So I was pretty sure I was going to exclude Scandanavia from the trip, since it is, after Switzerland, the most expensive place to live in the entire world at the moment, surpassing even the UK. However, enticed by the idea of meeting relatives and visiting my1/2 homeland, I took the opportunity to get over here. My relatives came from around the standing stones of Istad and left from the port in Malmo just across the new bridge from Copenhagen. After a rather uneventful week, followed by a near disaster, I decided it was time to look into doing some couchsurfing. God, am I glad I did.
Couchsurfing has been a small part of the trip thus far and was a small part of my life in the USA, also. Often when traveling it is just easier for me to pay for a hostel and do my own thing, but a good host can really make a country or city come to life! This is exactly what happened here. Only with several good hosts. I have been looking into a host in Berlin and recceived dozens of No’s. Within a day of looking in Sweden I had numerous Yes’s.
If you are a good couchsurfer, come to the south of Sweden during the summer! The weather is lovely, mass transit is easy, and the people are about as friendly as I have ever seen! Everyone speaks English, so never fear.
Some key points to financially surviving Sweden:
- American food is really expensive here. $13 whopper. Go with local fare: cheap falafel is eeeeeverywhere.
- The Jojo card will get you anywhere you want to go at a discount.You can pick them up at most corner markets or Skanetrafiken offices.
- Everything closes early!
- Stay with a host!
- Be ready for anything.
Sweden had loads of surprises for me. I mean it when I say, be ready for anything: So far we’ve got
- A Pin-Up Girl
- Indie music rock festivals
- Vikings!
- Viking Moustaches
- Beeeeeeautiful Countryside
- Sleeping in old churches
- Norweigan Black Metal
- Summer wine and berries right off the bush
- Recorded a music video
- home made sushi
- failed thermite experiments
- etcetcetc
This has been truly fantastic. The wild thing has been going to the grocery store and trying to find groceries to mitigate the high cost of food. So many of the words are similar in pronunciation or text that I can go shopping with about 80% accuracy. I feel good about that.
Jogging in the morning has been awesome. I go out for about 30-45 minutes and just run and keep my eyes open. When I do, an interesting thing happens. I see things I want to go check out later. I learn the streets and I can remember landmarks and things I want to go see later. It’s an easy way to get to know a section of a city very quickly. More on this later.
For now, I’m just throwing an “I’m not dead” post out there with some photo fun from the last couple weeks. Hoping to be able to give some mroe detailed accounts later when I have more writing time! I want to give a huge thanks to Lasse, my distant cousin, and Mimmi with honorable mention to Mattias, Gabriel, and the Pirate Party Crew.
