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We've had a busy couple of days, and the last thing I wanted to do last night was fiddle online before falling into bed. I have some good pictures, but the thought of uploading them on dialup makes me queasy.
Yesterday, we went into town and walked around. We took the train to Centralen and then walked around, through Gamla Stan and across the walky-bridge (most people know this as Slussen, but not me.) We bought a bunch of stuff, including postcards, which I will hopefully be able to mail tomorrow, if I fill them out tonight. I'm only mailing three, and I will be back and have talked to the people before they receive them, but you can’t have everything.
After walking around for hours, we took the subway over to Judit och Bertil, a restaurant-pub type of place, to meet Blatt. Another friend of M's was there briefly, and there were a few other guys that he works with in attendance.. six of us left by the time dinner was over. We had a lot of fun… dinner (we both had steak, which was really good and was priced accordingly) and drinks, and we were there for seven hours in total. I don't even want to think about the money we spent (total bill: 3,819 kronor, or.. $545 at 7:1 exchange rate. Oi. I have heard people talk about the cultural phenomenon of Swedes settling the bill, but I have never really had the privilege of seeing it in action until last night. It was rather fascinating. I believe they settled on splitting it five ways (discounting me, really, because I didn’t drink anything worth mentioning in comparison to these guys) and then everyone just sort of started throwing money into the middle of the table until it hit the right amount. It was quite funny, even without a full grasp of what was being said.
Anyway, it really was fun. Blatt is a computer nerd by trade, and since these are colleagues of his, we had a real geek-fest there for a while. You know you're in a gathering of nerds when someone stops speaking, without a word being said, and glares at someone else and says, "Leave Adobe out of this." That made me laugh inordinate amounts for several minutes. I was a little worried at first because not much was being said, and none of it was in English, and there were five people I had never met before and everyone was male except me. But after a while, particularly after we moved from the table over to the comfy chairs on the indoor balcony, it got going and there was much discussion in English. At one point, there were three separate conversations going on and they were all in English, which was kind of neat.
We just barely missed our train (ten seconds--it was still sitting there at the station when we ran up the escalator. The brats on the train thought it was wildly amusing.. they knocked on the window and waved. I would have cheerfully strangled them, but then, if I could have reached them they would have had no reason to taunt us. Anyway, I resisted the urge to agree to M's suggestion that we just go upstairs to take a taxi because the thought of spending $65 more dollars on getting home when we hadn't already missed the train or anything was not so great. So, it was well after one when we got home, and I was freezing and tired after walking all over Stockholm all day, then from the train to the house, and.. blah blah blah.
So, today, we were up relatively early--by that, I mean that we were showered and upstairs by noon. We went to Sigtuna with M's parents, which was a nice little outing. It's a tiny, cute little town just north of Stockholm. I think it's the oldest town in Sweden, or something like that. Very old, anyway, and it looks like a town straight out of a fantasy novel, with these little cute houses and stone streets and a really pretty lake. I've always said that if we lived in Sweden, that’s where I'd like to live. We ate lunch, did a little light shopping. This evening, we took the train back into town to eat at a Mongolian barbeque restaurant with his parents and sister, who met us there. You put a bunch of raw foods from a buffet on a plate... vegetables and several different types of meats, noodles, etc, and then they cook it for you. It was really good, and quite reasonably priced (118 kronor covers the Mongolian buffet, a sushi bar, and a Chinese buffet, salad bar, and a fried banana with ice cream. $16.85, but restaurants are more expensive here… the steak last night was 189... or $27. Damn, but I hate dividing by 7... it makes everything so expensive.)
Anyway, two more days and then we're on our way home. Time flies when you’re having fun…
Yesterday, we went into town and walked around. We took the train to Centralen and then walked around, through Gamla Stan and across the walky-bridge (most people know this as Slussen, but not me.) We bought a bunch of stuff, including postcards, which I will hopefully be able to mail tomorrow, if I fill them out tonight. I'm only mailing three, and I will be back and have talked to the people before they receive them, but you can’t have everything.
After walking around for hours, we took the subway over to Judit och Bertil, a restaurant-pub type of place, to meet Blatt. Another friend of M's was there briefly, and there were a few other guys that he works with in attendance.. six of us left by the time dinner was over. We had a lot of fun… dinner (we both had steak, which was really good and was priced accordingly) and drinks, and we were there for seven hours in total. I don't even want to think about the money we spent (total bill: 3,819 kronor, or.. $545 at 7:1 exchange rate. Oi. I have heard people talk about the cultural phenomenon of Swedes settling the bill, but I have never really had the privilege of seeing it in action until last night. It was rather fascinating. I believe they settled on splitting it five ways (discounting me, really, because I didn’t drink anything worth mentioning in comparison to these guys) and then everyone just sort of started throwing money into the middle of the table until it hit the right amount. It was quite funny, even without a full grasp of what was being said.
Anyway, it really was fun. Blatt is a computer nerd by trade, and since these are colleagues of his, we had a real geek-fest there for a while. You know you're in a gathering of nerds when someone stops speaking, without a word being said, and glares at someone else and says, "Leave Adobe out of this." That made me laugh inordinate amounts for several minutes. I was a little worried at first because not much was being said, and none of it was in English, and there were five people I had never met before and everyone was male except me. But after a while, particularly after we moved from the table over to the comfy chairs on the indoor balcony, it got going and there was much discussion in English. At one point, there were three separate conversations going on and they were all in English, which was kind of neat.
We just barely missed our train (ten seconds--it was still sitting there at the station when we ran up the escalator. The brats on the train thought it was wildly amusing.. they knocked on the window and waved. I would have cheerfully strangled them, but then, if I could have reached them they would have had no reason to taunt us. Anyway, I resisted the urge to agree to M's suggestion that we just go upstairs to take a taxi because the thought of spending $65 more dollars on getting home when we hadn't already missed the train or anything was not so great. So, it was well after one when we got home, and I was freezing and tired after walking all over Stockholm all day, then from the train to the house, and.. blah blah blah.
So, today, we were up relatively early--by that, I mean that we were showered and upstairs by noon. We went to Sigtuna with M's parents, which was a nice little outing. It's a tiny, cute little town just north of Stockholm. I think it's the oldest town in Sweden, or something like that. Very old, anyway, and it looks like a town straight out of a fantasy novel, with these little cute houses and stone streets and a really pretty lake. I've always said that if we lived in Sweden, that’s where I'd like to live. We ate lunch, did a little light shopping. This evening, we took the train back into town to eat at a Mongolian barbeque restaurant with his parents and sister, who met us there. You put a bunch of raw foods from a buffet on a plate... vegetables and several different types of meats, noodles, etc, and then they cook it for you. It was really good, and quite reasonably priced (118 kronor covers the Mongolian buffet, a sushi bar, and a Chinese buffet, salad bar, and a fried banana with ice cream. $16.85, but restaurants are more expensive here… the steak last night was 189... or $27. Damn, but I hate dividing by 7... it makes everything so expensive.)
Anyway, two more days and then we're on our way home. Time flies when you’re having fun…
