i like the people around here. they are really friendly (even though most of them don’t reach the kindness level of the party :) i guess that alcohol has a positive influence on these people’s friendliness). it’s nice to be ”neighbour” to people who live several kilometres away. and i like it when they hoot when they drive by, so that you look up and can see that they wave. and that they stop to talk for a while, even though you don’t even know who they are. i guess in some ways it’s easier to get to ”know” people in a small place like this… but you don’t really become part of the community very easily. i’ve talked to people who have lived here for 12 years or more, and still introduce themselves as ”newcomers”. in that way it’s probably easier in a city, i imagine, where people come and go all the time. lots of people here are like the fifth generation living in the same house, or relatives to the first people who came here, or at least they were born on the other side of the lake, or they’ve lived in stockholm for 30 years and then decided to come back. i think that all the people who say they are newcomers are people who have no “real” relation to this place… even if you come from a village only 30 km away you don’t count as a “real” nylander, it seems. i wonder if there are any exceptions… i’ll have to figure that out :)  ¶ 6:28 PM