Afro Headquarters

On april 18, Thomas, Niels, Arianne, Oliver and I all piled into Oli’s car and headed out on another whirlwind adventure! With a map of the skåne region to guide us, we headed east towards a lake where we hoped to enjoy the springtime sun on a sandy beach with our picnic lunch. After driving around a labyrinth of side roads, and scattered communities, and stopping several times for directions (even one time the guy couldn’t speak english but could speak german, from what he told us, the only word i understood was “autobahn”) we discovered the lake was privately owned and that there were no beaches open to the public. Undeterred, and knowing there was a point of interest near the north end of the lake, we drove north to the point of interest. We discovered that somewhere between the road and the lake were the remains of a castle. We thought that maybe there would be a way to get to the lake from here, and we tried one last time to get to the lake to no avail. during our adventure we passed to areas that could be considered an area where castle might have stood but no real remains from a castle. We decided to picnic at one the areas we considered to be the site of the remains. The way the earth was built up in a way that suggested the castle stood here, and we found a few stones that were too well shaped to be natural. We had our picnic here atop the ruins, and relaxed in the sun for a bit before walking back to the car. We looked at the map and noticed another lake nearby. It wasn’t too late in the afternoon so we decided to check it out. Again after driving through the labyrinth of side roads we arrived at our destination. Only to once again find out that the lake was unreachable. We stood on the road and stared at the lake that was so close but so far. On the drive back home, we were still about 20 minutes outside of Malmö but there in the distance like a beacon guiding us home was the turning torso.

Two days later, Thomas, Niels and I found ourselves in the capital city of Denmark. We went for our own walking tour of the city, and even checked out the ripley’s believe or not museum. We tried to get into the architectural museum but it was closed. We then walked from the downtown area to a less crowded island within the city. We walked along the water past many boat moorings, and some very interesting street signs that depict a car driving off the road and into the water below. We came upon a wartime museum that looked interesting, but as we approached the door we realized that the museum was closed. It was early in the evening and we decided to slowly make our way back to the central station. I had to empty bottles of squash with that I couldn’t return at the swedish recycling machines, because the bottles were purchased in Denmark. So we found a store where I could return them and bought two more bottles to take back to Sweden. At the central station, Thomas and Niels couldn’t find a ticket machine, as we had 7 minutes before the next train left for Malmö, the two of them got in the queue at the transit office, as time ticked away they bought their tickets and the three of us ran to the platform to catch the train, only to find out that we have to wait 5 more minutes as the train had been delayed. We finally made it back to Malmö, and as we walk out of the station a beautiful swedish girl passes by and Thomas comments “I love this country.”

On Friday May 8th at 4:30 in the morning, I’m watching the canucks game and just as chicago scores to send it into overtime, Niels tells me that we have to leave now to catch the train to Stockholm. Niels, Natalia, Oliver, Verena, Arianne, Pets, Pavol, and I arrived in the capital city at about 9:30, it was a short 4 hour train ride from Malmö to Stockholm. We carried our bags to the hostel and checked in, we didn’t have private rooms so we stored our bags in a locked room in the hostel. We headed out walking around the old part of city known as Gamla Stan. We walked towards the tourist office, but got sidetracked by some free food. Spanish tourism workers were handing out free food to promote tourism in Spain. At the office we spent about half an hour debating on what to do for the next three days, we decided on “Stockholm Cards” for saturday and we would walk or ride bikes the other two days. We got back to the hostel early in the evening, and most of us were still pretty tired from only a few hours of sleep the night before and on the train. We set up our beds and all took a quick nap. We woke up and went out for supper and then to a bar, where we watched Team Canada hand Tre Kronor and 3 - 1 loss in the IIHF World Championships. Saturday we were up and off to explore the city with our “Stockholm Cards” (free transit and entrance to Stockholm museums). We watched the changing of the guard at the royal palace, before entering the royal museum. The palace was very extravagant, with huge rooms, portraits, and amazing chandeliers. After the palace we headed down to one of the harbours to catch a boat over to an island within the city. On the island we entered the Vasa Museum, where the Vasa, that sank almost 400 years ago on its maiden voyage, is preserved and on display. The ship is huge and the way that it was salvaged from the bottom of the Stockholm harbour is really incredible. After the Vasa we headed towards Skansen, an open air museum/zoo. It was later in the afternoon and all the old buildings were closed for the day, but we could still walk around the buildings and see the different wildlife living there. We walked back to the harbour where the boat dropped us off only to discover that it wasn’t running anymore at this time in the evening, a few locals directed us towards the bus stop back on the main road where we could catch a bus back to the central station. By this time we were all getting hungry and we set out to find us some eats. We found this really cool italian joint, you would think it would be really upscale and expensive, but the prices were really reasonable, and they had gummy bears for you after you paid, very sweet set up there. Then it was back to the hostel to relax after walking all day and eventually to bed. Sunday we carried our bags back to the central station and managed to fit all our stuff we didn’t need into one locker, that took some superb skills. We then walked through Östermalm for the rest of day. We checked out two market places, I found one stand that was selling strickly vinyl but had to resist the urge to look through all the vinyl to see if they had anything good, after looking through two stacks of nothing I moved on. While taking a short cut through a mall on our way back to the central station, I picked up a nice pair of aviators for only 150 SEK (approx 22 CAD). We had our traditional sunday dinner at a cool little restaurant in Gamla Stan, and then headed back to the central station to wait for our train at 11 in the evening. It was a 7 hour trip back home to Malmö but we finally climbed the stairs up to our flats at uni island at 6:30 monday morning and went straight to bed.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 at 10:04 am and is filed under Europe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.