stockholm.

as most of you know, or are about to know; i was in sweden for a couple of days at the end of last week. at the peak of our trip organisation there were 6 people coming but due to unforseen circumstances our party was whittled away to a faithful 3. so it was myself, my cousin from london and a mate form the hotel. our flight out was at 8:30 from stansted, the cheapest(but not necessarily easiest or most convienent) way to get there was to drive up to cambridge park my car in a mates street and catch the train back to the airport, had to leave the hotel at 4:10am, bit of a mission. and we passed a crazy guy running on the side of the road at 4:15am! he was a keen health enthusiast. Flew into sweden about an hour from stockholm and caught the bus up to the city centre, found our hostel which was slightly dodgey as there was no reception, and you just got given a door code, which meant any random off the street could get in if they knew the code. i left booking the accom. a bit late, so i take full responibility for the low quality accomodation. sorry team. despite feeling a tad tired, we headed down to the tourist info station, where we stayed for about an hour asking every question imaginable, yes it seemed we were quite underprepared and really didnt know where to start in our exploration of stockholm, we ended up jumping on one of the regular busses and kinda toured around a bit of the city. we saw a sign advertising something like road safety, couldnt read the sign just the date and the street name, so we went to check it out- im still not totally sure what it was all about but, we got to ride a mini bike, penny farthing and play with some other little gadgets, and do a bit of rock climbing, so that was a bit of a laugh (pics coming soonish) had a look around some little markets, where they tried to rip my cous off with some dodgey strawberries. ha. got back to the hostel and met johan, this dude who was going up to work in a ski resort up north, he was pretty cool, so we talked and chilled for the night and nothing much else. friday we kinda just walked around the city, went to a place called old town, which had heaps of touristy shops and stuff. some of may have heard of the icehotel, if you havent its a hotel, carved out of blocks of ice which is way up north in sweden, everything is ice, the bar, the beds, even the cups you drink out of. and there was a mini replica set up in a room size freezer, pretty funny, you put these cape things on for warmth, then just look around inside the freezer. photos will explain it better, but it was a bit of fun. also went to a few museums and that, a highlight was the dance muesum. you have to check it our if you go. got back to the hostel and there was a random sleeping in my bed; and my cousin had someone using his sleeping bacg and everything. i told you randoms could just walk into our hosetl. not cool. woke up the next morning and had our regular brekkie form the supermarket, and headed off to skansen, which is like a zoo/wilderness place on one of the islands in the harbour. we also checked out the vasa, which is a oldschool battleship which sunk in the harbour on its maiden voyage. so there a big museum about it, reasonably interesting, off to skansen, where there was an olden day festival on, people playing their accordians and other random instruments, old markets selling jam and bread and stuff, was cool, then we walked around the zoo part and checked out the animals, there were a couple of brown bears fighting and some elks just sitting there,also fed a wolverine some apple and a whole banana skin, he was loving it. was cool, just walking around on the island, nice scenery, relaxed atmosphere. for dinner we decided to had some tradtional swedish food, i still dont actually know what that is, but we rocked up to this restuarant and asked for a table, and they told us we couldnt go in. the reason being that, at night the restuarant was transformed into a gay night club. ok. but they told us it was their 2 year anniversary, and there was a free buffet, free drinks, free everything. and being low budget backpackers, we thought, we'll give it a go. so we went back at 9pm, and had some of the best food, it was real quality(especially after eating hotel canteen food, and supermarket food) and the people were nice, in a non funny way. we just chilled and chatted to them and that, was cool; so that was a great free night out and a great day overall. our final day in stockholm was just a chill out as we were pretty tired, we went out to the tv tower, the tallest structure in stockholm, and a great view of the city. and there was a nice park at the base of the tower, which we relaxed in, also had a go on the kids flying fox(zip line) and eventually got bullied off it by real kids. caught another bus around the city, and ended up at night just chilling at this cool little bar thing, which had the best music, really cool beats. got home to the hostel and slept for an hour and had to get up at 3am to catch the bus back to the airport for our 6am flight. flew back into stansted and went up to cambridge and had a bit of a look around, then back to the hotel where i am now. so in all sweden was totally wicked, even though i only really got to see the city(would have loved to get out to the wilderness and gone fishing or kayaking or rafting or something) i had heaps of fun just chilling out and meeting a few locals, they all speak perfect english, like better then me; and they are all really nice and willing to have a chat with foreigners; especially australians. woohoo. so thats about it, back to the normal grind back at the hotel now, ill be off to denmark on october 21st, to catch up with a mate from america. can't wait. anyways hope all is well where you are. keep smiling :) andyb