September 19, 2020
One Saturday afternoon, my host mother invited me to join her as she voyaged to Gevninge to pick up some items she had bought from a resident online. She told me that the countryside scenery was beautiful along the way, so I decided to tag along.
She certainly wasn’t wrong.
We passed many small farms similar to the one on the right as we avoided the highway for a voyage less polluted by infrastructure.
As we went along, I distinctly remember the blueness of the sky. There were two types of blue depended on where we were in the voyage. When we crossed the countryside, further from the fjord and more inland, the sky was a soft blue, touched only by the cotton candy clouds stretching as far as the eye could see. This blue was pretty, but the sky along the fjord took my breath away—from the azure blue of the sea to the soft blue of the sky, and even the cornflower blue outline of the terrain along the horizon, bordered by the sandy grey of the beach, contrasted by the green-as-pine trees on the other side of the road.
Taking these photos weren’t easy though. Once my hmom (host mom) parked the car, I proceeded to scale the steep hill with my phone in one hand and my Instax Mini in the other. At first glance, it appeared that I couldn’t get my footing, but the truth was that the hill became too steep, and gravity took its toll. I slid right on back down to the van. Imagine my confusion, and I was sure that I saw people peppered along the path above. But how did they get there? About as soon as I asked, I saw a sign pointed towards a set of stairs with a graphic forbidding people like me from climbing the slope. Oops.
Soon, we arrived at a residence in the middle of a little forest. My hmom attended to her affairs and I played with the little dogs on the property. Eventually, we were back on the road.
On our way to the residence, I noticed a group of rocks at the mouth of the neighborhood, so as we were heading back, I pointed them out to my hmom and she pulled over for us to examine them. She confirmed my suspicions, it was an ancient graveyard! According to my hmom, the countryside used to be filled with them, but as the land was needed for farming, they were taken down. Luckily, this one managed to survive the purge and it stands as a memorial to all those who once roamed the area.
All in all, it was a lovely trip, and a nice retreat from dense civilization.
