Stockholm!!

Wow! I haven't gotten around to posting in the last week and so many adventures to share!

I'll start with Stockholm!

My friend Nic from Montpellier lives in Stockholm so he met me at the central station where my bus from the airport stopped at. I immediately attacked him, it was soooo good to see him after a year.

He and I went back to his house about 30 minutes outside of downtown by bus and train so I could freshen up a little bit and drop my stuff off. He had to work that night so I did a little independent sightseeing around the Old City of Stockholm, including the smallest street in the city, the Parliament, City Hall, and Royal Palace! I learned so much about Sweden that afternoon. Prior to that day, I had no idea there was a king or queen, who by the way have no political power anymore and are liked much more now they are just a symbol!

The next day, Nic and I had a lovely afternoon in the very touristy area of Sweden called Skansen, which is a big open air museum of old Sweden with like little houses and a small zoo. For all of you who've ever seen Al Johnson's in Door County... I saw a house with grass on the roof! But no goats... Nic didn't seem to think that was a really Swedish thing. We looked at bears, elk and owls and had a lovely lunch outside. It kind of reminded me of Old World Wisconsin, the way it was set up and run. Very very fun.

Later that evening, Nic started feeling sick after a very scary fainting incident on the bus, so I spent the evening with Nic's dad, who drove me all around their island, around downtown Stockholm and took me out for some REAL Swedish meatballs and Raspberry Lime Cider. Absolutely delicious. After that, we came back to Nic's house, looked at photo albums of trips to the USA, old family photos and somehow managed to finish 2 bottles of wine. Around 2:30... we realized we had been talking for awhile and probably it was time to go to bed.

The next day, Nic was feeling better so we just took it easy around his house all day and headed to a graduation party that night where I got to see how Swedes celebrate the end of high school! It felt a lot like our graduation parties that I'm used to at home, except that they were speaking Swedish. Luckily for me, most if not all Swedes speak English. Thank god.

Thursday was my last morning in Sweden which basically consisted of me packing. I took the train back to the airport and flew to Milan where I spent the night. For those of you who haven't slept in an airport before, it's an experience. It's not the most comfortable night, but it's definately the cheapest. I got into the airport around 8:30, grabbed a piece of pizza and looked for a place to settle. At first I didn't know how many of us there would be, but by about 11:30, it was clear there would be a lot of overnighters. I evetually settled for a place on the ground so I locked up my pack, put the rain cover around it for extra protection, wrapped up in my sleep sack and went to sleep... until about 3:30 am when the airport starts to open again and the police man decided to walk around screaming WAKE UP. WAKE UP. Asshole.


Paris in the next post....