| July 23, 2003 - Back from Sweden |
| Dear Friends, I'm back from fantabulous Sweden where all sorts of fun adventures sucked me into their whirlpools of fantabulosity. Of course, it will take several diary entries to describe them all to you, but I know you'll check back breathlessly every day to see if I've written. Let me start off though on a less than positive note. I was on the way to hateful ol' work today, when I had my first bad experience with The Big City since I got back last night.....some bitch was polishing her fingernails on the subway! Can you believe that? The smell was nauseating; I don't know why she didn't just douche while she was at it! I must hand it to her, however; her hands were quite steady as the train rocked back and forth. I was praying that she'd get polish all over her hands, but, nope, she was a regular Picasso. Probably as a child her mother made her color in coloring books on long cross country drives over mountains and bumpy roads, and then punished her if she even once got out of the lines. If she had looked a little more intelligent, I bet she would have made a great brain surgeon. On the other hand, if she's used to doing intricate work in a moving vehicle, then she probably is unable to do anything while motionless. Writing a letter at a desk must be an ordeal for her as she tries to keep the pen from flying off the page. So, back to my cool adventures. The absolute most fantastical was a catamarand trip some of us made from Helsinki to Talinn, the capital of Estonia. The trip over was fun and Talinn itself was nice, but on the catamarand back to Helsinki, I bought four bottles of champagne at the duty free store and my 11 companions and I drank every luscious drop as our boat bounced over the waves. Now, unfortunately, when we first sat down we had noticed this Finnish guy who had already lined up three half-liter beers to consume on the trip. After he downed two of them (I think he was already drunk before getting on the boat), he took a fancy to one of the girls in my group. He stood up and started gyrating around in front of her and singing "I'm your private dancer"! You know, the song by Tina Turner. It was quite embarassing and his friend and the friend's wife (or maybe it was his own wife) tried to get him to shut up and sit down. Then as we were in line to get off the boat, I was chatting with my friend Lisa, and he started eyeing her. Then he touched my shoulder and I turned around and said, "Don't touch me." His friend pulled him back and said, "Don't worry. I won't let him bother you." So I turned and said, "Yeah, well, don't let him throw up on me either." So then the drunk started to try to talk with Lisa, so I pulled her over to me and told him she was my fiancee. At that, he put his fingers up in that kind of "Right on, OK" sign and left us alone. Now, in Talinn we just had to stop at this quaint drinkery called "The Beer House". Why the name alone implies glamor, n'est-ce pas? It was set up like an old German beer hall with long tables and benches, and they even had German music playing on the sound system. But the best thing of all was this giant beer barrel that had a door cut into it and they had set benches and a table in there. We didn't sit in there, because that was too much even for JOHNNYLEEN, but we laughed at it hysterically. I think it would have been fun to get a bunch of drunks in there, tilt the beer barrel over, and then roll it around on the floor or even down the street! Since Talinn's on a hill, the beer barrel would have rolled all the way down to the harbor and landed in the sea! Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub! Next entry Previous entry Go to diary entries Go back home |