Halloween, Snow, and a PSA

Happy Halloween, my American friends.  I hear it's snowing in New Jersey and people are without power and being buried alive by avalanches!  Guess what the temperature was here!  SEVENTY DEGREES.

No, I'm not at all bitter that you guys had a hot summer while I was dying wearing two hoodies.  Or that we had to turn the central heating on in July.  Of course I feel terrible for you.  What gave you the idea that I didn't?

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA ISN'T THE COLD JUST FABULOUS?

In other news, this week has consisted of very little, other than recovering from Sweden and laryngitis.  Yesterday I went to a bar with Other American and some of her friends, but I died before we hit the club and had to come home at midnight like the star of the Lisbon Theater Company's version of Cinderella.  Except in this version of the story, Cinderella sounds like a man-eater who accepts money from Prince Charming for quickies in the bell-tower.

Host Mom's parents and grandmother came over for a visit today.  They brought a crap ton of food, and Host Mom baked a cake with orange Fanta and mandarins, and it was possibly the best thing ever.

As a quick public service announcement, I would just like to remind anyone and everyone who texts me on my American phone that I am six hours ahead of you.  This means that when you text me at midnight your time, I get the text at six AM.  And since my American phone is my alarm clock, it sits right by my head, wakes me up, and then I go back to sleep fantasizing about procuring a giant pit of quicksand and throwing you in it kicking and screaming.  By the time I wake up the next morning, I've usually decided our friendship should not be fed to the death sand, but it's always close.  My sister did this to me last night, but it's happened two dozen times since I've been here.  I love you all, but stop texting me at ungodly hours.

Here's my new favorite song.  I like this version much better than the original, because it's so much happier and more up-beat, I keep doing stupid dances in my chair.  Then I realize I'm dancing to a song about school shootings, decide this is probably an indication that I'm hell-bound, and decide to be sober and serious.  But then I start bouncing again.

SWEDEN! Part the Last!

If you have made it this far, I am superbly impressed!  Go you guys!

Day 4.  Sunday, October 23.  Really Random Shit.

For our last full day in Sweden, we decided to do more running around and trying to kill ourselves.  So, we met up with Magnus again, and did exactly that.  Our shenanigans started with going to a cafe, where we ate cake for breakfast:

and where Marina suffered an attack from the robber.

I'm not sure what this is, but I think it's funny:

Then we decided to go Swedish shopping, and since there were no Ikeas in sight, we went to H and M, which also comes from Sweden originally.  

AND I BOUGHT A SWEDISH HAT.  I mean, if you want to get technical, it was probably made by underpaid children in Bangladesh, but I bought it in Sweden, and that's what counts.

After shopping, we discovered a Halloween store, and more or less went to town in there because Marina and I in particular were suffering from the complete lack of Halloween enthusiasm that is Germany.  So here are some superbly attractive pictures of Marina and Magnus:

and me in a superbly sexy flamingo hat:

At some point, Magnus took us to the library so that we could print out our boarding passes for the next day.  While Marina was hunting the printer down, I took the liberty of checking my email, and what did I find, but an email from Mega Stare Guy himself.  It was titled "Fake Portuguese..." and consisted of three lines.  "It was nice talking to you.  You seem cute and funny.  You need to learn more languages."  Remember what I said about Swedish honesty?  I debated internally whether or not to take offense to this, and then I decided making fun of people is the answer to everything, so I responded, "Cut me some slack, for an American, I'm doing pretty well.  Most of us barely speak English."  Whatever.  I speak way better German than him anyway.  He speaks conversationally, I speak real.  Shut it, Swede.  Your flirting is a *throws arms up over head* CATASTROPHE!

Then it was unfortunately time to put Magnus on the bus back to his real life, and to cheer ourselves up afterwards, we decided to go see The Three Musketeers, made possible by the fact that Sweden subtitles it's American films, not dubs them like Germany.  To make a long story short, The Three Musketeers was almost almost as bad as Twilight and just as hilarious.

Afterwards, Marina and I spent a bad 40 minutes in the supermarket, hunting down cream so we could cook for Couchsurf Boy.  Which we did, and he was a good sport and ate it, even though we bought coffee cream instead of heavy cream.  Oops. Dinner turned into card games, first Shithead, which I learned from 2 Dutch girls in Bolivia, then a round of Mao (I told them they would hate me, and they did), and then a Swedish card game called Hej Knecht.  Card games turned into building card houses, which devolved into flicking cards at each other after I kept playing the Big Bad Wolf and blowing everyone else's card palaces down.  Then flicking cards somehow morphed into flicking cards while tennis grunting, for extra authenticity.  Then we all snuggled up on his bed for a movie, followed by stargazing, followed by telling mind-blowingly hilarious ghost stories about moose in the dark.  At some point, two terrible jokes emerged: one about Chinese people crawling into your bloodstream, and one about killing your fellow Couchsurfers and putting them in the fridge.  I don't know how it happened, but we hung out for eight hours, staying up until 4 AM laughing our heads off.  It was an absolutely perfect last night in Sweden.

Day 5.  Monday, October 24.  Very Sad to Leave

We got up early Monday morning, cooked the only thing we had left for breakfast (pizza), and then hit up the airports.  I crashed at Marina's flat, and then headed back to Celle the next morning.  

Some final notes on Sweden.

Really, truly, it was brilliant, and I've decided after my master's degree, I'm moving there.  Feel free to not believe me,  but the first time I came back from Germany as a 16 year old, I told my friends and family I was moving to Germany one day, and everyone told me there was no way I would.  And look where I am now!  So Sweden, we are hanging out again on a more permanent basis, in approximately three years.  You heard it here first!

In other news, Marina and I have both been to Denmark, and now Sweden, so we've decided we need to hit up Scandinavia one country at a time until we find the one with the most attractive boys.  So Norway, watch out, we are coming in the spring of 2012! 

Kudos to all of your who actually read through the whole Sweden entries.  If you for some reason want more Sweden, check out Marina's blog, she's more concise than I am: http://allthingsmarina.blogspot.com/

Hej då!  That's Swedish for adios!

SWEDEN! Day 3!

More Swedish madness!  If you haven't already, go back and read the first post so that you get the references.

Day 3. Saturday, October 22.  Seeing Stockholm and Vikings.

For our first full day in Sweden, Marina and I got up far, far too early, to meet up with Magnus.  We grabbed breakfast in a cafe, and then hit the streets.  Like I said in my last post, Magnus is the greatest tour guide ever, and in following him around, we saw pretty much all of Stockholm, including...

the palace (not particularly imposing),

the Swedish Reichstag (I forget what that's called in English), 

the skyline,

and basically everything worth seeing.  We also played around in some parks: 

and hung out in random tunnels.

Magnus also knows half of Stockholm, so we kept running into his friends on the street, which was really cool.  We also entertained ourselves by taking picture of the robber in terrible places.

The robber is a hand puppet belonging to the charge, and his parents have started taking it with them when they travel and posing it.  Much like Pirate Duck and Dragon, except less cool.  In Stockholm, he got posed in some pretty awful spots.  Cases in point:

Here's the robber in a square where you can buy drugs.

 Here's the robber at the site of Sweden's one and only terrorist attack.  It is okay to make fun of this attack, because no one was actually killed, with the exception of the suicide bomber.  Apparently, had he walked 20 meters further, he would have killed a ton of people.  I said this was proof that, in his heart of hearts, he didn't want to kill people.  Magnus said he was probably cold.

The robber at the site of an assassination.

This went on for a while.

Then, while wandering around the old city, something amazing happened.  We saw this guy standing in the middle of a square:

"LOOK MARINA A SWEDISH VIKING!" I yelled, without commas.  She whipped out the camera for this photograph.  As she turned around to walk back to us, I saw the Viking launch his attack, and by attack, I mean he booked it for Marina and roared. "MARINAWATCHOUTTHERESAVIKINGTRYINGTOKILLYOU." I screamed, but it was too late.  Next thing we knew, a giant Viking, complete with terrifying red contacts, was all up in our faces, snuffling, waving his skull walking stick around, and making angry sounds.  "Donate to me," he snarled, "donate to me now or I will kiss your friend."  "No way," said I, refusing to be intimidated by his fake beard, "kiss my friend and then I'll donate to you."  And that's how I paid a Russian guy dressed like a Viking 11 kroner to kiss Marina.  Whatever.  She liked it.

So then the Russian guy and I got to talking, and I asked him what he was collecting donations for.  His response:  "I'm writing a book about getting drunk while dressed as a Viking, but I need money to drink first."  I told him I appreciated his honesty, but his bright red contacts were freaking me out a bit.  "Wait," he said, "here's what I look like without the beard," and proceeded to show me pictures of himself on his phone.  "Not bad, right?" he said.  "Nope, not at all," I agreed, "but can I take a picture with you dressed like this?"  "Of course," he said.  Then, handing me his skull staff, he said, "Here.  Hold my father."  

Aaaaaand...scene.

Having survived our encounter with the Viking, we met up with a friend of Magnus, a Bosnian guy who speaks eighty million languages.  With him we generally ran around some more, including through the smallest alley in Stockholm, which is only 90 centimeters wide and it's smallest point.  Here's the entrance:

Then Magnus took us to a hot chocolate bar, which consisted of about 12 tables crammed into the smallest room possible, and it was awesome.  I had a white hot chocolate, and it was the second most delicious hot chocolate I've ever had, the first being the one in Paris.  But this one had about an inch of melted white chocolate to scrape from the bottom of the cup.  DELICIOUS.  Now I want another one.

We ran around the old city some more, and finally found a Swedish moose.  Moose are everywhere in Sweden, but unfortunately distinctly lacking in Stockholm, unless they're stuffed:

  

At this point in the evening, we split up.  Magnus and his Bosnian friend stayed in the city, while Marina and I quickly ran back to Couchsurf Boy's place to pick up food. Magnus had bought all our drinks the night before, so to pay him back, Marina and I decided we were going to cook for him.  We met back up with Magnus in the city center, took a bus to his dad's apartment, and hung out there for a few hours before deciding to meet his friends at a bar.  They were quite nice, even though they encouraged Magnus to tell terrible, terrible jokes.  But he's so happy when he does it, you can hate the joke, but you just can't hate him.

Afterwards, Marina and I went back to meet up with Couchsurf Boy at yet another bar, before deciding we were dead and required sleep.  And that brings us to the end of Day 3!

Up next tomorrow: Cake, Halloween, really bad movies, and hanging out with CB!

SWEDEN! Days 1 and 2

Let me begin this blog post by throwing a few disclaimers out there:

1)  Sweden was, hands down, one of the best weekends of my life.  So when I go off on tangents to consult the thesaurus for other words for "amazing," feel free to skip those parts.

2)  Lots of highly entertaining, but also highly embarrassing things went down in Sweden.  In the interest of full disclosure, I'm just going to tell you everything, and I would appreciate it if you would at least make an effort not to laugh at me too hard.

3)  There are a TON of Sweden stories, which I am going to spread out over a few blog posts.  Even such, this will still be something of a novel.  With a hella lot of pictures. So it's more like a really, really really overachieving picture book, only with more profanity involved.

Ready?  Here we go.

Sweden was fucking amazing.  No, really, it was absolutely spectacular, absolute perfection, and I couldn't have asked for anything more.  There was pizza.  There were boys.  There were Halloween masks, a robber, and racist jokes.  Marina and I spent a good part of the weekend periodically looking at each other and then saying something alone the lines of "I can't believe we're having this much fun."  I'm still slightly euphoric from the Ben and Jerry's and lack of sleep, but I know awesome when I have experienced it, and Sweden was AWESOME.  There's a lot to cover, so I'm just going to break it down day by day for you.

Day 1.  Thursday, October 20th.  Pre-Sweden.

I took an evening train out to Lübeck, to meet up with Marina and her coworker Chris, the other half of the Charina experience from Köln.  We all went out for pizza, and then were faced with a problem.  Our plane left for Sweden (well, technically Belgium, but whatever) at 6.50 in the morning, but the buses from Marina's flat to the train station stopped running at midnight.  So, we (logically) decided the best option was to squat at Marina's job in the city center (she has keys) until 2.30 in the morning, whereby we would then walk to the train station, catch a 2.50 bus to the airport, arrive at 4.30 AM, and then hang out for two hours.  We did it.  We did not sleep at all.  At some point in the middle of a conversation, my voice suddenly dropped two octaves, in a particularly wonderful case of laryngitis that left me sounding like a bad phone-sex operator.  And when we walked down to the train, we discovered it was also arsch kalt outside, which meant that poor Marina was somewhat dying in her very fashionable, but very un-windproof bomber jacket.  I on the other hand had my super duper LL Bean coat, courtesy of my mom, which is meant for -40F conditions.  I had a voice like a hooker but I was snug as a bug, and had zero issues rubbing it in Marina's face, while managing to sound like I was on cigarette break between blow jobs in Atlantic City. Win.  

Day 2. Friday, October 21.  Arrival (and parties) in Sweden.

The first thing Marina and I noticed when we arrived in Stockholm was that the men were beautiful.  Like, it was like we'd stepped into a Disney movie and everyone was a prince.  Fitted jeans, scarves, really attractive facial hair...it was wonderful.  Also, the Swedes are currently rocking a weird hairstyle, where they shave the sides of their head quite close, but leave the top long and then slick it back.  This sounds hideous, but in practice, Marina and I had trouble concentrating on important things like where we had to go because we were too busy being distracted by the Swedish hotness. The second thing we noticed was that we a) did not speak Swedish, and b) had no idea what we were doing.

Eventually, with the help of some super Swedish nice-ness (they're attractive AND friendly!), we located our couchsurf's building, snuck in, and then realized we didn't know where he lived.  It was six stories, all with names on the door, and we went door-to-door like trick-or-treaters (not that they usually go sounding like AC hookers, but whatevs), up and down all six floors, looking for his name.  No go.  So we decided to call him.  Except I couldn't figure out how to dial numbers to Sweden from my German phone, and eventually Marina had to step in and set me straight.  As it turned out, he lived on the top floor, so we traipsed back up all the stairs and met Couchsurf Boy.

Our initial impression of Couchsurf Boy was that he seemed quite nice, and had the fabulous Swedish hair thing going on, but he was rather slow to warm up.  But he invited us to go with him to the supermarket, which we did, and then we separated for a bit so that he could actually get shit done while Marina and I ran around on an island.  Things we did not realize until we saw Stockholm from the air: the entire city is build on an archipelago.  So you can basically island-hop as you please, much like in the Pacific Theater during WWII, except with less body parts being blown in your face. The island we wound up on was called Långholmen, and it features some rocks, some trees, and an old prison that's been converted into a hostel.  Totally badass.

Then we headed back to CB's place, and hung out there for a bit before deciding to run around the city a bit. CB told us all the places to go, and all the places to avoid, and we were off to see the city by night.  And it was lovely!

Around 9PM we met up with Magnus, a friend of ours from way back when we all studied together in Konstanz.  Magnus lives two hours outside of Stockholm, and has been saying for the past three years that if we ever came to Sweden, he would meet us.  And he totally did, he borrowed his dad's Stockholm apartment for the weekend, so we got to hang out EVERY DAY.  I can't properly put into words how wonderful it was to see him--it's always awesome to see old friends, but we get on with Magnus so damn well, it was magical.  Plus, the boy more or less grew up in Stockholm, and it would have been impossible to ask for a better tour guide.  

Magnus immediately took us to a bar on the 26th floor of a skyscraper.  Superbly posh Swedish rum cocktails and panoramic views of the city that were amazing.  Then he decided we were going Swedish clubbing.  Here's where it gets entertaining and awkward.  Hold on to your pants.

As soon as we walked into the club, there was a boy staring at me.  I'm usually pretty oblivious when it comes to these things, but not even I could miss that particular look. It was serious.  But I was all "Meh, whatevs," and the three of us just sat at the bar drinking, until Marina decided to whip out the camera and start taking pictures. Except Marina has terrible aim when it comes to group shots, and someone's head kept being cut out of the picture.  I turned around to get my drink, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Marina hand her camera off to someone.  When I turned back around, who was our photographer but Mega-Stare Guy himself.  Smooth, Mega-Stare Guy.  Well played.  Here's the picture he took before he started hitting on me. Note that everyone's heads are in place.

Mega-Stare Boy's opening line was to tell me I had fairy-tale hair, which I found amusing.  Like all Swedes, he spoke better English than we did, plus German, plus French.  I talked to him for a while, then got hit on by his friend while he disappeared, only to reappear a minute later with a round of shots.  For the record, I may be college-educated in Jersey, but I can't do shots.  I embarrass myself, always. ALWAYS. Then he (followed by his friend) asked me to dance, and I was all "No, really, I'm a terrible dancer."  He made me give him my email address.

Sometime later, after those two had disappeared, Marina and Magnus forced me to dance, which I only reluctantly agreed to, because Marina had more or less threatened to kill me if I didn't.  And let me say it again:  I CAN'T GODDAMN DANCE, PEOPLE. The stages of my dancing can roughly be broken down into the following cycle:

  

However, this piece of awful did not stop Plaid Shirt Boy from dancing with me.  Plaid Shirt Boy was, as the name suggests, wearing a Plaid Shirt and rocking the weird Swedish hair.  He was very nice, very drunk, and thought I was much funnier than I actually am.  He also thought it was cool that Marina and I live in Germany.  Then his friend showed up, kicked Plaid Shirt Boy aside, and danced with me.  Plaid Shirt Boy's Friend was very nice and kept touching my hair.  Shouting over the music, he told me all about how he's half French, lives in Paris for most of the year, is generally badass, and likes my hair.  Yep.

After he wandered away, I danced (read: sprinklered) over to Marina, who was watching Magnus impress two Swedish girls with a home-grown dance move he called "milking the bull," which you can probably picture in your mind.  Marina and I ran off to the bathroom, and thirty seconds later, we found ourselves joined by Magnus' dancing partners.  "I know you!" yelled the one girl, pointing at me.  "I saw you dance.  Your dancing is a--" here she raised her arms up over her head, "--CATASTROPHE!"  As it turns out, the Swedes are almost as honest as the Germans.

It should be noted that for the rest of the trip, whenever any of us needed to reference any vague problems, such as train tickets or expensive food prices, we did it Swedish style.  I.e, throwing our hands up over our heads and yelling "CATASTROPHE!"

After we rejoined Magnus on the dance floor, Plaid Shirt Boy danced (read: stumbled) his way on over to us.  Grinning broadly, he threw his arms around Marina and me, and yelled, "Look!  It's the Aryan Sisterhood!"  Which left me completely floored.  I stared at him for forty-five seconds with my mouth hanging open, trying to figure out how one reacts to being referred to as the "Aryan Sisterhood."  Then I burst out laughing.  I figured it anyone questioned me, I could just blame Mega-Stare Guy's shot.

Suddenly, I felt someone touching my hair.  I spun around, and Plaid Shirt Boy's Friend immediately kidnapped me, and wouldn't let me leave until the club closed.  I ran into him at the entrance after picking up my coat, and he said, "Let me kiss you on the cheek!"  So I did.  Then he said, "Now both cheeks, like the French!"  So I did. Then he said, "Now on the mouth!"  And I went to say something along the lines of "Wait, what?" but I was too late.  Like the graceful swan I am, I may or may not have freaked out and then scampered.  It's how I roll.  

Marina and I said goodnight to Magnus, and my bad dancing/surprise Swedish stealth kiss had gotten my blood pressure elevated, so I threw my fairy-tale hair up with a pencil.  Marina and I met up with Couchsurf Boy, who pointed out astutely that I had a pencil in my head.  "Yes," I said, "it's so that whenever I feel like desecrating walls or graves or general public property, I always have a writing utensil handy."  He said, "I feel like doing that RIGHT NOW," pulled the pencil out, and graffitied "Stockholm Rules" on a particularly attractive piece of blank wall.  Note to self: next time, put hair up with a can of spray paint.

And that's Day 1 and 2 for you.  Marina and I were running on 36 hours sans sleep, and fell asleep as soon as we crawled onto our air mattresses.  Up next tomorrow: That Time I Paid A Russian Dressed Up Like A Viking To Kiss Marina.

The Sweden Itinerary

Here's the Sweden breakdown!

Tomorrow:  Hop an afternoon train to Lübeck.  Eat dinner with Chris and Marina.  Do random crap, like pose with suggestive statues and sing The Sound of Music while skipping around in circles.

Tomorrow night: Midnight train to the airport.  Camp in the airport until 6 AM, when our flight leaves.

Friday-Sunday:  Arrive in Sweden!  Search for polar bears, make fun of Skandies, and crash at Max's house.  Max is some guy we found on the internet.  Marina wants to date him.  Fingers crossed he's not an axe murderer.  At some point we are hanging out with Magnus, our Swedish friend from when we studied in Konstanz.  Navigate a Swedish supermarket and cook food, because Sweden is horrendously expensive. Drink fifteen dollar cocktails.  Get into general trouble.  Avoid being arrested.  Tame aforementioned polar bear, and figure out how to get him to Germany.  At some point we're supposed to try a food called blåbärspaj.  Bonus points to he who knows how to pronounce that.  Or even what it is.  

Monday:  Last minute madness in Sweden, and then arrive back in Germany at 11 PM. Take a midnight train from the airport to Uelzen.

very, very, very early Tuesday:  Sit in the Uelzen train station for two and a half hours. Try not to get killed doing it.  Arrive back in Celle at 5 AM.  Say hello to the host parents as they get ready for work, and then die.  

It's going to be epic.