SWEDEN! Day 3!

More Swedish madness!  If you haven't already, go back and read the first post so that you get the references.

Day 3. Saturday, October 22.  Seeing Stockholm and Vikings.

For our first full day in Sweden, Marina and I got up far, far too early, to meet up with Magnus.  We grabbed breakfast in a cafe, and then hit the streets.  Like I said in my last post, Magnus is the greatest tour guide ever, and in following him around, we saw pretty much all of Stockholm, including...

the palace (not particularly imposing),

the Swedish Reichstag (I forget what that's called in English), 

the skyline,

and basically everything worth seeing.  We also played around in some parks: 

and hung out in random tunnels.

Magnus also knows half of Stockholm, so we kept running into his friends on the street, which was really cool.  We also entertained ourselves by taking picture of the robber in terrible places.

The robber is a hand puppet belonging to the charge, and his parents have started taking it with them when they travel and posing it.  Much like Pirate Duck and Dragon, except less cool.  In Stockholm, he got posed in some pretty awful spots.  Cases in point:

Here's the robber in a square where you can buy drugs.

 Here's the robber at the site of Sweden's one and only terrorist attack.  It is okay to make fun of this attack, because no one was actually killed, with the exception of the suicide bomber.  Apparently, had he walked 20 meters further, he would have killed a ton of people.  I said this was proof that, in his heart of hearts, he didn't want to kill people.  Magnus said he was probably cold.

The robber at the site of an assassination.

This went on for a while.

Then, while wandering around the old city, something amazing happened.  We saw this guy standing in the middle of a square:

"LOOK MARINA A SWEDISH VIKING!" I yelled, without commas.  She whipped out the camera for this photograph.  As she turned around to walk back to us, I saw the Viking launch his attack, and by attack, I mean he booked it for Marina and roared. "MARINAWATCHOUTTHERESAVIKINGTRYINGTOKILLYOU." I screamed, but it was too late.  Next thing we knew, a giant Viking, complete with terrifying red contacts, was all up in our faces, snuffling, waving his skull walking stick around, and making angry sounds.  "Donate to me," he snarled, "donate to me now or I will kiss your friend."  "No way," said I, refusing to be intimidated by his fake beard, "kiss my friend and then I'll donate to you."  And that's how I paid a Russian guy dressed like a Viking 11 kroner to kiss Marina.  Whatever.  She liked it.

So then the Russian guy and I got to talking, and I asked him what he was collecting donations for.  His response:  "I'm writing a book about getting drunk while dressed as a Viking, but I need money to drink first."  I told him I appreciated his honesty, but his bright red contacts were freaking me out a bit.  "Wait," he said, "here's what I look like without the beard," and proceeded to show me pictures of himself on his phone.  "Not bad, right?" he said.  "Nope, not at all," I agreed, "but can I take a picture with you dressed like this?"  "Of course," he said.  Then, handing me his skull staff, he said, "Here.  Hold my father."  

Aaaaaand...scene.

Having survived our encounter with the Viking, we met up with a friend of Magnus, a Bosnian guy who speaks eighty million languages.  With him we generally ran around some more, including through the smallest alley in Stockholm, which is only 90 centimeters wide and it's smallest point.  Here's the entrance:

Then Magnus took us to a hot chocolate bar, which consisted of about 12 tables crammed into the smallest room possible, and it was awesome.  I had a white hot chocolate, and it was the second most delicious hot chocolate I've ever had, the first being the one in Paris.  But this one had about an inch of melted white chocolate to scrape from the bottom of the cup.  DELICIOUS.  Now I want another one.

We ran around the old city some more, and finally found a Swedish moose.  Moose are everywhere in Sweden, but unfortunately distinctly lacking in Stockholm, unless they're stuffed:

  

At this point in the evening, we split up.  Magnus and his Bosnian friend stayed in the city, while Marina and I quickly ran back to Couchsurf Boy's place to pick up food. Magnus had bought all our drinks the night before, so to pay him back, Marina and I decided we were going to cook for him.  We met back up with Magnus in the city center, took a bus to his dad's apartment, and hung out there for a few hours before deciding to meet his friends at a bar.  They were quite nice, even though they encouraged Magnus to tell terrible, terrible jokes.  But he's so happy when he does it, you can hate the joke, but you just can't hate him.

Afterwards, Marina and I went back to meet up with Couchsurf Boy at yet another bar, before deciding we were dead and required sleep.  And that brings us to the end of Day 3!

Up next tomorrow: Cake, Halloween, really bad movies, and hanging out with CB!