This past weekend there was a trip where most of the Rotary Youth Exchange students in Sweden came to Stockholm. It was quite chaotic and no one really knew what was going on, but we all had so much fun together.
On Friday at around 17.00 I went to T-Centralen (the central station in Stockholm) to pick up Kirsten! If you don't quite remember, Kirsten is my best friend that I made during Swedish camp in Sundsvall, and since she's currently in the Southern most part of Sweden, we thought we'd never see each other at another Rotary event. But when I got the text she was coming and staying with my host family and I, I was so excited! Anyways, I picked her up and then we went to a nearby cafe and talked for hours. It was so nice to see her again in person. We then went to the southern part of Stockholm and met up with all of the other exchange students. We were there for a bit, but then everyone left and went home, and we went and finally got dinner (it was about 22.00 by that time). We went to multiple places, and after finding out they were all already closed, we just went to the hamburger chain Max. That again was so much fun. When we got home we once again talked for another couple hours, getting to bed way too late. I'm so glad I met her though, we have so much fun together and it's so nice to talk/be around her.
On Saturday morning we headed back over to T-Centralen to meet with the whole group at 10.00. After putting all of our bags in this one Rotary guy's car, we headed for Gamla Stan (old town). Now i'm going to say a little preface: I had seen these shirts before and Friday night Kirsten and I vowed that if we saw them in Gamla Stan, we would get them. The time came, and as we were walking through Gamla Stan with the whole group, we spotted them. We sprinted into the store, and even though the rest of the group kept going with the leaders, we made it a priority to buy these shirts. It took a little longer than expected as we were trying to find the right size and Kirsten accidentally bought one that said "girls" at first, but we had finally gotten our hands on them and now it was time to catch up. We were running through crowds of people in Gamla Stan to find our group, and after running for a couple minutes, they were no where to be seen. We started to get a little worried as we seperated from the group without permission and now couldn't find them. However, we called Tomasso (Italy), and he saved us --telling us to just keep continuing straight. We finally found them, and needless to say, our shirts were a huge hit. People were dying of laughter and kept asking to take pictures of us with them. It was honestly so much fun and one of my best memories of the trip. The Rotary leader of the group even thought they were pretty great, because as I was holding mine up, he started laughing and gave me a double thumbs up. Okay... without further ado... here are our famous shirts in their full glory:
Also... I think it makes it 100x funnier that my shirt just says boy in the singular form. We love Swedish boy(s) and cheap tourist shirts from Old Town :)
After going through Gamla Stan, we headed over to Djurgården to the Vasa Museet! For anyone who doesn't know, the Vasa ship sank in 1628 after sailing about 1,300m, and they pulled it out of the water and now it's a super cool museum. That is quite possibly the worst explanation of that ship I could give you, but I really recommend looking up the story, it's super fascinating. We were there for about an hour and a half, but after 45min and exploring the whole museum, Kirsten, Reegan (Canada), Zac (Santa Cruz, California!!), and I went to find churros. Kirsten and I had been wanting churros for over 24hrs now, and we had passed some on the way to the museum so we headed back to get some. We soon discovered that the churros were a boat ride away in Gamla Stan, not on Djurgården, so we "settled" for some really good ice cream. On the way back to the museum we also saw some vikings fighting, but I sadly did not get any pictures of that. :(
After the museum, we had a couple hours to go around by ourselves, and can you guess where Reegan, Kirsten, and I headed to right away?
Where did we go after the museum?
Gamla Stan for churros
Gamla Stan for churros
Other
If you guessed Gamla Stan for churros, you would be correct! (I do realize you had already seen the photos but please pretend like you didn't for me thank you) We had finally found our churros and were in heaven. Then for the rest of the time we just walked around, had fun, and went shopping.
Then, we took the boat out to Vaxholm where we would be staying the night. It was about an hour ride, and so beautiful. We had some pretty funny moments as we were initially getting on the boat, and then a gorgeous sunset ride out of Stockholm followed by some great conversations.
We then got on a bus to take us to our hostel for the night. We expected to get in, eat dinner, and then go into town to explore, however, after an hour long bus ride into the middle of nowhere, we realized that would unfortunately not be happening (we did think we had a pretty good chance of being murdered as it felt like a horror movie/fever dream/the twilight zone sorta thing). Now I don't have any pictures of the hostel, but it was quite the experience. Don't get me wrong it was not bad by any means, just not at all what any of us were expecting. It was kind of sad because there was a main house and then cabins ten minutes away, so we were all kind of separated. However I switched with one girl to be in the same cabin as Kirsten and Reegan, and I told her she didn't need to do that for me, but she said she wanted to. As she was going into the main house and I was getting into the car to head over to the cabins, she just happened to mention that there was no running water --how lovely haha. Nevertheless, we still had so much fun. Zac and another kid named Gianni (Switzerland) were in the cabin next to us, so we all hung out and talked since we were pretty isolated from the rest of the group. It was so much fun. Once again Kirsten and I stayed up way too late, as we kept talking to Zac until 2.30-3.00 in the morning (everyone else made the smart decision of going to bed). The thing is, for me personally, it's so hard to go to bed when you're connecting and having such great conversations with people from all over the world. I have to say though, it's surprisingly super refreshing to finally talk to someone from California again haha.
Sunday morning was a bit chaotic, and I won't go into detail, but at 10.00 we headed to Norrtälje. The kind of plan that no one was always 100% sure of was to go paddle boarding, and it did end up happening. However, Kirsten was flying back to Malmö a couple hours later, and it would have been extremely tight to get her to the Bromma Airport if we had stayed --and since we have both paddle boarded many times, we sprinted to the next bus to head an hour and a half back to Stockholm. We did have some time to spare though, so we went to some second hand shops, found another great cafe, and had even more great conversations before she had to leave.
Overall, I had a really great time seeing my friends over the weekend --and we had so much fun. You never consciously realize it, but it is extremely mentally exhausting to sit in Swedish classes all day, so it is a bit relaxing to have a break and talk it out with people in English. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love my classes and learning Swedish and I wouldn't trade it for anything, but being able to sit down with Kirsten and have a deep conversation is so nice. I'm so glad I got to see everyone and have such a great time --despite the bit of chaos and extremely late nights.
What is that expression that some people say... ta ta for now? Anyways, hejdå för nu!
Bekah
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