I have a mini-holiday and this is the first time I’m actually going to sleep over in my cabin. I’ve got electricity there, the radiators work, there was a good chance of getting running water – luxury!

When I got to the cabin, I met with guy who was going to help me with the water. Sure enough, we got it going with just a minor flood in the bathroom, nothing that good mop doesn’t fix.

Then I set to work with cleaning and mounting more furniture. While I was getting along with it, I met with some new neighbours (they are all very nice here!) and a guy who had an expert eye and pointed out some more problems with the cabin. Not what I needed, so I made a few phonecalls to try to organise things again and felt better afterwards so I could concentrate on an IKEA chair with a missing hole. Exactly, a missing hole. I had a powertool with me and I had a toolkit, but I had left the drills at home. So I took the biggest screw I could find and screwed it through where the hole was supposed to be, and then I used a sandpaper technique (without sandpaper) to make it large enough – it figures that the missing hole is the biggest one of the lot. And when I finally got frustrated with it, I took a hammer and just simply tried to hit the darn metal plug but all you achieve with violence is to break things, so the wood split… Note to self: Always bring the FULL toolkit when you’re going to work with IKEA furniture!

With all the time I had spent on one lousy chair, I decided to enjoy the warm evening sunshine instead. I wanted to check out the lake and the Mittån river that runs from the eastern end of the lake, so I took the trail that is very conveniently almost behind my cabin and headed down to the village. Now, the only problem is that there are lots trails here. I was sure that the trail I needed was going straight so I ignored all the trail crossings, but soon I was starting to feel that it was sure taking a lot longer to get to the village than I had anticipated. I found the reason – I had walked in the wrong direction and ended up too far in the west. But at least I came out from the trail in a place which I recognised, so knew which way to go from there. Sort of – after another wrong turn and time wasted, I finally got down to the lake. Of course by now it was getting a bit late so I just walked to the bridge that crosses Mittån, took a picture (no points for the wind beaten lake) and headed back. I made an educated guess where I would find the trail that I was supposed to follow in the first place and I actually found it right where I figured it should be. Walking the trail this way, I got back in a fraction of time I had taken me to go out and indeed, it’s a very short bit to walk from the cabin to the village. It will probably take me some time to learn where all these different trails lead… but time is something I should have now, and I’m not talking about this mini-holiday!

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I have no Internet connection from the cabin, no telephone coverage either for that matter. So I’m posting this from Funäsdalen, the wind is blowing almost storm so it’s a perfect day to do some shopping. I’m not the least bit tempted to go up on a mountain in this wind, but at least it’s a bit sunny so I need to find something to do in the afternoon that doesn’t involve cleaning or furniture or lakes or alpine tundra.

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Oh and my first night in the cabin! A little bit sleepless to be honest, until at sunrise (I can see the summer sunrise from the ”kitchen” window) I finally put on the earplugs to shut out the birds’ chirpy chatter and the occasional cracking from the radiators. I’m a light sleeper.