Odo: 283807
Location: Aland Islands, autonomous region somehow connected Finland 
though swedish speaking

Actually this is yesterdays sunset and I was on that lake before but who cares. For your confusion I will post this days sunset tomorrow… The region around Nortällje sucks concerning spots for staying the night so I just returned to a place where I stayed when D. was visiting. After a morning swim I started to make plans. I wanted to leave Stockholm to go to the south of Finland, like Turku for example. Since I still have no guidebook I just looked at google maps for the shortest ferry connection which normally are the cheapest. Kapellskär to Marienhamn, 2h, 42€ with the van. Shortly before I drove to port I read the wikipedia article on Marienhamn saying it’s the only town on the Aland islands. ISLANDS? Fuck. It looked like there is a connection to the mainland on gmaps. If you don’t zoom in close enough… This means I have to take another ferry which tends to be more expensive than one ferry. These are the times where I miss a lonely planet guidebook. They really have this kind of stuff sorted out for you… So the clever thing to do would have been to drive back to Stockholm yet another time, spend the weekend at the pride festival partying and take a ferry from Stockholm to Turku next week which is cheaper than the connection over the aland islands. Since I hate tracking back and I already did drive back to Stockholm twice I did quite the opposite and got on the ferry. Check in without prior booking is an additional 5€ at viking lines but the lady at the counter thought my van is less than 2,4m of height so I saved 17€. Since she didn’t ask and I realized her mistake not before I drove off from the counter I thought I’ll just see how it goes and be extra careful with driving. The maximum height of the ferry was 3,8m, so the height limit seems just a simple rip off… Let’s see how the aland islands will be. 30k inhabitants is just as much as my home town including the neighboring villages. I’m a little bit afraid that I’ll strand there for a couple of days since the outbound ferries seemed quite booked out. But maybe it’s nice over there 🙂

Stockholm City / Södermalm. Where the wannabe hipster roams...

After a day at a nice lake outside of Stockholm I met up with Eve on Södermalm for some slacklining and while searching for two decent trees I got my third city tour by her. When I was just about to set up the line a belgian guy showed up and asked where the opening “feast” (his words) for this years Stockholm Pride was. The internet told him it was in the very park we were sitting which was quite deserted. Eve began to hazzle with the according web page to try to find out where it is, it took some time because of the webpage, we chatted and set up the slackline. In between a lady in her fifties sat on the next bench listening eagerly and I was approached by a young swedish guy who was looking for some company while waiting on his friends. When he asked if the others were my company I said yes without giving it too much thought. He went over, introduced himself and produced some beer and bottle of vodka from his plastik bag. While I was assisting Eve during her first steps on the line the other three started to chat to each other and got into serious drinking. A swedish younggun, a swedish 70s child and a gay belgian comedian (no kidding) in his mid-twenties talking about life, beer, the amount of sex partners they had, threesomes and so on and so forth. Since they were almost instantly in drunk mode and I was as sober as not in the mood for drinking I just watched and listened the spectacle with an occasional comment or two. According to Eve this was quite an unusual swedish park experience. When the sun set they took of for more drinking at the pride and Eve and I returned to her place.

Location: Norrköping
Odo: +200km 

I wanted to meet up with somebody I met online but mixed up two towns which meant quite some additional driving. A bad day for my carbon footprint. But I would hated me for missing the chance to meet nice people. After a very nice afternoon I ended up with plenty placemarks on my map and found the best camping spot so far thanks to the recommendation.

Location: Random lake NE of Stockholm
Odo: much the same

Another slow day if I remember right. Found a nice spot, went swimming, read “a clash of kings”, caught up on the latest dexter episodes. Stopped counting days.

Odo: no change
Location: Neither...

The first day where I didn’t move the van. Hooray! But I payed 15€ of parking fees just to park in Stockholm in front of some housing. It was a slow day. Yesterday I didn’t really took care of drinking enough water so today i payed the bill. The whole day was just hanging around and reading. I went to town to top up my mobile broadband card which was quite a hassle. I didn’t understand how to do it online because the site is only in swedish. I also was quite curious if I can stay anonymous so I went to a tre store to buy a recharge code. After some waiting i found out that they only take credit cards and that my mastercard has a chip but is lacking some other feature to work well with the terminal. This might also explain why statoil declines my card while it is working at all other gas stations. Anyways, I was sent over to The Phone House and after quite some waiting I exchanged 299 swedish crowns (35€) for 100GB of mobile broadband traffic. Not the worst deal ever, especially since it’s a 4G network… So I’m still completely anonymous if I use the supplied usb stick. That’s free speech as I like it…

The view from Langholmen to Kungsholmen

A chopper surveying Langholmen for the better part of an hour. It even followed me to Kungsholmen but left before i went to sleep. Probably police…

The official caravan parking in Stockholm. Sleeping under a bridge (literally) for 35€ per night. I somehow look down on these people (passing over the bridge :))