Pierre's 'Promised Land'

after getting the bus into town and drinking the remainder of our juice we checked teh internet and saw that we still had no couch surfing replies, which, in combination with 22 euro per night hostels, means we had no bed for the night. we proceeded into town and were stunned, nay shocked by the amount of beanies there were in the street. maybe it was the fact that the sun was out but my gosh it was amzing, one of the things we were exited about was going to teh flagship H&M which we wern't sure where it was. we went to all 4 in central stockholm so if it started in the capital then we deffinately went to the first one, i got some shorts as a momento. in the afternoon we went into teh old part of town and checked our messages again. we had a reply from a girl named sara who was full but she had told us about some stuff we were doing and we could meet up with her and the person she was hosting, some american guy called derek. we spent the afternoon over a 5 euro beer (if ur under 21 you cant buy alchohol over 3.5% in a shop. and ate some felafel (lunch and dinner). we had arranged to meet derek to see some crazy gypsy band and we were to meet him outtside some metro station on the south side of town. we tucked into our (very expensive) six pack and as soon as we cracked the first one open some security gurads told us that u cant drink on the stockholm metro so we had to throw it away, a whole can!! when we got out we started chatting to some drunken swede and he was telling us about some date he had with a 19 year old (he was about 28) in which the first thing he said to her after she asked him what he wanted to do (her friends were there as well) was 'i want to fuck you in that alleyway'... about half an hour later her friends asked him politely to go home. we told him we were going to slussen and he told us it was one of the best rock venues in the world! when we got there we realised that we could get into teh bar but not the venue because it had an 20 age limit. derek could go and we let him cos we didnt want to ruin his night but we arranged to see him later. meanwhile we went on a little adventure with the drunk swede who apparently knew lots of cheap bars with easy girls where they would let us in. strangely enough half an hour later aftre trying 4 places we let him go in and have fun, then went a cotched in a square and munched on some felafel (3rd of the day). we then got on the tube to meet derek and sara at in the main square. when we met them sara, out of teh goodness of her amazingly loving couchsurfer heart let us stay at her place even though she was hosting derek and picking up another 2 couchsurfers, she had her dads place free as well so she stayed there and derek stayed there as well, while me, pierre and mabel and jonathan (a couple from singapore) stayed in saras flat. derek was leaving the next morning so sara wuld let us stay for 3 nights, result!

the next day we went into town to get our bags and walk around the town centre to watch the beanies some more, we also decided that we wernt gonna see the rest of scandinavia anymore as it was too expensive even just to travel around in it, (the day before i had spent 50 euros (including the shorts) and that was with a free nights accomodation, grand master thrift left me for that day. we then went and got our ferry tickets to estonia which wernt too expensive as the website suggested and then we went back to sara's to chillout. that night i cooked dinner for everyone except the singaporians and my mum called me and still managed to be an over the shoulder cook even though she was about 1000 miles away. sara's friend jimmy came round who is a an english teacher here and has it pretty easy going as he lives with a swedish family so gets free food and accomodation, as well as not having to learn the language cos all his friends speak english (as well as everyone else) and on top of that he gets a fairly decent wage. jimmy and sara took us to a anarchist collective party, that sara had told us about the day before which is one of the reasons we really wanted to meet up with her. the house was made out of shipping containers and found wood but had working elctricity et al. and was in some forrest in the suburbs of stockholm becasue they had been trying to find a squat in teh centre but swedish squatting laws are really strict. there were a good number of people there but they preferred to sit around the massive bombfire and chat rather than rave inside to teh pumping elctro, in true squat rave style they were selling cheaper-than-a-bar-standard beer and vegetarin pasta salad. we met a few of sara's other friends who were really cool. the music was decent but it never really felt packed enough and so in order to get the last metro we left at about 3-ish.

on our last full day in stockholm we went to the park and had a picnic and had a bit of a kick around, which was so good as i havnt had more than one touch of a football in about 3 months. then me an pierre stayed around and had a little snooze. we got back to sara's and had some pesto (another thing i hadnt had in ages) and watched 'control' the biopic of Ian Curtis, the Joy Division lead singer and then jimmy and Mika, one of sara's friends that we met teh night before put on some anarchist video so i went to bed.

the next day we said our goodbyes to sara and went a checked out the town hall, which is a really nice building, and if you go to the top of tower which cost about 2 euros then u can see the whole of stockholm. our ferry was at 6 so we had to be at the terminal by 5 so we aimed to get the bus from town at 4 along the way some school group got on and they slowed the whole journey down we booked our tickets through silija line so we though our ferry was going from there terminal so first after me not being able to get off and going an extra stop i run to catch up with pierre who is finding out that we've gone to the wrong terminal we then SAS it too the car entrance and there like no go around this was blah blah, anotehr 15 minuts and we finally make it to the passenger terminal for TALLINK and get the on the ferry via the buff photography women who take a photo of you all sweaty and bothered just before you board the boat.

'promised land' my taint, it was cool but my 'calling' was better.