Mishaps and Sunsets

This weekend I went to Stockholm with my friend Amy from DIS.

The weekend started out pretty crazy, Amy and I accidentally booked the wrong flight, I guess that is what happens when you are annoyed and want to just book the stupid flight! We meant to book an 8:35 am flight friday morning, but booked a 7:00 am flight instead. No problem you'd think, except public transit doesn't run extremely early. So me and Amy got up at 3:30 and my host dad was nice enough to get up ridiculously early, like 4:30, so he could drive us to the Kokkedal train station. We caught a 5:02 train towards the airport and arrived a little before 6, we busted our butts to check-in, and we got through everything in time!

Our flight was not even half full! I felt soo unsustainable I wanted to cry :[ We got to Stockholm and decided to walk from the central station to our hostel, according to some lunatic online it was only like twenty minutes away. Wrong...it was about a 40 minute walk. With a suitcase it wasn't so fun, and it was freezing, but that walk was a wonderful way to see the city! We eventually found out way to the hostel and stored the suitcase and decided to take off and explore! First stop...buying a train pass! We were not going to do that walk everyday lol, we would be doing enough walking around the city!

We got back into the center of the city and just started wandering, wherever the cold wind blew us lol. We found a kebab place for lunch...mmmmmm :] I'm starting to realize that half of my enjoyment of traveling is eating different foods :] We went over to the Old City and walked through their tiny streets, saw the royal palace and went on a hunt for a Dala Horse for Amy. We headed back to the central station area to do some more wandering in the tourist shopping district...I love me some good shopping :] I didn't buy anything though, just stared at what I couldn't afford lol. We walked along the waterfront and got completely lost, it was totally worth it though because we saw the most beautiful sunset on the face of the planet! For dinner we went to a texmex place, man have I been missing burritos :] We took the train back to the hostel, we were exhausted from being up since 3:30!

Hostel did not equal a good place to relax :[ We were sharing a room with 3 spanish girls and 3 russian/not really sure where they were from girls. The common room was full of people until the wee hours of the morning, and guess where our room was? Basically in the common room, you had to walk into the common room to get to our door. So trying to sleep involved listening to a thousand different conversations in a thousand different languages! Eventually I got to sleep but woke up a lot because it was HOT! My bed was against the heater so it felt like I was in a fire, I decided to turn it down the next night...sorry girls :]

The next day we got up while all the other girls were sleeping, I guess when you stay up till 3 am you don't want to get up at 9 lol. We took off to book a winter boat tour around the canals in Stockholm...EXPENSIVE! Like 25 dollars, I guess its not that bad, but I'm a poor college student so basically I wanted to cry when I handed over the money lol. The tour was great though, we got to sit and be warm, the most important part lol since it snowed the day before! We saw some pretty islands and heard some local history of Stockholm, it was pretty great! After the boat tour we found some lunch and then headed to the Vasa Museum. The Vasa was a great battle ship sailing out of Stockholm in 1628, it was quite magnificent, but sank within half an hour of its maiden voyage, can you say embarrassment! They recovered the ship in the 1960s and it was actually mostly intact, the water in Stockholm is good for preserving wood apparently. They fixed up the ship and did some stuff to it so that it would last and then they put it on display in the museum. This ship was HUGE! It was so amazing to see, it is so old and sat on the bottom of a canal for over 300 years and it is still so beautiful. We were so exhausted that at one point we just sat and stared at the ship for like twenty minutes lol. We left the museum and decided to take the train to Sodermalm, one of the islands of Stockholm, to walk around. We walked along the water for a bit and went into a photography museum, we didn't see any exhibitions, it was sooo expensive! Sodermalm was also great to see the sunset from, open view of the clear sky and the shades of pink and orange were reflecting of the building windows, spectacular :] We went back to the train and took the train farther into the middle of the island. We walked around some more and found a grocery store, so we bought some snackage for the plane trip the next day :] We went into this local mall place and found a pizzeria....PIZZA!! It made me soo happy :] It was nice to be at a local place, it made me feel less like a tourist! Then we went to a burger king and got some ice cream and talked, they turned of the lights for earth hour :]]]]]]]]]] I was just a little happy!

We headed back to the hostel to attempt to get some sleep, the possibly russian group had left but the spanish girls were still there, but they were gettin' all dolled up to go out, so they left pretty soon after we got there. It was day light savings the next day so we reset our cell phones, missing our plane would not be fun! We hit the sack around midnight, the spanish girls came back around 4:30 and woke me up, so I was slightly grumpy the next morning lol. We packed up around 10:15 and then checked out of the hostel, we took the train to the central station to store the suitcase in some luggage lockers so we could go explore some more. Who woulda thought that dealing with luggage lockers were so difficult lol, but we managed and took off again to see the Stockholm City Hall.

We took a guided tour of City Hall, it was spectacular, the building was very grand and inside was even nicer! We saw a grand meeting room, where they host a big ball for the Nobel Prize winners. We also saw the "gold room", it had scenes on the wall made of gold tiles. The portrayal of the queen was actually really ugly lol, she looked like medusa. When the mural was made the citizens of stockholm actually wanted to tear down the wall because they thought the queen looked so UGLY! They kept the wall, which was pretty smart because now it is quite the tourist attraction! After the tour we walked around the city hall building and took pictures with the Dala Horse statue and looked at the frozen water, it is finally starting to warm up in Copenhagen so I was quite sad that it was so freezing in Stockholm still.

We went back to Old City to find the Ben and Jerry's shop that we saw the other day :] We ate some ice cream and were very happy! Our time in Stockholm was coming to an end so we headed back to central station to get the suitcase and took the Arlanda Express to get back to the airport. We got there two hours early and were extremely bored! It took all of like twenty minutes to check in and get through security and there was not adequate seating for everyone at our gate! Eventually we found some seats and ate some cookies while reading and practicing our Danish!

Our flight back was basically harmless, though when we were taxiing to the runway we saw the remnants of an old plane that looked like it had crashed and caught fire, not exactly what you want to see when you take off! Back in Copenhagen we were! We took the train back to Birkerod station and more fun began! We had just missed the bus and it was like 25 minutes to the next one, so we got on a different route that I had taken once before and asked the bus driver for help, he said he would tell us when to get off. It was going according to plan and then the bus driver told us to get off, he had already driven away when I realized he was WRONG! We were definitely not at the right stop. We had no idea what to do or where we were so we decided to just walk back the way we came, unfortunately while we were walking the few kilometers back to Birkerod station the wheel on the suitcase I borrowed from my host family started to break! I am just a mishap magnet when it comes to travel lol, but we eventually got back to my place so Amy could get her stuff out of my suitcase, then she headed home to relax! I made myself some Top Ramen and a bowl of cereal for dinner and dug into my homework!

Back to classes I went! I got my grade back from my oral midterm in Danish....A- baby....ohhhh yeah :]] I am also working on a debate for my human trafficking class about victims of trafficking seeking asylum in other countries, it is going to be very interesting! Today I didn't have any field studies so I slept in...9:30! And then leisurely ate some breakfast, watched a little tv on my computer and did some homework. Then I went to Sierra's house to chit chat and eat :]] We had avocado and mozzarella with oil and vinegar, then some top ramen and then we made banana bread! After the delicious afternoon we went and jumped on the trampoline in the backyard and then I left so we could be productive on homework! That didn't last long lol :] Now i am clearly writing this blog and facebook chatting with my lovely roomie Kristen :]

Farvel!