Sunday 26 July 1998

Slideshow Pictures

Arrived in Trelleborg at 2:15 a.m.. Handed our passports to the border guard who wished us a nice time in Sweden and let us through. As we thought, the relatives who were going to wait for us at the ferry terminal, had left and we were on our own to find Broby. We needed a map to find the town, so decided to head to Malmo and try to find a gas station that was open. I didn’t realize that Broby, even though small, was in the book of maps that we had journeyed through Europe with. So we drove through Malmo and finally found a gas station that was open where I purchased a map of Sweden. We drove towards Lund and being tired, it was about 4:00 a.m., we were lost. For some reason we kept going round and round in Lund. Finally we stopped at a gas station that was open and had a cup of coffee. This seemed to wake us up and eventually found the road towards Kristianstad. We were headed east and the sun was rising, right into our eyes. The countryside was quite beautiful with rolling hills and farm buildings in the distance lit by the early morning sun.

We arrived in Broby between 5 and 6 a.m.. It was a cold morning. As we entered Broby there was a large map of the town beside the highway. We found Helmer and Hilkka’s house without any difficulty. Rang the doorbell several times. No answer. Knocked on the door several times. No answer. I went around the house knocking, and peeking in, all the windows on the first floor. No answer. Finally we gave up. We were tired and it was cold. So we decided to go into town and try to find a hot cup of coffee. Nothing was open in the small town. Nobody was on the streets except one man. I asked him in English and German where a telephone booth was. He didn’t seem "all there", so we went off trying to find a telephone.

Finally we found a telephone booth but we didn’t have Swedish change. Luckily it accepted Visa. The LED. was in several languages. Rita came out of the car and tried to phone Helmer. Several times she dialed but couldn’t get through. She was freezing so she went back to the car. I continued dialing and finally after trying all the combinations of their telephone number dialed only the last four numbers. It worked. Helmer answered the phone. Since I didn’t speak Swedish or Finnish, and Helmer didn’t speak English or Hungarian, I just told Helmer in English, that it was Ti and we would be at the house in a few minutes. We drove back to the house.

Rang the doorbell. No answer. Rang the doorbell. No answer. Rang again. This time we could hear someone in the house. Helmer opened the door. He was dressed in his finest briefs and half asleep. If there would be a Victoria's secrets for men, he would have been their top model. Finally he recognized us and let us in. He excused his attire and went upstairs to get dressed and wake Hilkka up. In a few minutes they were both down.

They told us that they had waited in Trelleborg until one o’clock and then decided to leave. A party had been arranged for us at the house. Hilkka, Helmer and their daughters had been waiting for us at the terminal while the girls husbands were preparing food and waiting at home. Since we didn’t arrive they had decided to have the party without us, and didn’t get to bed till early in the morning. They took out all the remaining food, including a sandwich cake, which Annika, a friend of Maarit who had a restaurant in town, had made.

We had a shot of cognac with coffee, ate some of the food and then excused ourselves, we were exhausted, we needed sleep.