Leaving Stockholm *Again*

Hello!

Tonight I'm off to Berlin... should be great - it has a really interesting history, supposedly tons of nightlife and things going on. If everything works out I should be able to meet Dave as well, who I met in London all those (err, it was 2!) months ago! He's an Aussie, teaching English in Berlin... Had tours from locals before, but not yet from a transported Aussie... ohh except for the Munich beer tour - I wonder what percentage of the world's beer tours are run by Aussies??!

Ohhh should be warmer as well! Stockholm yesterday and today has been hovvering around 0 degrees... which actually felt quite warm! When I left Helsinki it was -5! But cold's not too bad... at least it's not raining! The day I went to Tallin it was snowing - supposedly "wet snow" and the dry stuff is better, but we'll have to see... there's quite a lot to learn about surviving in the cold!

The other weird thing was icy roads. I normally walk quite fast - I reckon I'm going to have to estimate a bit slower walking from now on! It's normally quite hard to see when you hit an icy patch (other than the frozen puddles that Doreen was encouraging me to step in!)... so if you're going to quick it's pretty unstable! Haven't come to greif yet... but I'm sure I looked pretty stupid trying to work out the best way to walk fast and stay balanced! This was while I was rushing to the ferry to Estonia... made it with about 10 or 15 mins to spare... but still too close for comfort!

Coming back to Stockholm was a good idea. I met Eric from Quebec, and yesterday we went and saw the Vasa museum. In 1628 this big boat was built for the king (who was fighting a war in Poland at the time). It was the first ever ship they built with two cannon decks, but it only sailed a few hundred metres into the harbour and then sank! Everyone forgot where it was for a few hundred years, and then in the 1950's they recovered it... because the water isn't too salty here, it's really well preserved... and was so fancy! Like tons of statues everywhere! So that was kewl. Today I was supposed to see this open air museum, but after sleeping in , then cooking brekky it ended up I would only have 2 hours in there.... instead I just went for a big walk around one of the islands here.

And now I'm just trying to kill time till my train leaves at 11! The train has no normal seats, only cochettes... which makes it more expensive, but at least I should get a better nights sleep. I think the number of darkness hours here this time of year... a lot... is making me pretty sleepy! Well, that on top of running around like a chook with it's head cut off every day!

Take care guys!

Posted by Sam at November 06, 2002 02:51 AM