Seedless Grapes and Hockey Helmets

After failing to make my plane on Saturday morning, I managed to actually catch one on Sunday and arrived in Stockholm today. I had one heck of a week before leaving... looking at rooms, showing my room, parents' evenings, end of half term tests to mark... I hardly slept at all. I needed to catch a bus at 3:30 am in order to catch my plane at 8:30... I said I was not going to go to sleep, but somehow I ended up completely out. Not even 200 wake up calls did the trick. My housemate Noelle who was also supposed to leave at 3:30 to catch a train, woke me up at 4:45. No way was I going to make it. So I went back to sleep until 10:00. Then I decided to see if I could get a flight out either later that day or Sunday morning. I managed to get one out Sunday morning and this time I left home at 1:00 am and managed not to fall asleep!

So after a sleepless night (I drank a LOT of coffee to ensure that I didn't fall asleep this time), I arrived in Stockholm at 10:00 am after two entertaining journeys on London night buses (you can imagine the drunks that are out at that time..), an airport coach, a flight, and then another airport coach. There isn't much snow here, but it is a bit chillier than London. Go figure that somehow one of my gloves disappeared en route! My really good GoreTex ones too. I spent the day getting to know the city a bit. I checked out the city museum where the highlight for me was the guillotine used for the last execution in Stockholm in 1910. Actually the highlight really was an exhibit by an artist who uses raisins. It's a bit difficult to explain his art. Remember making dioramas in school... well much of his stuff is sort of like that. My favourite one was called "Seedless Grapes". There was an "abortion clinic" where the seeds were being removed from grapes. Outside there were a bunch of anti-abortion protesting grapes. I guess you have to have a weird sense of humour to appreciate that one.

I like it here. It reminds me of home in a way. Watching kids skate and fall down, people running around carrying cross country skis. It's a bit of a taste of what I have been missing...