One more weekend at the summerhouse

Last week was pretty ordinary at work. I brought the new employee to the storage and she liked the cool temperatures indoors (17 centigrades). It was about 35 in the corridor outside our storage. I showed her around in both stacks.

Friday at lunchtime I took the train and a bus to get to the summerhouse. My sister and her family were still visiting, but there were also some additions. My second cousin and his wife had arrived to spend some time with us. It was his wife who found me through a genealogy query on the internet, it's quite a few years ago now. We meet usually once a year, and this time it was our turn to host the visit. We started out by going to the ocean, and most of us jumped in. The waves were not as high as last time, but it was still fun.

Saturday my mother and I went with our guests on a tour of northeastern Skåne in their car. We first went to the fleamarket in Åhus, and then continued on to more fleamarkets in Kristianstad. We all made some small purchases, my mother got some clothes, shoes and a lamp, for instance. After lunch we headed out to an area east of town called Kjugekull. It's a natural reserve with hiking trails and it's popular to go rock climbing there. 20 years ago my sister and I ran the summercafé at the local museum at Kjugekull, and it was interesting to see what it looked like now. They have more space than we did, one more room. The ice-cream was pretty good. We walked on one of the trails and made it to the highest point 85 meters above sea-level. Not that high, but the view over the lakes and forests is wonderful. On the way back my mother and I were dropped off at a bus stop and our guests returned to their place in mid-northern Skåne.

Sunday my sister and her family went home again and the remaining two rested. My mother in the hammock and I in a deck chair. I returned directly to work this morning, a two hour journey.

The weather is cooler now, about 22 centigrades and much more tolerable. The extreme heat we have had caused many problems, both health issues and major fires and traffic problems. A gigantic forest fire is raging in Västmanland province. It started twelve days ago and is just barely under control now, thanks to rain. They have used enormous resources to try to stop it; 17 helicopters, four special water distributing airplanes (flown in from Italy and France!), military personnel, rescue personnel from all over Sweden and many volunteers have done their best to limit the damages. One person has died and 25 homes have been lost. Thousands of people are evacuated and have no idea if their houses will be there when they are allowed to go back again. A terrible situation.