The Swedish Reunion
Trip Start
Aug 20, 2008
1
13
16
Trip End
Dec 20, 2008
Stockholm, Stockholm, Sweden
Monday, November 17, 2008
I say that it is a "Swedish Reunion" because the group that ended up going included Jess, Brandon, Bobby, and Garrett, which was most of the people that I went backpacking for two weeks in the beginning. It was awesome travel with everyone again. Brandon also brought his friend Tony who is studying with him in Barcelona.
So on the first day, we all met up in Germany at the "Frankfurt Hahn Airport" (that's right, Hahn!) for our connecting flight to Stockholm. The name of this airport is extremely deceiving because it's actually like an hour or two outside of Frankfurt. We had like 8 hours to kill before our next flight, and we did NOT want to sit in the airport for that long, so we wanted to explore the surrounding area
My people were near...
. We asked some of the airport employees if there was any cool town nearby we should visit, and they all kind of laughed at us. Some even told us not to bother leaving the airport. But we didn't like the sound of that and ended up taking a 15 minute taxi ride to a little suburb... I can't even remember the name of it. It was basically just a sleepy German town with houses, a retirement home, a gas station, a church. We must be easily entertained though, because we had fun walking around. It got pretty freezing soon so we sat in a kebab restaurant for about 4 hours and talked. After a while, we realized we didn't know how to get a taxi back to the airport. It's not like they drove through this place very often, we may have been the first tourists the town had ever seen. And we couldn't find a bus stop that went in that direction. We started asking around in the little shops, and came into a tiny restaurant. Brandon went up to a friendly looking German man wearing a neon yellow uniform if he knew of any buses, and he said "Are you trying to go to the airport? I can just take you. No problem. Let me just finish my coke." We all looked at each other sort of sketched out... but before we had time to have a pow wow and discuss whether this guy was just really nice or if he was going to drive us to his barn and kill us, he had downed his full coke bottle and said "Ok! Ready? Let's go." He stood up, and we saw that there was like a parking logo on his uniform, and his car had the same thing
Suburb of Frankfurt
. We asked him, and it turned out that he worked as a parking attendant in the area. We decided to trust him and just go. Along the way he said, "How much time do you have before your flight? I can drive you to a bar if you want!" We were just like... "ummm that's okayyy.... you can just drive us to the airport, please." So he did. It turned out he really was just a nice, very bored German parking attendant. He wouldn't even let us pay him. I guess we are just used to living in bigger city atmospheres and not trusting anyone, but it just proved that not everyone is trying to take advantage of you.So we boarded our plane to Stockholm and arrived at about midnight. We checked into our hostel which was AWESOME... it basically felt like we were living inside IKEA. Everything was very modern, clean, and convenient. And our beds... omg... it was like sleeping on a cloud. It was so hard to get everyone out of bed in the morning.
Sweden was absolutely freezing.. especially that day because it was raining and a little windy. We thought we were prepared, but ended up detouring to H&M and buying gloves and hats to bundle up. Afterwards, we took the metro to the city center. The metro system was amazing...incredibly modern and clean, and it was pretty far underground so the walls looked like caves.. but everything was painted really creatively. The stop near our hostel was underwater themed
Quaint little German town
. And, unlike every other public transportation system I've been on, there wasn't a trace of graffiti anywhere. How do they do it? Anyway, so we got to the city center which was beautiful. Stockholm is made up of quite a few different islands that are all connected by bridges, so everything was surrounded by water... it was gorgeous. There were old buildings all around, but they were mixed in with the modern style that Sweden is known for. We took an enclosed boat tour around the main island and got to see a lot of the historic buildings and sites... we also drove through this park/natural reserve area that was beautiful with all the trees changing colors. After the tour, we went into the Royal Palace... but we got there right before it closed so we had just enough time to see the treasury room with all the crowns, robes, jewels and fancy things. We left and walked around some cool streets on a mission to find Swedish meatballs. We assumed that they would be everywhere... I mean... what other food is Sweden famous for aside from Swedish fish candy? I guess Stockholm wasn't the right areas of Sweden to find them because we couldn't find them ANYWHERE. We ended up eating Tex-Mex for lunch, haha.Because we came towards winter, the days were SO short... the sun set at around 3:30 pm. It was bizarre. It also made all of us really sleepy... and we all wanted a short break from the freezing rain, so we went back to our hostel for a power nap in our cloud beds
New hats to keep warm
. Of course, "power-nap" turned into a few hours lol. The hostel had free pasta in the kitchen, so we picked up sauce from the grocery store and just cooked dinner there. After dinner, we went out on the town. We heard about a bar that was made entirely of ice, so of course we had to go see what that was all about. It was the "Absolut Ice Bar"... it was sooo cool. They gave us all big furry parkas and gloves upon going in, because everything really was made of ice, including the cups, chairs, walls, tables, and bar. It was a really fun experience. After about an hour, we all started to get numb though.. so we left. We went back to the city center, Kungstradgarden, and noticed that there was a big ice rink a little ways off. It was free, but we came after closing so the booth was no longer renting skates. There really wasn't anyone there except a two Chilean guys chilling on a bench. Bobby went up to them and asked if they knew where we could get skates. They opened up their duffel bag, and handed him both pairs of skates they had. Then they saw that we had more people, and one of the guys took off the skates he had on his own feet and handed them to him. Seriously, we kept encountering such nice, cool people. So Tony, Bobby and Garrett skated around while Brandon talked to the Chilean guys in Spanish.. he said they were really cool guys. Jess and I wandered around the area and noticed that there was a huge cement amphitheater nearby... but it was completely filled with a bunch of little orange things
Beautiful Stockholm
. We walked up closer to it and saw that there were actually millions of little plastic bobble-men. We had no idea why, we couldn't read the Swedish signs around us... but we later found out that it was part of a public protest: for each signature that they got, they put one of the little men down on the ground. I will have to post pictures, I can't even explain it... it was so random. We ran through them and entertained ourselves for way too long, lol. When the guys were done skating, we walked around the town a bit more and then went back to the hostel. The next morning, we decided to see the rest of the palace. When we got there, we got to see the changing of the guards... it was quite the show. This time in the palace we got to see the royal apartments, and then a museum about the "Tre Kronor Castle." I guess where the palace stands today, a castle once stood... but it burned down in a horrible fire in the 1600s, so they had a museum showcasing some of the remaining antiques and building parts from the castle. We sat down to watch a little video about the timeline of the castle's history... and these 4 little towhead Swedish kids come running into the room. They were a little more interesting than the video, so we were all secretly watching them instead. The kids were messing around... and one of them started to lean against the curtain enclosing the room, thinking that there was a wall behind it. Well, there wasn't a wall behind it and he fell through the curtain and ate it
On the boat tour of Stockholm
. This sound terrible, but we all started laughing so hard... like to the point of tears. He was fine. But I think we are all going to hell anyway.We spent the rest of the day just exploring different parts of the city including the old town, Gamla Stan. Stockholm is seriously such an interesting, beautiful place... I don't understand why it is so under-hyped. Anyway, we went back the hostel and made dinner again. While we were cooking, we made friends with this really cool guy Matt who was staying in our room. All of us went out together at night, but Jess and I had to leave early because we wanted to get an hour or two of sleep before waking up for our flight at 3 am.
Ugh.. our last day of travel was awful. We woke up at 3 like I said... took the metro to the city center to catch an 80 minute bus, then boarded a 2 hour plane to Frankfurt. During our lay-over in the Frankfurt airport, we ran into our friend Tara who I guess visited her friend in Germany this weekend... so the three of us killed time together before our 2 hour flight to Pisa. From Pisa, we had to take a 1.5 hour train back to Florence. We finally got to our apartment at about 3 pm. Twelve hours of travel, exhausted was an understatement. Needless to say, we passed out.... but our beds definitely didn't live up to the amazing hostel beds haha.
Overall, Sweden was such an amazing last-minute trip
Underground Metro System
. It was probably the first place I've been where I truly felt like I didn't have enough time there... there was so much we didn't get to do. But what we did do was great. Stockholm would be such a fantastic place to live... such a safe & modern city, and it is so easy to navigate around. I don't plan on learning Swedish anytime soon... I still hardly know Italian, so we'll see lol. Back to the grind today making up lost time for homework. Mom is getting here tonight!!! So so excited!! Better finish everything before she gets here. Here is the link to all my photos from the trip:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2075696&l=ca38e&id=35805155
