Long Trip part 5: Göteborg, Sweden

The ferry ride from Turku to Stockholm was pretty uneventful. This time there was no one my age at all. After watching the Finland hockey game I took a look at the Viking Buffet and wondered how hard it would be to dine and dash, so I figured, lets try.

Step 1, walk in unnoticed grab a plate load it with beef and norwegian salmon, check.
Step 2, walk away when done, check...

...except I got a little greedy and went back for some more. As I was eatting the next plateful the waiter asked for my ticket this time, I told him I thought we paided when we were done eatting and then paid for the meal, which was no biggie as I was planning to pay for it anyways, and just wanted to run an experiment. The food was pretty good, lots of salmon, shrimp, roast beef, fruits, deserts, swedish meatballs...ect but my appetite has shrunk considerably (i'll have to build it back up when I get back to Canada).

The rest of the night was uneventfully and we docked in to Stockholm at 6:30, after 9-10 hours at sea. I proceeded to take the train to Göteborg; this trip almost 5 hours. When I got there I didn't really have much desire to do/see anything, my only reason for coming here was there is a cheap flight to Germany from here, and thus bringing me 1 step closer to home (and Egypt). The weather was very rainy as well, which didn't help my mood. After a walking around the town I decided to call it a day, the 15 hours of travel made me pretty sleepy.

My hostel was another crappy pick, chosen for the cheap price more then anything. It was like the Ryanair of hostels. First, it was extremely far from the town it was advertised for, needing an hour bus ride and 10 mins of walking to get there. Second, it is located in the middle of nowhere, which is good and bad, there is a nice little hiking region around there which was nice and I went for a run. Third, it was total no thrills, and they required you to clean your room (floors and everything). On the plus side I did get my own room, which was unexpected as I booked the dorm bed (cheaper). The hostel wasn't too busy either, 1 interesting greek fellow and that was about it.

The next day I went out to check some of the sites, the usual really. Some big church in the center of town (Oscar Fredriks Kyrka), the "fish church" fish market, an old war fortress (Skansen Kronan), the old part of town (Haga) and a museum (world culture meseum, it was free). I remembered Felix telling me how these chocolate balls (chokladboll) where really good, so since I didn't go to the jaza buffet he suggest, I figured I should hunt this one down. It was pretty good but no much chocolate, more sugar then anything. After some more wandering, it started raining so I headed to the mall for some cover. The mall was more or less like any mall in Canada, just with more beautiful swedish girls).

On the last day, I first set out to look for my hat, i think i left it at a store the first day i was here. Unfortunately, like most things, it was closed on Sunday, darn. The whole sunday closing thing is annoying, luckily today is my designated travel day so there isn't a whole lot planned. There is only 1 airport bus for each flight so I had to get there super early and wait there for 2 hours, fun. After flying to Frankfurt hahn (2 hours out of Frankfurt). I got there at round 7pm and found a German girl there that was sleeping there for the night as well, which was nice, as it´s pretty boring waiting there all night. It was nice having someone to talk to for a while. The airport itself was decently big, unlike the ones in sweden which were shacks on the side of the road, but the seats there were horrible bucket seats so you had to sleep on the floor. I got up early and took the 6:15 bus to frankfurt arriving at 8am.

The tail part of my trip has been a little boring, mainly cuz I didn't go to these placed with too much I wanted to see/do and partly because I had so much fun in Riga. I think I'm burned out from travelling as well (especially alone), but I'm really looking forward to Egypt and Canada.

All in all, the scandanavian countries were beautiful and calm, but outside of going to clubs (see expensive) there wasn't a whole lot to do.