Fredrik Torstensson, the father of Our AirBnb family in Stockholm, noticed that Lauren and I would be passing within a few miles of his Dad and Mom's summer place after about a week into our bike trip. On cue, at the end of a very long day of exhilarating biking but feeling hot and exhausted, we called Torsten and Karin and got directions to their cabin. After some extremely poor orienteering on my part (which ended with Lauren and I pulling our bikes on the ground underneath a fallen tree snag that blocked my clever "shortcut" through the woods), and after asking a kind man who turned out to be Torsten's cousin exactly which (red, obviously) cabin was Torsten's, we found them. They were babysitting Fredrik's kids Edith and Sigge, and also two other grandchildren, Tuva and Adrien, for the week. We had met all four of these kids in Stockholm a week earlier and so got some familiar hugs.
Their cabin sat on the edge of a bay. Torsten talked us into our swim suits and the three of us plus Edith went to the dock below the cabin. Torsten held a picnic basket with three cold, tall, cans of beer. Although he and Karin and the kids had already eaten, he grilled me some hot dogs and made Lauren some pesto pasta and we had round two of beer (or was it wine?) sitting on a table in the late evening sun back at the cabin. They let us stay the night in a cute side-cottage and served us breakfast in the morning. Because Lauren's knee was a bit sore from the previous day, he then drove us 20 miles or so to the next town on our route so we could camp and convalesce (Lauren's knee bounced back nicely after this rest).
Torsten had a friendly track-and-field rivalry with an American (whose name escapes me, unfortunately) over 40 years ago and they and their wives have kept up a friendship ever since. They travel together roughly every other year. Due to this, and to Torsten's work with the Swedish Immigration Bureau which sent him all over the world, his and Karin's English were both excellent. Karin was a warm and welcoming person and we felt at home with them. It made the "practice random acts of kindness" bumper stickers peeling off of 70's vintage VW busses not look so time-worn, after all. It's hard to adequately thank them for their generosity at a time in our trip when we needed it.
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| Torsten and Edith |
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| Out in the back yard discussing bike routes |
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| Dinner in front of our cottage |
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| Lauren and the kids catch some TV |
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| With the Torstenssons before we left. |
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