car 54 checking in.

stockholm is fantastic. 

the weather is perfect, the sun goes down for a total of 3 hours per day, the people are happy, the children are adorable, the stereotypes fit (minus a fair amount of obesity), the archipelago is stunning, the royal family is cute, the tube is fast, the streets are clean, the architecture is a pastiche of russian-czech-german-british, and the language is fun to pronounce.

my couchsurfing host has taught me loads about the language and the culture, i have met so man local swedes and haven't met a one that i don't love.

on saturday i walked the city with my host. from top to bottom. we cruised along the water in the southern island of sodermalm and she explained the land that is zoned only for gardening. yes they have pivately owned land that can only be used for gardening and it runs along the water. hundreds and hundreds of plots of just gardens and bike paths. we followed the sounds of an achingly good trumpet player and stumbled upon a private party in a back alley of town. i hugged a metal statue that touches the heating system and exudes warmth outside of the downtown theatre. 

i recovered from jet lag. finally.

 i met up with my fellow bangkok traveler two days ago and we are having a blast. i went to an island called djurgarden south east of the city center yesterday to the world's first open air museum (think colonial williamsburg meets finnish settlement), saw my first live elk and wolverine (the elk is MASSIVE and licks my right hand the wolverine looked like a badger), walked around town collected some bread fruit veggies and cider at the grocery store and had a picnic on a hill in steppsholm with a gorgeous view of the city and watched the sun set (that lasted about four hours) and caught each other up on our travels. annie told me all about her border crossing from egypt into jordan which sounded intense...and tempting. we met three seagulls and watched them howl about the bread we threw to them.

i am headed to oslo tomorrow morning. so throw all of your good energy my way and ental encourage oslo to stand up straight and behave so i can have a marvelous first impression.