Moose Burger, and the return of the ...

I got off the bus, still quite annoyed about losing the phone. 10 minutes later, 10 minutes I spent watching two dudes playing some feeble kind of beach volley on a small court, my brother and cousin came around to pick me up. I was about to ask for a phone to call mine, when they said they hear I've been losing my phone.

Weird enough. I didn't know what was going on. But apparently a lady had found my phone, and called my dad - the last called number on there. Confusion ensued, of course, when my phone rang, and instead of my silkysoft adolescent voice, he heard a rough lady's voice, in Swedish. But after a little time to get over the initial oddities, he arranged that we would pick up the phone the same night. However, we drove back to the house, to meet up with everybody (8 people in all was at the house. Me, dad, his wife, my three siblings, a friend to my little sister, and my cousin. We were going to go out for dinner apparently. So dad called the lady again, and made new arrangements.

Weird thing, though, was that she was reluctant to give out her address. Reluctant to give out any information, when it came down to it. She finally agreed to meet the next day at noon, on the main street of Halmstad, although getting out of her exactly where proved a challenge. She rambled on about some sort of street food vendor or some sort. Couldn't give a name, and couldn't really provide us with a street number. It all seemed extremely dubious. Like she was scared of us coming full force to rape and pillage at random.

With the rendezvous for my phone settled, we all sat down at this local restaurant, and pondered the menu. I decided on Moose Burger, just for the fuck of it. Having never tasted moose/elk before, I figured it'd be fun to give it a go. I didn't exactly regret it or anything, but it was really fucking boring. I'm guessing the chefs just cooked it dry, and that it'd taste better other places. But here, it sucked. The burger bun wasn't really interesting either, mostly resembling just an ordinary supermarket frozen baguette. The sauce was overly spicy, killing off the remaining taste of the meat. Disappointing. And it wasn't exactly on the cheap side either, mind you. Overall, I daresay it won't be the last time I'll tive moose meat, albeit that place has seen the last of me. The waiter was nice, but seemed extremely goofy.

While eating and/or waiting for food, we contemplated why the phone lady was acting weird. Although my dad thought she sounded like a 50+ year old on the phone, I suggested she was this really nice blond Swedish girl, who would be very cool and fun, and insist on us staying for dinner and drinks. As it turned out, the truth was to be found somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.

The next day we got up at the ungodly hour of 10 am, in order to be there at 12. A bit of food was ingested slowly and in complete silence. The idea of going anywhere at that moment seemed completely ludicrous. But hey, it was my much coveted phone, so it had to be done. And in the old two birds with one stone fashion, it was decided, that we might as well stick around the city til 3pm, and pick up our uncle, who would be arriving then. He's our autistic, but socially somewhat functioning, uncle. I'll tell you about him in a later post. Since we now had 3 hours in Halmstad, we decided a bit of shopping would be in order.

Off we were. 1 hour drive in, went without problems. Finding the street she claimed she'd be on, proved easy enough. Finding the street number she claimed we'd find her by... not so easy. 14b was nowhere to be seen. If it could be seen, it'd be in the middle of a big department store window decoration. What the fuck now. Was she pulling our collective legs? We wandered around a bit like 3 huge question-marks. She didn't know what we looked like, we didn't know what she looked like, and the city was full of people. Then dad called. She had called him, because we were late. We told him what was going on. She called her back. Then called us again, and said we should just sort of hang around the square, and she'd find us. Again, she was vague and not really able to provide clear answers. It grew extremely dubious.

Through much deliberation and voting at home, before we left for Halmstad, it had been decided, that she should have a gift for her kindness of not just nicking the phone for herself, but actually taking time and effort to call up and arrange this stuff, however dubious it may be. The gift was to be a bottle of cheap, but drinkable, alcohol. "It's like money in the hand up here" my father jokingly exclaimed, before wrapping the bottle up in colored paper. But the weird thing is, the joke is on Sweden. Their currency is at an all time low, and lots of them are happy to get alcohol as payment for stuff, since it's so damn expensive here.

Anyway, we're hanging around outside an H&M and another large store, when a short blond girl walks past us, with a phone in her hand that much resembles mine. She knows she's looking for 3 guys, but not which, and I've no idea what she looks like. But I sort of stare at the phone, and she must've noticed it, because she turns on her heel, and asks if I'm the one looking for a phone. I say yes, she gives it to me, and then, without us being able to utter more than a fleeting thanks, she departs, rapidly, and enters the large H&M shop. She's gone before we even realize what happened. A blink of an eye, and you'd missed her. Amazing really. So she didn't get the bottle of booze that was intended for her. We argued for a bit whether or not she worked at the H&M, or just went in there to disappear in the crowd. Hard to say. But she did leave us with a funny train of thought.

We shopped around in Halmstad for a while, with the three of us buying various items. Shoes were popular though, and I got myself a decent pair. Nothing overly excitable, but hey.. it's shoes. On a happier note, I found Dr Pepper in a shop. The drink, that is. And it wasn't the watered down shit substitute wannabe Dr Pepper they sell at home. It was the real deal. I was chuffed. Well chuffed. Then we had pizza from a place where the guy behind the counter had absolutely fuck all idea about what was going on in his shop. In the end, we managed to get pizzas though, and that was the most important thing, I guess. They weren't half bad either.

Picking up my uncle was our last task, and while that warrants a story in itself, I'll leave it at that for now. We returned to the house, one uncle and one phone the richer, to much rejoicing. Yay yay!