I think probably SJ, the Swedish train company is the one who provided the best service so far. The train was on time. It was very clean and the seats were comfortable even with my height. There was no hustle like Eurostar's butt inspection in London. And last but not least the pricing was also good( 395 SEK~£34 for 525km).

The view was gorgeous. Pine trees lakes and small towns all along the trail. And when I arrived to Stockholm... It was beautiful. The little islands the architecture the view. It was proper Disney like. I didn't know too much about the history of their traffic but it just seemed effortlessly organized. It was like "silly, this is Sweden ofc it's sorted." There were bikes, few cars, electric rollers, scooters. The city was perfect.

Besides preventing to unwillingly spread my DNA too early WoW had an other positive effect on my teenage life. I collected knowledge about the festives of the world like my bike collects mud. I knew what midsummer is before it was even thing! Okey maybe not that early but quite early for sure. And once I travelled to a girl in Belgium on midsummer's night and in my first summer working with deliveroo for some uncertain reason there was a midsummer festival in Chester and they blocked the whole city center. IDK why I'm so proud of knowing midsummer... Anyways! I can say I have some pretty solid memories with it but this year I totally forget about. Especially when I planned this trip. And unexpectedly the most or after Christmas second most important event of the year in Sweden is midsummer. It was from 21 to 23 and I was staying from 21 to 23. First time I felt like I just clearly got lucky. Not just find something good in my misery, but legit lucky. I thought I could join some midsummer event, maybe meet other midsummer enthusiasts in the hostel. Dance barefoot with flower wreaths on our head around the fire. I was so high on midsummer. Then I arrived to the hostel. They charged me an extra 60 Krone, what was not included on the bill, but I didn't care too much until they got me into the room. It was like a prison. No, wait! Prisons have windows at least. The guy who had the downer doss of the bunk bed and was also smelly af just told me that he used the pillow from my bed cus he needed two. I was like "just keep it and go fuck yourself."  I don't even use a pillow for more than hugging it, and when I don't have one I just replace it with the corner of the blanket, but I really hate the "better say sorry than ask for permission" attitude.

I got my bedsheets on and left the hostel browsing on my phone for some midsummer event in Stockholm. The first page was an article that said that midsummer is usually celebrated on islands because of better view and Swedish people usually leave Stockholm for the festive. I was giving up on Stockholm I wanted to focus on resting and on writing. Was just walking back staring the screen of shops. Just realized it was 20 years Harry Potter anniversary, I tried to figure out the Swedish tittles of the books, was good fun.

On my way back to the hostel I saw an Uber eats driver. I started talking to him about doing uber in Stockholm and took a photo of him and his moped. I felt like documentary film maker. So I got a little confident about my new "quest". I went to talk to the two blondest girl I could find. I explained them my new mission about taking photos of people and asked them if they agreed to represent their city as the stereotypical Swedish according to probably everyone who's not been to Sweden. They were nice and cool about it. They agreed, but also said that they indeed are not from Sweden. I think it would've been my turn to be cool and say something like it's ok just pretend that you're Swedish, but it was more like "ok... nvm thanks, bye.."

Most of the time I'm not like this but that pillow thing really got me out of character. Went back to the hostel and just slept.

Next day because of the dark(lack of windows) I slept a lot and even after I woke up it was really hard to motivate myself to go out and do something. The lack of natural light screwed my mood. On the cost of hard effort I get out from the hole and get some food. After a few minute walk I got a little better and start exploring the city. I still don't even know where I've been just took pictures of stuff I liked. They can be world famous attractions or just random stuff IDK, but they were pretty.

I start walking towards Skansen, but on my way I got distracted by a ship that transported people to the ABBA museum. I decided to visit it, was too late unfortunately. So made a plan to come back next day. Went back to eat and wash my clothes. The guy on the reception told me that he is not trained to help me with the washing machine. I had a really hard time to hide my thoughts about this sentence.

Back in the hostel I sat in the communal area and made my new signature 'peanut butter - banana - blackberry - seeds' sandwich. For the first time in my Stockholm staying there were people who talked, I mean had a conversation. "Eyy son! Back to the civilization!" Usually I just ask something really fucking obvious. It wasn't different this time either:

 - are you guys from the US? - guessed the accent.

 - yes I am! She is from Georgia.

I didn't know why he was so specific about the state, so I tried to make a joke about not knowing the US, as usually Americans don't know Europe:

 - like the Georgia around the black sea? I know Georgia!

 - yes exactly! That's it! - said the girl.

 - wow now we got something to talk about! - must be a long story how you know eachother from the US and Georgia!

 - we just met here. - he said.

 - fair enough.

And from there we just start talking about stuff and went for a walk to find nice views.

There was an observatory building on a top of a hill, where Keti took us. Felt like out of the three of us she knows the city the most. She has also been to Norway and her bus was departing at the same night, so this was her last walk saying goodbye to the city. She was wearing a pair of Tisza shoes. It is a Hungarian brand named from the river. They used to make work shoes but at some point they rebranded themselves to make durable casual shoes. I still have a pair from 2010. Once I read that book about learning languages and it mentioned a guy who was traveling and learning languages. And he spoke like 17 or something and when he finished his journey he hang his shoes on a fence of a church in England. I was thinking of doing the same to my pair of Tisza, but because of the hole on their bottom I wasn't gonna risk it. I went similarly crazy when I saw her shoes.

When Jacob didn't know ABBA she start playing the dancing queen from them on the gypsy speaker(phone's speaker). It was her signature move. If she wanted to hear a song she just played it. So we three were walking in Stockholm listening probably the corniest song that we could listen there and just kept laughing. Jacob was from the south, he had a gun (not with him) and was driving, but when talked about europe and cycling he seemed to be quite open about this way of transportation and life. He was missing his job what was maintaining luxury yachts- so we couldn't really blame him for that. He also had a great talent of making fucked up jokes without offending anyone or being weird. When I was talking about the midsummer and about that it is at similar level with Christmas, he went on with the topic and talked about the Christmas in the US. He was really keen on it talked about the lights, the feeling, the Christmas songs. He also said he wants to take a girl on a date to see the Christmas lights cus it is so romantic, but wasn't too lucky at that period of the year so far so this year probably he will pay for a hooker to see the decorations. Just killed the whole thing he built up like in 10 minutes. At the same time when he mentioned the Christmas songs Keti put on her favourite one on her phone. We were walking in Stockholm in June listening Christmas songs and Jacob's ridiculous ideas about romance and Christmas. This is how we spent the rest of the night slowly getting to the bus station where Keti left us.

Before he went to prepare for his next day early morning leaving talked about Stockholm and stuff to visit, that I didn't see, because nextday the guy who was "trained" to operate the washing machine put some 4 hours program so I didn't have time to visit anything... Not even the ABBA museum and after having some breakfast I just aimed the ferry port. On my way I almost stepped on a table cloth full of bracers and other handmade jewelleries. They looked really cool. I bought one and stayed for a little talk. They were made by a Swedish girl who had dreadlocks and a Chilean guy. They were just travelling with the summer between Chile, Sweden and Peru where they got the stones for the jewelleries from. They asked if I learned something in Swedish during my say.

Och halvblod prinsen