In the sea of Blondes: May 2011

Today I finally managed to go to Skansen and luckily it was a really nice day, full of sunshine, noisey kids and people taking pictures. We walked for hours and hours and didnt really realise how tired I was until I sat down to eat a massive burger (2nd best part of the day naturally).

Also passed Gröna Lund the theme park. I can't WAIT to go for my birthday, and as it's my 21st everyone will be forced to have fun and go on the rides!

A short Swede and their every day houses...

I was rediculously confused/excited about the big things of milk, but seriously, why were they there?! Think people thought it was a day out of excited, camera loving, special gingers. And it kinda was :)

The next few awesome picttures were taken by Kevin and his awesome camera. Shame he didnt have a zoom.. everyone else did.

Monkeys! After walking for miles and taking hundreds of pictures we decided to take a hundred more but this time look at cute animals. There were monkeys, lemurs, crocodiles, fish, snakes, spiders and a lady with a spray thing of water to keep the lemurs from going near people..

Cool dude.

Compare de meeerkat dot com! Shoulda hidden one in my bag...

At the end of the animals place there was a stall thing with an open box with a giant Boa snake and another with a huge tarantula. All the kiddies could line up and touch them, and THIS is why I love Sweden. It's so laid back, for instance the crocodile cage thing, there was some glass about 1m high then a giant gap all around the top, with a sign telling us they could jump. But heeeey, whats the worst that could happen eh?

Then at the 'petting booth' all the wee kids were patting the giant snake and spider, as you do. At one point a baby was sitting on the desk and the snakes head (the lady in charge didnt notice) was sniffing/licking the babies hand, while the baby tried to grab the snakes head until the woman noticed and casually pushed the snakes head in another kids direction. Sweden is the a laid back surfer dude and everything is just cooooool man.

Then there was glass blowing, she was so cool... didn't look like a glass blower at all. Think I was picturing an old, soot covered hairy man.

All in all and awesome day out! Tonight is a free festival in one of the mini parks in the city, so going to that with quite a few people. Hopefully we get some good places to see the people playing.

Also, back to Scotland 4th-18th. Yeah man!

I'm kinda sad that I have given in and realised I was wrong after fighting a long, hard battle about this. There have been many nights of arguing about the way we call 10.30 'half 10'. I didn't notice until I moved here and noticed that in Swedish half ten means 9.30. I couldn't understand why they thought it was weird when we said it. I fought so long and hard.. really stuck to my guns on this one, convinced, finally, that I was right about something.

Then it clicked. It doesn't make ANY sense, half 10 should be 9.30. I will apologise to anyone I have had a screaming, violent match with because of this issue. Deeply, deeply sorry.

Anyway, in other news...
Today turned out to be the best Ive had in a long time. We planned to meet in the city for a quiet day of food and drinks while lazing in a sunny park, we didn't realise it would be so eventful!

First off there was a food market. Now, anyone that knows me knows that I love food. And people that really know me should know how ridiculously crazy I am about meat. Especially Salami, and other types of that delicious food of Gods. If I could eat salami all day, everyday, I would. No joke.

Stinky cheeses

Anyway, there were looads of stalls around Tcentralen, each with flags of their country. There were mainly British and German ones taking up the space with their tasty smells, but there were French ones with Crepes, sweets of all types, millions of different meringues . German ones with their meaty meats and weird... onion garlicky paste stuff (even my German friend didnt know how to describe it!).

Italian ones with sausages, another with chocolate. There was a stall of things made from forks, mainly jewellery. They were incredible, you'd never guess that they are made from forks, and since I'd experimented with using forks for jewellery in college (as my course project, not as a way to be cool and unique...) I knew how hard it was to do. So we had a nice wee chat and ended up buying a ring... I'm so sad that he doesn't have a shope here though. One day our paths will cross once again.... him in his cool rasta hat!

The best stall by far was the Ausssie grill.

The people working at it were all from Manchester (can't say I wasn't disappointed in the lack of nice Aussie-ness) who were really cool and really liked me when they heard my accent. One was asking about the Island in Scotland that has wild wallabies on it but can't remember where it is..

They were trying to describe the burgers for me, the Crocodile one "tastes like chickeny fish" and the Kangaroo tastes like "very meaty meat". I ate the Kangaroo, because it's cuter when alive, and it was sooooo goood! LOVED it. Might go to Aus just to eat some tasty road kill.

We then just sat around in the sunshine in a wee park we found and people watched. And talked about au pair life, it reminds me of mums when they meet for a glass of wine to complain about the kids... sooo glad I have easy one to look after!

Random dude chilly with his creepy rat dog...

Only 4 weeks until the family leave for good, the movers have come to see how long it will take to pack up etc. I still don't wanna think about it, have enjoyed it here soo much with them :( So stupidly happy that I get to stay here though. Even though after summer I don't know how I will have money or a house... or food. But it will all be fine.

Looking forward to the summer though, they leave on the 23rd June, Midsommar is on the 24th so Ill stay until the start of July then go home for 2 weeks. Dreading July though, don't want it to get hotter than this or I will be a big ball of mess and smellyness. MMmm yummy.

Also looking forward to coming home, unless Senair has accidently shot anything else apart from the wing mirror with his air rifle. I pity the fools with a boring grandad.

We then randomly stumbled upon a huge parade that happens every year around this time. I think its students all make floats and then walk around the city. From a distance I just saw floats then I heard Bagpipes. I felt like screaming "Braaaaveheart" and running towards them. Doubt any of them were Scottish though... and even if they were they probably wouldnt have appreciated it much. All of them were really funny and sooo much thought was put into it! There was two Viking boat ones but this was the best, especially since there were people dressed up and running at the crowd with fake axes.. I hope they were fake at least.