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Le Grand Tour, Day Thirty-Three
16 years ago
SWEDEN still, I think
Well, we did it.
Flywheel got to his plane and flew off back to the land of bröt and wurst *sniff* I waved goodbye to the receding plane in the freezing light of dawn...
It wasn't easy to get that far, though. We caught our train just after midnight, and I managed to forget my airport bus tickets. Good thing I gave duplicates to Flywheel! The kind train lady told us how to catch the connecting city bus, but it deposited us at 1:35am in a dead city.
Stockholm just stops at that hour. Even the central train station is closed, even the frikken subway was closed, and it was really cold! We walked around and around in the freezing wind looking for something, anything, and I began to conceive a real hatred of Stockholm when we finally stumbled across a kebab place that was open.
Boy was that place seedy. We only stayed long enough to see one drunk ejected, but that was long enough to eat something that gave me stomach trouble for the next few hours.
Finally the terminal opened at 3:30am and we caught the airport bus. Hour and a half to the airport, wait an hour for Flywheel's plane to board, sun comes up, plane takes off, I wait another hour and catch the first bus back at 7:50am.
Back in Stockholm the city is so beautiful in the morning that I forgive it immediately. I think it's the second-loveliest city I've been in on this trip; maybe the first if Paris' grandeur doesn't please.
Tired as I am I decided to go see the Town Hall, an amazing brick building constructed in the early 20th century. It's gorgeous, and there's a princely view from the top of the gigantic bell tower. The simplicity and artistic vision in this one structure left me amazed and delighted, and my biggest regret on this trip so far is that I had no camera with me when I visited it or the Old City today.
All was not perfect, though; my cell phone decided to run out of both battery and money at the same time. So I had no idea my texts to my friends weren't getting through, then the thing died before I could realise the problem. I could still receive messages though, and after a somewhat desperate enquiry as to my whereabouts, I decided to abandon my sightseeing and take the next train back to Uppsala. Damn!!
However I have been mollified by an excellent supper of varieties of pickled herring, and accept my disappointment with equinamity. Tomorrow is my last day here; we're going to tour Uppsala and maybe play a game in the afternoon. I have already visited the ancient pagan heart of Sweden.
Friday I fly back to Canada!
Well, we did it.
Flywheel got to his plane and flew off back to the land of bröt and wurst *sniff* I waved goodbye to the receding plane in the freezing light of dawn...It wasn't easy to get that far, though. We caught our train just after midnight, and I managed to forget my airport bus tickets. Good thing I gave duplicates to Flywheel! The kind train lady told us how to catch the connecting city bus, but it deposited us at 1:35am in a dead city.
Stockholm just stops at that hour. Even the central train station is closed, even the frikken subway was closed, and it was really cold! We walked around and around in the freezing wind looking for something, anything, and I began to conceive a real hatred of Stockholm when we finally stumbled across a kebab place that was open.
Boy was that place seedy. We only stayed long enough to see one drunk ejected, but that was long enough to eat something that gave me stomach trouble for the next few hours.
Finally the terminal opened at 3:30am and we caught the airport bus. Hour and a half to the airport, wait an hour for Flywheel's plane to board, sun comes up, plane takes off, I wait another hour and catch the first bus back at 7:50am.
Back in Stockholm the city is so beautiful in the morning that I forgive it immediately. I think it's the second-loveliest city I've been in on this trip; maybe the first if Paris' grandeur doesn't please.
Tired as I am I decided to go see the Town Hall, an amazing brick building constructed in the early 20th century. It's gorgeous, and there's a princely view from the top of the gigantic bell tower. The simplicity and artistic vision in this one structure left me amazed and delighted, and my biggest regret on this trip so far is that I had no camera with me when I visited it or the Old City today.
All was not perfect, though; my cell phone decided to run out of both battery and money at the same time. So I had no idea my texts to my friends weren't getting through, then the thing died before I could realise the problem. I could still receive messages though, and after a somewhat desperate enquiry as to my whereabouts, I decided to abandon my sightseeing and take the next train back to Uppsala. Damn!!
However I have been mollified by an excellent supper of varieties of pickled herring, and accept my disappointment with equinamity. Tomorrow is my last day here; we're going to tour Uppsala and maybe play a game in the afternoon. I have already visited the ancient pagan heart of Sweden.
Friday I fly back to Canada!
Eustache
~eustache
I definitely must return to Stockholm with my BF one of these days, I'm French/Swedish so it's my 2nd capital city
