Thursday April 24 2008

We woke up around noon with a hangover. Today would see the arrival of Aakarp, a friend of Maddok and Morani from their recent student days and a member of our geeky Internet community for well over a year. Everyone loves Aakarp. She’s smart, good-natured and able to laugh at pretty much anything, plus her regular online immersion in the guild’s willful desecration of spoken English has left her happy to abuse the language like a native. Picking up colloquial verbal ticks like a glue-covered ant strolling over the script of Eastenders, she peppers her conversation with phrases like “it’s proper nice,” “it’s well good,” and “it’s doin’ my ‘ed in,” to such an extent that she is now technically only 30 per cent Swedish.

Thanks to her arrival, today was selected as a day for drinking, not unlike like all our previous days in Sweden. The chosen location for said drinking was a nearby wood, and the activity we picked to justify it was a barbecue, at which we would be joined at various stages by members of Morani and Maddok’s extended social circle, who had exotic-sounding names like Gustav and Emma. Sitting on logs in the Swedish wilderness, grilling sausages and burgers and mushrooms and cheese, we frittered away the hours with beer, fruit cider and conversation. When we got bored, we prodded at things with sticks. It was a lovely way to spend an afternoon and by the time we set off home, it was dark.

Back at the apartment, things became increasingly drunk. The group size gradually diminished until only the five of us - Morani, Maddok, Aakarp, Brodos and me - remained. This is when the violence started.

For some reason best known to himself, Maddok took part in recreational wrestling at school. A couple of his friends followed the same path, with the consequence being that, whenever any of these people drink together, they eventually end up having a fight. It’s a friendly fight, of course, but it’s not without its risks, as the participants demonstrate new and exciting ways to squash each others limbs and airways until somebody desperately declares that they wish it to stop.

Booze provides the kind of nurturing environment in which this kind of casual violence can flourish, numbing the participants’ bodies to pain at the same time as it gradually erodes their last vestiges of sanity. Thus it was that we had a fight.

When I say “we had a fight”, I mean everyone. Maddok challenged Brodos, with the stocky Englishman smartly removing himself from proceedings relatively early. I incurred the wrath of Morani and Aakarp simultaneously, which I imagine would have carried exciting and erotic overtones if it had happened in a film, but in reality it’s a perilous balancing act between trying to avoid injury to both yourself and your assailant while only being permitted by law to engage in physical contact with about 60 per cent of their surface area, lest your actions be construed as sexual assault.

Morani insists to this day that she won that fight. She also insists that she cannot remember biting me, or biting me a second time, that she cannot remember who broke the sofa during the course of the night, and indeed that she cannot remember very much at all from the latter stages of the night, starting from at least an hour before the fighting began. Whoever won - it was me, ok? - I defended myself bravely against two angry women, a fact of which I am rightly proud.

It didn’t end there. Having ascertained that Brodos didn’t want to play, Maddok spent the following hour attacking me. Standing in the kitchen showing me “correct blocking technique”, we took turns to try and punch each other in the head as hard as we could, thrusting a forearm up at the last minute to intercept the blow. This caused much bruising for both parties.

Sparring also took place in the living room, a series of spirited bouts in which I called up moves I had learned from watching WWF wrestling - including an elbow drop and a spectacularly pointless 360 Powerbomb - while Maddok tried to manoeuvre me into a position where he could freely crush my neck. This struck me as a little mismatched, idiot versus pro, and eventually resulted in a choke hold which compacted my Adam’s Apple to such a degree that swallowing hurt for the next four days. I think it was clear who won that fight. Still, I like to imagine I would have been the audience favourite.

Bruised, bitten and breathing with difficulty, I fell asleep on the broken sofa. Not the most favourable conditions for a good night’s sleep, but then again, I was incredibly drunk.

Next week - the boys say goodbye to their first Swedish hosts.

Read from the start:
A Geek Adventure

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