yay for sweden spring! it so icy!

Europe » Sweden
March 28th 2008

Published: March 28th 2008

Ben is still here! hooray! and we said goodbye to jordie this morning! He's making his way back to england today for his job! hooray for jordie! good luck buddy! ee yo in turkey! lol. So what am i doing! still chilling in Orebro in Sweden, its quite a nice place and we've been lucky enough this past week to see it coveredin snow and then start to melt, it hasnt snowed since tuesday but there is still heaps of it about, the streets are now clear of snow but the footpaths still have a fair bit on them, and are really slippery in places, ( i think i have somehow deleted a whole section here, and i cant find where it went, so just continue reading and hopefully it will come good again..) i fell
ere she had to do some work apparently, lol, i jst did some emails and the facebook thing and jordie did too, while Nadine "worked" man she has the easiest job ever, kinda gotta be at work for about 5 hours a day, but only when the boss is there, and he works about 2 days a week, lol, she gets up at 9, has an hour or 2 or 3 for lunch, and finishes by 4, lol, unless theres lots of work to do, which i dont htink is possible, lol. that night we went to the video stor and hired Black Sheep, if you have seen it, i hope you found it as funny as we did, bloody kiwi film was fantastic! kinda like 28 days later and dawn of the dead, but the zombies were sheep, lol, it was jjust a hoot, and some of the kiwi jokes that only us from that side of the world would get, so funny! 😊 Then it was Jordie's birthday! hooray! i got a cuddle from hi at midnight, though it was a struggle, lol, then when we woke up i got 2 more! yay, lol, nads i think had to go to work and jordie and i slept in, then we were meeting nads and all the office girls from the iogt (i'll explain later, their strange sober people ... ) there were 9 of us to go out for a traditional swedish lunch, which i gather now is just going to a coffee shop and eating pasta and salad, or just salad and salad, all the coffee shops and lunch restaurants sell the same menu, which is odd... slowly i'm realising this place is really quite odd, so after lunch with a bunch of girls from norway france czech, sweden, romania, and maybe somewhere else, cant quite remember, nads went back to work, and jordie and i went in search of coffee! and found some,... that wasnt very exciting telling you that.. meh, that afternoon nads kocked off work at 4 and we went for a walk to the Lake, lake is called something like hal memori or something, i'm sure nads will correct me, but anyway, its the 4th biggest lake in sweden, and guess what, !!! mostof it was frozen! and i walked on some of it, only near the edge, there werent signs saying it was safe or unsafe, but after lobbing a few big stones onto the surface and hardly denting it, i figured, meh lets give it a go, i can now say i have walked on water! 😊 hooray! The lake part where we were walking was part of like a nature preserved area or something and there were all sorts of birds flying about, the geese were huge! i;m told they were geese but you could of tole me they were chipmunk birds and i wouldnt of known any better, but they were beautiful, and we were there for the start of sunset, which takes forever here! and its not even summer, lol, after a while and my camera battery dying right when we got there, typical ey! we started to head back, but i really enjoyed that lake, it was so frozen, like all of it except for a little stream near the edge closeish to where we were! it was incredible to look at, lol, and throwing stones onto it, bit ones, about 6 inches round onto it and just having them bounce and skid along was pretty cool to play with. The walk home however was freezing, really freezing, took about an hour, and there was some snow on my shoe that did not melt till we got inside, it was very cold, and thankfully the wind wasnt to bad, but the little there was of it just burnt through you, should of bought some gloves, lol, but i'm sure its all good for me anyways! lol. Being jordies birthday we had to have somethig to drink, as we had not really had anything all week, living in a sober apartment blockl does that, though tuesday night we did go out for a couple of pints, and then after 1 round each we though it'd be cheaper to fly to bali and drink beer there instead of buying another round, so we split, anyway, after the lake there is a bottle shop downstairs, yeah, real good placement, having a bottle shop uner a sober apartment building, lol, and it is run buy the government and called something like system bolaget. which pretty much means bottleshop of the system, or country, lol, weird. anyhow i went in to get a bottle of wine, and there not on shelves, but in glass cabinets, all locked up, and you have to take a ticket number, choose what you want, then when your number is called go to the counter and tell them what you want, they print out a docket then go out back, and collect it for you, really quite strange, but the wine was CHEAP! hooray, lol, and nads was very kind to let us drink it in her flat! yay, lol. so we had that and jordie had a small 100ml bottle of schnapps that he picked up in the wachau so we had that as a toast aswell! lol, then we watched american pie 2 which was on the box, and went to bed for jordie had to leave early this morning!
Bye Jordie! we all got up early this morning to walk jordie to the train station, yep, its bloody cold at 6am here, lol, and fully daylight and its only spring, 😊 we said goobye to jords and came back and went to bed, where i slept till pretty much noon, except for one part where i woke up to jordie calling me, of which i missed that call, only to see he had sent me 2 messages, asking which station he had to get off for the airport, the first one after malmo i think, and after repeatedly trying to call him back without success, all i can say dude is i hope you made it! :P and let me know if you did please! lol.

and so here we are! ben relaxing time! yay! i going to have another nap soon but first let me tell you some of the quirks i'm finding out about sweden. the place is pretty much commuist based but with a democratic system, everyone here has a type of social security number, shich is given at birth, and you use that number for everything, hiring videos, to doctors records, to schooling, to buying cars insurance, so many things, so the government has a pretty good control on seeing what its peoples trends are. next the whole alcohol thing, apparently has sort of stemmed from the american prohabition for alcohol back in the 1800's or something, and groups of people came over to the nordic countries to try and help out with the then current problems of alcohol and depression, as it was almost only spirits drunk here, the southern part of europe, like from germany south pretty much already had such a culture in alcohol it didnt stick, but somehow it did in the nordic countries, which is why the government has complete control, yes you can buy beer and cider in some supermarkets, but only light beer, max alc% of 3.5 which is just a midstrength back home, but i find this kinda interesting, because where nads works is part of the iogt, or iont, something like that, which is an acronym for something to do with groups agains alcohol and drugs, and they have a whole web community up here called sobriety net, or something, lol, all this info has mostly come from nads, and my memory aint great so it may not be too accurate, and i ma be gullible, but none the less the scouts up here are all not so much anti alcohol, just pro sobriety, with a kind of hidden hatred of alcohol. So apparently the scouts when they are 12 make an oath to never drink, argh! who does this to children! lol, so the scouts here are not affiliated with religion so much, and have more of a objective of showing they they are SOBER, and thats the way it should be, and using the scout banner to push this even further, which is kinda cool, and they still do all the normal scoutstuff, just without the grog, which as far as i'm aware is what all scouts under 18 have to do anyways, but they're sort of running a only sober people are scouts campaign here, an have been doing so for years, just a bit strange... hmmm.. anyway, this place is just a little odd, also you can take a sort of pay cut and get paid some of your wage in coupons that you can eat at restaurants and maccas and cafe's and places, and for locals it is cheaper that way cos it is tax free, this place is strange, beautiful but strange, and i kinda like it, except for the temperature not reaching above 3degrees so far...
lol,
anyhow i'll speak to you soon, love ben!

yay for sweden spring! it so icy!

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