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.