"Stockholm more like SOCK-HOLM!!! right ? right?..... no?..... ok"

You are all in luck. As an extremely characteristic move on my part I have been ignoring my blog and for that I apologise, but "once it hits your lips...... IT'S JUST SO GOOD". So yes I 100% blame my blog tardiness on my newly acquired alcoholism. At least it's a cool excuse though right?

But fear not my simple readers I have discovered how to add pictures and videos for your viewing pleasure!!!! Exciting I know, but before you  joygasm let me just warn you that this post will be quite long because I am going to attempt to catch you all up to the present day! I know it will be a bold move, but were down in the 9th inning and someone has to take this game into their own hands!

So on September the 3rd the Canadian Crew (for those of you unaware that consists of Andrew Hall aka the General, Ihop, or General Ihop, Graham Rogers aka Goose, Z-Money aka Cheddar, and yours truly Derek aka THE GARDEN ROBBER) jumped on a beautiful bus which took us all the way to the capital of Sweden STOCKHOLM!

Now there is something you should all know about Sweden. There is a bit of contempt for the Stockholm Swedes which comes from.......... well all the other Swedes that don't live in Stockholm. This was told to me on account less occasions by my new Swedish friends. Apparently Stockholm Swedes think they are better then the rest. I asked how a typical Stockholm Swede acted and I was told the typical Stockholm Swede was a bit stuck up, threw money around, was ignorant of other people, a bit rude, and often had long gelled back hair if the specimen was that of an XY chromosome. Now I don't like to confirm generalizations but for we did encounter instances where these accusations were true. We had a couple of incidences dealing with some very snobby people who indeed had gelled back hair. But if you go to any city you will find some bad Swedish meat balls so maybe we were just unlucky.

We arrived in Stockholm in the late morning and were quite famished. So we kept our eyes open for an establishment that would sufficiently suphunsafy us all (ya you can use that its real I just don't know how to spell it) and low and behold the good lord directed us to a PIZZA HUT BUFFET! Now if there is any doubt in your mind that we didn't have a pizza eating contest........... ERASE IT, BECAUSE WE DID!!! As these picture illustrate it ended ..... swimmingly. General Ihop was the winner followed not so closely by me haha.

As I have previously mention we have already given each other nicknames and not all of them can be explained. They just kind of happened. Andrews nick name Ihop was conceived on our way from the pizza buffet to the train stations (I know......... so romantic!). Here is a picture of Andrew HALL being dubbed IHOP!

 We then met up with Jen Zap and Courtney Smith who are on exchange from UVic and studying at Stockholm school of Business and Economics. They had gone to one of Stockholm's best clubs called Cafe Opera the previous night and were..... a bit "tired" but they manged to get us all back to Andrew Sorowkovsky's dorm in one piece. We hung around the campus for a bit and met up with Andrew and Cam McQueen than went off and explored the city. Here are some of my favourite pictures from the day

       The Royal Palace

We then went out to dinner with a guy named Patrick Bourke who Graham was told by a friend to get in contact with once we arrived in Stockholm. We met Patrick at really night Italian restaurant down town and had a great time talking to him about Stockholm and his transition from living in Victoria Canada to the largest city in Stockholm. We then all went back to Andrew Sorows residence and continued to drink and be merry. We of course played one of my favourite pass times ..... thats right kids DODGE BEER! Patrick and myself teamed up and were unstoppable! Z and Graham also made this nifty (this is a great word, I'm trying to bring it back everyone should start using it more!) Handshake.

After this fantastic pre-drink we went to a house party on campus which I have dubbed Stockholm Dude Fest 2010. I seriously have never seen so many guys at one party before haha it was so funny to watch the handful of girls being swarmed by the hungry drunken males. Sorrow found a piano and did a great rendition of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody". As you can see the General helped out.

Here is a great picture of us leaving Stockholm Dude Fest 2010 and Patrick "not" pushing Courtney out of the frame.

We may or my not have interacted with the near by livestock which were oddly enough on the campus grounds haha.

 

The next day we went out and did some more awesome sight seeing. We first went to Gamal Stan which is the old part of Stockholm the streets are very narrow and all the buildings are really old and very quaint looking.

 

Now on our way through Gamal Stan we came across a man husseling money by getting people to guess where a white ball was under 1 of 3 boxes. Here is a video, do you think it would be an easy way to make some kronor? 

I KNOW RIGHT!! Me and Sorrow got 10 in a row right so we decided to throw some kronor down and make some skrilla............. We may or my not have lost 500 kronor? haha it was an experience. Ask me sometime how he did it and I'll explain the whole story. 

  

On a side note. Speaking of stories, the next time you see me and you want to hear a funny story about my exchange just get me to tell you the "MacDonald's story".

We continued on and saw the Royal Palace, the largest royal palace in the world I'll have you know! We got to see the changing of the guards and we went into the palace to see some of the sights and tours but it was pretty expensive and not everyone was up for it. 

 

We ended the day to a trip to the Vasa Museum. This was definitely one of the highlights to the trip. The Vasa was an "old wooden ship" that sunk in the harbour of Stockholm on its maiden voyage in the 1600s. The king commanded the engineers to put another level of cannons on the boat when it was getting built. This made the ship to tall and bottom heavy and thus allowed the boat to flip and sink. I know what bummer! 300 years later the ship was taken out of the ocean and brought to port. they built a massive museum dedicated to the ship and that is where we went.

 

That night  we went out on a night on the town to go to a awesome Stockholm night club. Unfortunately CLUBS IN STOCKHOLM SUCK and we were denied entry to one because we weren't on the guest list or over 23 and to another because we weren't 23 or older. I felt like I was 18 again. after an hour or two of walking around and seeing two drunken Swedish girls being wrestled to the ground by polis we found a club called debaser and had a great time.

The next day before we left we went to see the city hall which is called "Stadshuset", which was my favourite place in Stockholm. It has one massive tower near the water and a back courtyard that over looks the waterfront and the rest of the downtown. It was an amazingly beautiful place.

 

So I told you I would catch you up tonight but I am extremely tired due to last nights festivities. I was up pretty late reading and doing homework and drinking A LOT of water! So I'll fill you all in on our travels to Copenhagen soon. 

Later days!