There's not much that can be said about the beginnings of a trip that make it any less boring or any more glamorous than it is or isn't. There was a hotel in Atlanta so I didn't have to wake up at 4am to drive down. There was a long layover in Ft. Lauderdale that involved leaving the secure area to get my luggage cause I took one of those super cheap airlines that don't connect your luggage through to your destination only to find I was 5 hours too early to check back in for my next flight. Even then there was another 5 hours of waiting in the concourse. There was a long, 8-ish hour flight where even though I've lost a lot of weight recently I found that I'm still a massively fat fuck in the eyes of the airline industry. But after about 20 hours of flying and waiting and flying I arrived in Stockholm sleep deprived but intact and with all my luggage in hand. I'm going to blame the sleep deprived bit on my inability to follow directions or make sense of the narrow, weaving, convoluted roads of Stockholm and turning the last 10 minutes of the drive to my hotel into over 30 minutes. I also don't know when rush hour is in Stockholm, but to make me feel better we're going to say it starts early in the afternoon at about the exact time I made it into the downtown area. But again I arrived intact at the floating hotel that will be my home in Stockholm for the next 4 days, the M/S Birger Jarl. I don't know what a Birger is, but a jarl is a chief or a king, so I've been mentally referring to it as the Burger King (it turns out Birger Jarl was a statesman from the early 13th century). The Burger King is a small cruise ship, it's relative size made plainly apparent when the neighboring cruise ships that dock each morning-which in turn would be dwarfed by the full sized cruise ships the likes of Royal Caribbean or...whoever the hell else has giant aircraft carrier sized floating bars. When it's not out on very short excursions the Burger King is a floating hostel, hotel, restaurant, cocktail bar, and probably some other things in the summer months like a discotheque or a bingo parlor (everyone I've seen get on the larger cruise ships next door have been in their...uh...twilight years).
My room, though private with its own bathroom (not as common as you'd think), is more hostel than stateroom. Presumably they have better appointed, proper berths on the floors above for people who aren't better suited for steerage like myself. However, the bed is solid, the toilet is functional (though it flushes with this initially terrifying jet-engine sucking sound), and I have a porthole of my own that looks at the granite wall of the harbor where I can see the feet of people walking by if I'm laying in bed. It is my own basement apartment away from home. The walls are entirely old 60s/70s wood panel wainscoting, I sleep on a simple but comfortable enough bunk bed, and the bathroom is a tiny multi-purpose room where you could easily sit on the toilet, brush your teeth, and shower all at the same time. Again...it does the job. As proof, I slept 13 hours after I got to the hotel and had food that didn't come from an airport or airplane microwave. Though, to be fair the "hot" vegetarian sandwich I had on the long Norwegian Airlines flight to Stockholm was fine, even if it was still cold in the middle.
Half a day of sleep did a surprisingly good job of getting me back in action and resetting my very jet lagged clock (Stockholm is 6 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time). I woke in time to grab breakfast, included in the dirt cheap room rate, which was simple but did the job. There was an assortment of breads, meats and cheeses I assume are for some kind of hearty breakfast sandwich that includes pickles, as well as jams, caviar, and a pate of some sort. The caviar was salty and fishy but not bad, the pate was nasty and disgusting as fuck and I think I was the only person who tried any. There were also little shot glasses of sour milk and raspberries. The sour milk is essentially a tart yogurt (and pleasantly reminded me of the skyr I had in Iceland). For free I can't complain and it was more than enough to get me going out on the town for my first Swedish excursion. (Continued in Part II)
No comments:
Post a Comment