|
1. A short intro. The 14th of July we flew to Skavsta Airport, Stockholm (actually 130 km south) with the four of us (Davey, Nico, Patrick and me).
We wanted to rent a car at the airport, but due to the lack of a credit card this was impossible. We took
a coach to Stockholm were we arrived at about 7.30 pm. We spent the next couple of hours to find a place to
sleep, this included walking through some showers for a couple of kilometers. However, in the end we found
a nice and cosy hostel. Next morning we walked out and had some breakfast, which is what you see on this picture.
|
2. Fast forward to the same day's evening. This might seem quite uninteresting but please read the letters
on the can of Carlsberg beer. That's right, 50 öre deposit (equals €0,05) and an alcohol percentage of 3.5%. This
3.5% is the absolute maximum (meestens) Swedish supermarkets are allowed to sell. However, you can of course buy
'real beer' in other places. More about that later.
|
3. Wait...what? Wut da fuck? We ran into a girl and guy (more or less) we knew from secondary school time
in the same hostel in Stockholm. World's small. Soft focus for style points.
|
4. This is one of the five Iron Maiden fans from Göteborg we met in the youth hostel. Big stories, a lot
of booze and snuss. Snuss is like a small teabag filled with tobacco which is kept inbetween the upperfront teeth
and lip for about 40 minutes if I remember correctly. It's somewhat cheaper than smoking cigarettes. Looks disgusting though.
|
5. Breakfast in the same hostel.
|
6. At Gamlatan, sick skies if you ask me.
|
7. Nico definately knows his stuff.
|
8. Street. Blue sky.
|
9. This view reminds me of Venice. This is the City Hall of Stockholm. Told you about the sky already?
|
10. Another street. Plus something about the sky.
|
11. I think they accidently switched the paint on these cannons. Aren't wooden wheels supposed to be brown and iron barrels grey?
|
12. Inside the Stockholm Palace.
|
13. Stockholm is built on quite a few different islands, connected by bridges.
|
15. Church.
|
15. Everybody's happy in Sweden.
|
16. Or at least acts like they are. Woei.
|
17. On the way to the Zoo. We wanted to see some 'wild'life.
|
18. Typical red painted wooden Swedish house at the countryside.
|
19. A bear! In the middle of nowhe...the zoo.
|
20. Fuck!
|
21. We sheltered under the reindeer stable while I took this. A squirrel was watching us unattended from our backs for a couple of minutes.
|
22. Another day again. The night before we stayed at another nice youth hostel more in the centre of Stockholm. Davey is practicing the trickery of Devil Sticking.
|
23. A lot of cranes that is.
|
24. Overview of a part of the city.
|
25. Another view.
|
26. This was taken straight up from the inner courtyard at the youth hostel.
|
27. This inner courtyard.
|
28. The nighttrain from Stockholm to Luleĺ. Well, Luleĺ was the destination we intended to go to in the first place. All the couchette's had six beds and as you
know we were with four. We imagined all terrible possibilities for the other 2 passengers, but what we did not imagine was a Swedish family with two small ADHD boys sleeping
from 10.30 pm till 6.30 am. Well, it wasn't as bad as it might seem by reading this.
|
29. This was out of the train in the middle of the night, still pretty light.
|
30. As stated two photo's ago we intented to go to Luleĺ. However, while reading some books about the country in the train we decided it might actually be more
interesting to go further north, into Lapland, a traintrip of 19 hours altogether.
|
31. This is Abisko, one of the more northern towns of Sweden. This little town also functionated as a sort of base camp for hikers in the area.
|
32. Our first healthy diner on the just bought new gas burner.
|
33. All the clothing is to prevent mosquito bites, there was no rain.
|
34. Also, this was our first night sleeping in tents. We tried to get the four of us in a 3-person-tent. Wasn't too comfortable for most of us.
|
35. Nico mastering the skills before hunting some moose's.
|
36. This is sick. In the middle of the night (1.30 am) the sky looked like this. It wouldn't get any darker at all. After this it would only get lighter again.
|
37. River with sunset or sunrise (pretty mucht the same in this case).
|
38. As I told Abisko was a sort of base camp for hikers. Inspired by them we started a well prepared 3-day
mini-hike in the area. After the first couple of kilometers walking we crossed this bridge and decided to show our Lord of The Rings
"You shall not pass!"-scene impression. Davey acted as the Balrog (sp?) because he has red hair.
|
39. Also, he looks at least as scary.
|
40. Walking.
|
41. A little break again before walking the last 3 kilometers.
|
42. After those 3 kilometers we found a nice spot with wooden benches, a place for a campfire and decided to pull up our camp.
The campfire was necessary to chase off the shitload of mosquito's over there.
|
43. Dinner with Köttbullar, rice and green beans. The left meatballs were taken during the night by some untill now unidentified creature.
|
44. A nice view from the place.
|
45. Next morning we got driven crazy by the 'mosquito air force' and decided to walk up, into the mountains. This is after a couple
of hundreds of meters climbing. You can see the height of the lake in the back.
|
46. We don't want to show off all too serious after climbing this little top.
|
47. Somewhat further there was this nice bird-spotting-hut which would make up for a great place to stay for the night. But we
only walked for two hours thusfar, so that would've been kinda silly.
|
48. The little mountain lake.
|
49. Hippie.
|
50. Climbing the steep snowy mountainwall.
|
51. Two birds tearing apart a mouse.
|
52. Keepin it going.
|
53. The area.
|
54. Patrick loving these moments.
|
55. "Hey! Nice. A bridge".
|
56. Looking solid.
|
57. Higher up in the mountains.
|
58. Pulled up our second camp. I told you I'd tell you about alcoholic drinks later on and I'll do that now just because this picture shows
a can of beer. Any drink containing over 3.5% of alcohol can be bought in the so called 'Systembolaget'. This are liquor stores runned by the government, to
keep the alcoholconsumption somewhat in control. The people working at the counters are obeyed to check the Swedish customers for not buying too much or too often. At such
a very busy Systembolaget in the centre of Stockholm the woman behind the counter even recognized me for being there two days in a row! She asked where we came from and
after responding "The Netherlands" we were okay.
|
59. The grey canvas is to shelter from soft rains and hard winds. Cooking also took place under here. Gotten wise by the meatball-theft accident we burried the left
meat under a pile of stones and luckily enough they still were there the next morning. However, these sausages were so disgusting so we threw them anyway.
|
60. Pretty much in the middle of nowhere.
|
61. Next morning we woke up at about 10.30 am, but stayed in the tents untill 2.00 pm because of the rain. Then we decided to break up anyways and walk the remaining distance
back to Abisko. Only a couple of hundred meters after we broke up we met a group of more professional hikers asking for a nice place to pull up their tents. They seemed to find it somewhat
weird that we just broke up and were doing the hike on Jeans, Hawaiďan swimming shorts, Loteks, All Stars, Puma's and Gola's.
|
62. Up high.
|
63. Just a mere hundred meters after the last photo we reached a skilift. We intended to take the lift to get in Abisko quickly, but the rates were too high for our likings.
Nico's ankle/foot was pretty wasted so he took the lift down and made a reservation for the last couple of beds available in the hostel. Thanks for that. The remaining three of us
took the walk down, which was quite more of an adventure then we expected it to be. We lost the path, ran into a ravine, slipped numerous time on all the mud (when we finally found the path it had already turned into a little stream), crossed little
streams which turned into fast-running wider streams due to all the rain and got completely soaked. On the last bit down we crossed another guy and girl going up on the mountain. Later that night
we saw them in the hostel. The girl said they couldn't get any further because the path was too messed up. Also she was happily suprised by our great equipment and high-tech clothing.
|
64. Fast forward. After a good night with some booze and lovely showers and drying all our stuff we chilled for the next day. This is Davey on the 4 kilometer walk to and from the local supermarket.
You can see the mountain we climbed the days before in the back.
|
65. Fast forward again. After the day of chilling we took an evening train to Luleĺ (you remember, the place we intended to go to first). Arriving there at a little past midnight we were too late
to find a decent sleeping place. We had little hope of having a good place to stay for the night when we got into talk with a couple of drunk 'alternative hippies', but it turned out they were too drunk and the
things they were saying in the end didn't make any sense anymore. We walked out of the centre and kept walking untill we found a park where we were somewhat able to pull up the tent. This is the morning after, biten
to death by another 'mosquito air force'.
|
66. Too much fast forwarding. That day we took some rest at the beach of Luleĺ, little sunbathing, little swimming. That night we took a nighttrain all the way to Göteborg, where we arrived next days afternoon. First
we went to a campsite, but we heard it was fully booked when arriving there. We had a couple of beers here and concluded we didn't feel like walking another 2 kilometers to the next campsite. We just took a bus to the centre and dropped the
luggage in lockers at the central station. This mirror sphere in which you see the four of us was for surveillance reasons.
|
67. Looking for that one nice restaurant.
|
68. Found it. Had some very good diner for not even that much money.
|
69. It's...it's...it is U-fucking-2!.
|
70. Göteborg harbour. After strolling around we went into a pub untill 3 am. We took a slow stroll back to the central station and took the 6 am. train to Stockholm.
|
71. Stockholm again, the same youth hostel again. A lot of young people from a lot of different countries.
|
72. We spent another day sightseeing Stockholm, visiting some musea and than the other day, monday 28th of July, we took our plane back.
|
73. Peter, if you are reading this you should hook me up with a decent answer to why I am not allowed to use any 'electronical equipment' during take-off.
|
74. Flying home. Long day of travelling. Walking - Metro - Coach - Plane - Bus - Train - Train. Thanks for viewing/reading!
|
