Travel Diary

For the train ticket payment, I was well prepared. I had visited my bank (Wells Fargo) earlier that week and bought some euros and pounds. For the Swedish kronor, I had to order them special, but they arrived in time, and I could then avoid transaction fees and such. I was only in Sweden a day and half. No sense in wasting too much money on transaction or exchange fees.

Yet, what was this horror? The ticket machines only took plastic. Argh! I’m sure there was a ticket booth somewhere, complete with a long line. So no. I’ll just use my credit card. I bought a train ticket and was soon rolling along to the city center.

The countryside was nice--as far as train rides are concerned. Most of the time, train rides don’t have too much great scenery when doing airport to city rides (fictional movies notwithstanding). This one did have great weather and I mainly noticed the cool graffiti. It was like it was all commissioned artwork. They must take great pride in their graffiti in Sweden. Duly noted. NYC, you could learn from this example.

I exited the train station and knew from Google Maps that it was next door to the hotel. There was even a sign for the hotel and a couple of girls were walking towards it. After a long walk down a small corridor, some workers on a smoke break said the entrance was around to the “front.” We all made an about face and walked back the other way. Why the hotel felt the need to have a large sign to the BACK door was a little peculiar. Were delivery trucks getting consistently lost?

But I found the front and checked in (the girls had beat me there, but I let them). The room was nice, although a little small for three people. Still, it would suffice okay. My dad and brother would be around several hours later. I could take a quick nap. And a nap was sorely needed.

Well, the nap was longer than expected. I checked my phone to see when they would arrive, but found an email saying they had a flight delay and missed their connecting flight, so they would arrive the next day from Germany. Guess I could keep napping.

And I did...until about 9pm. Then I was wide awake. My sleep schedule was entirely fubar at that point. I got some writing done and walked around the city at night to buy snacks. Finding open places was tough, but I managed to locate a convenience store and stocked up. The beer choices were not tops, and they limit what alcohol percentage the beer could be to a little more than 4% (EU?!?) But we all must make sacrifices.

After a lot of writing and other tasks, including rebuilding the cushions on the spare bed (I had removed them to make a third bed, but then the situation didn’t require this, so a lot of guesswork was done to get them back on the couch/bed unit. Luckily I had taken photos of how they were attached--a trick I had learned years ago after taking apart car engines and forgetting how to put them back together again.

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