Nästa... Korsvägen.

So, I've been in Göteborg for just under a week now. To be honest with you, dear readers, I LOVE IT.

Josefin started out our stay by grabbing us on Wednesday and taking us around the city. We started out at our hotel, and walked through. I don't remember the name of every street and region, cause I'm terrible with those things, but we saw everything. We saw her school (It looked more like apartment blocks!), Domkyrkan, a bunch of little stores and such... I also bought a mobile phone, because it was about 50 bucks and it was easier to just get that and contact everyone everywhere than to just use skype in the hotel room. I went shopping in a bookstore; I bought three moomintroll books in Swedish, two Astrid Lindgren books (Of course one was Pippi!) in Swedish, Let The Right One In in Swedish, and some stationery.

After a lot of walking and a bit of shopping, we met up with Josefin's parents and had some lunch (yay, meatballs), then we went to "Saluhallen". There was a tea shop called Josefin there! Josefin's mom got me a bag of peppermint tea as a gift from there. :)

Later that day, we went to Nordstan. I bought a few CDs for the concert on Thursday, and a couple Lena Ph CDs. I got BAO's new one as well. I'm sure I bought some other little thing, but I doubt it. After Nordstan, we just walked around the waterfront, saw the opera house, contemplated visiting "the lipstick", and such other things. We had dinner chez Josefin, and looked at one of her dad's old photo albums. Good day.

Thursday was a great day! Josefin didn't want to come because it started out rainy, but it stopped raining by the time we got there. Celicia and I went to see a free concert in Borås. We saw Tre Ess: Shirley Clamp, Sanna Nielsen, and Sonja Alden. We met a really nice girl named Paulina there, who is a very well-known fan of Shirley's (she was borrowing Shirley's umbrella!), and then we met a not so lovely man. Some stoned asshole was trying to ~*INAPPROPRIATELY TOUCH*~ us and steal from us, but my dad, the superhero, came over and threatened to call the police, which eventually made this guy's balls ascend into his body and run off. After a few opening acts, none of which were terrifically remarkable, Tre Ess came on stage. We were in THE FRONT ROW (and you can see us, if you look closely, in the BT [www.bt.se]), and I got about 900 photos. Not all of them were fab.

After that, Paulina told Shirley that I had come all the way from Canada. Not only did Tre Ess sign all my CDs, they signed MY ARM, and I got in a photo with them. Pretty great, eh?

Friday, we went to Liseberg, but I'm dead now. I shall update about Friday, Saturday and Sunday tomorrow, readers! These have been busy days, but rest assured, I have not forgotten about you.

Vi hörs!
~m

(ps, the title name is the tram stop right outside our hotel. i hear this phrase a sickening amount of times per day.)

Iceland and Sweden!

So, I've just gotten to Sweden and met Josefin.

Anyways. We arrived at Iceland about 6:05 in the morning on Monday. We took a taxi to our hotel from there, noticing that the landscape was essentially treeless, and waited for Sigrun to come pick us up. She did so at about 9 o' clock, and we left off to the Blue Lagoon.

We arrived there, and got in the water. It was nice, but it got a little too hot as we went farther in. The water was a perfect blue. However, I learned Icelandic people are not nearly as prudishas I am. I had to change in the changeroom, but everyone else, including Sigrun, just changed in front of everyone else. LOL PRUDERY LOL. We put a mask of silica mud on our faces, which looked TERRIBLE, and stayed for a good long while. My face is a lot softer today!

After that, Sigrun took us and drove us around downtown Reykjavik. We drove around looking for a bit, then stopped at Kringlan, where I called a few friends and we met up. It was awesome.

We bummed around RVK for a bit more. I bought some stickers for my suitcase, I bought a shirt hat says I don't speak Icelandic in Icelandic, I bought a real Icelandic wool sweater... It was awesome.

I got pretty sick, though. Dad says it's because of the time changes, lack of sleep, etc. Nevertheless, we went to eat at Perlan with Sigrun and her boyfriend, Tryggvi. The food was really good! Dad tried whale and everything! They had the best bread, too, really. After we ate, we got gelato and went home.

We woke up this morning at 5 (did the sun even set?). Left for Sweden. Got to Stockholm at 1-ish, left on the Arlandaexpress at 2-ish, got to our train (WHICH HAD WI-FI), and then we showed up in Gothenburg. Josefin walked RIGHT past us; this is how I will remember the first thing I ever said to her in person for the rest of my life.

OI!

So she turned around, and we met her parents. They're so adorable! Her mom speaks English and German, and her dad doesn't really speak English very well, but that's cool; I don't speak Swedish all that well. They drove us to the hotel. We checked in, and went upstairs. That's when I told Josefin I've been learning Swedish for the past year and a half.

Well, the Swedes I've talked to thusfar seem to understand me as well as I understand them. Very well. The first person I talked to was the girl at the currency exchange counter. She talked to me in English at first, and I didn't really mean to do it, it was sort of a ridiculous knee-jerk reaction, but I asked her how her day was going in Swedish. She apologised, and we didn't really talk anymore. Then, I asked an older woman which was the train going to Stockholm; she told me it was coming in seven minutes. That was alright. So, I was confident in my abilities. I told her! She was SO SHOCKED. She may have excreted an entire house onto the hotel carpet, hugged me... it was crazy. She told her parents, who were just as excited (this later got to me when her mom kept asking me to pronounce things on the street but I got all enbarrassed!), and we went to dinner at the movie theatre? Bergakungen? Yeah.

It's pretty great so far; I am having an AMAZING time. I will definitely go to Iceland again, and I will definitely be returning to Sweden.

Now if I get to Australia, my life will totally be complete, at least when it comes to my priority travel destinations.

vi ses!
~m

There are no trees.

There are hardly any trees here in Iceland. Well, there are a lot in Reykjavik, but not in Keflavik or anywhere else.

I'm going to write up a blog about it on the plane tomorrow, but for now I just need sleep. It's 10:45 pm and the only sleep I've gotten since Sunday was in the car from Reykjavik to Keflavik.

You'll get it soon, photos and all! :D

AERODROME TIME.

Time to go to good old YYZ.
See you.
Nothing to update until I get to the land of the Ice and snow ;)

~M

Marlo's Super Awesome Challenge of Mad Exhaustion

So, I leave later today at 9 pm.
My self-imposed challenge?
STAY UP UNTIL THEN.
I have been awake since 8am Saturday.
I think I am already starting to go mad! I CAN HEAR MADONNA'S RAY OF LIGHT IN MY HEAD. Maybe it was the two cans of Monster I drank.

I have three emptied cans on my tv. I hate carbonated beverages, but it tastes like candy and isn't as burny as other things.

Maybe I'll go so mad that I'll think I've become Julie Andrews and start singing the entire score to My Fair Lady when we're boarding. I'll talk like ELOIIIIIZA. Then I'll pull a Hephephepburn or something and my voice will suck magically all of a sudden but I will be a marvelous actress.

Yeah, I get really GENERIC EXPLETIVE STARTING WITH F/ VERB ENDING IN -ED when I even get SLIGHTLY over tired.

WHATEVER I'M GOING TO GO READ ABOUT THE 1918 FLU PANDEMIC, GRETA GARBO AND THE RICHTER MAGNITUDE SCALE ON WIKIPEDIA.

Going mad, yet still yours truly,
Marloooooooooooooooooooooo

My god.

Once the clock strikes midnight, it'll be four days until I leave, five days until I go to Reykjavik, and six days until finally meet Josefin.

I have never been more excited and nervous all at once than I am at this moment, obsessively thinking about these three things. I haven't left the continent in FOUR YEARS. Four years, guys. That's a long time to be stuck in Americanada (wut). What if I make a social faux-pas? What if I get lost in the middle of Iceland? Oh well.

I am thrilled.
I am scared.
I am going to go watch Pasila to take my mind off it.
Kyösti Pöysti = love.

Catch you on the flipside,
~M

Foodz.

So, Sigrun is taking my dad and I to a restaurant called Perlan. I think it looks good. What about all of you?

I wonder what I'm going to eat in Sweden. There's this fancyass place in my hotel on the 23rd floor. Maybe I'll take Josefin there.

Short entry, I know. I'm tired. I'm going back to bed for another 20 minutes. Bah. I hate waking up at 8am.

Tim Tams.

I am eating Caramel Tim Tams I bought at The Bay. Life is good.

It's about 9 days until I give Josefin her big surprise. If you know what it is, don't talk about it on here! I just want to blog about it. I guess it was hard "getting it". So far she's guessed it's a flower, a puppy, maple syrup... all sorts of random stuff. Of course, a few of my close friends know what I've gotten her. They're too loyal to me to tell her, spoil it. Right, guys? ;-; Yeah, I trust all of you. :)

So, it's been hard keeping such an object a secret for so long, but I've done it! Only one more week till I spill the beans. One more week. I contemplated breaking my surprise to her parents, but that would ruin the whole element of it all!

Gotta go though. Nosebleed. Josefin just made me laugh on the phone and now there's little scarlet pinpricks all over my desk. Shiiiiiiiit.

Love you all (except for you, Allison. You're a prostitute.**)

~M


**I'm joking. She knows this.

Eight.

Mm. So, there's eight days left until I get on a plane to Reykjavik. Okay, so it's technically Keflavik. Whatever. There's no accents on those i's, either. Is that the correct way to pluralise a single letter?

Enough of that. My dearest, darling Sigrun has volunteered to shepherd my father and me around Iceland's sunny old capital. We're going to the blue lagoon, which is pretty exciting. Here's a photo, for those of you who have never seen it:




Yep. Fairly pretty, don't you think? I do.

After a day in Iceland with our fabulous host, we're flying to Stockholm. Now, you may be asking yourself, "Stockholm? I thought you were going to Göteborg first!" Well, Stockholm and train tickets were cheaper than flying into GBG. God damned seasonal flights. The flight takes significantly less time than the flight from YYZ to KEF, seeing as Iceland is much closer to Europe than North America.

Fun fact: Our train has Wi-Fi. THAT IS SO MANY TYPES OF AWESOME.

Once we get to Göteborg at seven pm or something, we don't know what we'll do for the rest of that day. Maybe we'll take Josefin and her family out for dinner. Maybe they'll feed us. Maybe we'll do karaoke. GOD, I don't know.

On the 22nd, we're really not doing anything in particular. We're really only wandering around the city, shopping, seeing sights, taking photos, and all that jazz.

The 23rd of July is when the real fun starts, at least for me. My friend Celicia told me about this concert in Borås. Tre Ess. Means Three S's, according to her. Shirley Clamp, Sanna Nielsen, and Sonja Aldén. Shirley Clamp is one of my favourite Swedish singers, so I nearly excreted a house when she told me. Here's a photo of Shirley, and one of her songs.

(o hai i can has knit hat liek marlo?!)

Here's a youtube link to Med Hjärtat Fyllt av Ljus. (uh, yeah. it's totally live. expect faults. she usually sounds better, but i loooove this song. this fact may surprise some of my friends.)
It's from this year's Melodifestivalen. If you don't know what that is, it's the Swedish pre-selection for the Eurovision Song Contest. If you don't know what ESC is, I suggest looking it up on Wikipedia, then watching at least 100 clips of it on youtube. SO FUNNY. Watch it online in 2010! It's in Norway! Good times.

On the 24th, we're going to Liseberg. HELL YES ROLLERCOASTERS AND FAST STUFF AND OVERPRICED FOOD AND VOMITING CHILDREN HOT DAMN. That's all I have to say.

I'll continue later. Don't want to use up all my week+1's material in one day. :P I'll have more when I go, but for now, I have to pace my stuff.

Peace.

~M