The Rest of Sweden

The rest of my day adventures in Sweden are not too exciting. I kept wandering through the city. I saw the palace, a museum or too and some great small shops. It was very pleasant, but my overall thought was I spent a day too long in Stockholm. It's a beautiful city, but it has already gotten cold, limiting what I can do in the city. By the last day, I was pretty bored and ready to take off.

Some fun I did have was hoping on a random subway and taking it to its last stop, which was in the suburbs. The suburbs are beautiful. One of the things I love about Europe is how much of nature they keep and build around. In the States we build for efficiency, which is not a bad thing, but I would rather live in an area like I was walking through with beautiful nature perfectly blended into the city and I could even tell this was a mildly lower income area too. A person came up asking for money, I said I don't speak Swedish and they switched to perfect English. I almost gave them money just for that! I mean, come on, bi-lingual homeless people, I can't even compete with that.

My last two nights in Sweden are what were fun. The second to last night I went out with my two new pals from California. We met up with one of their Swedish friends (studied in the States) who lives in Stockholm. He took us first to a true English pub that a friend of his worked at. We sat in a "study" drinking nice beer surrounded by actual antique books. We sat there, got tipsy and argued about religion, politics and all the normal classics you would expect in such a classy joint.

Around midnight we moved onto the club. After wandering the city looking for a good club (lots closed) we finally find one that looks like its got something going on (finally). The age to get in was 23. I was kind of thrown off by this, but then I got it. Their drinking age is 18, so they need ways to separate bars and clubs, so they still have age limits to keep out the younger kids and make it a more deserved location. After talking to the bouncer a bit, which is interesting because to be a bouncer you are a mini-cop, with cop like authority and have to do like 1 month of training and 2 weeks follow-up every 6 months or so, he pointed out that most problems come from younger people and they don't buy drinks (same in the States!).

The club was pretty good, small, but good. They had a celebrity, Eddie Murphy's brother, who I guess is a comedian. He got a section taped off and was bringing all the ladies over there, which was also pretty funny. Thought about getting a picture with him, but decided to pass. More trouble than it was worth. We bought our overly priced drinks and hit the dance floor. We finally met 4 German girls on vacation there and danced with them until about 4am when the club shut down. The girls had a flight to catch (staying up all night to catch a 6am flight) and we, a little more than tipsy, decided to move onto the next club. There were 4 of us. Two of us wanted the next club to be McDonalds and two a real club. After some arguing, McDonalds won. We enjoyed some prized beef patties before finally wandering home around 5am.

The next day was more of the same. The only real highlight was I went to the Erikson Globe (think Sprint Center, but a sphere). It is the worlds largest spherical building. You can take a globe shaped evaluator to the top. Great for pictures.

That night I assumed I wouldn't do much. The people I knew at the hostel were already gone, but luckily for me my handy iPad+case/keyboard caught the attention of a German guy I was sitting next to. After a conversation about it, he invited me out with his other German friends (5 of them in total). We went to a club, a little more low-key one this time, and hit the dance floor, had some drinks. It was a good time. Three of them are working on becoming teachers, one of them is a German police officer and the other does media sales for a newspaper. Best part is, they live near Ravensburg, Germany (I am visiting a friend there later) and we agreed to meet up when I am there and go party. They will show me all the best bars, clubs etc. So I am looking forward to that.

The best part of traveling is meeting new people and then possibly meeting up with them again later. It is crazy to think about that I sometimes meet people for 1 night and I might never see them again or might stay with them a month later, but either way they make an impact on my life and journey. Makes me think about all the amazing people out there I never get to meet, but I am glad I am traveling to find some more I wouldn't have!