On to Sweden

Onto Sweden finally! I love to boast my Swedish heritage (1/8), so finally visiting Stockholm, Sweden is one of the planned highlights of my trip.

After getting to the airport - the correct airport this time - I killed the time attempting to talk to a very sweet Swedish old lady who knew no English. We enjoyed each others company even if we had about 6 words we both knew between the two of us.

One of the downsides to discount airlines is they fly into smaller airports. It is one of the ways they keep costs down. So this "Stockholm" airport was really 100km away, which is about an 80 minute bus ride. Honestly, not that bad, only cost about 15 Euros to get to Stockholm city center and I sat next to a nice girl who just got back from being an exchange student. She was kind enough to answer my 100's of questions about Sweden, while I answered things about America and we talked about Swedish and English's weird grammar.

Now, possibly my favorite part of going to a new city is getting there, having no clue where I am and having to figure out the city, the transportation and getting to my hostel. Luckily, once I got to Stockholm, I found that my drop off was very close to my hostel. Unluckily, Stockholm is a series of island and is very confusing to navigate. After about 20 minutes of walking around randomly, I finally got my baring and got to the hostel.

I get there about 10 minutes before the reception desk closes, give me name to the person working the desk and see a confused look, never good. She says, "uh....I have you for 4 nights...starting tomorrow night." I start to argue some sort of error but then remember, I am booked for 4 nights.....tonight would be a 5th...I am an idiot. Lucky for me, they have 1 open bed. That is right, 1 open bed. I take it. By this point I am starving and am going to go grab food after dropping my stuff off, but the kind hearted employee takes pity on me and gives me a free croissant from the desk (it was a big one too). So, all and all a success.

I get into my 12-person room, find the open bunk, which is luckily in a corner away from the door. Here is a tip in hostels. You always want the corner bunk. It is the farthest from noise, other people and the door, which means bright light every time someone goes in or out. I notice that a few of the bunks are still empty, meaning people will be coming back later, meaning waking up for me.

Now this hostel is really nice and the beds are very comfortable, but this was a terrible night for sleep. For starters, the guy next to me snored like a wild boar. But that wasn't the worst part. So the last people to come into the dorm have the bunk under me, great. It happens to be a guy and a girl...sharing it. Well, I won't go into too much detail, but I think you can guess what happened next. Yep, talk about the most stereotypical hostel story and possibly one of the most awkward 10 minutes of my life. That isn't even the worst part. This is around 5am and this couple proceeds to talk in a normal tone till 6am. They had no respect for the people around them. So I was up till 6am unable to sleep because of noise and I couldn't say anything about being quiet because it would be even more awkward to acknowledge I am awake!!!

Finally, I go to bed, only to be waken up at 8 or so by some crazy noise from the room next door (bathroom I think). Not the best night of sleep, but it made for a great story....please be better the next night!