Sweeeeden

I made it out of the Roskilde festival alive, and no one set my tent on fire. But someone peed on it, so I decided to just ditch it there... supposedly tents get donated to humanitarian causes. In the morning I took the bus and train from Roskilde to Copenhagen and then to Malmo in Sweden. I had a 5 hour layover there, which was enough to see the major sites in the city.


This castle has a really cool museum inside. Natural history, an aquarium, modern art, traditional Nepalese weaving, and lots of old castle stuff. Only some of the exhibits had english text, so I had to ask about somethings. In the natural history section they had a display of exotic fish, and then there were these tan rectangles... turns out they were indeed fish sticks, but I had to ask someone to translate the text to make sure it was a joke.
Cool windmill in one of the huge public parks near the university.

After Malmo, I made it Stockholm by nighttime. On my first full day in Sweden, I did the only sensible thing... and took a trip to IKEA. A free bus runs from center city to the Ikea mega flagship store, which is about double the size of any I've been in before. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera, but take my word for it: it was epic.
I also got a 3 day card for the public bike rentals that are all over the city. They're pretty cheap because they're run by Clear Channel which also gets money from advertising on the bikes and kiosks. The bikes are actually surprisingly nice; its a well designed system. I think they're rolling out this exact system in a couple US cities already or soon.

I stayed up really late last night hanging out with some cool people from the dungeon-esque basement hostel I'm staying at. Today I got a late start and went to the VASA museum which houses a ship ordered by the king in the 1600's. It was too extravagant and top heavy, and sank 20 minutes into its maiden voyage. Something about the sea and mud up here preserved it nearly perfectly, and it was raised from the sea bed about 300 years later. The ship is absolutely enormous, and the museum had great exhibits.
From the outside.
Scale replica of the ship in front of the real deal.

Master Samuels Street.



I also went to the Technical Museum which was nerdtastic. My favorite thing was this awd motorcycle, but they had exhibits on a little of everything.

Tomorrow I'm flying to London!