Hi there, this is lachlan and i’ve comandeered the blog. Seb’s reign of terror is over!!! I am your new benevolent dictator! This is a long entry! Go to the toilet now if you have to! I’ll try to divide it into paragraphs so its easier to read! Yes the exclamation marks mean i’m shouting!
So picking up from seb dropping us off at the station on the 26th… me and hedda successfully got in to stockholm and got on our train for Malmö. Because we were going for just the one night we were able to pack light so werent lugging around our 15 kilo mammoth packs which was a great change.
Because our planning for the trip had taken place in the couple of days before we left, the trains that we’d worked out were the best travel options all said fully booked on the internet when we were checking them out, but we thought they couldn’t ACTUALLY be fully booked, i mean the trains up north had been practically empty. It turns out a lot more people are interested in heading south for the winter than north. While the train wasnt ACTUALLY full, all the seats were full at some stage or another, we just had to do seat hopping every now and then when people who had booked the seats we were in came and said that we were in their seats. It was either that or they were asking if we had the time, it doesnt matter anyway we just said, sure, and moved.
But the key thing to get from that is that they all had booked seats. It turns out to travel on this train, you have to have booked a seat. You also have to pay an extra fee because it's a superduper XJ2000 ultra fine deluxe fast train. You are also required to fill in the date of your travel for any train journey on these boxes on the scanrail ticket before the ticket inspector comes around or else you get fined. All these revelations were shared with us by the ticket inspector when he came to check our tickets. So we did the only thing that seemed like it would work at the time, pointed down the aisle and shouted LOOK! A BIG SNAKE! With the intention of sprinting off when the inspector turned his back. It didn’t really work though, the inspectors english wasnt that crash hot so he just kind of got confused and angry. But it did seem to freak out a british couple sitting near where i pointed. The inspector got over his angry confusedness pretty quickly though, so we just paid the fee to book a seat, except our seat just happened to move around the train every couple of hours.
We had thought earlier in the trip that we were really brilliant and tricky and that the ticket inspectors didn’t know what was going on because they didnt fill in the date on our scanrail pass which we thought they were supposed to do. Turns out that we were just stupid and lucky not to get fined, and the ticket inspectors didnt know what was going on because they didnt fine us or tell us what we were doing wrong. Until this guy. I should have known he was better than the others when he didnt fall for the snake line. He made me fill in the boxes and was nice enough not to fine us. He also told us that all the stuff he just told us was actually written on the scanrail passes. I had thought that seb had read all the stuff on the tickets, so was sceptical… as if seb would ever not bother reading the terms and conditions thats in really small writing. The stuff was written on the ticket.
So we got to Malmö, got on a different train and crossed the bridge over to Copenhagen, Denmark. It was a little bit drizzly, but noticibly warmer than södertalje (it was between +5 and +10 basically the whole time we were there! wow). We arrived at about 2, the plan for the afternoon was to cruise along Strǿget (apparently the worlds longest pedestrian shopping strip), take advantage of the boxing day sales to get some presents to take home plus anything else that caught the eye. It turns out they weren’t having boxing day in denmark, they were having second christmas. No joke. The even actually call it second christmas. As if you could pick something like that, they don’t mention it on any of the websites. So there wasnt a whole lot of stuff open. There were quite a lot of people out walking along the strip, just not shops for them to go into. So we walked the length and went into everything that was open, ate a belgian waffle and got some choc croissants for breakfast the next day.
I think this is about halftime for the entry, if you feel having a break, go for it. I did, i watched the episode of the amazing race with jonathon and victoria where jonothan hits victoria and she has a nervous breakdown. Probably the most memorable amazing race episode ever, and there have been many great episodes so thats saying something.
We took the metro and made our way to the B&B we were staying at, about the only accomodation that was open other than hotels – not because of the second christmas thing, but backpackers places just arent open in winter there. We just dropped our bags off then went out to find some dinner. We stopped in at a fruit shop on the way and bought 2 pieces of fruit each, which was funny, going to the counter with a banana and a mandarin (hedda got an apple and mandarin). Had dinner at a pizza/pasta place, then we went back to the room and watched lord of the rings – which was shown the whole movie no ads. After the movie we just went to bed. The room only had one bed so we slept with our heads at the long edge which was fine except for my being tall. From about my knees down was dangling off the edge of the bed which was not the ideal set up for a good nights sleep (although it must be said its quite a bit better than just having a corner and no bed), however i had a stroke of genius and put the 2 dining chairs in the room seat against the bed to create an extension and a proper sized bed. You can work out for yourselves that Hedda didnt have the same height problems.
So the morning of second boxing day dawned (or first boxing day if you are in denmark) and we had our choccy crossies and fruit then headed back into town. We went back to the Strǿget and had a walk along there again just checking out the shops, Hedda got some cds of danish music. Then we went to find the Ny Glypotek Carlsberg which is the new carlsberg gallery with art collected by the carlsberg family, and also (i thought) brewery type tasting place. Turns out the place with the brewery type tasting area is at the old carlsberg gallery, which was still in copenhagen, but too far away to be worth going to with the time we had.
So we got on a train and left the city, heading north towards Kronberg Castle, which is the castle from hamlet in Helsingbǿr. It turned out to be a great castle, nice town, all round winning place. The castle had everything you could ask for in a castle, moat, walls, great big courtyard with a well in it surrounded imposingly big, very high castle buildings. The weather aswell was appropriate for the Hamlet mood – overcast and a little windy. And there were crows flying around croaking, so i was like, wow it really is the perfect hamlet mood, all sort of gloomy and troubled like hamlet because he was having all his issues and going mad and stuff. Then hedda told me that i was thinking of macbeth. Turns out hamlet wasnt crazy at all. And he wasnt even that troubled. He was troubled, yes, but not to the same macbeth extent.
So the weather wasn’t actually as appropriate as i first thought. But while i was in my macbeth belief stage i became inspired by the setting and how well it matched the castle and the story, so i fell under the illusion that i was some kind of artistic genius photographer and i tried to take all these artsy photos of the castle. There was this craggy bush and i was like, this represents the craggy descent of hamlet into madness, so i put it artistically in the photo with the castle. And then there were these crows circling around the castle tower so i was like, this represents crows, i’ll try and put them in the picture as well. Anyways, we’ll see how they turn out.
So after the castle we went back into town and walked around, stopped in at a local pub – but they didnt have carlsberg, so i had some other danish? beer called wiiborg or something like that. Then we caught the ferry back over to sweden and got the train back to södertalje. This was another train that we were meant to have booked and paid extra, so we just acted innocent when the inspector came around and got moving seats again. Except this time, when they said the train was full, they ACTUALLY meant it was full. We were in our first seats for a little while, then we moved, then we moved and had nowhere to go because all the seats were full, so we spent the remaining few hours in the restaurant carriage. Then seb picked us up from the station and we went home.
That was last night, today we went in to södertalje centrum for the afternoon.
And i see australia have gone 4-0 up, what happened to the people that had bought tickets for day 4 of the test?
