The Coldest Most Beautiful Place I've seen....

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Eight classmates of mine (from my pre-semester Danish course) and I decided to go for a trip to Stockholm, before the Spring Semester began. We took a 9 hour overnight bus. I was very paranoid that I would forget something, or perhaps we would miss our bus stop. I packed everything to a T. I had the smallest backpack out of all of my fellow travelers, which I was very proud of myself for doing. I even packed a first aid kit. After 9 hours of interrupted sleep and being jerked around on SWEBUS we finally arrived at Central Station Stockholm at 7AM. We all withdrew money from an ATM and used the restrooms.

And then I realized that I left my backpack on the bus!

Panicked, I ran outside and chased after our bus flailing my arms as it drove away. My precisely packed bag was now worthless to me. The downstairs booth for SWEBUS (our bus company) was closed because we had arrived so early. My German friend Andrea suggested we go upstairs and see if we could find any help. Another SWEBUS booth was closed. But we saw some arrows and something written in Swedish and wandered down a hallway and found a Swebus station open.

I said to the lady, "Um I left my backpack on the bus that dropped me off...."
She interrupted me and said, "Come with me."
She had handpicked my backpack off of the bus. She then told Andrea and I that she was glad she checked because the bus was now headed ten hours north of where we were. I was glad too, and incredibly relieved.

The first day in Stockholm, I was absolutely freezing. Never in my life have I experienced such cold weather. Traveling in a group of nine people also presents many challenges, well nine challenges to be exact. Deciding what to do and how to get where was never a simple task. But Stockholm was my first foot into traveling since I arrived in Denmark. Bonding with the eight other people in my group was a great experience as well.

My favorite day was my last day. Somehow, I had persuaded the remaining members of my group (about six of us stayed for four full days) to go to two museums I had personally wanted to go to; the music museum and the dance museum. We also went into the Nobel Prize Museum to stay warm and I found it fascinating. I found reading one of Winston Churchill's report cards most rewarding. Seems to me, that he most likely had ADHD just like me. 😊 His teacher wrote that he was a peculiar student that was not to be trusted alone and was a nuisance to others. His teacher as well wrote, that he was not meeting his fullest potential.

My summary of my Stockholm trip:

Too cold for comfort.
Too expensive to spend more than four days there. Too strict of drinking laws to have much of a nightlife scene.
Too clean to slyly throw your used gum onto the street. Too beautiful to put into words.

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Photos

A picture cannot capture the beauty of Stockholm, but I tried.
This was our first day, walking from the hostel into town.

The Dance Museum
It was small, half of it was shutdown, but Lael (fellow dancer) and I were thrilled to get our group to go.

Indoor Market
This was our first day. The boys slept in because of the bus ride, but we decided it was a girls day out. ;)