Ahhh...the swedish life

7.24 Kim, Clare and I walked down to the town and then to the harbor where we took their boat out for the day. They have a really cool little boat that you can even set up to sleep in if you want. It has a tiny kitchen, bathroom and all of that. We drove it out through the baltic sea to a little island that was fortified with old canons and such. The canons were there for protection from the Russians back in the day. We walked a bit around the island and then just kind of relaxed on the boat, listening to music and having blueberry soup.

The last time I was with kim and clare, they buzzed my hair on a small island-the perhentian islands-in Malaysia. So I had made sure I grew out my hair nice and long for the next time I met up with this barbershop duo. This time instead of just going full buzz, they gave me a mohican buzz cut hair. I tried to model it off of Puck from glee as heather had said she thought that would be a cool cut, but they had never seen the show so it ended up being quite a bit thicker than that. But Kim and Clare were quite proud of it and they said it suited me perfectly.

That evening, Kim's dad Lenart made us some very, very tasty swedish meatballs. I really stuffed myself as they were so good!

That night I took the midnight bus back to stockholm. And clare surprised me with some to go sandwiches for my wait in the terminal as they would be meeting up with me around noon in stockholm again.

7.25 I arrived around 5 in the morning and just hung out and caught some sleep until I met up with Kim, Clare, Lenart, Erik (kim's bro), Eddy (kim's friend),and Hannah (erik's girlfriend). We would later meet up with Kim's aunt and uncle gunilla and christo at the island. From stockholm we took a train, then a bus, then a ferry out to Utö island in the stockholm archipelago. It was a drizzly and foggy day, a bit like how I would imagine sweden sometimes. The island is a really tiny wooded island with a few shops and other things on it. It used to be important for mining back in the 1700's. We all are staying in a cool little, swedish style cabin not far from the baltic sea and perhaps better, there are huge bushes of raspberries, gooseberries and blueberries right outside my door. Lenart, who likes his beverages, had ordered a big shipment of alcohol to be delivered to the island. Lenart is quite funny and it's even more funny to see him leading all of us younger people around. That evening we all went out for some tasty pizza along the harbor, but it wasn't long afterwards before we moved out to the picnic tables and got the party started with some sangrias.
We then headed up to the top of the hill where they had a cover band playing outside. They did mostly english songs with some swedish songs too. I was really itching to dance, but no one was on the dance floor and I didn't want to make a fool out of myself, you know, being the crazy american, since everyone else on the island was definitely swedish. This is a popular summer vacation spot for swedes and has to be booked far in advance. But kim wanted me to get out there and dance so he bought me a couple beers and I was starting to dance a little bit at our table. I was telling him if they played abba, I'd be right out there. But, nearly as good they started playing I will survive, and soon I was up on the dance floor. And before long, the whole place was crowded with dancers. I guess they just needed an icebreaker. So we danced late into the night. It was nice bc there was like a little mist falling, keeping us cool and so it wasn't like the normal sweaty dancing at clubs. After the thing was over we went to talk to the band and they thanked us for our wild and crazy dancing. The lead singer told me that "you americans do dance crazy. I like your style" After that Eddy was pretty drunk so we went down with him to the harbor so he could run around I guess. Eddy cracks me up. He's gay and super fashionable. He always has his phone in his hands at all times, constantly texting, facebooking, etc. He has apps on his phone that was like telling him how far to the nearest mcdonald's and all that. He wears a new outfit about every 3 hours. They were giving him a lot of crab bc for there 1 week trip to the island, he brought two huge suitcases and a backpack. Way, way more stuff than I have for 6 months of travelling!

7.26 Lenart led us on some hikes around the island to different view points and to some of the old mines and an old windmill. Kim is really into boats so we also checked out the boats at the harbor. That evening we made a very tasty traditional swedish meal called pittya panya. Delicious again. Of course more sangria and wine were brought out. Then Hannah, who said she is part Russian, told me I need to start my training for the russian vodka, so she began taking shots with me. Needless to say it turned into quite the fun night. We went to some bar for a while, but then mainly ended up just running around the island.

7.27 Today, the weather was beautiful, although still slightly chilly, so we headed out to the "beach" the beach in sweden means flat rocks along the ocean that absorb the sun's rays and are quite warm. We did a bit of swimming in the very cold baltic and then just hung out on the rocks. The baltic sea is interesting bc it's salty, but hardly salty. You can just notice a little bit of salt, so it's almost like swimming in freshwater.

Tonight I am sure there will be some more partying and then I leave tomorrow morning on a ferry back to stockholm. When I get there I will then transfer to a different harbor to catch my overnight ferry to Helsinki Finland. I will be in Helsinki for a day before I catch the overnight ferry from there to St. Petersburg.

I love kim and clare. It has been great hanging out with them again. They are very similar to me in terms of their travel styles so we always have a good laugh talking about our travels through se asia. And of course tons of fun recounting our crazy 8 day jungle trek in malaysia. And they are always giving me new ideas all the time, which I love and gets me all excited about future travel and opportunities. They are the ones that did the trans siberian before that told me all about it. Clare was telling me about how she did this thing where she worked as an english rep for a bar in greece where she had tons of fun and she thought I could do a similar thing like this at a european ski area. Of course one of the really cool things they did was work and play there way through australia and new zealand. That's actually where they met. But for now they are going to be staying put a bit bc kim is starting university. He will be majoring in ship navigation. Clare said she might think about going to school, but will probably just be working. She is busy now taking swedish lessons (she's british) and she's picking it up quite good. She loves her swedish classes bc she says it's like travelling bc there are people from everywhere there...america, sudan, thailand, kenya, etc. So they are moving to gotenburg at the beginning of next month to get ready for kim's school.

Something else cool the swedes do is that they have these bottle recycling machines where they take bottles and get somewhere between 15 to 50 cents back. I think it's pretty cool bc it of course encourages recycling, but the other neat side effect is that the street bums and homeless in the cities walk around picking up bottles on the street and even in the trash cans so they can recycle them and get some money. Keeps the streets clean and also gets all the bottles recycled from the lazy people that just throw them in the trash cans.

Of course sweden is hockey crazy and they all love peter forsberg and of course the avalanche bc of this. Eddy is in fact a hockey ref and has been working on his yearly test while we are here at the cabin