11:20 it’s good to have all this time to myself - I’m starting to learn how my brain works, or more specifically how it fails to work. I am now on the train from Stockholm south to Nynashamn where there will be a mad dash to avoid an 11-hour wait for the next ferry to the island of Gotaland (goat land). Given that I was up at 0630 I could easily have been here 2 hours earlier, but something blocks me from thinking too far ahead and planning is a nightmare because I can�t hold facts and figures (and especially times) in my head. Had I bothered to find out the ferry times in advance I might have hurired a little - say packing my rucsack while waiting for the bathroom + but then when I hurry I make cock+ups like leaving my money behind or something. I don�t believe Nynashamn has 11 hours’ worth o fthings to do… Here’s hoping I make that ferry.
My approach to life seems about as un-Swedish as you can get. Tourist information seem bemused and even embarrassed for me when I ask about the chances of a last-minute dash for this (e.g. the ferry) or out-of-season entry to that. That said, I read in the paper on the train that a G�teborg Kanal trip (see day 0 18:09) sets off tomorrow so it seems the information bureaux are unnecessarily pessimistic.
13:54 ya boo sucks to the information people… The train arrived directly outside the ferry terminal with 20 mins to spare. After taking a queue number (a Swedish tradition) and waiting an agonising 7 minutes for the teller to count out huge wads of cash to the customer in front of me, I was told I was at the international counter and should go to the nearby domestic counter that had been vacant all along. At that counter I was told I could buy my ticket at the check-in desk (this seems to be another Swedish custom, the 3-counter manoevre) 170kr (~12quid) for a four+hour ferry trip and I was sorted. Bunged the backpack in a locker and took a fewphoties. The hostels’ phone reception doesn�t open till 1700 so for once I am busking it not because I am a slacker but because I have done everything I can do for now.
I bought a reasonably-priced coffee in the lounge and settled down to browsing the guidebook. Next to me were a middle-aged couple and an elderly uncle from Birmingham, talking about visiting York… so I barged in and had a pleasant hour-and-a-half’s chat about the island, where they have a second hmoe, and got some tips for my itinerary for the next few days.
14:14 I can tell I am entering rural Sweden now: a man with an improbably blond mullet plays the slot+machines, his blonde pig-tailed daughter begging for 5kr to play the mid-80’s jap-import pac man while vguns-n-roses blares from the jukebox.
14:22 urg. Swedish-language heavy rock on juke box. Time to find another room.
20:40 well here I am in Visby in a hostel for the first time in my life. I�m liking it so far - it�s in a converted (but not very converted) prison, but despite that it has a nice atmosphere. I nearly executed the itinerary I drew up on the ferry and hopefully got some wicked pictures of the old town. I can tell I am out of Stockholm: this morning I spent 64kr on a burger king ( and didn’t throw it down my front thatnks to the mangos’ help with the blood sugar - woo hoo!) yet just now I spent 98kr on tonight’s tea, tomorrow’s breakfast and stuff to make sandwiches for tomorrow’s lunch.
Spent the evening watching MTV with Erik who is studying computer game design at Visby U. One of his tutors is an Englishman called Richard White who goes on about what a great language english is - so I tipped hmi off about the whole countdown thing and especially the C_*NT____ tie in case he could get mileage out of it.
He was into thrash metal but had recently discovered Aphex Twin so I gave him a nudge in the Warp/Ninja Tune direction.
Score Tally, Day 3:
Skijump noses: 93
meatballs: 0
history: 1 great old walled town
brummies: one on ferry
mullets: 1
encounters with swedish rock music: 2
15:49 got into Stockholm Centralen @ about half eleven and threw more fast food down my front. Make a mental note to get out earlier so I can find somewhere to sit down and eat before blood sugar goes down and my judgement with it.
Spent the morning wandering the streets of Gamla Sta’n (old town) - saw plush moose - then took the Tunnelbanen to Kulturehuset to blog.
Kulturehuset (culture house) has some cool contemporary art and design. Bought mamphy a postcard - wonder if she’ll work out what it’s of -and saw lots of things I wanted to buy to furnish my imaginary playboy pad. At the entrance to the design shop, there were bits of paper and sticky tape and scissors, and there were people messing about in an apparently creative fashion. Turned out it was a present+wrapping facility as I saw the same thing in a toyshop later. You urbanites will probably tell me this is commonplace these days but to someone who normally lives in a sort of terrarium frozen in medieval times this was news OK?
I bought Lotta’s CD and some mangos for tomorrow’s breakfast, then after a mad dash to Lotta’s to change (waiting for your stop on a foreign bus has to be one of the MOST stressful things on earth) it’s back into Stockholm to La Isla for a salsa workshop and club. The Swedes seem to take it all a little more seriously than in York + we were taught a fixed routine, complete with the details on the hand+grip to be used. I guess it wasn� [typing in the dark on a swedish keyboard here, excuse mistakes like that one] t that different from back home but the language barrier put a different complexion on it.
After the class it was freestyle, and some blindingly good Swedes got up to dance, so I grabbed Lotta’s friend who I had been partnering and we had a go. A little while in she looked as if she was looking for a polite way out so we stopped dancing. It turned out Lotta & friend were leaving, having shown up only for the class, not the club. Ho hum. I downed a pear cider over ice (�3.50) and asked a few girls to adnce. My attempt at “talar du salsa?” - “do you speak salsa” - was met with a stony-faced incomprehension so I settled for asking very nicely in English with a slightly (but not too) desperate facial expression. Danced one-on-one with about 5 partners then they began a sort of game, which they announced in Swedish and then explained in Spanish. We all got in a circle in pairs and began dancing. Upon certain code words (in spanish) everybody would simultaneously do something cool. Except me. Or my partner. Boy that was a lesson in ‘letting go’ - no sooner had I FUBARed with one partner, than we would all change partners and I would begin the FUBAR again!
After this game I managed to acquire another stalker (see earlier salsa reports in this blog), this time I refused to buy her a drink saying she’d have to come to Britain where it’s more reasonably priced. [doh that was the chance to use the R.Feynman pulling method. Damn! ]
On the tube on the way home I saw a down-and-out, possibly Algerian, hassling some teenage girls. As best I could make out they replied “you can beg in English or Swedish but not in French!” Up yours frenchie :-)
Now on the train home, hoping I can find a better bus than earlier this evening. Tomorrow night I will be sleeping in a hostel, I know not where…
Score Tally, day 2
skijump noses: 752
meatballs: 0
moose: 5 varieties of plush toy including christmas moose with wee backpack
vikings: 3 varieties of pottery souvenir
royal buildings: 3
excellent salsa dancers: 28