Stockholm, Sweden.

Stockholm, Sweden.

I got about… 3 or 4 hours of sleep. Left Triolo with Rosalind, who is also beginning a journey today, at 5:45am. Luckily, I bought my ticket for the train to Tournai on Tuesday, because I made it to the platform and hopped onto the train just two minutes before it left the Lille-Flandres station. In fact, I decided to travel with a ticket of Lille to Tournai (just over the Belgian border) and then a slot on the Go 10 pass from Tournai to Charleroi-Sud. It cost me a total of €5,40. Deal! Way better than direct Lille->Charleroi –Sud ticket for €22. The problem with trying to make my 9:30am flight was that my earliest possible arrival at the Brussels Charleroi Airport (a large Ryanair hub) was 8:20am. Not a lot of time to check a bag and get through security. Luckily, I made it and my flight was actually late leaving. I couldn’t sleep, but did indeed manage to start drifting during the 90 minute coach/bus ride into Stockholm from the airport. When I got here, I was fairly lost. I had completely run out of time to plan my maneuvers outside of booking plane tickets and hostel beds. I wandered, backtracked, and eventually gound my hostel. It’s about 10x’s better than the one where I stayed in London. Quick let a few people know I was alive via the hostel’s wireless and my iTouch, and then decided to wander down to the National Museum. The museum was small, but nice all the same. On the walk down, I discovered some beautiful buildings and sights. (Pictures to come once I’ve returned!) Perhaps more importantly, while walking, I realized it had been about 10 hours since I’d eaten 2 bananas for breakfast, so I was on the search for a place to eat when lo! I saw a stand selling hot dog things. My heart lept! I gasped in excitement! TUNNBRÖDSRULLE!!

Yes. Tunnbrödsrulle. Anthony Bourdain featured the food on his show and I knew when I came here, I would have to try it. :D If you don’t know, tunnbrödsrulle (which they had translated to ‘flatbread’ in English) contains:

A hot dog

Mashed potatoes

Shrimp salad

Mustard

Ketchup…

And it’s all wrapped up in a tortilla (I guess that’s where they get the ‘flatbread’.)

In all, it may not have been the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten, but it was much more than tolerable! I would certainly eat it again.

After leaving the museum, I spent some more time wandering and taking photos. I’ve wound up here in Wayne’s Coffee, drinking the hugest mug of tea I’ve ever seen. Coincidentally, the man and woman who sat next to me on the flight have also made it here.. And presently, there are about 7 Swedish women doing some sweet cross-stitching and talking on the other side of me..

My plan is to stay here a bit longer before I meander back towards the hostel. Then I’ll type these up and post them, mplan the things I want to accplish tomorrow, and go to sleep.

But first, to give you a better idea of this place…

6 Things I Have Learned About Stockholm in Approximately 6 Hours:

1. It snows a lot.

2. It is dark very early (by 3:30?)

3. There is an H&M on every corner. (Really.)

4. Everyone speaks English.

5. Even if someone isn’t speaking English, it sometimes sounds far, far too similar to a British accent for my comfort..

6. There is a McDonald’s on every corner. (Still valid, but not as prevalent as H&M.)

Further experiences in Stockholm:

Upon my return to the hostel, I discovered that I couldn’t figure out how to access the internet on the computers in the lobby, so my updates will have to come somepoint after the fact.

I decided to take a quick cup of tea (the hostel provides free coffee and tea!) and met this Australian named Nick. (Actually, we only discussed names about 40 minutes into our conversation.) He’s super nice, if every quick to share tales of his drunken experiences. We were sitting next to three friends from Perth who were doing some extensive traveling. They played chess the whole night and talked with us too. I don’t remember all the subjects that we discussed, but Nick is now fully aware of the Platform 9 and ¾ in King’s Cross (he’s been living in London for 5 months) and told me he’d definitely be going there. Job well done on spreading the Harry Potter gospel, Self!

I ended up not sleeping until after 1 and still hadn’t made any real plans. Woke up until way late and said hello to the 3 Australians (once more playing chess…) and Nick while I had tea for breakfast. I made my way down to Gamla Stan and walked around, enjoying the lights and cute shops. I bought myself some earrings and went into a “Taco Bar” for lunch. It wasn’t great, but it was fairly cheap. 38SEK is about 3,80 Euro is about 4.50 dollars. Kept walking and caught Riddarsholmen out of the corner of my eye. Wandered around the island taking photos and then headed off to the Modernamuseet. I paid 80SEK for a ticket to the museum and the Arkitekturmuseet was free between 4 and 6! I spent an hour or so in the modern art museum. It was okay, really. I guess I’m just not a “modern art” person. You know, pieces that look like someone threw paint at a canvas and decided it was groundbreaking.. Some was cool, and the Dali piece was bizarre, and I, for some reason, like Matisse. The Architecture Museum had a cool temporary exhibit of gingerbread houses constructed by Stockholmians (I think), and a really neat collection of models of buildings around the world and of Stockholm. Afterwards, I walked over to Gamla Stan again with the goal of seeing the gigantic Christmas tree up close. Goal accomplished. It was decorated with some huuuuge ornaments and apparently real gingerbread men! Also, it turns out that the Stenbeck Tree (as it’s called, for the guy who suggested Stockholm make it a tradition) isn’t actually a real tree, but instead there are a bunch of trees that “donate” their best, fullest, greenest branches to the cause of the “biggest and most beautiful Christmas tree”. I left and walked to the Royal Palace and the church next to it. I certainly plan on going back tomorrow to see if I can go inside the palace and church. So far, I’ve been going places at the wrong hours.

:)

So. It’s 5:35am; I’m once more in Skavsta Airport. It’s also Sunday morning. My plans didn’t go exactly.. according to plan (harhar.) Honestly, the last thing I have written in my notebook is a big, green smile that I drew, I suppose, as a recap of yesterday (see: Friday). I will try to explain further atthis point.

Ahem. So, while in the hostel drinking tea and pouring my adventures onto the paper via my sweet Union Jack pen from London, the TV in the kitchen/common area was on with some music. A guy was changing the channel occasionally, and at some point, he asked if I was interested in watching something. I explained that I didn’t mind at all since I was writing. He asked if I was writing about my trip to Stockholm. I said yes and told him about my blog. This turned into 3 hours of conversation between us and no more recapping my day’s discoveries. And I don’t mind at all. :)

Tom is from a small town close to Hamburg, but speaks flawless English, certainly helped by is year spent as a highschool exchange student in Florida. He mispronounced “alibi” but I think that’s the only mistake I noticed. We spent a good deal of time talking about traveling, schools, America.. And that’s the only remembering my mind can do at the moment.

In any case, when we became tired, we exchanged names and emails to stay in touch and suggested possibly seeing each other the next day to walk around and maybe get to some museums.

Back in my still empty (!) room, I got ready for bed and looked through my maps a bit, planning to hit the us terminal to check departure times for the airport, get to the royal palace, stop in souvenir shops on the way home, try to get some sleep between 5pm and 1am when I would need to check out. If I saw Tom, maybe we could do something together as well. Simple. Sleep. (And good sleep. I had a legitimate mattress and pillow and extra cushiony mattress pad thing! Way,way, WAY better than those terrible 2 inch foam pads they call a bed in Triolo..)

Saturday morning, I very reluctantly got out of bed and gathered my things for the day. As I had tea and watched an incredibly varied selection of music videos on the TV (including Fatboy Slim’s “Praise You” and J. Lo’s “If You Had My Love”) I ran into Tom and we made the decision to go out together for shopping and some museums. First stops were some stores: one with a collection of ties so fascinating and creative that I wished I were a suit-wearing business man; one with tons of Halloween costumes, gag gifts and overall bizarre items that reminded me of Spenser’s in the USA; 2 design/furniture/stuff stores that were cool but far too expensive for me. We also stopped in a mall where, rather than going into stores to search for Christmas presents, we instead had gingerbread flavored gelato. SO. WORTH. IT.

We went to the Dansmuseet (for free!). It was fairly interesting to be honest. The exhibit included paintings and sculptures of dancers, costumes from performances, and a neat video showcasing a lot of different styles of dance, complete with a scene from Bride and Prejudice! We found an indoor food/farmer’s market and managed some free samples of Chocolate, then went to the Kungliga Biblioteket (aka: the Royal library), but quickly departed so we could make it to the East Asia Museum to see the Terracotta Army! Unfortunately, it cost about 15 euro to get in and neither of us were looking to spend that much. We did enter the permanent exhibits on China, which included loads of pottery and a nice little section on the history of bookmaking. On our way home, I bought some postcards, a cute moose figure thing, and my Swedish flag!

Back in the hostel, we had some dinner and spent the evening watching more (mainly terrible) music videos and talking with Nick the Australian. Once more, I’m at a loss to recount the subjects we discussed, but we did sit around together for hours. By 10:45pm, we snapped a quick photo (one I’ll hopefully receive from Tom very soon!), said our goodnights/goodbyes, and I went to nap for just about 2 hours before repacking, checking out, drinking more tea, reading Harry Potter et le Prisonnier d’Azkaban, freezing on my way to the bus station, drifting asleep on the bus ride to the airport, waking up abruptly to a screaming child upon my arrival at the airport, and now putting my pen and notebook away to get my flight!