I met Helena on a trip to the Gobi desert in Mongolia. Our team of five spent a week in an old Soviet minivan breathing dust and marvelling the great nothingness of Mongolian wilderness. Then we continued to Beijing and Xian to have more adventures, after which our ways parted. You rarely see people for your travels again. You meet very nice people and spend quality time together. When the time to part comes, contact information is exchanged, after which they become just another Facebook friend you rarely talk to. However, Uddevalla (or rather Smedsvik) was sort of on the way, so why not visit the fellow traveller? After many days of cycling and the woods I longed for a pit stop and somebody to talk to. And we talked…

There is a phenomenon among posh people from Stockholm called “vaska”. It involves purchasing two bottles of expensive champagne and asking the bartender to pour one out just to demonstrate your wealth status. The phenomenon was born after bars and restaurants banned spraying champagne all over the place by the same type of clientele, as this practice destroyed interior. Well, old habits die hard, so “vaska” was born. Nowadays in the age of digital technology you can even order “vasta” using SMS and you get a confirmation message that the service was carried out. NOW HOW COOL IS THAT?

We visited Smögen, an overgrown fishing village and a popular tourist destination, not so far away from Uddevalla. The tourist season had not started yet, so it was eerily quiet, which I enjoyed the most about it. A rathet enjoyable place, but not all that exciting as Lonely Planet makes it to be. Not that unique either. I visited Fiskebäckskil visited by accident – forgot to turn in tie, which resulted in a detour and a visit to this village. Anyway it was very similar to Smögen with all those rows of white houses and orange roofs, minus tourist infrastructure and posh people from Stockholm. Very quiet too. Another revelation about Sweden I had is that west coast areas are full of fauna I normally associate with more tropical areas. Crabs, shrimps, jellyfish and all kind of sea creatures not found in Finland. Good seafood soup in Smögen as well.