Stockholm

Due to some time issues with trains in Germany (they do exist), I got to Sweden a day later than planned, but after a great night's rest in a Hamburg business hotel comped by the DB.

My first night, I sprang for a pricy bunk in a converted ship. The idea was cool and it was a pretty comfortable hostel, but the novelty of sleeping on a ship wore off very quick. So someone better like these pictures...

From my bunk

View from the ship at night

That first night, before I had given up on finding reasonably prices in Sweden, I wandered downtown looking for a place to eat. After an hour I hadn't found anything under 20 dollars and had resigned to starve. I did find a bar with 4 dollar beers and decided it was as close as I'd get. After ordering a beer, I noticed every Swede was glued to a projection screen of the Swedish national soccer team's Euro qualifying match against Netherlands, a World Cup finalist. The Swedes were underdogs, but needed the win to qualify and were the home side.

I found a spot near the tv between two locals, one in his 60s and one about my age. At first, they were skeptical about sharing their bar shelf with an American basketball player. By half-time I'd proven that I knew a little about the game and that I was rooting for Sweden and they warmed up to me.

Sweden came from behind to win 3-2. Much celebration and many cheers' ensued. After the game the older Swede walked me back to the pier because I hadn't found a free map yet and was rather disoriented from my failed food search.

He showed me the exact alley where the Swedish prime minister was assassinated in 1988(?).

The guy's name is unspellable unfortunately, but he did tell me it meant "peace lover" in Slovak, his native tongue. I asked what brought him to Sweden and he gave me his entire (but wholly intriguing) life story. In 1968, when he was 19, he went to Sweden by himself to visit a girl. While he was there, the USSR invaded Slovakia. He was sentenced to a year and a half in prison for traveling abroad, but never served time because he didn't go home. His grandfather served five years for not turning in all his savings from his fur factory to the communists. His father also served time for a small offense.

This man's story was especially interesting because I just from Berlin, where we heard stories about families separate for years by a Soviet wall. Also, in Prague, we went to the Museum of Communism which traced the history of the USSR's involvement in Czechoslovakia.

I moved to a slightly cheaper hostel for my final two Stockholm nights. It was still 35 dollars, but had free pasta you could cook for yourself. I did.