A friend of mine named Sofie used to live in Taiwan. During her time there, me and my wife would often take her out and shower her around. To show her appreciation, she invited us to come stay with her on the west coast of Sweden for a couple of days so she could repay the favour. This year we finally had a good chance to take her up on her offer. For those who don’t know, the west coast of Sweden consists of a long chain of islands that stretches from Gothenburg in the South all the way to … Read the rest
My family is fortunate enough to have a cabin by a lake out in the woods. When I was young I always enjoyed spending time there; swimming in the lake, rowing the boat, or going going for a stroll in the woods. It’s not too far from my parent’s house so we never stayed there for more than a couple of days in a row, instead opting for shorter but more frequent visits. It is however a very long way from my family’s house in Taiwan, so when we finally did go back to Sweden this summer, we thought it … Read the rest
We go tramping through the forest like giants, mostly unconcerned with where we step. It’s not until you kneel down to pick some berries or mushrooms that your perspective changes and you notice it: The forest floor is like a landscape within a landscape. There are groves of blueberry bushes with fields of grass in between. There are deep gullies winding their way between moss covered hills. There are anthills the size of cities and paths that no human has ever walked. There are irregular patches of lichen scrubland. There are bright red, yellow, and purple mushrooms shooting up from … Read the rest
One of the first beers I ever drank that wasn’t a boring lager was a blue Chimay. A nerdy factoid I learned while drinking it, is that it’s a special type of beer known as Trappist, which is brewed by monks and is only made in six monasteries in Belgium. Years later my wife’s friend Naomi got a Belgian boyfriend and over the years we’ve often talked about visiting him and going on a tour to the Trappist monasteries. As we were planning this year’s trip back to Sweden, we figured it was about time to make something of those … Read the rest
We come around the bend and the view opens up in front of us; distant peaks obscured by the haze, the mountain side dressed in pale greens and yellows – bamboo waving in the breeze like reeds – the mist comes rolling down the slope like water, spilling out as it hits the boxy structure of a man made tunnel – concrete and dark green moss – billowing into the air like smoke then swirling into the blue void. No time to take a photo, just a few moments until the road leads us into the gaping maw of the … Read the rest
My passport will expire in a few months, a fact which I overlooked when I was in Sweden last year where it would have been convenient to apply for a new one. Due to Taiwan’s diplomatic status, it’s not possible for me to renew my passport here, I must leave the country. It so happens that the Swedish embassy in Tokyo is the most convenient of all nearby ones, so I decided on going there. Traveling all the way to Japan just for a passport run seemed like a waste of time and money so we figured we could combine … Read the rest
I’ve been living in Taiwan for more than ten years now but funnily enough it’s only recently that I’ve started to discover just how many odd places there are in this country. If you check the Taiwanese map for landmarks and tourist spots you’re not likely to find them, which is part of the reason it took me so long. However, if you take the time to explore the back streets, country roads and other less touristic parts of the country, and you pay a little bit of extra attention to your surroundings, you might stumble on some such place … Read the rest