Time for our stay in the countryside

We took an Uber to the car rental and picked up our Skoda. Is is a really cool car and has features I want in my next car. One of them is that the wipers come on automatically and adjust to the right speed depending on the rate of rainfall.  The bad feature of this car is that the air conditioning did not work and it was hot.  Eric found a Skida dealer along our way, but they were closed. It was late Saturday morning. Also the car rental did not answer their phone.  So we had a breezy drive down to Alstermo, a very small town in Smaland.  Our new hosts are very present and friendly as apposition to our hosts in Stockholm’s who we never did meet.  We are now with Lena and Derik. They have many stories about their life and this place.  

A few photos of the new digs. First, the stairway leading to our apartment.  Not as bad as it looks

My bedroom 

Eric and Fiona’s room

Kitchen table 

The stove.  There was a choice here.  To cook you could light the wood in the stove or use the need cooktops sitting on the stove.  Had it been winter we may have chosen them wood fired stove

For dinner we went to a neighboring town to a restaurant off on a gravel road on what seemed to be a farm    Highly recommended, well known and traveled chef. This is the owner. We were the last customers of the day so after everyone else had left, he visited with us and gave us shots of schnapps flavored with cumin.  Delicious.  His stories would be a separate chapter in our upcoming book about Smaland.

This is my dinner. Wild boar steak over handmade pasta in a cognac cream sauce. Delicious!

Eric had moose steak with a red wine sauce

Fiona had a burger made with the meat of some kind of ram with big curled horns 

Eric’s beer was twice world champion dark lager and was great.  

Our appetizer was this plate of three dried meats.  The chef told us it takes 8 months to make it.  Top is venison, middle is wild boar and bottom is moose. All the meats are local.

Chandelier near our table. Driftwood and mossy stuff

Entrance to restaurant