Today was a great day. We started out by going to Use It to use the internet (a half-hour for free). Then we started for the library, but noticed a place that repaired boots, so we walked back to the hostel to get Shari's boot that needed a new grommet. We went back and got the boot fixed, and then went to the library where we got another free half-hour of internet. The machines were not easy to use and weren't as fast as the ones at Use It, but at least it was free. We also looked at a Lonely Planet book on Germany to start to get ideas of what to do there.
We had tried to call the hostel in Sweden a number of times to make reservations and the call would never go through. We tried all sorts of combinations of "00," country code, city code, and the number, but it wouldn't work and no one was able to tell us the correct way to dial the number. Finally, a man at the library told us to use everything, but drop the "0" in the city code and it worked fine. It can be very frustrating to try to make calls between countries and sometimes even within a country. Luckily, Shari got through though, because the first place was full and the next place didn't do a hostel anymore, so we are booked for 2 nights in out third choice. It's hard to tell what a place will be like from just a brief description in a book. We usually have an idea of its location versus the train station because we have small maps of the cities from our Lonely Planet Europe book. We try to get a fairly centrally located place so we can just walk to everything. We may not be hiking in every country we visit, but we sure are walking a lot.
After the library, we started walking towards Vigeland Park but it started raining, so we decided to check out the cinema and we found one on the way to the park. We got there about 1:50PM and asked about movies in English and found out that "About Schmitt" was playing at 2PM, so we went in. We split a soda and we each got popcorn and the ticket plus the popcirn and soda for each of us was 96 kroner (about US$13). We both enjoyed the movie and after it was over we walked back to Vigeland Park.
Vigeland Park is Norway's most visited tourist atraction, probably because it is one of the few things you can do in Norway for free. Gustav Viegland designed and decorated the park with more than 200 of his sculptures. They are all nudes depicting men, women, and children in various poses and activities. The central sculpture is a tall column (over 50 feet high) of many figures of people seeming to rise up out of the earth, which was carved out of a solid piece of granite. The sculptures are somewhat erotic, but very powerful and to me they represent a celebration of life.
We treated ourselves to ice cream on the walk back to the hostel from the park and stopped at the grocery store for dinner and lunch supplies. We took showers, did laundry and then cooked grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches for dinner. It's nice to have clean clothes because we haven't done a laundry since we left London. We had the room to ourselves and it was a little cooler, so it was a pleasnat night for sleeping.
7/22: We went up to Use It right at 9AM but unfortunately their server was down so we couldn't use the internet. We walked back to the hostel, got all our stuff (boy do I hate having to carry all my stuff at one time) and went to the library to use their internet. Then off to the train station for the 11:27 train to Stockholm. It's one of the fast trains that we paid a supplment for so we will arrive at 4:15.
The train ride was uneventful except we arrived late, at 5PM, due to bad weather and problems with some other trains. We walked to our hostel, the Hostel Mitt City, which is about a ten minute walk from the train station. It's on the 5th floor of an older building and you have to take a very slow elevator to get there. It's not as spacious as the one in Oslo. It has a small dining area (seating for about 30) with a TV but it has no self catering kitchen so we can't cook there. The price of the hostel is 195 Swedish krone (US$24) and includes breakfast. We are in a small room (maybe 15 feet by 10 feet) with 4 sets of bunkbeds and all 8 beds are filled. There is very little floor space for packs and luggage.
After settling in we walked back to the train station to plan our time in Sweden and Denmark. Boy, does it take a lot of time to coordinate activities, where to stay, and transporation between cities and towns. We sat and planned for almost 2.5 hours (I had a Carlsberg beer, my second beer in Scandanavia), at a table in the food court. Prices are a little better here than in Norway but things are still expensive. One good thing - we found an internet at the train station where you can buy a ticket for an hour's worth of internet for 19 krone (about US$2.50 an hour). You enter the ID and password on the ticket when you start using a machine and it tracks the time you use. You can log off at any time and use the ticket as many times as you want until the time runs out. There are 7 of the "sidewalk internets" where you can use the tickets.
We went back to the hostel about 10PM and there were already people asleep in our room so I just listened to music. It was interesting to find different stations because now I'm in Sweden, not Norway. In Norway, I listened to the BBC but here I get US National Public Radio. I listened to All Things Considered for awhile and then I found a very good US Oldies channel.
7/23: I was up early to figure out some banking stuff so I could call Susan later today. She is still working on getting my old charge account straightened out. I feel badly that she has to do so much work on that account. That's the one that someone got the number and starting charging against it. The account is closed now, but Susan has to submit a lot of paperwork to get the bad charges reversed.
Breakfast here is pretty good - boiled eggs, sliced sausages, pate, toast, cheese, cucumber, tomatoes, juice and coffee. After breakfast we walked back to the train station to buy phone cards. Making calls here is even more of a challange than in Norway. There are no coin-operated public phones anymore, so you need to buy one card, a Telia card, to get connected to the local phone system and then use another card to make a long distance call. The Telia card uses 4 units to connect to a free phone number and then I can use my ekit card from there, but we also bought a World Card to use in making calls within Europe. The Telia card costs 50 krone and the World Card is 100 krone. The units used on the World Card vary depending on which country we call.
We wandered around the city a bit and then made our way over to a park, Kungstradgarden, to litsen to a free jazz concert.The Stokholm Jazz Festival is being held from July 25 - August 2 and they run these free concerts in the park to entice people to buy tickets to the Jazz Festival. We listened to some music for about an hour, had lunch in the park and then made our way back to the hostel. I stopped on the way and called Susan, and we once again discussed my old charge account. It's always nice to talk to her and I'm sure we will both be happy (especially Susan, because she's doing all the work) wheh this account is all straightened out.
We took a short nap and then headed back out to go to the Old Town section of Stockholm called Gamla Stan, to attend a choir concert in the German church. The concert started at 6PM and we stayed until just after 7PM because we were taking a walking tour at 7:30. I felt like I was at a church service during the concert, part of the music was sung by a choir and part was played on the prgan. It was nice, but one hour was definitely enough.
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