We got zero sleep on the bus. Despite the impressive recline of the seats considering it was a bus, we were apparently aboard with many Arabic speaking immigrants/refugees from Africa (Sudan, if I was recognizing the dialect correctly) who evidently believed that 2am was the ideal time to begin making several consecutive 1+ hour phone conversations at a very loud volume. The guy sitting in between the three of us was having a particularly «interesting» conversations of sweet nothings with a girlfriend, though not exactly very quietly.
We arrived to Stockholm around 0630h yesterday, and afer paying a little more than $2 each to use the bathroom (standard practice in Scandinavian public places apparently) we found a locker to store our bags, and then went in search of some food. We got some pastries from a shop in the transit center, and then got on a train, and then a bus north, towards the city of Vallentuna, Sweden. There we met with our tour guide, Jonathan Olsson of Time Travel Tours.
He took us through the nearby neighborhoods until we reached the edge of a large lake, where an ancient Norse «thing» stone ring was located, as well as two very impressive runestones set into the hillside. A «thing» is an actual term, I'm not just referring to a noun I don't know the name of. A thing is a meeting of important Norsemen and women, to discuss legal and judicial matters, as well as upcoming raids, and more. We learned of some interesting laws and the punishments that could be set forth at a thing, for example calling your neighbor a dog or slandering him by saying that he had sex with his horses could net heafty fines of money. The stones were also quite interesting as well. While they did memorialize the dead quite often, they also served more practical purposes of deeds to the land they stood upon, and also for social status effects- putting one up was the Norse method of humble-bragging. You had to have the money to put one up, you usually put one up to honor someone else, but you also «tagged» yourself in your «post» to show that you were the one responsible for honoring someone else- so obviously you must be a good person. Jonathan was extremely knowledgeable and friendly, and let us pepper him with all kinds of questions, which I'm sure comes as a surprise to exactly no one reading this, I had tons of. We learned about their religion, their agriculture, social structure, diets, laws, warriors, superstitions, social norms, international relations, boat building, and more. Also, we learned through experience just how freaking freezing the wind coming off that lake was.
Jonathan helped us figure out how to get transportation back to Stockholm, which ended up involving us walking all the way into the city of Vallentuna to buy a train ticket, as tickets were not for sale neither on the train nor in the local train station. When we arrived in Stockholm we went off exploring the city, spending quite a bit of time aorund the Kungstradgarden park and the whole area bounded by the roads: Sveavagen, Kungsgatan, Birger Jarlsgatan, and Hamngatan; as well as some of Ostermalm as well. In particular we went in search of food, hoping to find some at the Ostermalms Saluhall based on the recommendation of some family, but it turns out that it's under rennovation and wasn't open. After much searching, we finally found a place that looked like it was the right mix of the kind of food we were looking for, the ambience we wanted, and an affordable price: «John Scott's». Unfortunately, we were somewhat dissapointed there. The customer service was distinctly lacking, and it took an absurdly long time to get our food. When the food arrived it was delicious, but our energy levels were definitely failing at this point. Zero sleep, lots and lots and lots of walking, and getting extremely hungry were taking a toll on our moods, so we decided that we had better find our way to the hostel and call it an early night.
We returned to the central transit center to pick up our bags and exchange some money, while trying to avoid being trampled by the massive mobs of people packing the station in post-holiday travel, returning to their homes. It was quite the contrast to the relative silence and ghost-town feel we had experienced since arriving in Scandinavia. We walked the short distance to our hostel, «Generator» which it turns out is astoundingly nice. Extremely chiq design and shared spaces, very friendly customer service, and really nice rooms. We got to our room and after cleaning off our feet which had been stuck in boots for more than 24 hours, we all passed right out. We definitely needed the sleep, and we're all feeling much better now. One nice thing about us as a group of friends, born out of both our friendship and our military backgrounds is that we still work together well even when we're in bad moods or things aren't going perfectly, which really helped us yesterday in our sleep deprived and hangry state.
We gained some roommates during the night, but thankfully they all seemed quite respectful of our sleep, and so when we woke up at 0630h we tried not to bother them as we came downstairs for breakfast. We all ordered open faced egg sandwhiches which were absolutely delicious. Goat cheese was spread on a dark rye bread toast, with avacado, sprouts, onions, watercress, cucumber, some tasty but unrecognizable vegetables, and remarkably a cold over easy egg- as in it wasn't room temperature, it was refrigerated to be cold! Anyway, it was absolutely scrumptious.
We'll gather up our things soon and figure out where we'll store them- probably in the locker room here, and then head out exploring again! We're excited to meet a friend of some family of mine today for lunch, and hopefully to start seeing some museums as things should start being open as of today. This evening, we'll depart for Tallinn, Estonia by taking an overnight cruise across the Baltic Sea- but we've got a private cabin for that so we should be able to actually get some sleep on that trip!