This post is WAAY late, sorry, and there are more to come eventually, I hope. There's just so many things to do, and too many TV shows to watch illegally online, and even more recently, too much homework to do--I am writing this from Germany (so if there is ever a z where a y should be, I am sorry-their keyboards are different than ours!). In the two and a half weeks before we left on April 13th for Germany and a tour of several key Martin Luther sites, we had a visiting professor come and do an intensive two week class with us on Islam, one of the three parts of the religion class I am taking here, and having a long reading everyday added A LOT to the work load we have been used to! Anyway, back in February, seven of the other ScanBaltic trippers and I went to Stockholm together on a long weekend. Overall it was very fun and interesting-unfortunately, I didn't have a camera so I can't show you pictures of all the awesome sights there were to see.
We left on for Stockholm on Thursday night, taking a train to Oslo and then an overnight bus to Stockholm. We were all settled in our train seats on Thursday night only to discover when the train started moving that all of the seats were facing backwards, since the train was turning around but didn't actually turn around. Some of our group weren't fans of riding backwards, but we made it work. When we got to Oslo we followed the arrows to walk from the train station to the bus station, and then started the 1.5 hour wait for our bus. We had been (unnecessarily) nervous about finding the bus station, so we came early. We waited by a little mini-market that had magazines and newspapers, so I stood there and casually read TIME, trying to make it look like I was just skimming it. I don't know if I pulled off the look very well, but no one came to tell me to pay for it, so I guess it was alright. Then it was time for the night bus, which was interesting. Theoretically, we were going to sleep on the bus and be bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and super excited for touring Stockholm once we got there at 6 am. That was not the case. First, the guy sitting behind me was very tall and big, so there wasn't room behind me to recline my seat, so I tried to sleep leaning forward, which didn't work. Then I switched seats with Kelly, my seatmate, and the guy behind me then was shaking the seat, and the hook for the curtain was right by where I was trying to lean my head to sleep. Overall, it wasn't a very restful journey. I don't think overnight buses are something I will do a lot in the future.
When we got to Stockholm, we switched some money and went to find our hostel. Then we went out and saw the sights, and stopped by the National Art Museum, which was interesting, then walked around a bit. The museum was pretty cool, I have learned to appreciate art museums more now, although I sometimes don't really understand what I'm supposed to be looking at for mintues upon minutes. One of the girls that was with us, Courtney, is an art major, so she really enjoyed this museum. After the museum we wandered more for a bit, then found the shuttle bus to IKEA and decided to check out IKEA in its home environment. The shuttle was kind of long, but once we got there we were greeted by warm, gooey, delicious smell of cinammon buns. I'm not sure if the Stockholm IKEA is the original store, but it was HUGE! We walked through the 4 story building from top to bottom--some of the girls found things they wanted, so we set out to find the checkout, and realized we had no clue where it was. After wandering around, consulting the map, going back up and down a few times looking for it, we finally found a little corner we hadn't followed before. It led to the stockrooms, which eventually led to the checkout, but in all our find the check-out adventure took about 20 minutes, and it was almost time for the shuttle bus back to town. Some of the others found this confusing experience very frightful, and have declared that they no longer like IKEA, but I think it was fun. I've enjoyed pointing out every other IKEA we pass on our travels and seeing what kind of reaction I get too--its pretty amusing.
The next day we went to the Vassa museum, a museum that displays the preserved ship Vassa, which sunk in the harbor of Stockholm six hundred-some years ago, because no one bothered to check if they had made it too top-heavy or not. It was a very fancy ship, meant to sail the world and show off the amazing-ness of Sweden, but that didn't quite happen. It was a very interesting, very large museum--I could have spent hours more than we did there. They had preserved the skeletons of the bodies they found on the ship, and presented a bit of what they had found out about them. It was really nice to learn not just about the ship itself, but also about the people that were on it.
We then returned to town and did a bit of souvenir shopping in Gamla Stan, the old town of Stockholm. The streets there are very narrow and the buildings are old. It really gave the feel of being somewhere else! I stopped in a store and saw a beautiful handknit sweater, which is the one souvenir that I really wanted to bring back from this trip. So, after passing it by once, bugging everyone else by talking about it and deliberating for a day, and figuring out how I would pay for a $220 sweater, I went back the next day and got it! YAY! I don't have my computer here, so I can't post a picture, but I will try to get one on here eventually. It's very beautiful, the majority of it is cream-colored, with gray and raspberry colored decorations. I wore it our first day back, I was so excited about it! The only thing that isn't wonderful about it is something that the shopkeeper I got it from was very proud of--its a traditional Swedish design, its not based on Norwegian patterns like "all those other sweaters you find in Stockholm." I was a little disappointed by that, but I still love my sweater, so all in all the trip was a sucess--we all also managed to dodge the snow that would occassionally fall off of roofs into the street!
