General Update

Well, it's been a while since I've posted. Lots of high adventure here in the land of vikings and meatballs. Actually, I have managed to get out and see a couple of the major cities of Scandinavia. I drove up to Oslo a couple of weekends ago and then last weekend I finally got over and explored Copenhagen.

Oslo was a bit of a rude awakening. I had a completely open weekend so I decided to drive up to Oslo. We had a district manager that I've hung out with a few times here in Malmo that was working in Oslo. So, I left Malmo on Saturday morning and took my time up to Oslo. It's normally a 6 hr drive but I decided to stop off a few times on the way up. I stopped at a little harbor town that one of my coworkers had recommended as very scenic. Once I got there I felt like Chevy Chase in vacation at the Grand Canyon... Deep breath; head nod........ yep. Moving on... In fairness it was quite overcast, but I don't think I was missin too much. Here's a pic:

So, onward. I drove through Gothenburg but decided not to stop. Gothenberg (goteborg is used on the maps here but everyone calls it gothenburg) is the second biggest city in sweden and looked pretty cool but when I tried to double back I ended up taking a tunnel that effectively drove me under the entire downtown area and spit me out north of town so I decided to trudge on. I stopped about an hour north and explored an old castle called Bohus Fasting. It was pretty cool, I wandered around there for about an hour and then decided to make my way up to Oslo.

Once I hit Norway, driving slowed down to a crawl. lots of construction and much more winding roads. by the time I got to Oslo it was 7:30 pm and all the shops were closing. I didn't realize that I had to dail the country code since I was now in Norway and I couldn't figure out why my calls to Eric weren't going through. He finally gave me a call and told me a hotel to get set up in. I booked the hotel at a halfprice rate of about $250 for the night dropped off my bag and met the guys down at the bar. We went to the Hard Rock for dinner and I had a BLT and a couple of beers for about $100. After that we went to a club called Uncle Donald that was actually pretty cool. Like most the clubs, they were playing lots of house/techno/hip hop, but the bar was pretty cool and there were lots of hot norwegian girls. Nevertheless, noone was really up for partyin all nigt and by about 1:30 everyone else decided to call it a night. I walked home to the hotel and left in the morning. All told, my trip to Oslo cost me about $900 ($300 for 2 tanks of gas, $300 for the hotel and parking, and $300 for dinner and drinks) for about 6 waking hours and another 14 of driving. By the time I got home I decided I would be flying from now on, or traveling with more people to split up the costs.

Copenhagen was a little more enjoyable. The weather has been really nice here for the last 2 weeks. Lots of sunshine and temps of about 20C (that's about 70 to US Americans). So I caught the bus down to Malmo central station. I was able to buy my roundtrip train fare to Copenhagen from the bus driver and that includes free bus rides for the day in both Malmo and Copenhagen! Pretty nice huh?

I got into Copenhagen around 11am. there was a sea of people everywhere. I followed the crowd and found myself nect to the city hall and in the first big square. This square feeds into the big walking street thata is the copenhagen shopping district Storget. It was really crowed and as I made my way down the street, I realized there were a lot of people lining both sides of the street just standing around. Then, as I continued on, i began to hear drumming and a moment later there were girls in huge feather headresses and bikinis and shirtless guys wearing warpaint dacing up the street towards me. I steeped to the side and watched as a long parade started making their way up the street.

After about five minutes, I turned and asked someone, "So... is this some kind of holiday, or is this just Saturday in Copenhagen?" they laughed and and informed me it was Whitsun Carnival. I'm not sure what a Brazilian themed carnival is doing in Denmark, buy, who am I to question. I watched the parade for a while and then moved on to the rest of the city. I had lunch at an outdoor patio and then made my way down to the harbor and wandered around for several hours.

I have to say, my ipod does a really good job of selecting the right music for whatever environment or mood i am in. I usually just out it on random play and out of my 2600+ songs, it does an amazingly good job of playing really appropriate music. From the morning when I first stared it up it stared with really rockin music like The Seeker and Superabound (Frank Black) that put me in the mood to get off my ass and catch the train to Copenhagen, to fun fast paced music like Mashin on the Motorway (DJ Shadow) and Captain Fantasy (ween) while walking the crowded shopping streets, to quieter instrumental stuff like Starla (Pumpkins) and Modest Mouse on the more deserted neighborhood streets. Here's to you ipod, you really have fantastic timing and excellent taste.

Well that should do it for now. I'll try to do a little better job of posting, but let's not get too ambitious.