11:22 surprised myself by getting up fairly smoothly at 0515 to catch the f�rje. Once about it was a mad rush to the breakfast buffet - the Swedes get as pissed off as the brits at people pushing in but they do a lot more of it. Buffet was: bread, cheese, salami, ham,rye bread, tomato, cucumber, pickled gherkin, yoghurt, muesli, herrings in tomato sauce, mushroom omelette, fruit salad, hard- and soft-boiled eggs, cereal, orange juice and coffee. Many people came close to having all the above. considering it was ~ukp4.50 and everything but the rye bread and cheese sucked, I don�t blame them.

Spent the rest of the trip feeling slightly sick and managed to catch a bit of Lattjo Lajban - the show whose website hosts the Bilbanen scalextric simulator - but didn’t see any parrot. 50 games of hMaki and one swedish-subtitled robot wars latre, and I�m on the express bus back to stockholm ready for my connection to Gothenburg. Where it willl be Monday, thus everything will be closed.

I will be giving the volvo museum a miss as you need a car to get there!

13:03 can you credit it? I booked the train to go to gothenburg and was asked if I wanted a return ticket. I asked how long it was valid to which she said I have to know the exact train I want and it’s no cheaper! I guess the main advantage is that you get a seat at all!

13:09 aarg! so I decide to plan ahead and find out about the sleeper train north from gothenburg. The office opens 14:45 today, 35 mins after my train departs!

16:08 urg. 2 hours down, 1.5 to go on this train and I swear if I get one more tall slim blond Swede’s pert little ass shoved in my face I�m going to grab it. And that�s just the lads.

19:09 Well THAT was a journey I intend to avoid in future. 13 hours after bounding out of be into yesterday’s clothes I arrive inGothenburg, ask the nice lady to explain the trams and make my way to the G�teborg mini-hotel, which is a hostel in the SVIF (the STF’s bastard half-brother) gborg reminds me of Londin, for the mixture of races and the slight shabbiness of the buildings and inhabitants (compared to Stockholm), and Amsterdam for the canals (made by dutch engineers) and the trams. The hostel was a shock at first, variuos aftricans hanging around outside and in, which in the movies would suggest a pending knifepoint mugging scene. It�s a funny feeling to be ashamed of your prejudice at the same time as fearing for your posessions. My mood was not really lifted by the fact that one of the two white people in my dorm of 8 put me in mind of Daffy from The Beach. To cap it all there are no lockers for dorm guests. After the initial shock, I switched to “travelling in asia” mode + moneybelt on, everything hidden, mugging money separate, and felt a bit better. The “mini hotel” is very clean - not quite as clean as the Khao San Guest House in Bangkok which was tiled up to the ceiling, presumably to facilitate hosing away all the blood, puke and other excreta. I got the felling here that bloodstains would stay on these walls, and I couldn�t see any so that was cool. Hmm. Does any of this relate to a 5am start?

Gburg is much more bohemian than the other places I�ve seen in Sweden - there are musical instrument shops dotted around, an art college, jazz clubs, a restaurant run by the Hare Krishnas and various arty characters including a transvestite who passed as I was ordering my food. He didn�t seem to be trying to be a woman, but was wearing a sheath skirt and lipstick.

I’m eating posh tonight - Smaka is the restaurant, doing Swedish cuisine with a nod towards haute cuisine and a backdrop of chilled jazz breaks. The starter of salmon with “stuwed” potatoes and mustard dressing was fantastic, and I finally got to have meatballs!

Score tally day 6
Skijump Noses: 220
meatballs: 6! woo! yay!
epic journeys: 1 x 13hrs
Prehistory: saw some way cool stuff from the train. After my CBT I may come again and just check out runestones, cairns et al.