Freezing my bälls off...

Aahhh. I have the room to myself. I can read and relax (though my damn Ultraviolet player wouldn't play my Batman movies). So I stayed up later than I should have reading a Steven King novel (damn you Steve!).

My plan to hit the morning sauna was slightly delayed as I was lazy by a half hour. Then I went down to wash my clothes only to find that the cleaning staff had booked the machines. There are only two washers and one dryer. There are no laundromat anywhere near the hostel. And we have to share the machine with the cleaning crew - so they use it all day. This would be called sucking.

Cool street art on the walk from the hostel to the cruise ship dock.

I walked down to the nearby dock open market area to find information on ship and bus tours. It was much colder today than yesterday, so I was freezing my previously mentioned unmentionables off. I did manage to book a combo ship cruise around the bay area and 48 hour hop on/off bus tour. I then looked around the market which was next to the dock to try and find a cheap hat and scarf. All the hats started at 20 euro, so I figured I could do better by going into the huge mall in town.

The cruise was pretty cool. It lasted an hour and a half with lunch and a bar on board. So I had a roast beef sandwich with dill and a couple lattes. The outdoor part with the good view for pictures was cold, but they did provide blankets you could put on your legs. Nothing to help my head though. There were a lot of islands and most of them had fortifications on them. They were a big deal during the Finnish/Swedish war and later when the Russians used it. The really cool thing is that they have withstood the test of time, so they are still very much in place and unspoiled. A sad thing is that the guide was saying that the bay usually froze up, making it possible to drive to the islands during winter - but that it no longer happened the last couple decades. Might be that whole pesky global warming thing.

The cruise eventually got chilly enough to where I went inside the boat and decided I definitely needed to hit a mall to get some clothes. After the tour I walked up the main thoroughfare to the shopping district and its main mall "Focus". The mall was different from the ones I'm used to and this one was built into a hill. They setup is a number of small halls (maybe 15 feet wide) branching in many directions with a very small open area in the middle. Very cramped compared to our malls, yet they had over 130 stores in it - so the size of the mall was the same. I went in at ground level and figured out it was built into a hill when on level four I walked out the back into a neighborhood. Whoa. I ended up hitting a sports store and got super thing thermals, a hat, and gloves. I needed the hat anyway from yesterday's encounter at the station. When a giant bigoted Nazi Fin tells you your hat is a bad thing, it must REALLY be a bad thing. I then ended up having a Southern Fried Chicken meal on the bottom floor.

Sign for the downstairs bathroom, I self entitled it "Why does it hurt when I pee?!?!"

I was able to find the 4 tram to my hostel right off the bat this time and headed straight back to the hostel. I got to the laundry room just in time to see two students (mining engineers) trying to get some laundry done too. So we took the clothes out of the washer (it was the hostel staff and we checked first) and we each took a washer. After a half hour we stuck both our loads int he dryer. Cool guys, they were hitting the various college teaching mining engineering in the country.

While sitting here waiting for my clothes to dry, and in between text Mr. Pete Lee to go get some drinks tonight (he's here for a month vacationing); I noticed something pretty cool. In the apartments they have these fully enclosed double glass insulated balconies so that they can enjoy the sunlight when while they can and not get frozen. Me like. Also, as in Sweden, it appears they think dryers are a silly idea and most households simply hang the clothes in a bathroom (with warmed floor tiles) or in a special room by the heater.

Now just awaiting for my clothes to dry.

The bathrooms here have a twist to them that I can only picture as uniquely Scandinavian, like having heated bathroom floor tiles. There are speakers in front of the two toilet rooms that continuously play the sounds of a bunch of birds chirping. Obviously to cover up the sounds of the people in the toilets. Its these cultural dualities that always intrigue me. They won't use a dryer, but they take the time out to cover bathroom noises.

I think I caught a session of OCD though. There was a guy with arm sleeve tattoos (I haven't seen a lot of tattooed folks) washing his hands when I went it. He was already soaping, rinsing and repeating. He maintained this throughout my bathroom visit and only moved to the dryer to dry his hands when he seen I needed the sink. Just helping out unintentionally it seems.

Heading out now to meet Pete and Pub Sirdie.

Ok, Pub Sirdie was really cool. It is owned by an old Bulgarian guy that married a Finnish wife and opened a bar about the size of my living room. There was old Soviet gas masks and uniforms on the walls along with a string of old beer mugs lining the area above the bar itself. It also had the unique distinction of being on of the very rare pubs that had a working jukebox that still played 45 albums. Though the songs ranged between Kenny Logins and old Soviet songs. Very unique character. We had a couple beers, tried some unique Finnish liquors (one tasted like Glenlivet and one was smokey that was made with pine tar). This was on a hill in the Bohemian Kallio district.

After this we headed down to Molly Malone's further downtown. It was owned by an ex-pat and it was a typical Irish pub stuck in the middle of Helsinki. There was a cute Moldavian bartendress I chatted with, we played blackjack (minus side the house wins on a push, plus side everything goes to charity), and talked to a blind stinky Irish guy that kept lamenting on how he wanted to get into a fight with someone randomly. Yeh. Stereotype confirming isn't a good thing homey...

I ended up losing Pete, so headed out to the hostel. Met up with the new hostel mate. Speaks fluent English and he's from Berlin. Wants to travel to different cities and check out how people live in each city. Cool guy. I might get up early enough for a sauna. Might not. We'll see.

Finland is great... for whitey...

So here is the good, the bad, and the really fucking ugly.

WTF part one, this was hanging in my hostel room

The Good

The Russian hostel mate apparently was here on some kind of night shift job for a week I think. He stayed up til 1am reading, which kept me awake (even though we have individual lights, his would keep me awake). After which he got up, changing into some utility type clothes, grabbed his backpack and split. His stuff was in his shelving unit and it looked like he had two dozen packs of smokes. Along with the bare eating essentials, like bread and fruit. He came back around 8am, packed up all his stuff and left. So my sleep sucked but now I don't have Serious Non-talkative Russian Guy in the room anymore.

So just waiting for the hot Scandinavian supermodel that likes to walk around her hostel room in expensive lingerie. Yup. I'll be right here awaitin'...  Anytime now...

So anyways, I walk down to the tram station right behind the hostel. Strutting meh stuff like I had a tram pass already. Oh wait, that I do! I hop on and head to the Central Train Station. I get there and I was able to book my trip to St. Petersburg and from St. Petersburg to Moscow. Unfortunately, they couldn't book my sleeper cab from Moscow to Riga. So I'll have to do that in St. Petersburg. The gal behind the desk told me that its doubtful that anyone in the train stations there speak English, so I'll have to drag my guide into the station in order to have them help me get tickets.

The Ugly
So I'm standing at the tram station waiting for the tram to take me to Kallio, a Bohemian artsy working type area in the middle of the city. So large Finnish working guy in some torn and stitched up jacket asks me about my hat. Huh? He says its a 1930s style cap, and that's not a good thing. I wasn't sure what he was talking about, but apparently the 30s weren't good in Finland. He mentioned a couple royalty (I think) blowing their brains out. Ok, good to know. Then after I mentioned I got the hat in Edinburgh, he immediately asks me what percentage of "dark skinned" people were in Scotland. Then he asked what about in London. Then he muttered something about not mixing the races as it destroyed blond, blue eyed people. Uhm...ok... He goes on an on about that, and how the US likes to bomb other countries. I try to be polite at this point and ignore him. He eventually have realizes I have stopped talking to him and he gets on his tram. Damn. I hope that isn't a prevalent attitude in Finland. Otherwise we may have to bomb this place.

The Bad
Finland has a nice enough tram system, but their information on it sucks serious balls. I'm used to tourist maps that have the tram/bus/metro lines on them. Neither of the ones I have do this and the only thing I have on one of them is a vague metro map without end destination names or the name of stops. Also the tram stops themselves have little to no information on them. I'm used to seeing the stop name, then the trams that stop there with the end destination next to it so you know which way you are going. They don't do that here. The station names don't match the street names most of the time and the end destination changes in some system I just do not understand. The central station also doesn't have bus or tram maps. The only place in any country I've been in where there is nothing. Feh.

So I wander around Kallio. I seen some artsy stuff but I mainly seen "massage parlors" and sex shops. I'm pretty sure I'm in the wrong part of Kallio as supposedly there is a cool pub/art scene. I did walk by some vegan shops, natural food places, and pipe shops. Just didn't see the cool arty shops and such I expected. And I seen a ton of residential apartments. So I'll have to figure out where this place is supposed to be.

So found a kebab shop and had a kebab with marinara sauce on french fry plate with a salad. Cheap and hit the spot, not a lot of English speaking folks around here so I just want to make do. On the way back I found a tram line that would take me back to the central station. Unfortunately, I could not make heads or tails of which way the trams went. There were two rails and the same number said different thing depending on which side of the street you were on. So yah, sometime the exact same stop have a different name depending on which way the train is going. Also the seeming destination made no sense and matched nothing on the map I had. I found someone who spoke English and he was kind enough to actually walk me down to the Metro station instead and explain which way each went. He said they had the smallest Metro in the world with only six stops (there were more, but not many) and the Metro actually DID have the end station on the signs.

Hit center station and then a train back. I seen a cute girl with short red hair in a dress and poofy mini-skirt. Great legs and knee high studded red shoes. Pretty decked out for a morning and she had a guitar on her back. When she walked by, that's when I noticed that the reason for her skirt being so short (it is pretty chilly out there right now) was that she was wearing something underneath the skirt. She had a 3 foot long fluffy brown tail attached to her butt and it was hanging down. You wouldn't see it until she walked past. I thought that was pretty damn cool. I would have commented but I doubt she spoke English, so telling her she was awesome would have just seemed like me being a lech if she didn't understand what I was saying.

The city downtown seems like pretty much every European downtown. Mostly 5-10 story buildings with the bottom floor being a shop. I see a far greater number of people with cool colored hair. So far I like it. I just hope that bigot bastard was not the norm around here.

Sometimes when life bugs you, a good gourmet meal is in order. I headed down to the hotel by the waterfront. The cruise ship (and another cruise line) docks at the port a couple blocks from the hostel. I'm on a smallish island called Skagg. I figured that any hotel with marble floor right in front of a cruise ship dock might have some nice food.

Reindeer goulash with rosemary fraiche and dried lingonberries
Beef fillet with bacon, fried mushrooms, and crispy onions in a red wine sauce
Pumpkin marscapone  risotto

Ok good mood restored. And still no hostel mate so it looks like I'm sleeping nude tonight, woohoo!

I'll leave your with this...

WTF part two, transvestite hooker donkey balls... for kids!

Hells Sinky

Welp the room is a two bed hostel room and I'm sharing it with a Russian guy that knows no English. I would try to see if he is interested in me trying out Russian, but he seems a) sick and b) decidedly unfriendly. Cest la vie. He's around my age too, so no idea what he's doing here unless he is just looking for a cheap place to crash for an undetermined period of time.

Unfortunately, he's also pretty stinky. Feh. Oh well, hostels can be a crapshoot. Sometimes you get a seven, sometimes eleven.

The hostel has no meeting spot where people can hang out. It has a reception, an attached restaurant/bar, and a kitchen on each floor. The refrigerators, however, comprised of 24 individual locked boxes. You can get a key from the front desk with a deposit that you get back when you turn it in. I don't know what to think about that. On one hand - no one can steal your stuff and you know how much food you can store; on the other - it just seems messed up in a basic manner of kinda denying people access to a fridge. I dunno. Just seems weird to me.

The funny thing is that even though they have very few amenities, they have an entire floor dedicated to nothing but saunas. They have a mens and womens section, and a morning sauna is included in with your room. You have to pay for an evening sauna though. These there Fins looooooves them saunas, I guess.

I was somewhat beat after not getting much sleep on the cruise (there were three clubs on the boat! and a casino!), coupled with having to walk around four hours prior to my getting my room key kinda has me beat. So I stayed in the room and took a nap. I eventually ventured out to get some food and do a quick walk through the downtown area to the central station to see if I could get a tram pass. I made it to a Napalese place (basically Indian food, but it was gooooooood); had a mixed sizzling meat plate with coriander/lime and yogurt dipping sauce and rice. Plus marsala tea, though they called in Napalese Tea.

I know, I know. Different country. Food was the exact same as any Indian place I've been to though.

After that the walk downtown, though while not being very far, seemed out of reach. Plus its a Sunday night, so everything would be shut down anyway. On the way in though, I chatted with the gal at the desk about bus passes and apparently they can sell them at the desk. Sweet. Now I have unlimited tram access for three days.

Also I confirmed a flight from Riga to Warsaw. Apparently there are no direct trains between the cities, you would have to take an overnight bus. I scored a flight using LOT Polish airways for 99 euro. Since I would easily have paid that in a sleeper bunk, it sounded good to me. I also reserved a room at a highly rated hotel in old town Riga off of Hostelworld. Normally I would have just gotten a single bed room, unfortunately there were plenty of single bed rooms for every day except the last day of my stay. So I said screw it and booked a room with two beds for myself. I don't want to have to mess with checking out, putting all my luggage in storage for four hours, and then moving it to another room just for one day.

So all I have to do now it book the train from Helsinki to St. Petersburg, from St. Petersburg to Moscow, and then from Moscow to Riga (overnight). Other than that everything is taken care of.

Oh and once again, fuck Belarus.

The long trip to Helsinki

Woke up somewhat early and had breakfast with the family. Lovisa was already on a plane heading to a business conference in Alberta; so it was just me, Craig, and the kids. Fresh croissants, fresh squeezed orange juice, and coffee. Got to say my goodbyes then whisked off to the train station.

The wait wasn’t long and I so far the train ride is pleasant. Traveling over idyllic Swedish rural countryside - forests, farms, and lakes. While its pretty, nothing really stands out.

I think Riga is the way to go. I really want to go to Russia, so that is a given. But the Belarus part is looking more and more sketchy the more I look at travel blogs and such. The cost of the hotel in Riga would be $150 and the train trip slightly longer out of the way - so lets say $100 more. However, I can take3 pictures of everything, Riga is on the Baltic sea and things are a ton cheaper. So while I would be losing out on $600 for the hotel and visa, I would not have to deal with the stress. Plus if the switchover between Russia and Belarus isn’t smooth (and considering US has sanctions against Belarus - my gut feeling says it won’t be), then it would run up into the thousands and I would miss my flight back.

So, in essence, fuck Belarus. I have a feeling the extra $250 bucks to go to Riga will actually be made up in savings from getting screwed in Belarus via bribes and fleecing the tourist. Plus my stress level will be nil. I just have to figure out now about the train trip from Riga to Warsaw. Make sure it doesn’t go through a country that requires a transit visa. It shouldn’t though. It should just go through Estonia and Lithuania, both of which don’t require a visa if you have a US passport.

So, note to self in the future, while minor investigation and reading the US government website is good for EU countries - east block countries that require a visa need to be investigated ad naseum. The government travel guide doesn’t mention that if there is a problem with a visa in Belarus, you cannot get a hotel room and are therefore homeless. That kinda makes a big difference in my plans.

Gah. So the train to Stockholm left me an hour and a half to get to the Viking Line cruise ship. Just out of Stockholm, the train decided to stop at a station due to something or other happening. They only announced it in Swedish, so I was stuck looking around for the stewardess or someone to tell me what the hell was going on. I could have asked folks nearby, but no one looked stressed out at all. Anyway, I knew they closed the boarding gate 15 minutes prior to the ship launching, which left me no time to deal with the tram and walking the distance from the station. I hired a taxi and this guy kicked ass. He told me “I know exactly how you feel, I’ve been there.” The trip cost 326 kroner but I gave him 500 because he seriously took a ton of chances on the road and worked it like a pro.

I figured I would be spending the night in a cabin with four other folks as the cabin had four bunks. I had forgotten that I had simply reserved the whole cabin. Sweet. I have my own bathroom, shower, couch, and bed. Plus an awesome view from the 6th deck. This is a full on cruise ship with suana, a pub, nightclub, restaurants, casino, video game room, etc. I took this route as I have never been on a cruise ship and I love boats.

The cruise so far is awesome. We’re 3 ½ hours into it and we still haven’t gotten out of the Swedish archipelago, so little islands with tiny houses on them abound everywhere. I had a beer and cruised around the various outer decks. After a beer and a relaxing stare out into the ocean, I headed back to the cabin to chill out a tad before hitting the “Viking buffet”. They claim to have 130 different dishes. Not sure about that but I definitely took tiny bites of about 30 or so different things at least. It was pretty cool, the table I was at were a step-father and his daughter. I heard her speak and knew right off the bat she was American. Kinda. He was a Swede that had dual citizenship and when things started going bad in the US, she came over fairly recently. She is from the Ohio area near Cincinnati, now living with him right in between Stockholm and Gothenburg. I’m giving meh belly a chance to chill before I head out for some beers and maybe the club they have.

So headed out for beer and the clubs. The nightclub had karaoke, the pub a metal band in lederhosen with an accordion (no I’m not kidding), and the other nightclub had an 80s cover band. I ended up cruising around and drinking beer, then settling on watching the water go by on the open deck. Cloe and Chrostov (the folks from the buffet) came by. It was her “sweet sixteen” cruise present that her dad was giving her, so she was snuck into the bars. She couldn’t drink, but since she was small - she was able to hide out and not get kicked out. Her dad is pretty cool for taking her on an awesome cruise to see a new country for her sixteenth and she was all kinds of stoked. We hung out and talked about TV shows, politics, guys that were totally scamming on her (she was cute and there were some 14 year olds acting tough and smoking on the outer deck). Totally cool peeps and we hung out for a while.

Later I was hanging out on the aft deck, enjoying the full moon on the waves and seeing the blinking lights of distant islands. It was romantic as hell, with the scent of the fresh sea air, the moonlight reflecting off the waves made by the ship. The type of night and view that would make you want to sneak a quick rendezvous in an unlit corner.

So yah, I masturbated on the poop deck. Don’t judge me you bastards…

Seriously though, this totally made up for the some of the low points in the trip and after talking to Christov - I am definitely skipping Belarus. Hola Riga!

Awoke this morning via the alarm in the cabin. Its pretty cool, it has settings for 1, 1.5, and 2 hour prior to arrival. So showered, got some free breakfast in the lounge, and headed out. Met Cloe and Christov at the gate out the boat again. Cool peeps. They are just hanging out in the city for 5 hours before they hop back on the boat to head back to Sweden. It was a quick cruise trip for them.

The hostel was 300 meters from the boat ramp. So that was cool. Problem is that I can’t check in until 2pm. Also they have no lounge and you have to pay for WiFi. No problem, I’d rather do that that have to constantly go to an Internet café or into town for the free city WiFi. However, they don’t have a lounge, which sucks.

So I’m stuck cruising around town for four hours. I passed by a little farmer’s market type thing by the waterside. I’ll hit that up on the way back I think and get the cheesy tourist crap. Currently I’m having a bowl of goulash with sour cream, bread, and some weird chocolate confection which is essentially cream filling with a thin layer of chocolate over it. Free wifi, so that is taken care of. Now just to wander to and fro until I can toss my crap on my bunk and relax.

Last day in Sverige

Welp I actually set the alarm this morning to get up in time for a ferry ride out to the islands. So took a shower while Craig made a business phone call. Unfortunately, the call and subsequent work arranged things so that we didn't get our to the ferry until 1130. The timetable for the day was such that we wouldn't be able to get back until after the time needed to get Filip to his tennis practice.

So we ended up instead heading towards the "old town" of Gothenburg, where some of the older buildings were located. apparently though, instead of being like Stockholm's old city, it was mainly older foundation with newer building on top where a large immigrant population was located. We ended up eating at a little Persian lunch spot and heading back to get Filip.

While Filip was in practice, we packed up all my extra crap and shipped it out Oregon (howdy Janie!). Then grabbed some booze at the state run store (you can't buy anything over 3.5% alcohol elsewhere) and drove around checking out parts of Gothenburg.

Picked up Filip, picked up Lovisa from work, then drove back to the house. Lovisa took Filip to his tennis tourney at 6pm while me, Craig, and Lukas headed out for some nearby pizza. Lukas got a kebab pizza, Craig something with shrimp and artichoke hearts, while I got a bacon/ground beef/olive/ mushroom pizza. They give you a coleslaw like side, except its oil, vinegar, and a bit of sugar and seasonings. Its a Swedish thing they do at pizza places.

Anyhow, slow day at the homestead. Just packing and getting ready for the train trip to Stockholm and then the cruise to Helsinki. I'm seriously thinking of changing my travel plans though. The problem I have is that my Russian visa is from Sept 28 to Oct 7. The Belarus visa is from Sept 8 to Sept 12. I talked to the gal at the Russian visa place in Seattle and she said it wouldn't be an issue in transit. I had planned to take a sleeper train and wake in Minsk.

I'm reading a LOT of things that say differently. Worst case scenario either of the two.
A) The sleeper train to Belarus is not over the border by midnight. Belarus border kicks me off the train (they have done this to people apparently). I am now in Russia a day longer than my visa. I now am stuck in Russia until I can expedite an emergency leave out of Russia, which takes three weeks. I would have to pay for three weeks of lodgings while it happens.
B) Worse scenario. The sleeper train is over the border prior to midnight. I am now in Belarus illegally. If you are in Belarus without a valid visa, you CANNOT legally go to any hotel. Basically, I'm homeless in city where I can't leave for three weeks - same as Russia. A place with a mild to high crime rate where the US is picking a fight with (we have sanctions on them and they kicked out 30 ambassadors so we have only 5 left).

So yah, Russia I'm not that worried about. They get tons of tourists and I've heard many nice things. Belarus is supposed to be a nice place, but the price of failure might be too high. I contacted my inviting tourist company and I'll see if I can get an extension of my visa so that there is a day overlap. If not, I might bite the bullet and go to Riga in Latvia. Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania all have open borders with the EU and no visa requirements for US tourists.So not even going close to the Belarus border. Instead taking a sleep train to Warsaw from Riga instead of Minsk. This would mean me being out about $600, but if I get screwed we are talking many thousands to get out of there. I'll do some research but I might be taking Minsk off my itinerary.

Also good news is hotels are cheap in Riga and its a friendly place on the Baltic sea.
Huh, Hostelworld shows I can get a private hotel room in the old city for between 30 to 50 euro a night (weekdays are cheaper). That's dirt cheap. Our government site says its a democracy and fairly safe.

It also says its not uncommon for government officials to search your things in your Belarus hotel suite.
This choice is now starting to sway closer to Riga.

The Day of the Dim Sung

Yesterday was pretty much a wash. I wasn't interested in doing much as I needed to fix my shoes (or buy a new pair) and was just in the mood to read and chill out. So after sleeping in til about noon, I got up and headed out with my bro. We went to a nearby shopping center where I picked up some new Timberlines. I'll be sad to see the old pair go as they were comfy. Plus I got them in Amsterdam when the shoes I had exploded. Cest la vie. We also stopped by an Asian buffet for lunch, then headed back so that the kids had a way in the house.

I spent the day reading and later on at night me and Craig headed out to check out the view from the Gothia towers. Its a bar a lot like the Portland City Grill, so expensive drinks but with a cool view at the top of the tower. Cool, but just not someplace to spend a lot of time. So we headed down to Adra Lanngattan, a kind of semi sketchy place but with a number of cool hipster bars. One of them had twelve beers on tap, so we had a couple beers and then cruised down the street. We hit up Wandas and Maxim. The first being a semi (as much as that exists in Sweden) high class strip club. We had a beer and watched a gal dance, there were three of them and they were pretty sexy - but all three were very "enhanced". Definitely turned down any lap dances, the price to get in was about ten bucks and the lap dances were about 75 per. Nah. Then we hit Maxims where the price to get in was twice as much. What the hell, I was on vacation. Not even close to being worth it going in. We where told that they had seven gals (unlike the three from the last place), but it was a really sketchy place and the gals were natural but a bit scary. We left there in a hurry.

This led us back towards the car to go home, though with a brief stop to get a kebab burrito thingy at an all night cheesy joint by the tram/bus stops. All in all a fun and entertaining night.

This morning was another relatively late morning. I needed to see if I could find a mini-SD to SD adapter so that my bro could have some files off my phone, I also needed to find some band-aids and more blister packs as my new shoes were tearing up my hamstring. So we headed out for lunch and to hit Gothenburg a bit.

We started out looking for an Indian restaurant Craig enjoyed but instead found a brand new Brazilian restaurant. I had a fish stew with rice that really was outstanding and finished with a latte and some kind of chocolate thingy with a baked cookie like center.

Afterwards we hiked up a local fortification that was built in the late 1600s to protect the city. It was a local landmark and gave a great view of the city.

It was a kind of cool little park in the middle of the city and with a great view. We wandered around for a half hour or so and then hopped in the car to check out various parts of the city. We had to head home to pick up Filip and take him to his soccer game, so we didn't have a lot of time. We did stop by a cool place that was a local flea market building, now closed. The cool thing was that it was covered in street art.

So we got back, picked up Filip and dropped him off at his soccer game. We tried to find a dirt cheap flash drive 4GB but couldn't. We did manage to get the blister pads and the band-aids. Craig had a flash drive that he had gotten from mom, so this worked out as I could download my photos onto it. That way I could send them back home with the rest of the touristy stuff I was carrying around.

Tonight was the night I promised the kids I would take everyone out, so we hit a nice Dim Sung place and ordered a ton of little munchies. The food was good, but I took quite a while to prepare. It was worth it. The restaurant was in an industrial and sketchy part of town, but not really that bad. I also got to talk to Marriane, Lovisa's mom. She is a cool gal and she owns the place I stayed while in Stockholm. We talked and some of it was that she was glad I was making an attempt to be in my nephews' lives. She didn't want them to know Frank as the only other Schiavone brother, and I don't blame her in the least on that one. Having a sane uncle is a good thing. When they get old enough to want to travel, they will have a place to stay and an uncle to look out for them in the pacific northwest. She did warn me about St. Petersburg though. She said that I stick out as an American and she was worried that someone might take a knife to me. From what I've read Russia and Belarus have chilled a ton in the last decade. They are making a lot of headway in making it easier to get tourist visas and they are actively trying to get rid of their bad reputation. Which makes sense. Tourists mean money to the local economy. Mugging, getting ripped off by the police or natives means more bad press and less tourism - which is simply not a good thing in any way. So crossing my fingers and diving in.

It sad though that I'm halfway through my sabbatical already. But good news is that there will be a full moon for my ship cruise to Helsinki. Sweet.

What the fuck is on my pizza dude...

Morning breakfast consisted of the more of the same. Fresh sourdough bread with butter, cheese, coffee, and juice. Breakfasts in Sweden tend to be simple like that. Afterwards, I wandered down to the bus stop to ride into Gothenburg (I'll use the English names for things as its a pain in the ass to constantly pop up the character map). The bus trip into town was quite a bit. Maybe a little less than a Max ride into Portland.

The first thing I did was make my way over to the place where they have tourist boat cruises. Unfortunately I had just missed the one at 1130, so I was stuck having to come by at 1230. This gave me time to wander around some of the streets. One cool thing they have in Sweden are these large covered markets (usually called fish markets but they have all sorts of things. Its very common for folks to have lunch or such there while picking up some cool tasty treats for the homestead. So there are some cool coffee shops and different food areas inside.

I got back for the canal trip after a quick walkabout through the market. They use special canal boats, but the water was so high that we had to take an alternate route or the boat wouldn't go under the bridges. It was still pretty cool. They have a series of parks lining the canals with artwork and native trees spread throughout the parks.

The bridge in the canals were made so that they could be turned sideways to allow boats through, but this practice died out very quickly. The gearing was still in place though they now had it attached to an electric motor instead of making a half dozen Swedes turn the thing. The canals ended up in the industrial area after a trip under "the hairdresser". A bridge so low that we had to get out of our seats and sit/lie on the floor in order for our heads to clear. This took us out the major canals with ship repair industry, cruise and cargo ships, ferries, and notable other areas. One building was were the immigrants going to America would travel to that contained a gambling casino. This would make a number of the immigrants too broke to leave Sweden in the first place.

The tour was cool but pretty short to I heading down into town to check out some of the areas. The first I ventured into was the Haga district. It was originally a working district with wooden housing and such, but its now an area very similar to the Hawthorn district in Portland. A lot of hippy types, small tea shops, hand crafted items, cool little cafes, etc. I got some cool wooden items and a bar of nice smelling soap (I ran out of my Dr. Bronner's). I was tempted to eat at a small French cafe, but it didn't look like many folks spoke English and I couldn't figure out the menu. 

This place was really cool, but everything in it was for women. Cest la vie.

I walked past Haga into the apparently "seedy" part of Gothenburg. I found the three strip clubs/sex shops/sex cinemas alongside some tasty looking Thai and Indian holes in the wall. I ignored it but made a mental note to check it out on the way back. It didn't seem like there was much else in the streets around the area, just residential and the main street by the canal. I found a cool looking church on a hill, but when I got to the top of the hill - the city view sucked and not much was there. So I headed back on down.

The trip back down included a stop over to get some lunch. I was still unsure as to what I was hunkering for when I went by some place offering pizza pasta kebab. So i figured, what the hell. They offered a kebab meat pizza so I had to check it out. It consisted of kebab meat and fried onion with a tzaziki sauce. It was actually kinda tasty, but I doubt I would order one again. I'm pretty sure it would never catch on in the states either.

After a nice meal I headed to Wandas, the least sleazy of the three strip clubs in Gothenburg. It was still outrageously expensive. Roughly ten bucks to get in, beers for twelve bucks a pop, and a lap dance would set you back $75. I got one, but it was nothing special considering Portland's strip clubs. And this concludes my (apparently) strip club report from around the globe.

On the way back I kept getting a soaker and I was wondering why as my shoes weren't really that deep in the water. I looked at the bottom of my Timberlines and seen that there were a couple large cracks through the soles. Great. Though I did manage to call Craig, find the name of a store that could help, and found a clerk that knew English enough to get Sweden's equivalent to Shoe Goo. I'll see if I can find another Timberline shop and replace the shoe as I had gotten used to it and they were pretty comfy. I always carry two pairs of shoes just for this reason now. That and one is more for hiking between the hostels and sometimes the trek with a full backpack can be fairly long. Tomorrow, shoes and maybe the science museum or some such.