Category: Sweden (2002)

Today I will go to the city to do some last minute shopping. On Monday I will visit the Royal Castle with Johanna, and I will board my plane on Tuesday morning for the long journey home. I won’t have access to internet anymore, so this will be my last entry for my trip. I appreciate anyone who has taken the time to enjoy this trip with me, and I hope that you have enjoyed to watching my trip unfold. Thanks to all my friends throughout Europe for your help in making this the best trip it could be! I have really enjoyed seeing all of you, and I hope some will visit me during this next year! See you soon!

Oh my gosh. I had the best time last night in Norrköping. We got there about 6:30 and Kent started at 10:50. I bought a KENT T-shirt to wear during the concert. It started with their new songs on their Väpen och Ammunition CD which I think is so awesome!! Then, like the cover of their new album, a tiger was lit up on the stage in the background with its eyes in the spot lights. I LOVED IT SOOOOOO MUCH. I really couldn’t believe during this awesome concert, to finally be seeing them live, and participating in something so cool like this in Swedish, and in Sweden!! I really felt like a swede when I was able to sing along with the crowd during songs like *Om du var här* and Musik Non-stop. I HAD THE BEST TIME! And it was so cool to have this be the end of my time here in Sweden. We got back late and slept most of the morning this morning. I then had to say good bye to Rickard, because he is going to a golfing tournament that he goes to every year. Sofia and I are staying and then I will see Johanna!

KENT Concert! Tonight is the night where I see my favorite band play. For those of you who know me, you know I love two artists very much—Utada Hikaru and KENT! I will write more about the concert when I get back!

Today I met Johanna for lunch in the city. We ate at Sandy’s, a really good deli type place that now I have eaten at 3 times. We walked around the city just talking and enjoying the awesome weather until she had to run errands for her party tonight. Rickard and I went home to get his parents and Sofia for our family dinner out in the center of Gamla Stan, the Old City of Stockholm. Dinner was so much fun. Kördel Mom, Dad, Sister, Rickard, and I all went to a really cool restaurant for some great food as my thank you for letting me stay. It was really an awesome evening with each other. Rickard and I then went to meet THE COACH, another Swedish guy that studied at UT with us during the 2000 year. It was so fun to catch up with the Coach and see what he is up to. We all then went to meet Johanna and her friends at Stockholm’s finest ranked club called Kharma. It was pretty much like clubs in the states in big cities I guess, but it was really nice to meet everyone. Rickard’s two friends came, and meeting Johanna and her friends was a blast. All in all the night was a perfect night to always be remembered.

So, today I got off my cruise ship and made my way back Rickard’s house in Haninge. I was quite proud of myself, because I made it the whole way back with no trouble. I then called Johanna, who I haven’t seen in 3 1-2 years, and we decided on a place for us to meet. We met and it was exactly like I had just seen her last month! It was really so awesome, and we went on a boat to an island in Stockholm for an ice cream and to walk around. We then came back and had dinner at TGIFriday’s (for it’s location, not food) and had a nice dinner. After that we walked around the city and planned for tomorrow’s activities..

Today we headed for Sweden’s largest IKEA store and looked around with Sofia, Rickard’s sister. She’s moving into a new apartment they just bought in Stockholm so we looked at the furniture she bought. We then went home and waited for Rickard’s mom to come home so we could go out to the stables and ride their horse, Mula, an Iceland horse brought over from Iceland for it’s interesting trot. It was a lot of fun to try to control this horse in the *tilt* that it rode in, it looked hilarious because it runs really fast without bumping you up and down. Lots of fun.

Today’s weather did not permit us to use the sail, so the motor had be run for us to get to Martin’s parent’s house on the archipelago. We *sailed* all day and finally made it for a great barbecue meal at his parents. I don’t know what got over me, but Rickard and Martin are practically twice my size and I out-ate both of them! It was almost to an embarrassing point as for those of you who know me, you know I am not the fastest eater, and everyone was sitting finished for almost 25 minutes before I finished my last piece of steak… yummm. Anyhow, we then went back down to the boat and played cards until nighttime — which still is not dark enough to know that it is so late, and we went to bed.

Today, Rickard and I got together our things and set out to Stockholm to walk around and get stuff for our sailing trip with Martin and Sara. I have never been sailing before, so I was really excited to get everything started. We met them on the train, and took the train south of Stockholm, then a bus to the harbor where we found an amazing blue sail boat complete with 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and a shower! Of course, Martin did not own this huge thing, but the brother of the ex-president of Volvo Sweden did! Martin is an avid sailor and transports boats to different ports. It was a very nice boat, and we bought dinner and started on our way. We sailed until 11 that night and found a nice little harbor to park our boat so we could go to sleep.

We decided to take the X2000 train back to Stockholm because it was a lot quicker. My pass covered it, so I was glad that it shaved off 3 hours of transit time back to Stockholm. When we arrived, we were picked up by Andreas, RickardÂ’s best friend. It was cool to finally meet him, because I had heard so many stories of him. We hung out at his apartment, and he is just as a fan of KENT as I am, so we listened and talked about Kent and their upcoming concert weÂ’re going to attend. We then went out to Stockholm to another amusement park, but this time not to ride rides, but to watch a concert. A Swedish band called Eskobar and Weeping Willows were playing, and Andreas had invited us to go. It was really cool to see how the Swedes watch concerts and how safe I felt there. ItÂ’s really different from the US in respects of violence at the concerts. It was a lot of fun, and then we headed back to RickardÂ’s house at night.