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Apr 6, 2003 Last weekend saw the end of winter time here in Sweden. At two o’clock in the morning last Sunday, the last Sunday in March, we set our clocks forward to summertime as decreed by SFS 2001:127 in parliament. Summertime was tried previously in Sweden as far back as 1916, but was rejected by both farmers and cows, who were bewildered by the change in milking times – the cows, that is, not the farmers. It wasn’t until 1980, the sixth of April to be exact, when the current system came into effect. Now summertime is recognised all over Europe – except Iceland, who refuse to change their clocks at all. I often wonder who has to go around all the public buildings and change all those clocks at two o’clock in the morning... The other big event here was that it is now permissible to once again drive around in a car fitted with “non-winter” tyres. Yes, that’s right, every October it is compulsory for all cars, trucks and busses etc. to change to winter tyres, and every April it is compulsory to change back again to normal, “summer” tyres. Winter tyres are similar to summer tyres, except that they are fitted with steel studs in the tread pattern, so that they can grip on the ice and snow. Of course they give the car driver a feeling of invincibility once fitted and at the first hint of snow, speeds increase rather than decrease, with a corresponding higher accident rate. This time of the year, you can always find a tyre depot by the queues of cars outside waiting to have their tyres changed over. But most people actually keep two sets of wheels for their cars, one set equipped with winter tyres and the other fitted with normal tyres. But these are small events in the overall scale of things. This week is the week of the Swedish Ice Hockey Finals and our local team, Färjestad, from here in Karlstad, is up against the might of Frölunda from Goteborg, having defeated the Stockholm giants Djurgården in the semi-final last week. Coming from Australia, I had not taken much notice of ice hockey previously, but here in Sweden it is almost a religion and competes for the sporting public’s attention with that other great Scandinavian sport, bandy. I have yet to attend a game of bandy, but I gather that it is about as strange to an Australian as cricket is to a Swede. Apparently it is similar to the game of hockey played in Australia, England, India and Pakistan on grass as a summer sport, but here it is played on ice in winter. There is also an indoors form of bandy called, appropriately enough, inner bandy. Needless to say, Sweden are the current world champions in bandy. But I digress. Ice hockey has to be one of the fastest, exciting sports around and I have been lucky enough to attend several first class games here in Karlstad. Färjestad play in the top league and have a great winning tradition in recent years. They play in the Löfbergs Lila Arena, which is named after the local coffee maker, and which has only been open a few years, so it is a modern, well equipped stadium. The Nya Wermlands Tidningen, that source of endless useless knowledge, tells me that four out of five Swedes over sixteen drink coffee and 70% do so several times each day. Coffee is supplied free of charge to more than half the Swedish workforce, which means that employers have to supply around a billion cups of coffee to their employees every year. Now, back to the ice hockey. The final series is the best of seven matches, played alternately in Karlstad and Goteborg. Unfortunately, Frölunda won the first of the seven games in Karlstad by the score of 5 – 4, after a sudden death period following normal time. The scores were locked at 4 all, at the end of the third period. Statistics show that of the last 28 finals series, only 3 times has the team that lost the first game at home gone on to be the Swedish Champions. The odds were definitely against Färjestad. The second game was played on Thursday evening at the Scandinavium Arena in Goteborg and Frölunda again won by the score of 2 – 1, going 2 – 0 up in the final series, with five games still to play. Saturday afternoon was the crunch game in Karlstad. But unfortunately for Färjestad it was Frölunda who won again, this time 2 – 0. So now it’s 3 – 0 in the final series, with the next game in the series to be played on Monday – I’ll report on the outcome next week, but it doesn’t look too good for the locals here... Oh yes, as a footnote, summer time was greeted with rain on Sunday and some snow again during the week. Last Saturday and Sunday saw gale force winds over much of Sweden, with up to 50,000 homes without electricity. Welcome to Summer... Hälsningar till nästa vecka, About the author: Robin Alan Bell is an Englishman by birth, but migrated to Australia back in '72. Married and divorced there. Spent the last 3 years living by myself on a remote farm in rural New South Wales with no mains electricity, water etc. All power, heating was from natural resources (solar, wind, wood). "Met" a Swedish girl on the internet, came to Sweden for a holiday, loved the place (and the girl), moved to Sweden permanently Christmas 2001 and married the girl in Easter 2002. Living happily ever after... Email Robin Alan Bell: sosoft@ozemail.com.au ------------ Comment on this column in the forum. ------------ |
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