vagranting

recently, when i caved to the social networking phenomenon. not really. i set up a facebook account to keep in contact with travelling companions, and a myspace account to better keep up with friends back home. update: once enough friends had progressed to facebook, i deleted that myspace good!

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well, i’ve been up here in lapland for nearly a week on dial-up. i’ve now got broadband cravings. and cravings for curry, or anything else spicy. swedish cooking is like english cooking, in it’s all-pervasive mildness. i would pay $20 for nandos. which is a realistic price estimate if they were open in sweden!

more visa headaches. it seems that even though aussies don’t need a vista to get into most western european countries in the schengen agreemen, it seems you may only stay 3 months out of any 6 month period. it’s not really that they’re very strict on checking this, but if i overstay that could nullify my travel insurance. i’m not 100% sure of what my options are, but i’m hoping to sort it out when i talk with immigration back in stockholm.

in worst case, i’ll have to spend at least 3 months outside the schengen countries. so it makes sense to find a base city where i can focus on working instead of sightseeing, where the cost of living is cheap. currently considering tallinn (estonia), riga (latvia) and possibly belgrade (serbia). all seem to be reasonably developed, cheaper to live in and pretty accessible. tallinn less of major hub, but much closer to sweden and relatives.

anyhow. should at least be back in the black with my spending card before i leave lapland. doesn’t help when you have horrible customer service people who don’t cancel your contracts when you ask them. that’s $75 lost on wireless access for north america. great. but at least i’m relatively free of distraction from work here.

speaking of distraction, i’m thinking of rebooting the podcast as i mentioned earlier. i’m currently thinking a series called “things i learned around the world”, which will mainly be silly, 5 minute rants on annoyances, cultural differences and whatever else pops into my head. i think i need an outlet for that kind of thing a the moment. thoughts, people?

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again, something which should have been posted months ago. from chicago, i caught a bus to milwaukee to see mutemath live (video clip). awesome concert. also, the cinematics were fantastic live too. leaving early to catch a bus back to chicago in the rain sucked.

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so it’s 4.30am and i’m about to catch a bus to the airport. i’m catching a flight up to far northern sweden, to visit my grandparents in örträsk: a tiny village of under 1000 mostly retirees. exciting! nothing to do but eat lots of home made food, rest and catch up on some more work. although i’ll be stuck on dial-up in all likelyhood. shock horror!

sweden has turned out to be ludicrously expensive. so i’m quite relieved that there won’t be any need to spend money while i’m up there. for example, you can’t really get a takeaway meal for less than $10. it’s more expensive than london (at least on the big mac index)! the 25% gst might have something to do with it. neighbouring norway apparently has the highest cost of living in europe.

did not get around to dealing with the immigration department this time, i’ll work it out when i come back through stockholm. also, didn’t really do any sight-seeing. the time-zone inertia was partly to blame, along with a general longing for a break from being a tourist.

i’ll finish up with a few new mini-revelations:

• in swedish, glasses (spectacles) are called “glasögon”. literally, glass eyes. i still do not know what a glass eye is called.
• although a medium mcmeal will cost you over $10 here, you can choose to have it with organic milk.
• americans are still them most culturally clueless travellers.
• the shops close very early here, especially after brazil where basically things stay open all night.
• stockholm has an abudance of copper statues, hot dog stands, cafes and h&m clothing stores.
• this is the first major city on this trip where i haven’t ridden the public transport yet.

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