blonde hair and blue eyes

So I arrived in Stockholm early afternoon at around 2, and I am already in awe. I had no idea how much waterfront Stockholm had. Stockholm itself is actually a collection of islands and you can’t go 50 feet without seeing the coast. Even though Sweden is in the EU they don’t use the euro, they use the Kroner which is a task in its self. This city is VERY expensive, even moreso than London. An average meal will cost about 100-120 Kroners which Is about 10 euro to 12 euro. This has got to be the first country that has fit my stereotypes. You know everyone always says oh everyone has blonde hair and blue eyes, but for real they do. You can’t help but gawk at the people who are just pure as hell. Even the men, you get caught looking at them and are like, what the hell do they feed their kids. Not to mention that everyone dresses extremely trendy. And by that I don’t mean your typical euro trends which by American standards are laughable, they dress well. Friday when I arrived I spent most of the day getting my berrings and actually getting some rest, as I was exhausted. The hostel was gorgeous, everything was ikea ironicly and the staff was awesome. One thing that really throws you off is the English speaking skills of the general population. They just did a survey in the past 2 years which came to the conclusion that 89% of the population speaks English, with that last 11 percent being people born before WW2. With that being said, EVERYTHING is still written in Swedish which is really intimidating because it looks NOTHING like English. That night I met a kid from Jakarta Indonesia and we shared a common interest of Nike shoes so we had a long chat and went out for the night wandering around and exploring the town. When I got back I met a kid from Iowa State who was traveling alone as well and we decided we would wake up the next morning early to take a boat cruise, which by the way Sweden is home of the largest archipelago in the world boasting nearly 20,000 islands.

I woke up Saturday morning EARLY, about 7:30 and my friend and I hopped on the subway to the marina to grab a ship to the islands. We checked the itineraries and decided on taking a cruise to one of the larger islands known as Voxholm. The cruise was about an hour and the sceneray was beautiful. It actually really reminded me of northern Michigan. While on the boat I met a lady from Grand Rapids who was in her 40’s and had been traveling by herself for about 2 and a half monthes and we exchanged stories and both agreed how creepily similar Sweden’s landscapes were to northern Michigan. Upon arriving my buddy and I headed to a café that was on an isolated point to grab a coffee and a light snack. The weather was gorgeous and we got lucky because according to the weather forecasts, it was supposed to rain all weekend. We just walked around the island for a couple of hours and explored the landscapes. This would be the absolute perfect place to go camping and if I return to Sweden that is exactly what I will be doing. After hopping back on the hour long cruise through the Swedish archipelago we decided to cruise through Gamla Stan, which in Swedish means “old town”. The old quarter is small yet beautiful. It really reminded me of the streets of Pamplona with its shades of yellow, orange, and red filling the small nooks and narrow streets. After a very long day of walking we headed back to the hostel to rest up. I had planned on going out that night but I met a bunch of girls from germany and decided to just grab some beers from the store and kick it at the hostel, WHICH REMINDS ME BY STORE I MEAN 7-11 WHICH WAS THE FIRST 7-11 IVE BEEN TO IN EUROPE!!!!!! But don’t get too excited, it was shwags, no slurpees and they don’t even stay open 24 hours, so what the fuck? But none the less it was good to be in a 7-11 again which is basically my headquarters back in east lansing.

The next day I got to sleep in and decided to do some exploring on my own. I intended to head to the famous Vasa museum. The Vasa museum is an exhibition on a Swedish warship from the late 17^th century which is completely and perfectly preserved from sinking 30 minutes into its maiden voyage. The exhibition was spectacular, definitely the coolest museum ive ever been to besides the guggenhiem in Bilbao. The ship is MASSIVE, a few hundred feet long, ive never seen anything like it in my life. I took a guided tour which was very informative and spent about an hour after that just reading the different exhibitions around the 5 floors of the museum. The weather was still gorgeous so after that I headed to the open air museum known as Skansen. This place was huge, filled with gardens everywhere and was high up on a hill with awesome vistas of the city skyline. It also included a zoo with scandnavian animals including lynx, wolf, moose, wolverines, and walruses?? It was really cool to see a wolverine outside of Ann Arbor as I have never seen a true wolverine in person. After all was said and done I headed back to the hostel to hang out until my flight later that night. Tomorrow we are headed to Edinburgh Scotland which I have heard nothing but great things about. Cheers!