Craziest Train Ride

So this is probably one of those stories that won't be funny in print, so just imagine me retelling this story with all my hand animations and everything...

So I cheaped out and decided I wasn't going to pay the 50 odd dollars to have a couchette (a bed on the train) for my night train from Maria's town to Stockholm. I decided on just the reclining chair, should be fine right?

My first sign of the night to come was that the train allowed dogs on board...ok thats fine....turns out i'm sitting with two. I little fuzzy lap dog right beside me and a medium-large hound type dog. Grrrreat.... actually they turned out to be the least of my worries. So before I can go on need to describe the scene.

Doorway to next car

Hall - Bathroom

11 12 15 16

table table

13 14 17 18

squeaky door

some more seats

next car is the bar

So i was sitting in seat 14, beside me in seat 13 was an older lady with her lap dog and in seats 11 and 12 was the older lady's 20 something daughter and her larger hound type dog. Across in 15, 16, 17, 18 was 30 something girl and a family off three.

So it started off bad, being right beside the bathroom and the squeaky automatic door. But it was the proximity to the bar that made everything crazy that night. At first it was two crazy hippy types who kept staggering back and forth yelling at each other. Luckily they got off around 1am. Then there were these two guys who were drinking and smoking in the doorway to the next hall. Well, girl across from me in 12 decides to curse these guys out (I assume, it was all in Swedish but that seemed the gist of it) since the drinking and smoking is not allowed. Of course they aren't happy and are a little beligerant but not much else happens.

Around 2am the family of three gets off the train. A short time later, the same two drunk guys and a girl stagger down again and decide this is a good place to sit....guess they didn't actually reserve seats. So of course they were still drinking and partying, hence still no sleep for me. Girl across from me kept trying to figure out how to get her and her dog comfortable on the seats as well as getting up for every stop for a smoke. She must have had something else wrong because she literally went to the bathroom every 20mins all 8hrs of the train. Wierd.

So finally things sorta calm down around 4am. By this time drunk guy has passed out under his table with his legs across the aisle and under my seat. So now my leg room not only is contending with the dog but with drunk guys legs. On top of that drunk guy isn't feeling so well so he is rolling and moaning, occasionally kicking out....at me. So I didn't really sleep much.

6am is when the real action started. We hit a big stop. As such a ton of people got on the train, including some filipino ladies who's seats were where the drunk and friends are. So there is all these people trying to get on the train, stepping over the drunk guy in the aisle. His friends tried to wake him up but he just moaned and cursed, so they left him. The filipino girls sorta sat down, cross legged as they were scared of him, and everyone else just walked over top of him.

Eventually, in his kicking rolling he sorta kicked the dog underneath my seat. Well that was it, girl across from me already didn't like him, so she was started trying to wake him up, tell him to get out of there (once again i assume that's what was said). Eventually she was hitting him with a rolled up magazine in the leg. Well he snapped. Got up and a shouting fight ensued. It was craziness. I didn't know what to do as I couldn't understand anything. But the shouting went on for many minutes. Eventually he left, the train security came around and they were told about this guy. So they went to look for him. Somehow they missed him and he came back and there was more shouting. He put his hand toward the dog and they pulled it back screaming, feining as if he'd been bitten and then screaming how viscious the dog was. So that was about it, security finally came and took him away. Crazy.

Needless to say, once again I went a night without sleep. Good thing my body is used to it by now. I got a couple hours on the way to Oslo though.

To Norway!

Logan

Pictures

Finally! I have added pictures to the gallery. 241 pictures to be exact. I even categorized them for all the place I've been and made all thumbnails so you can preview them in small size.

Only took a couple hours and some downloaded programs to do all the resizing. Enjoy! Let me know what you think!

So just click on the Photo Gallery at the side or here
http://www.uncasvet.com/cgi-bin/emAlbum.cgi

Logan

Sweden Fun Facts

Ok, no big story here, just some tidbits of my time here in Sweden.

• This is officially the farthest north I've ever been. Here in Ornsköldsvik I'm at latitude 63.3 which is farther north than Yellowknife or Anchorage, and almost the same as Fairbanks. Hence, my first week here it never got dark. It's not quite the midnight sun, but sunset was at 11pm and sunrise was at 3am so even at 1am you could still play sports outside! But the climate here is the same as Edmonton, due to the gulf stream coming up here. It's been high 20's my two weeks here with occasional rain.
• This whole area around Ornsköldsvik is a UNISCO World Heritage Site because it has the highest land rise in the world. In short, this area was the thickest part of the ice during the last ice age 20,000yrs ago, about 3km thick. The weight of the ice pushed all of this land 500m below sea level. Since the ice melted it has been rebounding ever since to it's position now 286m above sea level. And it's still rising at a rate of 8mm per year. http://www.highcoast.net/english/eng.html
• All this makes the landscape here amazing. Every turn in the road there is another big deep beautiful lake. There everywhere, a boaters paradise.
• Gas here is expensive!!! It is now at 13Kr / litre. The current exchange rate is 6.5Kr to the CAD dollar. So that is 2CAD / litre!! Which is probably why there isn't a ton of waterskiing and related sports around here, boats eat too much gas.
• Oh sports how I miss thee. Luckily Maria had me meet a friend of hers son who is 19 and just as much into sports as me. So we played Badminton (i lost), beach soccer which was crazy fun and tiring, and then a lot of beach volleyball. I even entered a beach volleyball tournament which I also lost but was tons of fun.
• As many of you know I've been staying with Maria here in Sweden. 17 years ago she was my nanny back in Canada when I was 6yrs old. Now I'm staying here with her husband and her 2yr old. Wow, 2yr olds are a lot of work. But they have been absolutely wonderful! I'm so glad I got to come here!
• If you work at a job in Sweden for 1 year you are entitled to 4 weeks holiday!
• As well when you have a child the mother gets 450 paid days off and the father gets 100 days.
• They have shop express at the supermarket, where you get your own scanner and just scan your items and pay. Pretty cool.
• This is Hockey Town Sweden. From this area came Peter Forsberg, Markus Naslund, the Sedin twins, Nicholas Lidstrom and more. This is also the home of MoDo the Swedish Elite team that some Oilers played for during the lockout if I recall.
• The Swedish language is hard! They make sounds I can't make!! I'm a little worried about Danish now.
• I think that's it. Two weeks has gone by incredibly quick and I've now been gone 8 full weeks. Crazy! Tonight I start my journey towards Norway. I have one night in Oslo on Saturday then off to Stavanger on Sunday to stay with Anne and her family.

Until next time! Leave comments please. They're fun for me to read!

Logan

Four Days Four Countries

Man, travel wears on you. In four days I went from

• Madrid to Basil Switzerland
• Slept 5 hours in Basil and caught the early train to Interlaken
• Spent the day and a rough rainy night in a tent in Interlaken
• Caught the train to Milan, took a two hour bus ride to the Milan airport
• Caught a 1hr delayed flight to Stockholm and arrived at 12:30am
• Took a bus into Stockholm and arrived at 1:30am
• Sat down and dozed outside the closed bus station until some wierd looking guy came to me and said "Do not go to sleep"
• Walked around Stockholm until 5am, my 8:30 train was full so i wandered some more until 12:30
• Then took a 3hr train to Sundsvall

So yeah. I'm glad to be staying here in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden with Maria for a couple weeks. Actually get to unpack my smelly backpack and sleep in a nice quiet room for a little while.

P.S. Sweden in beautiful, and the women are all tall, long blonde hair and blue eyes...ok not all, but most, the cliche's are true :-)

Logan

I've got that Interlaken feeling

So after consulting both my (or should i say Leslie's) guidebook and the girl sitting beside me on the plane, I decided if i had one day to see Switzerland it had to be in Interlaken.

Wow, it is the most beautiful place I've travelled so far (as well as the most expensive). I arrive there by train at about 9am. It's this teeny little town of 10,000 people situated between two massive lakes and along the river running between them. Surrounded on all sides by the towering Alps (10,000ft) which are majestic!!

So I completely blew my budget, I will now be in debt until at least Christmas. Interlaken is the adventure sport capital of Switzerland and Europe. And I talked myself into the whole your only hear once thing.

I really wanted to skydive but at 380fr (1 CAD = 1.10 SFR) it wasn't worth it. I can skydive back in Canada for much less and I'm not skydiving for the scenery. But I did decide on a little package deal.

At 11am I took a van ride up 2500ft up the mountain. Strapped myself to some guy named Bruno and a parachute and we ran off of this hill and Paraglided! It was beautiful. Not the big adrenaline rush, but just a amazing view and flight. I took a ton of pictures on the way down.

Then at 1pm I went canyoning. Seriously it was the coolest thing I've ever done. Strapped on a wetsuit, helmet and lifejacket and then came down a river gorge in the mountains. We had 25ft jumps into pools, rappeling down waterfalls, steep inclines where the water has carved a smooth path so it turns it into a massive slide. Unreal! So much fun. As soon as I was done I wanted to go back and do the full day trip.

It was a wild day. I stayed the night in Balmers tent village, which is exactly as it sounds. There was good fun and games there. Then that was it, I left early this morning on a train to Milan before catching my flight to Sweden. I arrived in Stockholm at midnight and here I am, at 4am not having slept waiting for the train station to open so I can train to Sundsvall to see Maria.

Cheers all!!

Logan

Oh budget airlines, where am I now??

Disclaimer: on this computer the y are in the z spot, but internet is expensive so i dont have time to slow down and fix it so deal with it. there is also no apostrophe

Ok so i alreadz wasnt happz with the budget flights as thez have me arriving past 11pm which means im sleeping in airports a couple times, but its budget flights so what can zou expect

Well im alreadz to go to Milan to sleep in the airport and then catch the earlz train to Cinque Terra. Waiting waiting, our flight isnt leaving. Tada zour flight is cancelled!!!

So that was at 2130. There were 200 angrz spanish and italians ahead of me in line for the easz jet customer representatives. each one takes min 10 to 20 mins to figure out how to rearrange flights. bz the time i got to the front it was 2am and thez told me i couldnt flz to milan for two full dazs. so i just said, i dont reallz care, im just backpacking can zou flz me anzwhere tomorrow? that made her happz as i didnt care if i got to milan

so where did i flz. Basil, Switzerland!!

it wasnt all bad though. thez put me up in a hotel......ok so not just a hotel. The biggest hotel in europe. Nô kidding. It was ginormous, 91,000 square meteres!! i got a free buffet dinner...at 3am then went up to mz king siye bed and washroom with that little butt washer in it. It was el primo. Got a free buffet breakie out of it as well and speant the whole daz sleeping until mz 7pm flight.

OK so one last thing about flying. Our flight was delazed leaving Madrid to Basil and then a bunch of thunderstorms popped up around swityerland. well in those conditions air traffic control onlz lets so manz planes through per hour. Well since we were delazed we missed our time slot as such thez said wed have to wait 2 hours for another time slot.

Luckilz easz jet called and reworked somethings and got a new time slot and we were onlz half an hour late.

Also luckilz i walked to a random hostel 20 mins before thez closed and thez had one bed left so i dint have to sleep in the train station. ZaZ!!

So no Cinque Terra for me which is sad, but im loving switzerland!!

Logan

I love Backpacking!

Ok, i am having so much fun visiting all these cities and seeing all these sights, but truly my favourite part of backpacking is the people. I have met so many people I can´t even imagine. I´ve met people from every continent on Earth (sans Antartica), every country in Western Europe, almost all 50 states, every province and territory in Canada (except the Maratimes, not sure why) it´s unreal!!!

It´s cool because right away you have one thing in common, your travelling. So starting a conversation is easy! Where you from? Where are you going? How long have you been gone? It´s unbeliveable.

We are at a wicked hostel in Madrid (called Mad Hostal) and I had the greatest day yesterday. Both Elandri and Elise are major art buffs which isn´t really me so we split up for the day. At breakfast I met some Americans and we went and saw all the sights then they left and I met another american and two mexican girls along with 3 americans stationed in Germany just here for the week. So we started playing Asshole (the card game) up on the roof of this hostal (yes the roof isn´t that cool) until it got dark. Then we went back downstairs to the huge common room and bar. And we just kept rounding up people. The beers were cheap (3euro for 1liter!!!) and by the end of it we had 15 people playing Asshole. We had Americans, south Africans, italians, a japanese girl, a jamaican, a brazilian, two mexicans it was the coolest thing ever. Then we just all got up and tried to find some local bar down the road until they closed. Just so cool.

So yep, life is buenos! I gotta run to catch my flight to Milan. I´ll write more about what i actually saw here in Madrid later

Logan

Language Difficulties / Cordoba

So there have definitely been language barriers all through Europe but the hardest has been Spain. Barcelona was fairly easy to communicate in as it is so touristy from what i read it was about 25% spoke fluent English. Malaga wasn´t bad only because the whole Costa del Sol area is a British hotspot so everywhere we go there was British people and bars. But then we hit the interior of Spain in Cordoba and Granada and i won´t lie it was hard. I´m guessing maybe 5% spoke partial English. At the train stations, the hostels, the restaurants it was hard to get around. Makes me want to learn spanish even more so now. I´m picking up things here and there but it makes you feel lonely in a town when you can´t talk to anyone. I was sitting watching the World Cup Game (Brazil and France) and this old man sitting beside me wanted to tell me stuff but i just couldn´t understand. He kept trying but it never worked, but at the end he still smiled and shook my hand on his way out. It would have been so fun to sit and talk with him.

Ok so Friday we day tripped to Granada which has the Alhambra palace which is gigantic. The saying is you have not truly lived until you visited the Alhambra.
http://www.alhambradegranada.org/historia/granadaOrigen_en.asp

The next day Saturday we left the resort and bussed to Cordoba which has a ton of history. When the Moors came over across the straight of Gilbraltar and conquered Spain they made Cordoba their capital in 711. As such Cordoba became the largest and most sophisticated city in all of Europe at the time. We visited the huge Mosque/Cathedral there. It was beautiful and disappointing at the same time. It was a incredible Mosque built starting in the 11 century and expanded on through the centuries. However when the Chrisitians came and conquered Spain they decided to convert the mosque into a Cathedral which in my mind ruined it. To be walking in this beautiful mosque and then see this massive cathedral placed in the middle was disgraceful in my opinion but hey who am i.

We just spent one day there and Sunday caught a bus to Madrid!!

Logan