June 12th: Stockholm.

Feelings Flash Cards: Tired; Annoyed.

The feelings were inevitable results of the twenty-two hour flight in economy. I’m not going to say who was which—just let you know that the order is always the same, and let you see if there is a pattern to be discerned. Qatar is bigger; I would have to say it is true. And possibly not just by millimetres. I had the middle seat on the thirteen hour flight and while it was never, ever, ever, going to be enjoyable, it was bearable (-ish). I did have movie disappointments. I watched Rango (okay, I really thought the goldfish would figure more), Just Go With It (mmm, predictable and deja-vued/viewed, but with a couple of funny moments) and Unknown (not bad, good twists, but is it a re-make of something like it?), but couldn’t do anymore. Possibly because there was not anything I wanted to see enough to stay awake—not implying here, however, that I actually slept in the truest sense of the notion.

We arrived in Stockholm about two in the afternoon, Sunday, breezed through immigration, waited for our bags forever and then caught the train into town. That was a little exciting—it combined the maritime feel of wooden window frames with the technological advances of a train that travels effortlessly at two hundred and five kilometres an hour. In twenty minutes we were in town, and twenty after that we were greeting Martin at the door of the Old Town Apartment we had booked. It is the cutest and tiniest little apartment you ever did see. Stockholm is made up, as its nickname (Venice of the North) suggests, of a number of islands (did I read somewhere there are fourteen?), joined by an even larger number (fifty-seven?) of bridges. The Old Town Apartments are on Gamla Stan, on a cobbled street lined with cafes and pubs and antique shops; tacky tourist shops and old bakeries; ice cream shops which beckon with waffle smells to die for; funky fashions and beautiful craft; even shops where chain mail armour or Viking headgear (authentic and in-) is to be had. Anxiousness, unfortunately, plagued me on our afternoon and evening soirees into the streets because although I have looked and read and tried to memorise a few choice phrases of Swedish, I am completely useless and succumb to allowing myself to find the easy way in the Swede’s superior grasp of my language over mine of theirs. I feel guilty. It’s part of the weird transition into holiday-in-a-foreign-country mode and will hopefully not last long—or will be perceived differently soon.

Aside: Lots of people wear very bright green, and the sound of the wheeled suitcase is ubiquitous.

We spent the afternoon walking the island of Gamla Stan, followed by beer, dinner in an Italian restaurant and ‘home’. Shattered didn’t begin to describe it, and sleep was easy to find.