Taking the Wheel

Let me warn you now - this is going to be a crazy entry. My roommate April and I left for our Scandinavian tour during fall break on the night of Thursday the 22nd and got back home to Bath on Saturday the 31st. So I have a lot of ground to cover, to say the least. My goal is to keep this from not becoming a giant rambling monster with things more or less in chronological order, but that probably won't happen. So don't say you haven't been warned.
Getting ready for break was a little crazy. All of a sudden, it just snuck up on me. Granted, I'd been a little preoccupied with papers, traveling to Paris, seeing Sondre, internship stuff, and everything in between. I ended up having only about 2 1/2 days to really get ready for the trip. I hurried to exchange some money for each country (because each of the three countries have their own, and very similar, currencies - the Norwegian kroner, the Danish kroner, and the Swedish kronor). I also had to buy a new memory card (my old card had about 350 ish pictures, and considering that I had to keep going back and deleting photos so I could keep taking pictures during my weekend in Paris, I knew there was no way I was going to be able to make this memory card last my whole trip). I ended up buying a 4 gig card, which is an obsene amount of memory, because it was actually the cheapest card.
After class on Thursday, April and I rushed back to our house, crammed everything we could into our own backpacks and one suitcase (because it was a lot cheaper to travel with one instead of two) and hopped on our train. Our flight wasn't until Friday morning, but since we were flying on Ryanair (aka the really cheap European airline), we were flying out of the really inconvient airport that takes about 3 hours to get to from Bath. So we headed over Thursday night, spent the night in a guesthouse, and woke up early to get to the airport. And with that, we were on our way.

Oslo, Norway (or, Track You Down)
Thankfully, I was able to sleep for most of the flight to Oslo. Also thankfully, I woke up as the plane started descending, so I got a grand, dramatic first view of Norway/Scandinavia . Now there were definitely some downsides to going to Scandinavia in the fall (it's the off season for tourists so some things were closed or closed earlier, it was waaayyy cold), but the landscape was so incredibly gorgeous that it almost made up for it. The trees were such brilliant colors that it was just stunning. Granted, I know I'm a little obsessed with fall simply because 'seasons' in general is a foreign concept to Southern California . But I promise that this foliage really was impressive, especially looking down from the sky. In addition to the beauty, I was struck with the memory of my Grandpa. My family went to Oslo about 10 years ago (or something like that, I can never remember) because Grandpa wanted us to connect to our heritage. I was so excited for this trip because, being Norwegian and Danish, I had a second opportunity to visit 'the homeland'. In the planning of this trip, I had lots of memories of my first visit to Oslo and Norway, but it wasn't until I looked out that airplane window that I thought of Grandpa. And even though it's been three years since he's passed away, there are moments when it's still hard. So needless to say that snuck up on me and turned me into a hot mess. But it also strengthened my resolve to make the absolute most out of this trip.
We made it out of the airport and took the bus to the center of Oslo (we were even able to get a student price, although the bus company didn't start giving a student discount until about a week later. Good work, traveling American girls). And again, since we flew Ryanair, we were at a fairly inconvenient airport that was about an hour away from Oslo, but it worked out because we got to see some more gorgeous scenery. We made it to the bus terminal just fine and made our way over to the subway station (or T-bane) so we could get to our hostel. We figured there would be somebody at the ticket station that we could talk to so we made sure we got the right tickets. Only...there wasn't. And the self-service ticket machines were old and only in Norwegian. Um, alright. We kept walking back and forth across the station hoping we would find somebody to help or that some answer would magically appear. It didn't. So after wandering for a decent amount of time, I finally sucked it up and walked up to a woman with a stroller who was purchasing a ticket from one of the old kiosks. (This was a big deal, because I'm not one to ask questions, let alone go up to a stranger and ask questions. But this was only a warm-up for later...but I'll get to that later.) I felt slighly awkward, but we got our T-bane tickets for the day, and that's really what mattered.
Our hostel in Oslo was kinda out of the way. It was kinda a pain to have to wait for the train each day when we wanted to do something and it would have been impractical to return to the hostel to rest in the middle of the day. It was only about a 5 minute walk from a T-bane station, which was convienent, but it was also at the top of a big hill. On the plus side, it was a really fantastic hostel in itself. And the free breakfast was fantastic! In addition to cereals and various drink options, they also had a huge spread for you to make your own smørbrød, or open faced sandwich. So delicious. I guess that's part of the whole hostel experience - some good, some bad, and you simply have to make the best of what you have.
April and I decided that our Friday should be fairly low key after weeks of stress and papers and a day of traveling. So we went to the Munch Museum (for free, thank you) and looked at some famous paintings. We then took the T-bane to one of the downtown stations and just wandered around, looking at things and being cold. (The coldness certainly wasn't helped by the fact that the sun set so early - that whole being far north thing - and daylight savings only made it worse.) We saw some cool buildings and statues and a lot of H&Ms. (We really should have kept a tally of the number of H&Ms we saw over this trip. There were soooo many! Sometimes there would be like 3 within one block. H&M is originally from Sweden, but still. It was crazy.) When we sat down to eat around 5:00, we realized we were going to need to find something to do for the night. Thankfully, we had walked by a movie theatre in our wanderings, so we went to see Zombieland and then went back to the hostel for a great night's sleep. It may seem odd to go to an American movie our first night in Norway, but we were much too tired to enjoy anythig else. Plus, we saw a lot of crazy Norwegian commericals before the movie and the movie had Norwegian subtitles. See? A Norwegian experience.
Saturday morning was a little bit easier after some decent sleep. This day consisted of a good hour long hunt to get an Oslo Pass (a ticket that gets you free admission into a huge number of museums as well as free public transport). We were initally looking for a 24-hour pass, but the hostel only had a 48-hour one. So we headed down to the Central Station and finally found our way to the Tourist Information center. And ended up buying a 48-hour Oslo Pass. Oops. But at least we quickly made use of the Oslo Pass. We hopped on a bus (I am so much more comfortable navigating subway systems vs bus systems, but the bus was actually easier for a number of destinations) and headed off to Bygdøy, a less urban peninsula off of Oslo that has a lot of museums. We went to the Vikingskiphuset (Viking Ship Museum - which is really cool and has three old viking ships plus artifacts that were found in the ships), the Kon-Tiki Museum and the Fram Museum (two watery exploration museums).  We also spent some time outside the museums - the views from the shore of the peninsula were absolutely gorgeous. After we finished with these museums, though, we were cold. We thought we had put on enough layers to help us survive the day, but clearly we hadn't. (One of the first lessons I learned from this trip - it's silly to think you're going to wear anything other than Ugg boots when you're visiting Scandinavia in the fall.) So we spent the evening exploring Oslo City, a shopping center that had lots of publicity everywhere, looking at DVDs and books and CDs in Norwegian (they had Sondre CDs under the 'Norsk' music section!) and giggling at Norwegian fashion (they really love their sequins in Scandinavia).
Sunday was our last day in Norway. (It also was Daylight Savings, so we got an extra hour of sleep. Yesss.) According to the weather websites, Saturday was supposed to be kinda drippy day and Sunday was supposed to be nice and sunny. So we bundled up all the way and were ready to do lots of outdoors-y things. And it was raining. We decided we would just have to go out in the rain and make the most of our last day in Oslo - make it an adventure. And it turned out to be a really good day. We got on a bus and went back to Bygdøy to visit the Norsk Folkemuseum (or Norwegian Museum of Cultural History). There were a couple of indoor exhibits we saw about urban Norwegian households in the 19th century and traditional Norwegian costumes and folk art ( rosemaling!) but most of the museum is outside. The open-air museum has lots of old traditional Norwegian buildings from around the country that have been relocated to the museum. There's a stave church and lots of houses with grass on the roof. It's really cool to see all of the old houses and to walk through the woodsy area of the museum. Not so cool was when my umbrella decided to fall apart of me. Literally, just fall apart. I freaked out just a little, because there was still so much to see today that was outside, but April and I went back to the gift shop and I found a cheap black umbrella. (It's not at all cute, but it also was cheaper because it was plain, so I guess that's alright.) Probably my favorite part of the Folkemuseum, though, was the food. At the museum's cafeteria, I got a salmon smørbrød and lefsa! Norwegian food! Granted, this lefsa wasn't 'real lefsa' like the kind we have at home - it was more of a potato cake - but it was still delicious. And then they had freshly made lefsa out in one of the old houses (again, not 'real lefsa', but a thicker lefsa, more like a pita). But any lefsa is fantastic lefsa.
Our next stop was the Ibsen museum in the city (I love Ibsen!) which was really neat and had lots of crazy representations of Ibsen (my favorite was a neon sign Ibsen). Then we walked to the Royal Palace (I love the idea of just being up to walk up to the royal palace and walk your dog or stroller, no big deal) and then across the street to the National Theatre. Then we hopped on the T-bane for our last stop of the day - Vigeland Sculpture Park. I remember going to Vigeland with my family years ago and I had thought it was kinda weird. But I absolutely loved it. It is this series of sculptures that truly capture the human experience, from life to death to new life, with relationships between lovers, parents and children, and siblings. The power and beauty of the sculptures was enchanced by the light rain and the sky. We got there around twilight (like 4:30) and the beauty of the sky really added something to the sculptures. Unfortunately, none of my pictures really capture the power and beauty of my experience at Vigeland, so you'll just have to trust me. It was just so moving (especially since in my mind the park is connected to my family) and it was the perfect way to end our visit to Oslo.

Copenhagen, Denmark (or, Part of That World)
We woke up early, and I mean 3:50 early, Monday morning to get on our plane to Copenhagen. We could have taken the airport bus to get to our flight, but the first bus left about 45 minutes after we wanted to leave (that's how early our flight was), so to be safe we took a 890 kroner taxi ride. It was so ridiculously expensive and it sucked because we flew through security, but it was one of those thing where you never know. Thankfully, our plane and train rides went smoothly and we made it to Copenhagen (city of Danes). April's good friend Sabrina is studying in Copenhagen for the semester so she met up with us at the train station. She even arranged for us to not stay in a hostel while we were in Copenhagen - April stayed at Sabrina's host family's house and I stayed with Sabrina's friend Kasia's house. So we got the couch-surfing traveling Europe experience as well as the hostel experience this trip.
We spent a lot of this day wandering, which I always love. April and I spent a good chunk of time meandering down the Strøget and checking out some of the old important politically buildings by the water. (My favorite is the Old Stock Exchange, which has a really cool spire made out of dragon's tails. Awesome.) As we were taking in the sights of the city, we looked up and found this tower that looked straight out of Atlantica!! (For those of you that aren't obsessed like I am, that's the memaid city from The Little Mermaid.) Trust me - it looked like Atlantica. Which is actually really cool since Hans Christian Anderson lived in Copenhagen, so the Disney artists drew inspiration from the source. We also went to the King's Gardens and Rosenberg Castle, an old spare castle (no big deal) that houses the crown jewels. And for dinner, I had another smørrebrød (only this time spelled the Danish way). It was cool to be with Sabrina because she's taking a class about the history of Copenhagen so she was able to tell us all these neat facts about the things we saw. It was also nice go to her program's building and have a place to crash in the middle of the day. Plus, we got to have a feel for what student life in Copenhagen is like.
My real Copenhagen adventure, though, didn't start until Monday night. I had met Kasia earlier in the day, but because we were visiting during midterms week, Kasia went back home earlier to get work done. She had given me plenty of instructions on how to take the train to her house and told me to call her when I got to the station and she would meet me and take me home. The first problem occured when we got to the train station. It turns out, that one of the train stations along the way to Kasia's house was on fire. (How does that happen? Well, I know how it happens. But it's not something you expect to happen.) Sabrina frantically asked one of the security people how I could get to Kasia's house. All I needed to do was take a train to another station, hop on the subway, and then transfer one more time when the subway ended. I promised Sabrina I would be alright (thankfully, I've gotten pretty adept with train travel between visits to New York and this semester) and told her I would make sure to call her when I met up with Kasia. Sabrina and April headed off to Sabrina's house and I got on the train and made it to Kasia's station without any more problems.
[Now here, parental and adult figures, is something you might not want to read. Feel free to skip this paragraph. I just wanted to warn you.] I was so happy to be at the train station and be close to a good night's sleep. But when I tried calling Kasia, my phone wouldn't work. I tried calling Sabrina and April and texting Kasia and Sabrina. Nothing worked. My phone had been acting a little odd earlier, so I had prepared myself to hunt for a pay phone to call Kasia. But as I searched around the train station, there was not a pay phone to be found. And it was late-ish at night (around 9:30/10 I think), so the station window was closed so I couldn't ask for help. So I took a deep breath and decided I would need to hunt for a pay phone. I figured I could go a block or two in either direction of the train station (so I wouldn't get lost or too far away) so I girded my loins and, suitcase and backpack in tow, I went off in search of a pay phone. In just a minute, it looked like I had come across a row of pay phone boxes, but when I got closer, I saw that they were empty. I had kept it all together before this, but to have my hope immediately crushed like that, well, that's when the tears came out. Luckily, at that exact moment a couple walking their dog came towards me. I pulled myself together best I could and asked if they had a cell phone on them or if they knew where the nearest pay phone was. Neither of them had their cell phones and they didn't think there was any pay phone nearby. Another woman came up on her way to the train station and we asked her the same question, only for her to say 'no' as well. At this point, the couple offered to take me to their house about five minutes away and let me borrow their phone. Considering I didn't really have any other options, I said ok. (Plus, they had a dog, so I figured I must be able to trust them. Right?) Thankfully, they did actually only live five minutes away (right by the train station) and the husband ran upstairs to their apartment and brought his phone down for me to borrow so I wouldn't have to go inside. They were very sweet and asked me where I was from, what I was doing in Copenhagen - I'm really so grateful to this couple. So I called Kasia and she and her host mom came and picked me up and drove me to their house and I went to sleep. Monday night was definitely an experience. Things could have gone so horribly wrong, but I was so lucky and blessed that things turned out the way they did.
Tuesday morning was nice because I got to hang out with Kasia and, you know, get to know the girl whose house I'm staying at. We had breakfast together and took the train into the city together. Kasia then had to go to class (go figure) and I met back up with April to do a harbour tour of the city. The boat we took was a little funny looking because it was really wide and really short. There are so many low bridges in the city that we needed to get under. (I should have counted the number of times the tour guide told us to sit back down because we were coming up to a low bridge.) We got to see so many gorgeous parts of the city from the water, so the trip was certainly worth it, but our tour guide was pretty lame. He would make one or two comments about a certain building or area, and then head back to the front of the boat to hang out with the driver. Way to earn your salary, kid. After the tour finished, we headed back to Nyhavn (or 'new port') and explored it on foot after seeing it from the water. It has so many great old and colorful buildings along with water. Hans Christian Andersen even used to live here - too bad his old house was the ugliest and plainest on the row and there wasn't anything more than a tiny plaque to say that he lived there. We also made the trip up to Amalienborg Palace, the royal residence. I still love the idea of just being able to head up to the royal palace and walk around, no big deal.
That night we met up with Sabrina's friend Zach and his friend John (an Irish boy studying in Copenhagen) and went to Studenterhuset (the student bar). It was fairly low key and a lot of fun - another insight into what student life in Copenhagen is like. The bar ended up playing good deal of late '90s-early '00s American pop, so we maybe had a little too much fun singing along. After calling it an early-ish night, I headed back to Kasia's place (again, she had understandably headed home early to prepare for midterms). I was feeling confident because I knew what trains to take and how to walk to her house from the train station. My problem this night, though, occured when I got into her complex and realized that I didn't quite know which house was hers. I had been so grateful to make it to her house the night before that I hadn't paid too much attention to which house was hers and then that morning Kasia and I had been in a rush to leave the house so she would make it to class on time. Again, my phone didn't work, so I figured I would search her rather large complex and, with the few details about her house that I did remember, I should be able to figure it out. Well, I didn't. So after about a half hour of wandering, I saw a family drive up to their house. Again, I took a breath and toughened up and went up and asked if I could borrow their phone to find my friend. Ironically, I was so close to Kasia's house. And while it sucked and was awkward, I was proud of myself for taking the risk of asking for help. So, more life experience . Right? (That's what I told myself to make me feel better.)
Wednesday was our last day in Copenhagen. Sabrina didn't have any classes that day, so she got to be our tour guide all day. First, we went to the Round Tower, which is a big round tower (obviously) that you can climb up (by ramp!) and see the whole city. It's really not a very big tower, but all of these Scandinavian cities have a shorter, and quite adorable, skyline. After looking at the view, we found a Danish Christmas shop, which made me really happy and a little homesick, because my house is filled with traditional Scandinavian decorations during the holidays. Our next stop was Christianhavn, another area of the city, and specifically Christiania, a hippie village. The village is entirely its own entity, free of Danish rule and of the EU. It was cool to wander around and see lots of Danish hippies (even though they didn't sing 'Hair'. Which they should have).
The highlight of this day, though, was the most famous attraction in all of Copenhagen. (No, not Tivoli Gardens. Unfortunately, it was closed for the season while we were there. I guess it's just something for the next time I'm there.) We walked along the waterfront and as it started to rain, we took a quick break in the lobby of the New Playhouse. Because we could. The light rain continued, so we decided we would just have to go back outside. And then finally we reached her - the Little Mermaid. Now I'm a giant Ariel nerd, so I am a little biased, but the statue was absolutely stunning. (April and Sabrina, who aren't huge nerds like me, agreed so I'm not alone in this.) I was really excited to see her, but I didn't anticipate how much she would move me. One of the great parts of the Little Mermaid is that she's off to the side, out in the water, and you can climb up right next to her. But in addition to being able to play with her, the statue itself draws in you. I always thought of her as a pensive mermaid, but when you get up close you see this burning sadness in her eyes. I really can't do her justice. But I definitely understand why she's the most famous attraction in Copenhagen.
All of us were so struck by her that we spent a long time just standing looking at the statue and talking about her. Whenever we would ponder or ask each other a fairly rhetorical question about the statue, there was an old Danish gentleman nearby who would chime in with all of these facts about the mermaid. Eventually we got to talking with him - his name is Jan and he's a retired Dane who will sometimes give personal guided tours of the city simply because he wants to. He knows pretty much everything about Copenhagen. We chatted with him for a while, and Sabrina got to practice her Danish, until finally he said that there are three other mermaids in Copenhagen and he offered to take us to see them. Now, the way he said it was very polite and friendly and he had just told us about how he does do tours of the city and there were three of us (as opposed to two or even one), so we said sure. A little hesitantly, but we still agreed. And fortunately, he was only a nice old man who wanted to show us mermaids. It turns out, there is a genetically modified mermaid, a huge mermaid outside of someone's restaurant, and a small scared mermaid outside of the royal library. And along the way, Jan was chatting with us and telling us all of these things about Copenhagen. April and I decided that he is the Danish Andrew Butterworth (the fantastic internship coordinator at ASE). And now we have a new Danish friend.
I went home with April and Sabrina that night because Sabrina lives closer to the airport than Kasia, so the journey home was much more uneventful. We stayed up a little talking with Sabrina's host family (they're pretty awesome) and figuring out how to get to the airport in the morning. Finally, Sabrina's host dad graciously offered to drive us to the airport, so instead of taking a little over an hour, our journey to the airport would only take about 15 mintues. And would be free. The Danes are just so friendly!

Stockholm, Sweden (or, Take a Chance on Me)
After getting a little more sleep than we had expected on Wednesday night, we made our way to Stockholm. Now Stockholm was the city I was least excited about visiting during this adventure. I have personal/family connections to Norway and Denmark, but I'm not Swedish. And I grew up with my dad and grandpa jokingly making fun of Sweden but, being a kid, I took these jabs quite seriously. So with this silly little prejudice against Sweden and without the emotional connection, Stockholm was always an after-thought for me in the planning process. But as I was sitting in the plane, I started thinking about how, even though I'm not Swedish, Sweden and the Swedish culture is still closely tied to my past and who I am (both in terms of Sweden's control over Norway and in terms of awesome Viking stuff). Plus, my Kirsten is Swedish, and she was an important part of my childhood. So with this in mind, I was ready for Sweden.
We were able to take a train straight from the airport to the center of the city and our hostel was only a 10 minute walk from the main station. This was a nice change after having a big commute in both of the previous cities. So naturally, the hostel itself wasn't as nice as the Oslo one. We shared a room with 6 other girls instead of just 2 and the showers were far away and super awkward. Plus, there wasn't an amazing free breakfast. But again, it's that whole hostel experience where you simply need to make the best of what you have.
We decided that Thursday should be a pretty low-key day. We decided to head out and wander and came across a big shopping district in Stockholm. (We seem to be really good at finding these.) They had a cute little outdoor market. And then we found an awesome candy shop where they had actual Swedish Fish! (I don't eat Swedish Fish. But still...they were truly Swedish.) We then decided we should get a real boat ride since Stockholm is part of a 30,000 island archipelago, so we made our way to the tourist information center to figure out how to go about this. It turned out that there was a boat leaving for one of the islands in about an hour, so we headed over to the harbour and got on the boat.
Now, the boat left at 3:00. And during the boat ride, we got to see the sunset. (Silly Daylight Savings and being super far north.) But the views on this hour long boat ride were absolutely stunning, perhaps even more so because of the sunset. Unfortunately, my words and even my pictures can't do it justice. With the water and the sun and all of the little wooden islands and their tiny houses, it was just amazing. We made it to the island of Vaxholm and were only there for a little more than an hour before we headed back to Stockholm. There really wasn't much to do on the island as it was just this small town, and it was getting dark and was really cold, so it was good that we weren't there for long (although we did find an awesome toy store). But the big reason we went to Vaxholm was the boat ride itself, and that was definitely worth it.
The next morning (after showering in the awkward hostel showers), we headed out on our last day in Scandinavia. Our first stop was Gamla Stan, the old town section of Stockholm. I'm not sure how old this area of town is, but it's very old. First of all, it's this cute little island. And then there are cobblestone streets and colorful buildings and teeny alleyways. It was just really adorable and fun to simply walk through. But our real destination this day was Djurgården, the old royal hunting grounds that now has a bunch of museums and some great walking paths. We hopped on the ferry from Gamla Stan to Djurgården and went from one tiny island to another.
April and I hadn't really thought about what we were going to do at/on Djurgården, so we found the main path around the park/island and just started wandering. This was pretty much the best idea ever. I'm in love with the Scandinavian foliage, but before we've only really seen it from the air, or on the train or bus. But in Djurgården, we got to wander around these gorgeous trees and soak up the beauty and general autumn-ness. Eventually along the path we came to this big rock. So we decided to climb up the rock and look at the trees from up above-ish. It felt so fantastic to be out in nature and be a part of it all. We meandered over towards Rosendal Palace, but it ended up being a much farther walk than we had intended, so we turned back around.
We went back to Skansen, the Swedish open-air cultural museum (like the one we went to in Oslo), which we had originally passed on our adventures around Djurgården. Our first stop in Skansen was the cafeteria for food (naturally). And here, I finally got the food I'd been craving - meatballs! Our family Christmas dinner tradition is Norwegian meatballs and they're fantastic. These were (obviously) Swedish meatballs, so they were a little different - the sauce was a little creamier while ours is more of a gravy, and it came with lingonberries on the side - but it was still utterly delicious. Add to that some delicious Swedish pancakes with strawberries for dessert and I was all set. We didn't feel a huge need to look at the buildings, since they were for the most part pretty similar to the ones we had seen in Oslo. But, Skansen has a zoo of nordic animals (moose, reindeer, brown bears)!! So we spent a lot of time watching the animals, especially this family of brown bears which consisted of a mamma bear and three babies born earlier this year. They were so incredibly adorable. And soo much fun to watch.
As it was strating to get dark in the middle of the afternoon, we headed back to the center of the city. And as we were walking back towards the area of our hostel trying to figure out what we would for the rest of the night, we came across this Halloween/costume shop in the shopping district. Even though I knew we were flying back to England on Saturday October 31, between traveling and stressing out about papers, I kinda kept forgetting that Halloween was coming up. So it was a pleasant surprise the day before Halloween to stumble across this shop. Also, because it was the day before Halloween, there was huge line outside to get into the shop. But April and I figured why not so we got in line to have our turn in the shop. The store was three levels of crazy decoration and costume stuff. So we kinda got to experience a Scandinavian Halloween.
Our final adventure of the day was April's quest for a spoon. Her grandma used to collect spoons and now she's carried on the tradition. She didn't have too much trouble finding spoons in the last two countries, but she hadn't really found any in Sweden. We figured we should be able to find some good souvenir places at the main train and bus stations (since tourists come there right?) and the two were both so close to where we were. Turns out, there are no souvenir stores at the Stockholm train station. But, there is one at the bus terminal. And April got her spoon. Right outside of the souvenir store, there was an old-man-band playing swing/jazz music. They weren't fantastic, but they were really cute and old and clearly enjoying what they were doing, so we sat and enjoyed listening to them for awhile.
Then, we got food at Sweden-China (best restaurant name ever?) and headed back to the hostel to pack up and sleep. And for one final time, we woke up at the crack up dawn (slash, before), headed over to the bus terminal, sat and waited for a bus that came an hour after they told us the bus would come, went to a teeny-tiny airport that only housed Ryanair, fought to get seats on the plane (since on Ryanair you don't book a seat assignment), flew on a plane with lots of unhappy babies, and made the 3+ hour ride from Stansted Airport to Bath. But we made it back home, safe and sound. It was great to be in Scandinavia, but it was really nice to be back home in Bath.
And that, my friends, is the story of my Scandinavian Tour. Finally.