onsala 8 – stockholm, actually

i swear, i was so freakin busy in stockholm, i barely had the chance to look up the sites of the museums we went to, let alone right a blog entry, let alone translate poor yuu’s journal. =(>_)>

we arrived saturday evening, went to the hotel to drop our stuff off, and then headed for dinner. i had what was possibly the best italian somethings evarz. it was like an egg roll only in pasta. it was so incredibly delicious i ate all four roll things and the appetizer rolls before i could stop myself. cannelloni, i think it was. yeah. i’ve had plenty of manacotti before, actually i love those things, but this? this was like The Italian Food. in short, i was in italian-cuisine-otaku heaven. also, the restaurant had zebras on the wallpaper. it was quite odd. oh yeah, also, they served me what is possibly the best strawberry daquiri i’ve ever had as well, and i’ve had quite a few of those. … uh, i mean…

then we wandered around gamla stan (pronounced gemlah staun) and planned the morrow’s trip.

sunday, we started out w/ breakfast at the hotel – fairly good. the swedish like to have sandwiches for breakfast, which is a tradition i can get completely behind – and then headed for the VasaMuseet, which is the museum constructed to house the Vasa, a ship which is freakin huge and awesomely cool. unfortunately, it was so bloody dark in there that i could hardly see anything, and the pictures i took weren’t very good either. the ship itself was raised from goteborg harbor about 330 years after it sank on it’s maiden voyage. the king wanted his ship a little larger than engineering at that time could manage. the thing that really struck me about that museet though, after the sheer size of the ship, was the reconstructions they did of some of the skulls they found on board. these kind of reconstructions always intrigue me, but these were especially creepy, because it was so dark in there that the faces sort of floated out of the ether at you. (^^;) after that we had lunch at MAX, a swedish hamburger chain that has apparently closed down mcdonald’s in the northern parts of sweden. it was quite delicious. the burger i ordered was huge! maybe four of five inches across, with all the toppings. it was almost like a big mac, except with both patties smooshed down into one massive pattie, and then not so much special sauce. their fries were like mcdonald’s too, i.e. not to my liking, but the burger itself more than made up for that. after lunch we headed to the post museum, which was the history of postage and the swedish postal system. i think my cousin thought i was crazy, but i quite liked it. we spent so much time getting there, though, that by the time we’d looked around, they were closing and we didn’t get to go to the gift shop. (T_T) probably a good thing, though, considering the massively large amounts of moneys i spent at the vasamuseet. (^^;) after that, we had dinner … somewhere. i can’t remember where now. i was still pretty much high from the cannelonnis. we decided after that to go to the movies, as it had been raining, literally ALL DAY. plus, and this is the part that threw me, the stores all close at like 5 or 6. i know it was sunday, but they close at that time every day. i was totally thrown. we were going to see pirates 3, but mom said that we’re going to see that when i get back to the states, so sanna and i decided on 300 instead. if you like the graphic novel, you will absolutely love this movie. if you’ve never heard of the graphic novel, or if you hate highly stylised violence, or if you dislike high stylisation in general, you should spend your moneys on some other movie, one that you will like. i? loved this flick. sanna? didn’t. then it was like midnight, so we went back to the hotel and went to bed.

monday, i slept in whilst sanna went to breakfast, and then we headed for the silk weaving museum. this? was righteously cool. it was the smallest thing we visited, but it was totally cool. they have jaquard looms there, and the lady who operates them was there. she was like, would you like a demonstration? and sanna and i were like, hells yes! so she basically gave us a little impromptu class in jaquard weaving right there. i soo wanted to try my hand, but given the age of the things, it was probably a no-go.
they also had a loom where they wove bookmarks and ribbon. you could do six ribbons simultaneously! in the little video they had upstairs, there was video of someone doing just that. i was like, talk about pre-computer age multi-tasking! also upstairs, they had a little exhibit about the histoire of the business. that was pretty cool, too, but also dark. that damn light! damaging all the historical things and preventing me from really seeing them!



after that, we headed for lunch, this time at a pizza joint. i had decided that i absolutely must eat sweden’s take on the immortal dish. let me tell you, i was not disappointed. i ordered a ham and mushroom thing, figuring to order toppings i was well familiar with in order to better analyze the difference between american and swedish pizzas. then the thing came. i was like, this? is all mine? =(>_)>
i was not disappointed. the crust was much much thinner than anything i’d had in the states, and so we were forced to use forks and knives. apparently, in this country, this is quite normal. i went with the flow and dug in. … then i blacked out. it was so yummy. delicious. delightful. atrociously good. i don’t remember much until we were leaving, and i looked down at the plate. oh crap! i thought. i’d better take a picture!

there was, in gamla stan, probably the best bookstore i have ever been to. if you’ll pardon the crappy shooting, i invite you to view the video i had to take of the manga section. it was too large to fit in even several photographs. frankly, there was even another end cap stuffed with manga. now, i realize they had to have had both swedish and english language editions of some of these, but quite a few of them were engleska only or svenska only, so… that was a huge manga section. as you can hear, sanna was perhaps not so impressed. silly her. (^_^)

then we had some ice cream, hurridly caught our train to the airport and our flight home, had some mcdonald’s for dinner and finally went our seperate ways, me to onsala, sanna to her own house. i about passed out i was so tired, but! i managed to stay up for the 13er episode of blood+. which, by the way, rocked. hard.

this morning, we went to chalmers observatory for a tour, which by the by they don’t do all the time. you have to call and make a special appointment. (^_^) — i am having the biggest deja vu right now. how many freakin times am i going to be stuck in sweden exactly!? — it was very very cool. they do radio telescopes there, listening for things and mapping the stars with radio waves. they’ve got one telescope 20 meters across for the really tiny waves, and then a 25 meter one for the large waves. the 25 meter one was suitable for framing, i swear. the 20 meter one was actually encapsulated in a bubble made of metal to keep the noise out. it was very cool in there, like some kind of crypt. it was actually temperature controlled. the patterns of the bubble when i looked up were intriguing.
they also had a room of ancient technology, such as apple iie’s and the first laptops they used (oh yeah, ancient…) but right outside of that room, hooked up to the computers that they actually used, was a familiar sight. it aroused in me a certian longing for things like my own friggin bed, and a shower stall that’s bigger than a closet. actually, what it made me want the most was access to my regular book making tools. i miss you, tools! (T_T)

then we came home for lunch and then rae and i went thrifting. the thrift shops they have here, at least the ones we visited, were more like secondhand shops than what i’m used to calling a thrift shop, but they were awesome. i got two new shirts and one new sweater for 35 kronor. about US$5. then rae and i went grocery shopping – something i always love doing – and they had these things that hooked on to the shopping carts where you could scan each item you bought as you bought it and then at the checkout lane, you just handed them the scanner and went along. it deducted automatically from whichever account you listed when you signed up for the service and you didn’t have to hassle with anything. how cool is that? i, only the other hand, had to pay for my four dr peppers, tub of ben&jerry’s cherry garcia (^_^) and wether’s originals box that will later become a book for sale, i had to pay for those things the regular way. the fancy thing was, i did it all in swedish! now, granted, i hardly said three words for the entire transaction, but the cashier spoke at least a little bit more than i did, and she didn’t have to utter one word in engleska to appease my measley little brain. yays~ (^_^)

oh yeah! i almost forgot. before we did all this, rae and i went to see one of the seriously old churches that she lives near. or rather, kyrkan. the church. every single one of my pics of the interior turned out fuzzy, which is a real shame because it was nice inside, but i really liked that kyrka. it had nice acoustics. it also had a crypt. literally! it had two sarcophogus…es(?) one for this famous pirate from onsala, and one for his bride. mister lars gathenhielm apparently wanted to marry this girl, but her father said, hells no, you’re a pirate. you can marry my daughter when this church has two steeples! … so, lars, being the industrious fellow he was, built a second spire on the church. nothing like putting your ill gotten booty to good use.

or your ill booten gotty.

goodnight folks.

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