Sweet Sweet Sweeden

We FINALLY arrived in Stockholm after over 24 hours traveling by train to get there. We started out going from Linz back to Vienna, then took a night train from Vienna to Hamburg (which went back through Linz so we actually could've just stayed in Linz and cut nearly 3 hours off of our travel time by jumping on the train in Linz but we didn't realize it until the next morning in Hamburg!!!), missed the Hamburg stop (it was the train steward's fault... she told us the train was 30 minutes late, but it wasn't) and got off the train in a different part of Hamburg, took the subway back to the right Hamburg station, went to Copenhagen, changed trains to get to Malmo (which included the train riding on a ferry across the water), and finally caught the rockiest train from Malmo to Stockholm! In Stockholm, our messages didn't get to Jill & Ben so we didn't see them until a couple of hours later when they returned back from the train station where they'd been waiting for us to arrive on a later train!

Anyway... after spending some time playing "catch up" on the latest gossip from the past 3 weeks, we finally got some much needed sleep (and a shower) and got up to a fresh start in Stockholm on Sunday morning!

In Stockholm we walked along the waterfront to the Vasa Museum. This museum featured the famous Vasa ship which sank in the Stockholm harbor in 1628 after sailing for nearly 20 minutes. Because the Baltic Sea is brackish (not salt), the ship was very well preserved under the water until it was raised over 300 years later! They had the entire ship along with many of its contents in the museum. Additionally, there were stories and movies about the raising of the ship. Next, we took a water taxi across the harbor to Old Town (Gamla Stan) where we walked around peeking in many of the shops (well, Jill & I did that while Keith and Ben talked "Spring") and continued shopping until dark. A bird helped to move us along by pooping on me as we sat in Old Town looking at maps and our travel guides trying to figure out what to do next! >:(

After a walk to City Hall (made of 8 MILLION bricks) where we were able to stroll through the site of Nobel Prize Award Ceremonies location, we had a long dinner, the headed the train station for our first night train with more than just Keith and I in the room. Jill, Ben, Keith, and I all squeezed into our little cabin in Stockholm and prepared for the long ride north to the cold, wet winter-esque weather of Storlien, Sweden. During our short stay in Storlien where we waited for a train to take us across the Sweden/Norway border to Trondheim, we saw our first snow of the trip!

Stockholm Favorite Memories:

• Ben enjoyed a pita/tortilla of hotdogs, mashed potatoes, sour cream, ketchup, tomatoes, mustard curry, and a few other things for lunch in Stockholm
• Jill's favorite memory there was finding "my friend Keri" (and Keith too) already safely at the hotel after returning from waiting at the train station and thinking that we weren't going to make it to Stockholm that night.
• My NOT favorite memory was getting pooped on by the big ole bird! Although I did appreaciate Jill coming to my rescue to clean it off of me while Ben ran off gagging (seriously) and Keith convinently wandered off!
• The high-technology in the entire city! There was one store that had motion detecting sensors that would light up different parts of the store window display depending on where people were standing/walking on the street! That kept us intrigued for quite and while, and even got a few other people to stop and see what we were looking at!
• My favorite hitorical sight/event was seeing City Hall and the park inside/behind it