. And then I encountered the Swedish fermented herring.

I’ve first heard about this rather peculiar local culinary specialty soon after I moved to the Nordic area. And I thought why not. I’d be the first one to point out all the wonderful results of fermenting foodstuffs. Although I wasn’t really sure if fermenting fish could yield anything good. Fish have a very strong smell to start with and start stinking in no time. Since the olfactory organs play an important role in every eating experience, stinky doesn’t make you think tasty. Which means that fermented fish and a delicious meal might be as far apart as can be. Still I thought it is unfair to bring any conclusions without actually trying it out myself. I was on a mission.

Experiences of those who have tried fermented herring range from culinary exaltation to downright disgust. But whomever I talked to couldn’t avoid mentioning the diabolically strong smell.

In its motherland Sweden surströmming (as they call it there) is taken seriously. Not only is it considered a delicacy of highest grade, but has solemn and devout followers who in 1999 established nothing less than a fermented herring academy. As irreverent as it may seem, I cannot avoid wondering if Alaskans or Norwegians have salmon academies, or Japanese tuna and whale academies.

Surströmming gurus might see this as oversimplification, but the whole thing is very simple. Fisherman catch Baltic herring each spring right before it spawns. They add salt and water and let the fish ferment in barrels for a couple of months. They then pack the fish into cans where anaerobic bacteria continue the process until consumed. It’s there that herring gets its tang.

Fermentation produces gases (in case of surströmming also a multitude of other smelly compounds) and the tins containing ripening fish bulge as a result. Bulged cans usually contain spoiled food, but when it comes to fermented herring, the logic is upside down: you don’t want to pick it off the shelf unless the can has bulged enough. Which makes for a tricky can opening procedure. (Think punctured beer can.) If not careful, a spray of reeking juices will make you wary the next time (if there happens to be a next time).

It was exactly the combination of the foul smell and the unavoidable gushing of its brine that made British Airways and Air France deny herring from boarding their planes. Swedes were outraged, but as far as I know the ban is still in place. Just imagine the hubbub at the academy. They must have hired an extra secretary to help them calm down the nation.

Herring’s foul smells reached me before I even smelled it. A Swedish colleague told me a couple of facetious anecdotes that became dead serious snigger once I dug into surströmming myself.

Some years ago a few Italian friends visited him in Sweden. Before they boarded the train to head back home, he hands them a can of surströmming, not telling them what it is. Somewhere in France the group runs out of snacks and without further hesitation they decide to munch on the food their Swedish friend gave them. They open up the mysterious can. They got kicked off the train on the next stop.

The stars of the other anecdote is a Swedish couple who should have known better, since they knew what they were dealing with. Anyway, they open up the can of fermented herring in their flat in Berlin and get evicted from the apartment.

Cans should wear a warning label “Do not open unless outdoors.” But they don’t. Which is why I am quite happy I knew all of these details even before I found fermented herring in the store. I could plan the whole ordeal: wear shabby clothes, get the bulgiest of cans, find a quiet spot in the woods, puncture the can underwater, if possible, eat it out there and don’t show up at home until the stench subsides. In spite of all the preparations I still have the feeling I was caught with my pants down.

I grabbed a large bulged can of Röda Ulven from the store and headed for a lonely spot in the woods on the coast. I checked that no one was around besides the people I was about to eat it with. Knowing the facts, bans and anecdotes, we didn’t want to get in trouble.

As I punched the can, a spray of putrid drops spread around us and literally made everyone take two steps aback. Whoa! Even though we had hoped for a tasty meal, a single whiff made some draw the line right there. I slowly started doubting this meal will be appetizing. No offense intended, but I begun wondering who could consider a combined miasma of rotten fish, dried urine, unwashed genitalia and barf mouthwatering. But since I got this far, I simply could not quit now.

The first bite tasted, well, like putrid fish. Although I have no idea why I was even surprised about this anymore. Even though I ate bread and onion along with it (only the potatoes were missing), the taste of rotten fish dominated through and through. Nothing could cover the noxious smell and putrid taste. Nothing. Quite the contrary. Whatever I’ve put in my mouth for the next hour or so, tasted plain bad. And since fish happily continued its fermentation, my body dispatched aplenty of unpleasant gases, front and back, before the damn fish was finally discharged from my system later that night.

Later that day I recalled reading about an American food guru Jeffrey Steingarten who travels the world and has supposedly tasted everything. What I remembered particularly well was how Mr. Steingarten thought that lutefisk, a Norwegian fish specialty, was the most disgusting food (translated excerpt provided by Wikipedia, although I have no idea why they have placed it under “humor”). I’d say that in comparison to surströmming, lutefisk is chocolate. To prove my point, I’d take Mr. Steingarten to as large meal of ripe Swedish surströmming as he chooses to ingest. If he accepts the challenge, I’d be delighted to eat twice as much of lutefisk.

Speaking of fermented herring and restaurants, I find it difficult to imagine seeing it on a menu in a restaurant. I’ve never spotted it myself, but can already imagine a waiter approaching the neighboring tables telling his other guests that the gentleman over there just ordered a can of surströmming and that he is giving them about quarter of an hour to finish their meals, pay and leave.

Even though I had perhaps naively expected that fermented herring would help expand my palate, that certainly did not happen. As hard as it might be to believe, it took only a few days before I have decided to give the herring a second chance.

Bon appétit.

Mladen

The first strip of the train trip ahead was long. After leaving Göteborg the train went through Skövde, Örebrö, Stockholm, Uppsala, Gävle, Ågne, Sundsvall, Umeå to Luleå. Checking the map before the trip and just thinking about getting the chance to see all this Swedish landscape as it changes from south to north got me quite excited. In fact, I got so excited that when booking the tickets I did not even for a moment doubt that I’d want to shut my eyes on this 24 hour train ride; all I had in mind was a romantic view of the forests and lakes as they rush by.

Sure enough there was plenty of trees and lakes, but booking regular seats instead of the sleeping car bunk beds was a mistake. It proved to be difficult enough to sleep in the middle seat with nothing to lean on, but on top of this the train was packed and having a kid with growing pains sitting right opposite of you is not exactly exhilarating circumstance either. And then again, as it turned out, the landscape was rather monotonous too: 1800 km of forests, lakes and occasionally a house flew by here and there.

One thing to keep in mind if wanting to travel fairly cheap around Sweden is that railroad passenger transportation is privatized here. As such it much more resembles air than land travel. Not in the sense that you need to be worried about your luggage being placed on the train to Berlin as you left towards Kiruna. Luckily the only resemblance is the ticket pricing methods: the earlier you buy, the better deal you get. And if you buy them a month or so in advance, prices can be almost as ridiculous as flying for one euro from London to Bangalore, if the company doesn’t declare bankruptcy before take off, that is. Anyway, the good thing is that you can buy tickets on the net and then collect them from any ticket machine located on every train station in the country.

Almost exactly 24 hours after we left Göteborg we reach the twin cities of Haparanda and Tornio. The former being in Sweden, the latter in Finland they resemble a little Nova Gorica and Gorizia in Slovenia and Italy. But that is just about all these four cities have in common. While Gorica and Gorizia actually have someone living there, Haparanda and Tornio are like ghost towns. We were there on a Friday night and it seemed like someone has rised the threat of a terrorist attack or some other similarly stupid modern-day threat. Besides the operating bus that brought us there, two cars driving by and three intoxicates, we were the only living beings.

Besides, both towns definitely had a rather peculiar feel to them as they both looked like a time capsule sealed off in the 1950s. Or maybe people did leave fifty years ago. Not that I have ever lived in the 1950s, mind you, but I do come from a place where everything from the stores to the cars in the 1980s still resembled the 1950s. The only two cars in Haparanda-Tornio we saw confirmed our assumption, while the bus was in mint condition despite the age and was aptly decorated with washed-out red seats and outfitted with a coffee machine that probably broke down at least 20 years ago. Quite nifty and nostalgic, I must say.

Even the huge IKEA shopping center was not too assuring of towns’ inhabitants presence. I just couldn’t think of anything else but propaganda when reading about the millionth shopper at the very same IKEA who was supposedly there a week earlier and what the place looked like during our short visit. Things somehow just didn’t add up.

It is only after traveling this far north that I have fully realized what the locals have in mind when they grumble about their exceptional welfare they enjoy over here. Although it is true that somehow it has been exactly in this part of the world where the density of social states has probably reached higher density than anywhere else. I finaly begun understanding why these states definitely need to pamper their citizens if they want to prevent their fleeing to some place cozier. Although the attempt in Haparanda-Tornio didn’t seem to have succeeded after all.

But then again, after more than 2300 kilometers and almost countless hours of sitting in the train (OK, three days, so not really countless), I was quite exhausted and as a consequence content by the time we reached Kuopio, a tiny town in the middle of Finnish lakeland. Home sweet home, or more aptly, bed sweet bed.

Mladen

Moving is usually a straight-forward business. But there’s always a bit of uncertainty. Canceling everything connected with the old life and ordering everything anew. Although this can be exhilarating, doing such things in certain places can be a tad bit on the unnerving side. Sweden fits among such places. Sure, it could be a lot worse, but there is also a lot of room for improvement.

Canceling the apartment lease two months before leaving is still quite reasonable, but it strikes me as incredibly obtuse that in Sweden you have to literally beg to get the electricity bill. Not that I’m incredibly gung-ho about parting with money, but I cannot understand why the electricity company wants to send the bill in two months’ time and obviously to the wrong address as some complete stranger will live in the same place. And when it comes to Swedish bureaucratic thinking it’s not that difficult to imagine incurring huge debts and eventually being hunted by the international crime busting special forces.

Speaking of which, this is not even the proverbial tip of the iceberg when it comes to Swedish slowness in processing things. What one would expect it would take a couple of key strokes or at most hours to resolve, takes literally months to accomplish in Sweden. Say, for instance, student registration. I arrived to Sweden in January as a visiting student at the Göteborg University. One would think that it would be only a matter of a simple formality to get the official stamp confirming me being a student. But no, after three months I became one and was entitled to everything students are, such as a library card. I mean seriously, think about this. It’s not like I get paid by the university to study. It’s the library card type of things that are at stake here.

I don’t want to get started again on the witless bureaucrats and their papers, but there’s just one more thing that I cannot resist mention.

One thing I was sure about when I was leaving Sweden was that I can stay if I desired to do so. Not just to study, but also with a working permit. Forever, if I wanted. Too bad I found this out two days before I left. Yes, just two days before my departure I have received a letter from the Swedish immigration office stating that I am allowed to stay, study, work or do whatever in Sweden. Thank you and good to know, although I would feel much more welcome if I were to receive it a bit earlier, nevertheless.

But what really kept me busy the morning of departure as I walked in circles around the only room in the apartment is, where the hell am I going to stuck all these papers, those few but only dishes and tons of tiny useful crap. There isn’t much choice as everything that does not come along goes to the garbage bin. And being the hamster I am, that would really be the last resort in desperation to catch that five o’clock train.

Even though the situation was a bit tense at that moment, I was at least happy that I could at least in theory take all my possessions with me. This time around the name of the game was carry all that you can carry and not 20 kg, without sharp objects, water, bare feet and in fear of latex gloves being prepared for inner inspection. That said, I am incredibly tired of flying and all the haste and unneccessary security crap associated with it. Trains are great. They might be slow, but people are more relaxed and I can take chef knives, water, wear shoes on my feet and as it turned out 108 kg of, well, stuff. Or to be more precise 54 kg per person: six backpacks and three boxes. Mind boggling, but it was actually hilarious.

Six hours of packing later, and finally, the last item gets to go into the box. Fridge is empty, stomachs are full. In the attempt to avoid wasting any food new culinary combinations are tried out. After eating sushi gari, truffles, pasta, pesto and mustard and washing everything down with milk, I didn’t wonder anymore why such dish is not on offer in any restaurant. I did, however, hope this last minute foolish experiment wouldn’t cause digestive problems on a three-day trip ahead.

The apartment is locked and stuff carried to the elevator with great amusement as this is the first time I actually lift my share of backpacks. All together they weight 44 kg and had to be carried to the train station. But once everything was on the train, the rest was pretty straight forward: sit down and enjoy the ride.

Mladen

Spending one of the last days in Sweden in Liseberg amusement park turned out to be almost the best choice. Considering all that unhealthy stress and tension that come along with moving, getting a healthy and constant dose of adrenalin for eight hours straight seems like the best one could do, instead of packing boxes, that is.

The owners of Liseberg claim to be the oldest, largest, baddest and the most visited amusement park in Scandinavia. I don’t know if all that is true, but I can say that some of their rides are so good that one simply never gets enough. Take, for instance, the Balder roller-coaster (in the photo above). Already from afar its magnificent wooden structure is awe inspiring, but once the tiny train rises to the top and just moments before it reaches that first 70 degree drop into the void, you really become aware of your insignificance. The feeling, alongside the constant clasping of internal organs, remains all the way until the two-minute ride is over.

Similar feelings are constantly present on other rides where the trains are shot out and reach speeds of 75km/h in 2 seconds, flip you upside down, swing and spin between 0 and 120 degrees at neck breaking speeds, catapult you sixty meters up or drop you from the same height towards the land. No matter whether the ride lasts 20 seconds or 2 minutes, I am pretty sure that the times are carefully measured for each ride to hit just the right spot between the weightless stomach sensation and puking. It’s probably as close as it gets to astronaut training for the mere mortals, especially if you can persevere for eight hours.

The last time I did a similar thing was in Helsinki’s Linnanmäki amusement park. It was great fun while it lasted, even though I did get a bit green-faced from that Viking Ship ride. But the next three days after those eight hours at Linnanmäki were quite terrible. I had a constant nausea, my head was spinning whenever I sat or lied down. It felt like a terrible hangover for three days straight. And it would be quite terrible if I got the same feeling after a similar stunt at Liseberg, since I have a day of packing and 48 hours of traveling ahead of me.

As I mentioned right at the beginning, I’m moving again. Although there are some resemblances to the last move, it is a lot easier this time as the flat needs to be emptied, or in other words, stuff just needs to be packed, or thrown away. But the trip itself will be something special.

The trip back to Finland is unlike anything I’ve done before: I’m going back by train. Once the train leaves Göteborg I’ll be traveling via Stockholm, Umeå, Luleå and finally to Haparanda, a small town right on the border with Finland. From there I continue the next day to Kemi, Oulu and Kajaani before I reach the final destination: Kuopio.

I was excited already when planning the trip and can hardly wait to board the train tomorrow afternoon.

Au revoir,

Mladen

Aaaaalmost there. Obviously not a first generation immigrant graffiti artist from ex-Yugoslavia.

Mladen