France and the Beach

I ended up in Cannes because I couldn’t find anywhere to stay in Nice. I arrived on he train from Bern at around 7:30pm and, following the instructions, made my way to my host, Franck’s, place.

Franck was cool. Extra friendly and hospitable and after a long chat about everything and nothing, he suggested that we go and get some kebabs and a drink with his friend Marco, a Dutch guy living in Cannes. So we headed out, only to find that the kebab shop which Franck wanted to go to was having it’s one week of closure for the year. We then headed down towards an Irish pub (they have these all over the place!) and had a few drinks which continued into the night back at Francks, despite the fact that both he and Marco had work the following day. At about 3am, we decided to call it a night.

The next morning Franck poured both him and I a coffee and left for work. It was a beautiful day so I got ready and headed out to explore Cannes. After stopping by the tourism information centre and grabbing a map, I headed down towards the beach only to get distracted on the way by one of those shops which sells hippy clothes, incense, and blankets and other items from various Asian countries; Tibet, India, Malaysia, etc.

I got stuck in this store for about an hour and half. The guy who ran it was half Chinese, half Tibetan and born in Borneo, and a motor-mouth extrodanaire. He talked and talked and talked, and gave me coffee and talked some more. It was ridiculous. But finally I got out, phew!

Me and the shop owner

Then I headed down the main shopping street, passing a cinema which had a small film festival playing French films, and another playing old films in English. They were playing the 1979 version of Planet of the Apes, which incidently I had thought about seeing recently, but unfortunately it wasn’t at the right time. So I kept on walking and ended up at the beach!

Cannes beach

While I was there I saw the real thing, French kids flipping all over the show practising Parkour!

Parkour!

I started to walk along the beach in the direction other than what is seen in the photo above. Soon I had to leave the beach because it turned into a marina full of large, expensive, launches and the theatre where all the films are played during the Cannes Film Festival each year in May.

Film festival theatre

Af ter this I made my way over the Cannes’ old town. I wandered around though this for some time, checking out all the old buildings and old people, then made my way up the hill to where a clocktower and church looked over the city of  Cannes. The weather was beautiful and it was a great view from up there.

View over Cannes

As the sun began to set I made my way back down to the beach and began to walk. I walked for a while along the beach. It was good to smell and feel the sea spray. Soon the beach ended but I continued to walk further along the shoreline with no real objective other than feeling like walking. As I walked the sun began to set behind the hills in the distance.

Cannes Sunset

Once the sun had set, I began to head back. As I approached the Old Town again, I noticed a fun fair which I hadn’t seen on my way out. I spent a little while checking it out, not being able to tell if it was being set up or down, being yelled at by random carnies, and trying to avoid spending any money.

Carnival by night

I soon left the carnival and headed back to Francks where we decided to have a quiet night –  both of use were still feeling the gin from the night before.

The following day I planned to go to Monaco but the train workers were on strike. The shortest amount of time it would take for me to get there (usually a one hour or so train ride) was 5 hours so I decided to flag it. Isn’t the French train system supposed to be one of the best in the world? This is ridiculous. I ended up heading back to Francks and we just hung out for the day, listening to music and watching crazy French TV.

In the evening we set out for Marco’s house for dinner. Franck promptly reversed his car into another parked car then drove off, got lost, went around in circles and arrived at Marco’s about half an hour late. Another friend of theirs was also there and that evening we sat around and ate far, far too much food and drank even more wine, which Marco told me I had to do as I was in France.  He also told me that I had to eat several cheeses after dinner, so I indulged and ate some crazy cheeses which I would never have dared eat before – they were not half bad either. By this time I was bloated, drunk, and it was 3am so Franck and I headed back to his place. No late night gin this time!

(This post is rubbish! I’m starting to get lazy I think. Sorry my fair readers.)

At last, warmth.

Off the plane I stepped onto Athenian soil, a balmy 18 degrees. The plan was simple enough. I was to make my way to the CouchSurfing meeting at the Barrio Cafe in the centre of Athens and act out the character of the traveller with the lost documents, appealing to the CS Ambassadors.

When I stepped off the metro in Athens Central, I got lost. All the tiny streets going in every which direction, disorientated me rather badly and I ended up wandering around in the night looking for streets which I was supposed to turn up. I sat Wedown on a wall to try and reorganise myself when I was approached by Mike, a Canadian and fellow CouchSurfer. He told me that he had been in Athens for about a week and also the year prior, offering to help me find where I needed to go. Unfortunately, he was just about as useless as the map I was using and it ended up being me who found the Cafe in the end. It was good to have someone to talk to, though – you never know how dangerous these places are at night.

Arriving at the cafe, I staged my act to the first ambassador I saw, Lena. She was much less stressed than I had hoped and the joke kind of faded into nothing. Basically she said that I could sort it all out in the morning. When she found out it was a joke, she kicked me repeatedly in the leg yelling “LIAR!!”. Soon afterwards, I found my host for the first two nights in Athens, Vanessa, and later we headed back to her place, a huge apartment about seven metro stops out of central Athens.

The following day I had agreed to meet up with Mike to check out some of the sights. The first stop was the western world’s most prominent historical place, the Acropolis. We began to walk up the hill and came to a place which had a pretty good view over the city.

View over Athens

Further up we walked, I had an arguement with the ticket office lady over my student ID which has no expiry date on it, and after paying more than I wanted to, we were inside the complex. The main structure which everyone comes to see in the Acropolis is the Panthenon, a huge columned building which was covered in scafholding, my new pet hate. I thought that maybe I had come in a bad time, being winter, but later found out that the scafholding had been on there for 25 years and they were nowhere near ready to take it down. This was confirmed through seeing a number of photos of the Acropolis which all seemed to have been taken in the late 70s.

Panthenon

Down below the Panthenon is the Theatre of Dionysus.

Theatre of Dionysus

After seeing these two amazing sights, we walked back down the hill and checked out some more crazy ruins which I can’t remember the name of.

Lunch was had, then Mike decided that he should probably get back to his hostel and start packing as he was going to head back to Israel (where he was working or attending school or something) that evening. So we parted ways and I decided that I was going to walk up to the top of the Filopappou Hill.

On the way up I passed the Jail of Socrates.

Socrates Jail

Soon I made it to the top. The temple was less impressive than it had looked from a distance (though still cool) but the view of the Acropolis was pretty amazing.

Filopappou Monument

View of the Acropolis

On the way back I walked down through Pynx and past the Ancient Agora, but unfortunately it was closed. That was first on the agenda for the following day. I headed back to Vanessa’s place and that night we hung out, chatting about classic cars (she drove in a Citroen 2CV rally across europe) and good music and such.

Vanessa had friends coming to stay for the next few days, so this meant I had to leave the following morning. But it was ok, I had arranged to stay with Lena, the woman who was kicking me, and her seven year old son, Angelos, so I headed out to her place which was on the opposite side of Athens. Once set up there, I headed back into the centre as the Ancient Agora was calling me. There I met a Chinese American guy who was also travelling alone. Once again I was asked for directions in a city I know very little about, but this time I knew where I was going as he was going to the same place.

We hung out, walking around the ancient ruins, with the most impressive part definitely being the Temple of Hephaistos and Athena.

Temple of Hephaistos and Athena

From here I wandered down towards my last ancient site, the Temple of Olympian Zeus.

Temple of Olympian Zeus

The following day I visited the Museum of Archeology which was pretty amazing, although you can really see only so many marble statues, no matter how impressive they are. They also had a pretty good Egyptian collection and a gallery of Greek vases, none of which I recognised from my 7th form Classics class. After this was my time to check out all the crazy markets and shops which Athens has to offer. A jersey and backgammon set were bought, then I headed home.

The night Lena, her son, and I attended a CouchSurfing meeting in a local park which included crazy games, moonlight backgammon, and a small party at Lena’s upon return. Wine was served from 1.5 litre plastic bottles which looked like they should have contained meths. I thought the Grecians would have more pride in their wine considering ethey had a god devoted entirely to it.

The next day it was time to leave, I was heading for Rome but the mission was long. At first I was ripped off by a taxi driver, not by much, to get to the correct bus station to leave for Patras. On top of my fair he charged me for luggage and for the fact that I called him to come!! At the bus station I ran around like crazy with not much time to spare, only finding my bus at the last minute.

After a three hour bus ride, I arrived in Patras, with enough time to get myself on the Superfast ferry to Bari in Italy. Now this was an ordeal. Firstly, I went to the cabin which my ticket stated. There were two guys in there who started yelling at me about “reception! Reception!”. I so went to the reception to find that my ticket was wrong (like everybody’s) and got given a new cabin. I was alone in a 4 bed cabin which was nice, until aout 1:30 am which a bunch of children busted in and woke me up. The guard then made me get up, pack my stuff and go back to the reception again, to which they sent me back to the room. Now around 2am, I was back in the cabin with no children, but had gained the loudest snoarer in history. I managed to get back to sleep, only to be woken two hours early by the other guy in my cabin going on about us almost being at Bari.

Two hours later we were at Bari. I got off the ferry, became comfused for a while, then took a taxi to the train station, but not after being accosted by a random guy who wanted to take me there for five Euro – not in your random car!

In Bari I had a few hours to kill, so I headed to the tourist information centre, got a map and decided to check out the Old Town. There were town walls which you could walk upon.

Bari City Walls

And a large church.They also had a castle which was pretty cool and had been rebuilt and extended many times over the years.

Bari Castle

Soon it was time for the train to Rome, so off I headed and by that evening, I was ready to sleep!

A Citidel and a Dead Guy: Moscow

I arrived in Moscow at Leningradskiy Station at around 10am. Once there I was supposed to amuse myself for the day, then find my host, Krishna’s, place. I had pretty good directions: get on the Metro, take the circle line until the correct station, turn right and walk till I hit an Italian restaurant.

I found the metro, but for some reason I could not for the life of me figure out how to get inside it. I walked around the building numerous times but all I encountered was markets, beggars, and about 300 dubious looking people hanging around the station, smoking, the ground a sea of their spit. Soon I found a map and decided that I would take the red line to where I needed to go and walked to the next metro station. I had decided that to fill in my time I would go and check out the Kremlin as I had a few hours to spare.

After finally getting a metro ticket (I walked away from the counter, forgetting it at first), I jumped on the train, decyphered the Cyrillic name for the closest station on the line to the Kremlin, counted the number of stops and headed on into the central city.

The Kremlin is closed on Thursdays.

I had no idea what to do. I had not seen one tourist office and my Lonely Planet map was pretty bad, but it did have the NZ embassy, so I thought I’d drop in there to see if they could give me some information. After a fourty minute walk (I’m carrying my pack here too) down the wrong street, I didn’t find the embassy, so I walked back. Right, it was only a few hours ’till Krishna said he was going to be home, so I decided to find his place and hang out and read a book.

This was the easiest thing so far, although the guy I asked for help at first tried to tell me that I needed to be back at the original station I had started at! I found Krishna’s apartment, rang the door bell, no one was home. So I sat down to wait. Pretty soon it started to get cold, and by cold I mean it was probably below 0 degrees. People kept coming and going but no sign of Krishna. I kept ringing the door bell just in case there was another entrance to the building. When he was 20 minutes late, I rang again and was answered by his flatmate, Katija. Finally! She let me in, it was an amazing feeling to be out of the cold. We sat down, had some tea and talked. Krishna didn’t make it home ’till 11pm! I’m very glad that Katija was there! That night Ben, the Australian guy I met in Estonia, came around for a chat. It was good to see him again and we made plans to meet up the following day.

Katija also had a very cute kitten!

Katijas Cat

In the morning Ben called to say that he wasn’t feeling so good; an allergic reaction to the chili in the meal which Krishna had cooked. He needed the day to rest but I decided to visit the Kremlin anyway and would meet him later on. I began to walk from Krishna’s into town, it’s about a 40 minute walk to the Kremlin, and passes by the majestic Cathedral of Our Saviour.

Cathedral of Christ the Saviour

Soon enough I made it to the walls of the Kremlin which borders Alexander Gardens and the entrance inside the citidel.

The Kremlin's Wall

After waiting in what Russians appear to call a queue, which is basically a mass of people pushing to be the first to the counter, I managed to get a studen ticket to get inside. Students pay one sixth the price of regular people. So in I went.

Entrance to the Kremlin

Cathedral Square

My ticket enabled me to wander around the grounds and check out the Cathedral Square in which four white and gold cathedrals stood proudly in the winter sun.

Inside, though, was where the amazement began to set in. Every cathedral was adorned from floor to ceiling with icons painted both directly on the plaster, and on wood facades. Colourful faces and gold halos were beaming from every direction. Lining the bottom of the walls were tombs of important Russian figures throughout history. Unfortunately you were not alowed to take pictures inside any of these places, otherwise I would have taken hundreds, it was astonishing.

The rest of the buildings inside the Kremlin were very St. Petersburgian. They were really the only buildings which I saw in Moscow that seemed to have been built in the same style as the Hermitage or Catherine the Great’s palace.

I still had a bit of time left before I had to meet Ben, so I went for a wander around, over the bridge which crosses the Moscow River to get a better look at the Kremlin.

The Kremlin

The above was the view from to the north. To the south was the sunsetting on the clearest night behind the Cathedral of Our Saviour.

Sunset behind cathderal

Soon it was time to meet Ben. We got some food then headed out to an “expat friendly bar” that I “had to see.” It was true it was crazy inside this place, it was like every kind of bar you can think of in one; club, sports bar, live music venue, cafe, sisha bar, and then later in the night was what Ben had wanted me to see. At aproximately 11pm, about 25 prostitutes just strolled on in. Apparantly they pay and exuberant entrance fee to get in and just act like regular patrons. They dance with you and then pop the question about having fun for payment. Crazy.

We visited a few more clubs and soon the night came to an end. When I got back to Krishna’s I was expecting to meet his other CouchSurfer who was supposed to be turning up that night. He wasn’t there. Ah well, bed time!

In the morning I got up bright and early as I really wanted to see this dead guy. You know, my father, your father, the father of communism: Mr. Lenin. I also realised that I hadn’t visited Red Square which would have been ridiculous. So in to the Kremlin I walked again and got in line for Lenin’s Mausoleum. I passed through the airport-like security checks, and started the slow walk to the building, pased the graves of many important Russian political figures. Soon I was at the mausoleum. This place is surrounded by numerous guards which ridiculous weapons, who loudly pronounce “sssssssh!!” every 3-4 seconds. In I walked, down into the tomb site, a temperature controlled pit of black marble. Next thing I knew I was staring at a very dead man, so dead in fact that he looked like he was never alive, but only a wax figurine. I began to speculate that maybe he still is alive and that this body is indeed wax. I hear they are thinking of closing the venue to the public, though, so maybe no matter the temperature control, he’s beginning to suffer the fate of human breath.

Lenins Mausoleum

Back into the sunlight I emerged and at the other end of red square, facing back towards the State History Museum. No tanks parading through today.

Red Square

My next stop was St. Basil’s Cathedral which is located on the west end of Red square, opposite the State History Museum.

St. Basils Cathderal

This cathedral was like a candy house. If Hansel and Grettle’s witch had been more wealthy, this is what she would have had. I ventured inside. You were also not alowed to take photos in here either, but it didn’t seem to bother anyone, and everyone was doing it, so I followed the crowd. Here you can also get an idea as to what it looked like inside the Kremlin cathedrals.

Inside St. Basils Cathedral

After St. Basil’s I had one last stop in Red Square and that was GUM, the high profile shopping mall with high profile prices, situated in a high profile building. Beautiful architecture, and full of crap that stupid people buy.

I headed back to Krishna’s once more and not long after I returned, the CouchSurfer who was supposed to come last night showed up. It turned out that the previous night he had gotten lost, had no phone number to call and ended up sleeping on the steets of Moscow! Now that is crazy! Apart from the fact that it was below 0 degrees at night, who knows what might have happened. But with a name like Phoenix Mourning-Star, I guess nothing is crazy for you. He was from Colorado and told me that he did his entire college life of five years living out of a car.

Anyway, shortly I was supposed to meet Ben again to go and check out what he had called an “airplane graveyard”, so I asked Phoenix if he wanted to come along too. And also another dude called Ben who had helped Phoenix find Krishna’s apartment. We met Ben (the Australian) and a whole bunch of Moscow based CouchSurfers and headed off on the Metro to an disused aerodrome from the Cold War turned insustrial area. The planes and helicopters were in sight but were surrounded by a large fence. Not to worry, at the price of 50 rubles each, we paid off the guard and he let us in to pretty much do anything we wanted.

There were huge helicopters, missiles, jet planes with afterburners, everything adorned with the sicle and hammer and beautiful handpainted red stars. If the cockpits were smashed, you could even get inside.

But my favourite part was the fact that they planes were parked wing to wing. So at one stage near the end (and I have a video of this), I started from one end, and began to run. Along the left wing (becareful of the flaps!!), over the fuselage, along the right wing, then jump! Onto the next plane’s left wing and so on over the top of around 15 planes in a row. I can only say it was a very interesting experience, running around on the top of warplanes.

Warplane Graveyard

That evening Ben, Phoenix and I met up with some of Ben’s friends including a Cuban guy from Miami who looked like Zorro except with an uneven moustache. This guy had one of the biggest egos I’ve ever met, but he also knew where to go out, so out we went. We only actaully managed to make three stops, the first being a pie shop. There I met Eric, a Nigerian guy who ran a promotion company in Moscow and brought in hiphop acts like Chingy and Jaz-Z and Timberland, he was currently bringing over Chingy at the time. These people didn’t understand how hilarious Chingy is, but anyway.

Our next stop was a student party, held in a student club where we all pretended to be students. The music was terrible, and they kept playing this annoying “king of my castle” song over and over again, which was only topped by a remix of the Pirates of the Carribean theme music which no one else seemed to find absolutely ridiculous. I was told that to get a beer you pay 15 rubles, to get a girl you speak English.

Our next stop was, according to Zorro, the best club in Moscow and a “real club”. It was called London, and had this weird theme of umbrellas and Ducati motorcycles going on. The drinks were horrendously expensive and they were playing the same terrible music as the student party. I think Russia has it’s own dance music where they basically remix anything that they can get their hands on. We stayed there until about 4:30am, and then Ben and I decided it was about time to leave, I was staying at his place and had to get up at 8am to leave for the airport, which I managed to do okay! At 10am when I left Ben’s apartment, it was -2 degrees, when I landed in Athens at 5:30, it was 18 degrees. Aaaaaaahhhh.

Traveling South to the East: Tallinn

On the Thursday morning I made my way to the Helsinki port, boarded the Tallink Star, sat around for two hours, and got off in the Estonian city of Tallinn.

Here I was staying with a girl called Triin, who at my time of landing was working, so I had half the day free to wander around the town before I had to meet her “in the square under the dragons” at 5:15pm. So I locked up my gear, got a map, and start walking towards the city. The map had twelve sights placed on it that were within the Old Town, so I figured that I’d check some of these out.

Walking through the (new) town, there was construction everywhere. It was blatently obvious that Tallinn was fast developing into a very Western city. The architecture was great, the streets were packed, and the people looked like they had taken all their style tips from those living in Berlin, Stockholm or Amsterdam (but probably Helsinki).

I entered the main town through the eastern gates.

Old Town Eastern Gates

To the left was a McDonalds, what an introduction to a well preserved medieval town. To the left, running along the city walls was some sort of knitwear market. These are everywhere. Every second shop is trying to sell you a knitted jersey or (and what I forgot to buy) one of those long woolen hat that you see people skiing with in cartoons.

Knitwear Market

As I ventured in, it became obvious that this was a town that would be overrun by tourists in the summer months. I keep hearing the word “touristic” being thrown around, I’m not sure if it’s even a proper word, but this is what I imagine it would be like. Similar to Brugge but with a more Eastern feel.

I began to follow the map around. It first led me up an old alley which was lined with ancient tablets from the old Tallinn.

Ancient Tablets

Once past this alley, I continued my way north within the town, and stumbled across St. Olaf’s Church, a huge white building with a tower which was once the tallest building in medieval Europe.

St Olaf's Tower

I walked inside and as the day was beautiful, I decided to climb the tower to the make shift viewing platform which they had built into the copper roof, 60m above the ground.

View from St. Olaf's Tower

From the tower I had spotted a huge building full of right and 45 degree angles, which looked to be made entirely out of concrete and left to rot. So I once I had decended the tower’s rickety stone staircase, I made my way further north towards the sea. What I found was a huge Soviet style building, purely in grey with huge staircases, graffiti and rubbish everywhere. Half the place was broken and it looked like no one had used it in 30 years. But it definitely had that Russian “for the people” feel to it.

Soviet Concert Hall

Later I found out that this place was built when Tallinn was under Soviet occuptaion, and amazingly, it is still in frequent use! You would never know it from seeing it, and even walking around on it. I was even on the roof to get some better photos, if I had known there might have been people inside I don’t think I’d be running around on the roof. It turns out that they can’t afford to renovate it, and they can’t afford to pull it down, and they don’t want to get rid of it because of it’s historical significance and architectural value.

I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering the streets of the old town, through alleyways, pasts interesting shops and cafes, and at 5:15, I met Triin outside the town hall, but not after an interesting performance from a group of Hare Krishnas.

Hare Hare Krishna

We walked back to her apartment and hung out for a few hours, had dinner, then not long later, we were out again. One of the CouchSurfing hosts in town had moved into a new flat and was having a flat warming. There I met a number of the other CouchSurfing hosts in Tallinn and the people who were staying with them. There was Mattias from Italy, Ben (an Aussie) from Moscow, and Shigi (a Taiwanese guy) from Austria. We hung out and talked rubbish, listened to traditional Estonian music which they all know from their singing festivals (it turns out Estonians love to sing). Later, Shigi and I decided to meet up the following day at 12 and wander around the city together.

So at 12 the next day, we met outside the town hall.

Tallinn Town Hall

I ended up seeing a number of places that I’d seen the previous day, then I took Shigi to the concert hall. It appears that this is a place that no guide books talk about and no touists seem to know about, so I’m pretty happy thaat I found it on my own. Then we walked to the south end of the city, up into the highest part, past some crazy bird scultpures:

Me and the Bird

…the orthodox church:

Orthodox Church

and ended up climbing the town walls to spy on a crazy Russian wedding, complete with a guy with a megaphone ordering people about and “beautiful Russian women” who seemed a bit undressed for a wedding.

Russian Wedding

That afternnon Shigi and I decided to walk along  the waterfront towards the ruins of the Piirita Convent. This appeared to be a short distance on the map, but in fact took us about an hour and a half to walk. It was well worth it, though. This place was old, very old! There were floor foundations and sky reaching walls everywhere, and amoungst them were scattered gravestones and small underground passages. It was a beautiful place.

Piirita Convent Ruins

Later that night we met Triin and Shigi’s host, Christina, for dinner. Afterwards, they left and Shigi and I checked out a few bars.

The next day Christina and Triin wanted to show use a few more sights. First we headed into Kadrioru Park which was very close by to Triin’s apartment. Inside this park was the Tallinn art museum which was originally built as a Russian palace.

Art Gallery

Next we headed to a huge Soviet WWII monument which was built inside a massive park.  But before this we made a stop at the Estonian History Museum for a look around the ground, where we found a Lenin graveyard.

Lenin Graveyard

Soviet WWII Monument

Later on we visited a large park where these Estonian singing festivals are held.

Festival Park

That night it was the birthday of one of the Tallinn CS hosts. She had decided that she wanted a pirate party, so at about 8 o’clock, Triin, Christina, Shigi and I headed over to the home of Eva (who was hosting Ben the Russian Aussie). Everyone got dressed up in pirate regalia and we headed about 1 hour  out of town. The party was full of crazy Esotinans in priate gear, vodka, rum, and other assorted alcohols.

Pirates!

Later in the night it was time for me to finally experience the Finnish sauna which these people had in their house. So, basically, everyone got naked, went into a 60+ degree room, sat around for a while, and then went running around outside in the 3-4 degree night. Crazy, but very fun!

Finnish Sauna users!

The night was great and ended up with us all sleeping on the hardest floor I’ve ever experienced.

The next day it was time to go. I had decided to head back to Helsinki so I could sort out some visa issues, and I decided that even though my tour to Russia had been cancelled, after talking to Ben, I had decided to go anyway, I’m not going to miss that oppurtunity! So here I am, hanging out in Helsinki for a few days while I wait for my Russian visa to begin on the 1st of November.

Stockholm!

I arrived back in Stockholm at around 4pm on a Tuesday. My next Couchsurfing host was Karl. He was busy working on a student radio show that evening so I made my way to his place using the instructions which he had given me. I always worry a little bit about using the local public transport systems, but as usual, this one was indcredibley easy.

I took the metro four or five stops and then met a bus. I asked the driver if he went to where Karl lives and how much the ticket was. He replied, “one thousand.” I said, “how about I give you two.” He laughed and then asked, “American? Canadian?” “New Zealand” I replied, and he told me to get on the bus and that he’d take me there.

I arrived at Karls apartment building, entered the door code and headed up to his place, found the key and let myself in. Nort knowing what to do, I looked through Karl’s bookshelf and spent the night reading a book until Karl arrived home.

Karl arrived home at around 9:30, and straight away we got along. He was a friendly guy with what I thoughht was an American accent. I later found out that he was purely Swedish but had lived in California for a year when he was 17-18. He didn’t seem to realise, but I think that the accent atoning his english was influenced from this experience – and network TV! That night we chatted about all sorts of things ’till late including Whatipu’s tunnel of wind (some of you will know of this amazing place on Auckland’s West Coast).

The first proper day I spent in Stockholm was beautiful, sunny autumn day, so I decided that I would just start walking and see where I ended up. So I headed across the bridge from Liljeholmen to Åsön. The view was amazing;

Bridge from Liljeholmen

I saw from the bridge a nice looking park which ran along the seaside, so I decided to head into there. The autumn trees were looking amazing, but the first thing which I noticed were these crazy little houses set into the hillside. I thought they might be something like a retirement village, but after inquirement it turns  out that they are summer houses which you can hire out from the government as a place to garden and hang out in when the weather is warm. A great idea for the thousands of people who live in apartments in the inner city.

Summer Houses

I continued my walk along the seaside for another hour or so and then headed into the city. I found a  cool shop called The T-Shirt Shop where I bought an urban guide to Stockholm which was to guide me to the best of the shops and other places in Stockholm for the next few days. I even found an awesome statue of Thor beating down upon a sea serpent.

Thor!

The rest of the afternoon I continued my walk around the city and in the evening headed back to Karl’s where we had dinner and hung out for the evening, him telling me crazy stories and showing me videos of mixed martial arts legend Bas Routen. Hilarious!

The following day I decided to check out the Old Town. Almost everywhere has some form of “old town” and this was no exception. Cobbled streets, ancient buildings, and hundreds of ridiculously expensive tourist shops. The palace was also on the island where the old town was located, a huge building complete with guards and everything!

Palace

Next on the list was the Swedish Parliment and a crazy round church, walking-a-tonne, and another evening of hanging out with Karl.

Swedish Parliment

The next day I decided to check out a few more parts of the city. The town hall which had this cool leave covered wall hiding an amazing lion statue.

Hidden Lion

Next I went to check out the Moderna Museet, but ended up not having enough time to go inside. Outside, however, were some very cool sculptures consisting of child-like giant lumps coupled with strange steam-punk style machines. Very strange but very cool.

Modern Sculpture

That evening things got more exciting. There were a number of options for the evening, but we had to choose one. At 7 we headed out to one of Karl’s friend’s place, Lena. Her and her friend Mary (I think, sorry!) had cooked dinner for us, a Swedish specialty, reindeer. The dinner was amazing and after a large helping and some crazy chat, we were ready to head out. Lena was running a club night at one of Stockholm’s clubs, but before we attended that, Karl and I headed to another club to see a gig by Californian experimental band Xiu Xiu. Later after the gig we headed to Lena’s club night, met her and Mary and had a few drinks, then headed off home.

The time in Stockholm was excellent, things just keep getting better! The next day, ‘though, it was time to leave. An overnight ferry was booked for Helsinki, and at 6pm, after only making the boarding with 5 minutes to spare I was off with the sunset behind me.

Stockholm Sunset