Klaralven Karlstad Scandic

... installed. The new windows flip out and give excellent cross-ventilation when cooking which is a godsend given that the last 2 old ****** windows were cemeted in place. On top of which they look smart and make the old Westfalia fibreglass roof a more modern appearance. Did I mention the rust in the gutters has also been fixed the day before we left so the van (whilst very old....26 years old) shapes up good from a distance and does us no shame when cruising into the ...

... by american cars with more corvettes than we have ever seen<br>* The stars here are gorgeous<br>* Camping isn't as cheap as other countries but overall Sweden isn't as expensive as everyone seems to think<br>* The swedish language isnt too hard to pick up the basics, very similar words to german and english. It must like english be derived from Indo - Germanic.<br>* there are lots of cute little birdys everywhere

... at the site and we had the whole cafe to ourselves. <br><br>Its so refreshing to go to a country that is not overloaded with tourists even in the low season. We then headed inland which turned out to be the most amazing drive through postcard perfect picturesque countryside landscape. Every turn put us cruising along the side of a still lake lined with fir pine forest and dotted with the occasional remote house and dingy (painted in Swedish Ochre of course). Along the ...

... mushrooms and learned about local fauna. Of course we had to visit the local H&amp;M department store. H&amp;M&#8217;s here are massive, dangerous stores. Luckily we have suitcase limits to control shopping. <br><br>In the village of Edeby is a small building that still houses the brick oven used to bake traditional Swedish flatbread. Back in the day, people would bake together rather than in their own kitchens. It is still available for use ...

... work time in Sweden and Norway as the camping grounds and hostel have been really empty. The public transport options here are awesome, you can take a bus anywhere, the trains work, and the city provide a free cycle hire service. There are bicycles everywhere, hundreds of them. NZ really needs to take a lesson from this. Yesterday I went to another museum and learnt about some Varmland history, and called my family from a payphone outside the tourist office, then bought a watch ...

I was so desperate to get out of Norway. Everyone is so stressed and serious in Oslo, and the cost of everything is way too high. So I took a train to Sweden where I will stay for a week before I go back to Norway (but I dont want toooo). I am staying at an empty campground by a large lake in a small town called Kristinehamn. I'm here because Lene is having another concert in a city ...

... to see, you can always find someplace new because the world is huge. As I said i've had the luck to see very many places in my life and i'm still just 19 years old. This year i've been to Dublin, Liverpool and London during spring. And the summer started off quite good as well as I went to Austria and Innsbruck with a friend and saw the Euro 2008, where we ...

19 minutes past midnight and we are leaving Karlstad by a bus that is taking us to Örebro, where we'll change to another bus that will take us to Stockholm Skavsta Airport in Nyköping. In about 17 hours we'll hopefully be in Innsbruck in some pub or fan-area where we can view the game between Sweden and Spain.

... ATMs are even more helpful than American ones. They access your account in less than a second and give you local cash in a good exchange rate. No more travelers checks needed. After two bus rides we got to Karlstad, home of Mathias, the Blooms' Exchange student from almost twenty years ago. Touring around Karlstad Karlstad is the kind of quaint and adorable city that those faux European cities in America strive to be ...

... to go in (They have limited Eskimos suits), 4 Americans (2 of them grade school teachers) were trying to figure which part of the world we are from. They didn't make it past the $1000 question when they guessed China. Damn, I should have printed a few page of Singapore snippets to tell them more about Singapore. I am not offended knowing full well in a big country, one tends to read more about their own news rather than global news. The reverse was true in ...