You can find the middle of nowhere in many places around the world. One of those places is Ändebol about 20 kilometers south of the sleepy small town of Katrineholm. There are two Ändebols in a relatively close vicinity of each other. One is a village where you can live, buy milk and bread and raise your kids so that they too can grow up and curse the boring, dead place where they were born. This is the other Ändebol. Although actually larger in size, littered with houses along the two lakes and the forest road, it’s one of those old societies that didn’t quite make it into the modern age. There is no convenience store nearby (there used to be one but it burned down). No gas station. You can’t go there by bike without risking your life, and there’s no bus anymore, since the only kid in school age suddenly moved away last year, prompting the municipality to withdraw the school bus that came twice a day. Still there are a couple of families who stubbornly lives here all year round, refusing to give up their refuge despite the inconvenience. I’m currently visiting my relatives who rent a summer house in the area. The summer house is in fact an apartment in an old wooden house, one of several that in the early twentieth century housed the workers of the nearby sawmill and their families. There’s no water, the walls are thin like paper and the toilet is an outhouse. All the neighbors live closely and know each other well. Perfect grounds for gossip, indeed.

I have a favorite place around here. It’s on the other side of the railroad tracks separating the two lakes Small Fjälnaren and Big Fjälnaren by a narrow strip of land. Once there was a busy train station here with a full time table, but now all the trains pass by quickly on their way to or fro Norrköping. It doesn’t happen that often, only a couple of times a day. The sound of the signal and the train that eventually cuts through the water never fail to remind me of that scene in Spirited Away by Hayao Miyazaki, when that little girl takes the train in order to visit the big nosed witch, who somewhat like the inhabitants of Ändebol also lives in the middle of nowhere. I’m sure there’s a big nosed witch or two around here as well. If you pass the unguarded railroad crossing to the south and walk straight ahead, you end up at the place you can see in the picture above. There’s nothing there but a bench. Yesterday around eight in the evening, I was reading inside, when I saw the sky turn peach through the window. “I’m gonna go out for a while” I told my relatives. When I got outside, I saw the sun was an impossible ball of orange fire, and I hurried up, wanting to watch that incredible sunset without having trees and houses in the way. I walked down the little road by the lake, I passed the crossing, and as I came out on the peninsula I could see the sun sink behind the trees on the other side of the lake. No, wait…! Before it disappeared completely I snapped this picture. It’s a bit blurry since I rushed with it. A second later, the sun was gone.