Day 1 and Day 2

In total, travel must have taken about 17 hours, and thank God it was a night flight so Mel and I were not jet lagged. The first thing I realised when I woke up on the plane at 6-ish Swedish time was how bright it was and then it hit me, that I really am a far far way from home.

Arlanda airport is like IKEA, everything it about it from the floors to the counters and toilets. It was quite funny. So with 130Kg divided in 9 bags between us, Mel and I decided to take a train to Stockholm Central and then find our way to our backpacker inn Lodge 32 by Metro or taxi. I am not kidding when I tell you, this was the worst and most tiring day of my life so far despite Stokholm being amazingly beautiful city and the weather being perfect.

We could not find a lift to get from the airport to the train station, and some guy told us the escalators were the only way. So the plan was for Mel to go down first and for me to send the bags vis escalator down one by one. Smart? Well you decide. We successfully brought down bags number 2 to 8. Bag 1 almost got me killed becuase the escalotor was very fast and I lost my footing for a while so I could have fallen resulting in a big mess. But bag 1 also almost killed Mel becuase I was unable to place it properly on the step, it started to tumble and roll down like a boulder towards Mel making a lot of noise on the way down. When we got to the bottom, we realised there were lifts after all. I bet you they are they still playing the CC-TV records at Arlanda and alughing at these two silly Asians.


After 5 long hours of moving bags to and from stations and taxis and sidewalks, we made it to out inn. Upon seeing our baggage the lady at the counter calmly asked me "Are you girls staying here your whole lives or what?". I was in no mood to joke whatsoever, so I calmly said "We're on a student exchange, going to Lulea, it's very cold there so we have a lot of thick coats & sweaters."

We spent Day 1 and 2 in Stockholm just walking around our neighbourhood and the main shopping district in the central. There's quite a lot of good shopping and many antique shops selling wonderful weird things from the past. If only I had space in my luggage to buy some stuff.

At 6:12 pm 6th August we boarded a train that would take us to Lulea - 13 hours away. Met really nice people in my compartment - which was a sleeper compartment with chairs that magically become beds! (pictures to come soon) In my cabin was a Swedish lady, a korean lady who lived in Sweden her whole life and is an alumni at the uni I'm doing my exchange at and a middle eastern lady with her two beautiful baby boys and of course Mel :) We all got along great, except for when the older boy who was about 3 would have a tantrum, but I gave him chocolate to keep him quiet and it worked.


I fell asleep at about 10pm, it was still bright out and we had to pull all the shades down.