The right kind of wrong day

Well, what a day this has been. Brandy and her husband picked me up at 9:30 and we drove in a light mist to the Roanoke airport. Nothing eventful happened there because it’s a small airport and easy to get out of. Our flight to Chicago which I thought would be somewhat full was like half empty. We all moved around and basically everyone had two seats to themselves. Brandy and I were a couple rows apart but we moved around every now that then to brainstorm ideas. Once we got to Chicago, the fun began. Brandy and I are both Ph.D. students and therefore we’re smart, yet we got lost at ORD like 3 times. We would walk to the signs saying Terminal 5 and then when we passed them, we wouldn’t see them anymore so we’d walk back the other way. After doing this like 3 times, we finally asked for help (and remember, this was still in the states where everything was in English)! We ended up have to leave the security area and I had to check back in since they didn’t give me a boarding pass for the second flight when I was in Roanoke (even though Brandy had one). I got my boarding pass and we went through security again (always fun to have to pull everything out a second time with tons of people around) and then we made our way to the gate (around 2:30). Of course, there was no food in the international terminal so we were stuck with $7 sandwiches or the snacks I brought. I chose my snacks. We were supposed to start boarding at 3:40 to take off at 4:25 but didn’t end up boarding until right after 4:00. We spent our down time trying to plan for the weekend and see how much flights were to various places. We finally got on the plan (not next to each) and Scandinavian airline is not the most spacious plane. It was a little crammed even though I had a window seat and there was just one other seat next to mine. The cool thing about the flight is that there were a ton of movies to choose from, games to play, and you could watch camera views from below or in front of the plane. We also took a neat route to get to Sweden. We flew from Chicago, over Wisconsin, over a lot of Canada, then over Greenland, Iceland, Norway and finally Sweden. I have some pictures on the plane because in Greenland and Norway, we could see the ice cap mountains through the clouds which was just awesome. During the flight, I watched P.S. I Love You, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, and part of the Devil Wears Prada (all but the first I had seen before). I played Battleship and Blackjack for a bit too. I had a hard time falling asleep and only ended up sleeping for like an hour and a half. After only being in the air for like an hour, there was a big to-do with one of the passengers who hurt his ankle or something and moved up to the seat in front of me because there was more room. Like 10 people tried to help him for about 30 minutes and it was a little ridiculous. They couldn’t give him pain medicine because he had already had a little bottle of whiskey and so on. In the meantime, the flight attendants were no where to be found and I was getting light-headed from being dehydrated since all they’d give us was a tiny cup of water. After talking to one lady and her not understanding what I wanted (and walking off without getting me any water), I was a bit more aggressive the next time and got 2 whopping cups of water. When the guy sitting next to me got up though, I walked back to where Brandy was to talk and realized there was candy and water up for grabs in the back of the plane. After downing the equivalent of like a whole bottle of water and stuffing a lot of candy in my pockets, I went back up to my seat for the rest of the flight. We landed just around 8:00 am Friday morning and then the fun really began (and I am being incredibly sarcastic). We easily cleared customs but struggled a little to find the baggage claim (obviously, we’re not so good in airports!). Brandy and I were planning on being spontaneous and back-packy while here and we wanted to wait and see what flights and places were available to go to. We really wanted to go to Tallinn, Estonia today but when we got to Arlanda (the Stockholm airport), the ticket prices were either outrageous or the flights were booked. This was the case for EVERYTHING…. Helsinki, Copenhagen, etc. We then thought that we would stay in Stockholm and tried booking numerous hostels yet they were all full because apparently, some sort of festival is happening this weekend. After much going back and forth and talking with a fantastic woman at the information desk (which was nice since we talked to a guy from Estonia Air earlier who was incredibly rude), we were able to get a single room in a hostel in downtown Stockholm for Friday night only. We said we’d take it and just go from there. We got our tickets (110 kr = $18) from Arlanda to the Stockholm Central Station on the Arlanda Express Train and we decided to look into a train ride to Copenhagen when we got to Central Station. The train ride was smooth and pleasant and gave us a nice 20 minute break from the disappointment that had been coming from not planning ahead. When we got to Central Station, Brandy sat with the bags while I talked to a woman at the ticket counter. Most of the rest of the trains for the day were sold out. Then I asked about a train to Goteburg and she said we could get on one without a seat (first come, first serve) at 1:06. We decided not to go to Goteburg (where we’re planning on staying next weekend) and made our way out of Central Station to find the City Lodge Hostel. We of course got lost, but just barely, and then found the hostel. We checked in (about $50 for Friday night) and got our room which is literally a closet. There is one bed (because all they had was the single) and we paid like $10 more to get another mattress. So the mattress is leaning against the wall right now since we can’t close the door if it’s laying flat. Don’t worry, I took pictures. We laughed it off and were grateful that we even had a room. We asked the woman at the front about possible cancellations for Saturday night and she said she would keep checking for us. Brandy and I spent an hour or so freshening up and then decided to head to Skansen, an open-air folk museum place. We could’ve taken the bus but decided to walk instead. So, like before, we started walking and went in the wrong direction! Fortunately, we came across another hostel we knew and I realized we were not going in the right direction based on where it was. We turned around, walked down the same street, looked for the right street to turn on, and walked completely past it! We realized 2-3 blocks later, turned around and finally got on the right street. We walked pretty far past a whole bunch of shopping areas in downtown Stockholm. We walked by a lot of parks, some open areas for street performers, a cultural center (Kulturhuset) and then finally the harbor. We were going to take a ferry from Nybroviken to Djurgarden but then found out that it only runs on the weekends. So we just decided to walk the rest of the way. We crossed a bridge and made our way towards Djurgarden. When we got there, the first thing we did was go to the Vasamuseet, which is the Vasa Museum, built around a 17^th century warship that was pulled up from the sea floor. It was actually a really cool museum and we only paid 50 kr (just under $10 with our student discount) to get in. I took a ton of pictures of it because it was really neat. Then, we left and walked further down to Skansen. We paid 90 kr to get into there and it was massive. We spent a couple of hours walking around, looking at the historic buildings, animal areas, little cafés, etc. We were pretty tired half way through from all the walking for the day and so we sat down at the Petissan café where we enjoyed some caffe (coffee) and Brandy got a weird sandwich that she said wasn’t very good. I have a picture of it because it only had bread on one side and I thought that was different enough for a picture! We visited a few gift stores (not many good and inexpensive souvenirs here) and then started making the trek back. We grabbed some ice cream on the way back (2 scoops of blueberry cheesecake) and walked directly into the sun for awhile (we’re expecting sunburns….). We stopped into a huge department like store called Ahlens and went to the bottom floor to Hemkops (I think that was the name), a massive grocery store to grab some food. That store was incredibly overwhelming. Even though everyone speaks English here, absolutely nothing is written with any bit of English on it. It was really hard to tell what everything was, even simple things like sandwiches. We made it out alive and came back to our hostel which was only a few blocks away. When we walked in, we found out that we had space booked for tomorrow night as well just a few feet away in the dorm area. We gladly accepted it because we don’t care what we have as long as it’s a bed in some sort of shelter. We’re still waiting on hearing about Sunday night and then on Monday we’ll head to Jonkoping. I have a million pictures from today and I will try to upload them, organize them, and share the site with you all tonight. It’s about 7:30 pm here and we are both absolutely wiped out. We’re just working on our computers and then we’ll prob. crash hard and sleep in very late tomorrow. I’m sure there is more to tell you all about today but my head is so foggy that nothing else is coming out. I’m going to work on my pictures now and look into flights for the last weekend as well, since this time we are going to plan ahead. Today was full of the great life lesson that planning ahead is actually the better way to go, so for all the mommies, don’t worry, we learned our lesson!