Stockholm!

The Swedish capital city. Swedish people are very nice once you get to know them. The last few days I have been staying with a Swedish guy named Adrian who I met at my hostel in Lulea. His roommate is gone so I have had a whole giant room to myself. Anyways, when I got to Stockholm, Adrian bought some sill (a type of fish) at the supermarket and showed me how to make a traditional Swedish dish with sill, salmon, dill, and potatoes.It was pretty good, although I liked the salmon more than the sill. They also have something called "hardbread" here which is *gasp* bread that is hard like a cracker!

The days I have been here I have walked around the city, sometimes by myself and other times with Adrian. On Wednesday I came across a museum with a giant 17th century ship inside that had been pulled up from the seafloor. It was well preserved because it was in bracken water (not salt but not fresh) where the worm that decomposes wood does not live. It was really cool, and I met some Americans in the museum and museum'ed with them. Here are some photos of the ship:

I also explored Gamla Stan, the oldest part of Stockholm with narrow winding streets:

All of the statues of horsemen were purposely pointed towards Moscow, which I thought was funny.

In the evenings I hung out with Adrian and his friends, one of whom had been to Afghanistan, and we had some good discussions. One thing we talked about was how Swedes do not like to live in excess and luxury, even if they are rich, which I think is pretty cool. Today Adrian is going to England to get his Tattoo finished by the Japanese artist who started it and enter a tattoo competition for the guy. I am headed to Berlin on a night train, and am pretty excited. I will be staying in a youth hostel there for backpackers.

For those of you at UW, I took this photo of a cafe in the central train station because it reminded me of home :)