Live, from Stockholm, Sweden!

Says Libby:

So! We're at the Central Station in Stockholm, Sweden and will be leaving tonight (in half an hour!) on a night train to Boden which arrives at noon tomorrow. From there, it's just one more 7 hour train to Narvik, Norway ; the northernmost point served by the European rail system, and situated at 68 degrees north, even further north than Iceland! We'll arrive in Narvik at 7 pm on Wednesday, but from what we can tell, it will never get dark that night! Then the next day we have our fingers crossed that there's a bus down at the border between Sweden and Finland, because no one at the train station has been confident enough to confirm this in definitive language - they all say they "think so"... from the north border of Sweden and Finland we'll train down to Helsinki, the capital, where we're hoping to "couchsurf" with some gracious host before taking a long-ass ferry across the water back to Stockholm and eventually making it inland to Kulturstationen, our woofing spot. [click here for a general map of our itinerary]

To fill folks in on our last 36 hours....

After we left Bente and Soren's delightful place in Fano, we hopped on the "train" - another bus, due to the travel-prohibitive expansion of the rails from the heat, and bussed-trained through Kopenhagen across the islands to Sweden, where we were delighted to be hosted in Lund by a dear friend of mine from the International House days at UCSD, Nik. Nik met us at the station and treated us to a tasty dinner at an Italian place. The three of us talked about the political system and the positive and negative aspects of the European Union. European farmers, for example, receive 1/3 of the money of the EU to subsidize their crops, and continually overproduce. The surplus is dumped onto the African market so that prices stay higher for the farmers in Europe (the US is culpable of the same), the value of the African goods is greatly reduced, and this is one more reason why African agriculture can't compete on the world market (not even considering access to technology, disparate growing conditions, or hundreds of years of colonial exploitation, etc.) Despite some of its flaws, Nik was keen to point out that the greatest benefit of the EU is the solidarity bred among the citizens of the continent and the assurance that Europe won't again see a continental war like befell them with WWI and II. As we strolled back in the cool summer twilight to Nik's place in the student dormitories, we mused about effective tactics for social change. Many folks had moved out of the dorms for the summer so we had our own luxurious dorm room! It was great to see Nik and we're hoping to reunite with him next month when our trajectories collide in Montpelier, France.

As we left Lund this morning, there were a bunch of drunk Swedish high school graduates in special sailor hats (apparently a Swedish graduation tradition), blowing whistles, singing, and trumpeting through the streets this morning to celebrate their graduation. Slightly obnoxious, slightly entertaining.

Once we arrived to Stockholm, we stuck our heavier bag in a locker and explored Stockholm for the afternoon. The buildings here are tremendously well-kept, the facades intact and most of them having really interesting architectural design with fancy domed black roofs, turrets, balconies, etc. There seemed to be an abundance of trees and parks mixed in with the busy city, and it has a very international and multicultural feel having recently left the sheltered island of Fano (Thai food for lunch, hurrah!).




We've got tons of photos to upload, but unfortunately this netcafe won't allow us to connect the camera, so they'll have to wait until next time, probably this weekend. Sorry for the lag in postings, and we look forward to being able to relay the experience of life in the land of the midnight sun and other Scandinavian adventures!

Much love from Libby and Billy