The good news…Dave’s Mum has made a full recovery.
More good news…we’re BACK on the road again.
The bad news?
It was -2◦c when we landed in Sweden.
We spent the week with our friends Nic and Jess who deserve a huge thank-you for allowing us to dump our stuff (and the car) when we had to rush back to Perth over two months ago. We kitted out the car with ‘winter’ tyres (got a good deal on some second hand tyres and had them fitted a day later), anti-freeze and an ice scraper for good measure. Dave also managed to pick up a Star Wars advent calendar while he was shopping for car products???
‘Dibs’ on Yoda dressed as Santa, I have put.
Anyway. Enough of this. Back to the story at hand….
We’d been threatened during our stay with a traditional Swedish dish of Surströmming which, translated, means ‘soured herring’ which, to you and me, means rancid fish! On our last night in Stockholm Nic and Jess (well, mostly Nic actually, Jess couldn’t stand the smell and waited safely in the corner of the garden) very kindly –ahem – made a traditional meal for us of rancid fish served with tunnbröd (thin bread) boiled potatoes, raw onion and whipped cream.
The fermented fish bubbled and sprayed from the can as Nic opened it up outside. And then the smell hit. Luckily ten weeks through China had prepared us and, although we’d smelled worse things in China we’d never actually had to eat the source of the smell. Apparently a Japanese study has shown that the smell of a newly opened can of surströmming is the most putrid smell of food in the world. Mmmm-m.
To be fair, if you can get past the wiff, the fish isn’t too bad at all but you do need a big blob of the whipped cream to help tone down the rancid saltiness. Of course, once it’s washed down with a bottle of schnapps and a few beers you forget the whole thing ever happened.
Until you wake up the next day with a stonking hangover and get a fresh wiff of leftover rancid fish.
Want to know more about Surströmming? I can’t imagine why but you can find out HERE
Pick up a tin at your local Ikea 
