What's the best birthday present? Trips!
After TWIN conference I had acquaintances all over Europe and more, so I decided that I should visit at least one of them. I chose the girl from Thailand who was living at Stockholm at the time. Too bad that it was winter time as I needed double space for my warm clothes. But who cares! I was going to Stockholm! And in the summer I read Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, so I just HAD to see all the places the book was taking place.
I flew to Skavsta's airport where I took a bus to Stockholm. No ferry this time. I met my friend at the bus station and then we proceeded to the metro station to go to her place. She lived in the dorm, not in the center, so the next day I had to buy a metro card (still have it!) to go to the center and old town. I was exploring Stockholm the way I wanted to: on foot. I realized why most people living there look and probably are so fit: whole Stockholm is full of hills it's all ups and downs and after a long day of walking you can really feel your legs. There is one nice place on one of the hills where you can look over most of the Stockholm (the girl I was living with was so nice to show it to me. She was also so nice that she made traditional Thai dinner for me. Good thing I like spicy food because that stuff was HOT).
And I achieved my goal: I wen't and seen all of the places mentioned in Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It was quite funny when I was looking for one place, so I asked one person how to get there and he was "well, just take the metro and it will be two stops". Two stops? Can't I walk there? "No, it's too far" the person answered. I found a map and walked to the place I needed in twenty minutes. Some people really don't like walking if they think that twenty minutes of walking is far.
Talking about Swedish, how cool is that their official greeting is Hey? I mean you can walk into the royal palace and you meet the royal family and you're like "Hey!". Their whole language is very melodic. It's actually my favorite language to hear. Even the metro stops sounded like the lady was singing them.
Stockholm was getting ready for Christmas (it was December) so there was already decorations and Coca-Cola trucks standing everywhere. Sadly there still was no snow.
At nights we went to bars, and can I say, Swedish people are really friendly when they had a few drinks (like most people actually). But I didn't have 20 (it was a week until my birthday) so we weren't allowed to some bars. Oh well, I guess I'll have to come back one day.
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