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Mike and I went to the Apple store at Easton (in Columbus) yesterday evening for the festivities surrounding the release of Tiger. We were hoping to get some discounts or giveaways perhaps. They closed the store between 5 and 6 to let everyone line up outside. Then when we went in they gave us each a scratch-off card to win prizes. I won 1 free song from iTunes. I think it’s insulting to my intelligence that I could have bought a Pepsi in Springfield and gotten a free iTunes song. They didn’t have any Apple shirts or any discounts. Also Mike bought a Mac Mini recently and, as we expected, they wouldn’t give him Tiger. He has to wait to get it in the mail. Hopefully he gets it soon.

I just got back from Wisconsin and Chicago early Monday morning. As you can see, I got some nice pictures. In fact, the only pictures I took in Wisconsin were funny ones. They are some kind of special up there.

We left Dayton on Thursday morning at about 5:45. With a gas stop and one driver change (so I could make a business call) we made it to Appleton in 7 hours and 45 minutes total. That’s pretty good time. We stayed at a pretty nice Best Western. Well, the pool area was nice. The sauna didn’t work and the “weight” room had no weights, just broken cardio machines. On Thursday we visited Erin’s parents for a little while and we just kinda hung out. We had dinner at BW3. On Friday we went to the Casino, where I proceeded to lose $40 at slots, craps, and roulette. Then we drove around looking at the sights in the afternoon. We had dinner at Erin’s parents’ place. Saturday we got up and had some fresh Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Fresh Krispy Kreme doughnuts are like crack that melts in your mouth. I’ve always been a big fan. Then a little before noon we left for Chicago. We stayed with Erin’s friend, Elaine. Saturday night we went to Elaine’s boyfriend’s apartment, which was really sweet. He has a couple Technics turntables and he was showing me some stuff. After that we went to the bars for a couple hours. Sunday we had lunch at IHOP and then headed back to Ohio. We made pretty good time, although we did miss one turnoff which sort of screwed us up.

I have posted a couple pictures in the [dead link].

Look at me. I got a pic to upload! That’s me and Mattias at the train station before I left Motala.

So I was going to have a pic here but I can’t seem to make it happen tonight.

I guess now I need to sum up my last few days in Stockholm. On Sunday I wandered briefly but I wasn’t feeling very well after lunch so I went back to the hostel for a while. That night I went out to a couple bars with some people from the hostel (Dan from CA, Lisa from Austria, and Lut from Netherlands). At some point that night some local guy snuck into the hostel and stole a few items from one of my suitcases. Fortunately I’m too smart to leave anything good in the luggage room so all he got was my darts and some power adapters. That makes me angry. Monday I wandered around in Gamla Stan (old town) for a while and had lunch there. At 4PM I met with my cousin Margit and her granddaughter Marie. We had some coffee and chatted for a while. That night I met up with Linn again and we did a little drinking at the bar right by the hostel. Tuesday I had to leave. That is sad. My flights went pretty quickly at least.

Tomorrow I will be going to Wisconsin for a couple days and I will be in Chicago on Saturday night. I am going with my friend, Erin. Her parents live in Wisconsin and in my infinite niceness I offered to go with. I have never been to Wisconsin so it will be a good chance to add a state to my list. I will be back late Sunday night so I can drive my mom to her knee surgery at 6:30 (!!!!) on Monday morning. I will be posting pics when I return. If you need to reach me, the cell-phone should be the best way.

I’m writing from the hostel in Stockholm. I’m staying at the same place as I did last month.

Last week in Motala I didn’t do too much exciting. Friday evening I went bowling with Mattias and his dad and that night we went over to his friend Marcus’ place where we drank and played Monopoly. I lost, damnit. Then we went to Hugo to hang out for a little while before closing. After it closed we had some Kebabs and went home. I found out that Marcus’ dad owns a company that makes POS software. I told him to inquire about software developer positions. Saturday Mattias and Jenny got the keys to their new house. We went over and checked it out for a while. It is a pretty big place with a big yard. It needs a lot of work but they got a good price on it and it seems to have a lot of potential.

Saturday afternoon I took the train to Stockholm. When I got in I gave Linn a call. Some of you may recall that I met Linn at the blackjack table in a bar last month. We met up and went to a few bars. One of them was a salsa place. I thought it was cool because I know Spanish better than Swedish and everybody there spoke Spanish. Linn and I had a few drinks and chatted. She has the 2 most important qualities for a girl: 1. Swedish, 2. knows massage therapy. I’m really glad that we got to meet up again. I ended up getting to bed at about 4:30AM. Today I haven’t done much except for earier I walked to the National Museum. My lunch didn’t agree with me so I wasn’t feeling so good. My only solid plans tomorrow are to meet with my cousin Margit again. This time I think I get to meet her granddaughter.

I will probably not write or post pics again until I get back to the U.S. on Tuesday night. I’ll see you all soon!

Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted! So I will quickly tell you what I’ve been doing for the past week.

Saturday: I took the train to Växjö and wandered around for a few hours. I walked around town and had some lunch. Then I got on another train and went to Copenhagen, Denmark. I arrived in the evening and still had plenty of time to go out. As soon as I got into the reception line at the hostel I noticed that the girls in front of me seemed to be Americans. I inquired and it turns out that they all go to Miami University. I guess there were about 50 Miami University students there at the hostel. They are on a semester-long program in Europe. For the Arizonians out there- Miami University is about 1.5 hours from where I live in Ohio and my brother goes there. So I hung around for a while and chatted with them for a while and then I went out to a couple bars.

Sunday: I walked around Copenhagen for a while and took lots of pictures of buildings that I couldn’t identify. I realized that it is a big place and there was way more there than could be seen in 3 days. That night I hung around the hostel and participated in a large politics argument that the MU people were having.

Monday: The Metro workers were on strike so it made getting around harder. At least the bus system is really good in Copenhagen. I took the bus to see the Mermaid and then I walked down to Christiania. Christiania is a neighborhood where there are no police and everybody just hangs out and smokes weed. I didn’t, but it was amusing. I guess years ago it was a military barracks and after it closed a bunch of people started hanging out there doing drugs. The government decided to leave them alone as part of a social experiment. A few years ago they cracked down on hard drugs so now all they do is smoke weed. I guess there have been talks of shutting the whole place down. Then I wandered around for a while before going back to the hostel. Since the Metro was shut down I just hung around the hostel that evening.

Tuesday: I went to the NationalMuseet for a couple of hours before catching the train to Lund. In Lund I met up with Jenny and we went to a coffee shop with her friends from school. Then we had dinner then rented a movie and hung out at her place.

Wednesday: I had lunch and took a few pictures in Lund before catching my train to Göteborg. When I got there my cousin Rebecca picked me up. She lives with her boyfriend, Simon. He and I talked for a long time about cars and electronics and then we had dinner at their place. They gave me a ride to the main street in the city where all the activity is. There wasn’t much activity though (perhaps because it was raining). The Hard Rock Cafe was the most happening place. It just opened in December and is huge. It is four floors and it is apparently home to the worlds first virtual bowling alley.

Thursday: I wandered around Göteborg for a while. It was raining on and off all day. In the evening I met up with Caroline and Nina to watch a movie. They got bored of the movie so we ended up playing pool.

Friday: I had lunch with Caroline and Nina at Caroline’s dorm building. I met a pretty cool guy from Turkey who actually went to school at UT Austin. He has been living in Sweden for 2 years. Then Caroline, Nina, and I went to the World Culture Museum, which is terribly boring. Then Rebecca and Simon picked me up and we went to the coast to look around. The scenery out there is great. After that we had tacos and drinks at their place. The drink of the night involved Svensk Vodka, which is made here in Motala. Then I went to Caroline’s place and we watched 3 movies. I got back to Rebecca’s place at about 6AM via trolley.

Saturday: I got up at about 11AM (grrr) and caught the train to Motala at 1PM. Mattias and his dad picked me up at the train stationand we came back here. I ended up taking the bike to O’Leary’s for a little while but I was in early.

Sunday: The main activity for the day was visiting my great-grandpa’s house. It is where he grew up in the late 1800′s. The people who live there now bought it the day we were visiting it a few years ago. We didn’t meet them at the time but they were there yesterday. They are really nice and it seems like they’ve done lots of work to the place. They painted it and put a new roof on it among other things. We got to look around inside too, which we didn’t get to do last time. The ceilings are barely high enough for somebody of my height and I had to duck for the doorways. My great-grandpa Eric had 7 siblings (not counting 2 that died) and they all lived in that tiny house. It has a really nice yard with great scenery around. I would love to live there if I were to ever move to Sweden. The prices are really low out there in the country (I think this guy paid about $10,000). After that we went to Vadstena to check out some old buildings there. That town is really old and more wealthy than Motala. There is a really old church there and a castle. We took some pictures and left.

Monday: We went into town for a while and I had lunch and went to a few shops. Other than that not much has happened today. I’m trying to figure out exactly when I will go to Stockholm this weekend.

What I’ve been doing:

Wednesday: I rode the bike to town for lunch then I came back home. Not too much later, Jenny called to see what I was doing. We didn’t know of anything constructive to do so we went to a coffee shop (the same one I had lunch at). I had a vanilla cappucino and she had a milkshake. They have nifty spoons there at the coffee shop. They are a cross between a spoon and a straw. I may have seen similar contraptions before, but I’m not sure. After the coffee shop, we wandered around town a little bit and then we wandered around the library, looking up various things.

Thursday: I walked to town to have some lunch at Hugo. It’s a pretty popular place in town. I went there last week once. I wandered around a little and then walked home. In the evening I was figuring out my Copenhagen trip. I was having trouble finding a place to stay but I got it figured out finally and it’s only going to cost about 54 USD for 3 nights of lodging.

Today: I drove to town for lunch at etage. I went there a couple weeks ago but it was closed all of last week. Apparently they reopened today under new ownership. They had a lunch buffet today. Last time I was there they had a lunch special but not a buffet. I don’t know if it’s going to be a buffet every day from now on or what. I wasn’t as impressed with the food today as I was last time. Of course, last time it was really good. After lunch I went to the Motor Museum. It is a pretty big place and they have lots of things other than cars. The reason I wanted to go was because I figured they would have some cars I had never heard of. I was right, they did. But they also had plenty of old American cars. Most of the car exhibits had an English translation so I knew what was going on. It only cost me 40 SEK to get in so I think it was a pretty good value.

Tomorrow I am leaving by train on a little journey. I leave tomorrow morning for Växjö. I arrive there right before lunchtime. I will hang out there for about 4 hours. I heard that it is very similar to Motala so there shouldn’t be much exciting going on. Then I leave for Copenhagen, Denmark. I arrive in Copenhagen at about 19:00. I will be in Denmark until Tuesday afternoon. On Tuesday afternoon, I plan to leave for Lund. I plan to hang out with Jenny in Lund on Tuesday evening and stay the night down there. On Wednesday I will probably take the train up to Göteborg. I will be staying with a cousin there for a couple nights. She used to live in Motala and I met her last time I was here. She wouldn’t speak to me much because she is embarassed to speak English. So this should be interesting. I figure I will be back in Motala next Friday but it’s hard to say because so many of my plans are tentative.