First day of Herräng 2012!
As I, as usual, had been slower packing / fixing things at home (more specifically setting up the self watering plant threads) than I thought, I was leaving home in Husby (north of Stockholm city) a bit after 4 am.
I took the slightly shorter of the two easily accessible routes to Herräng, mostly following the road 280, same as the bus from Stockholm. Since this road can be rather heavily trafficked in relation to its narrowness, on a bike you prefer going there on the off-hours.
As I was cheating a bit, sending my sleeping bag, my shoes and some towels with a (driving) friend, the luggage didn’t feel so bad. (The years of biking to Herräg has taught me the importance of properly balancing my things, as the smallest tilt will steal valuable energy.)
First half was perfect biking weather - cloudy and around 20 degrees. I had a 20 min break a bit more than half-way, after Rimbo. Then the rain came. Still not too bad, as it was rather warm. It rained for most of the remaining ~50km... Still, I made it to Herräng in less than 5:30h.
After putting up my new tent for the first time ever (including turning most things upside down at least once) I had a well deserved shower, and went looking for people to say hi to.
There were already some familiar people around, and already volunteers at the road leading to Folkets Hus / the place for registration.
For the 15 o’clock registration people that had all registration info nicely printed and even money, or had already paid were placed in the ‘Fast Feet line’. We had plenty of time joking about the line in fact being “slow feet”. As a sidenote, one of the people I chatted with in the line, a first time visitor, turned out to be staying for the full camp, and being one of my volunteering colleges during week 5.
As the procedure for people staying in general accommodation goes, registration -> speeding back up to school area, get a bed tag, a find a bed, register your bed tag. My favourite bed spot was already taken by a setup volunteer, but I grabbed a decent bed still close to “my” fire exit.
The rest of the afternoon & evening I spent hanging around, and then going to the very first opening meeting. Which offered the expected teacher presentations, some general info, some Lennart humor and a chorus line performance.
As this was week 1, not everything was in place, including the info on how to do the auditions. They wanted to introduce a new audition system, with a first round of peer auditions on Saturday night, to make a pre-arrangement of groups for the ‘normal’ Sunday audition. Unfortunately no one told us about the pre-auditions, so only a few of us had seen the announcement on the news posters, or heard about it from those that had. So we were a small and somewhat confused group of people that showed up after the meeting, and danced, and did the peer review on pieces of paper which were most likely just scrapped...
Finishing the long day with a bit of dancing - and the first Herräng berry pie!
I was indeed happy to be back, although by now my legs were feeling a bit numb.
