SWEDEN TRAVELOGUE PT 1

SALTSJÖBADEN, SWEDEN -- Per here. Been in Sweden for about 2 weeks so I thought I'd give everyone an update. Flight over was a mess because my flight into Newark was late so I missed my flight to Stockholm, argued with airport people, and ended up staying at my uncle's for a day.

1st week we stayed in Stockholm and saw the royal jewels, including a king's broadsword from the 1600s that had pictures and things engraved on the blade. Went to see the Vasa, for those of you who visited that's the huge man-o-war model that I'm building. It's gigantic, and you don't really realize how big it is until you're standing next to it. Been eating lots of swedish cinnamon buns, chocolate balls, and icecream.

This past week we took a ferry to the Swedish island of Gotland and rented a house on a farm near the coast. It's probably one of the coolest places I've been because there are viking artifacts everywhere. The island used to be a huge trading center way back when because it's in the middle of the Baltic, but it declined and turned into a farming island. So there are viking and iron age gravesites everywhere and old medieval churches that haven't been touched. You'll be driving down a road and see a sign that points you to a farm, and behind the barn there's a runestone sitting there. The main town of the island was the trading city and it still has a medieval wall, towers, and gates surrounding it. The museum there has all this viking armor, weapons, and treasure that they've dug up from all the graves. There was an interesting part where they had all these coins from the viking's grave hoards, and the coins came from everywhere that they traded: italy, north africa, jerusalem, baghdad, constantinople, etc.

Went to the beach and checked out the swedish tryna jauns, girls pretty much dress the same here, but the equivalent here of a frat boy is what my brother calls eurogay. Hope to have some pictures posted soon.

Love all around

PS Louie, that's so sweet of you to propose that (no homo), I'm thinking about it. Skip, I actually do feel bad about leaving you to deal with the roommates, if you're serious about it I'll split Call of Duty. To all: Depending on when the apartment needs to be vacated and when I get back, I might go to PSU and clean up the place.