10/2-3: The Pharaohs of Stockholm

10/2:

Tamer and his buddies from Cairo (Victor, whom I met before and Kaz) came to Stockholm for a visit. The two guys stayed at a hostel in downtown while Tamer stayed with Courtney and me. I picked up Tamer from the train station, while the other guys took a different flight into Stockholm. Eventually that night we all met up and headed for an old medieval style pub in Gamla Stan for a few drinks.




Following the medieval pubs we wandered a little through Gamla Stan, experiencing the old town through a slight drizzle. Being that pubs tend to be so expensive, I brought a long a bottle of vodka and some lingonberry juice. Unfortunately I didn't quite work out the proportions very well and the drink tasted more of the metal shavings that were undoubtedly leaching into my drink through my aluminum water bottle. This ordeal was worth acknowledging because the concoction was barely drinkable ... which left only me to drink it. So while the other guys went from pub to pub more or less sober, I was absolutely gone.

Flash backward for a moment though when I was a mere 7 on a level of drunkenness, and we were waiting in line for a pub/club/whatever. I had finished my awful beverage, and poured the remaining drops out on the ground. This happened to be in plain view of the bouncer, which I thought was totally reasonable. The bouncer on the other hand, would have none of it. And although we had waited for a while, and while I was definitely still cognizant, he wouldn't let us in. Tamer, played it cool and tried to help him see our perspective, but the guy wouldn't budge, which was probably a product of his personality as well as his, shall we say, "robust" stature. As such we went to an upscale fancy club where I bought a martini I didn't need. Eventually the guys rolled back to their hostel while Tamer and I headed back to my place.

10/3:

The next morning we woke up and took our time. Tamer, admittedly, is not the sightseeing type and so we rolled out slowly finally meeting up with Victor and Kaz. We had hoped to go to either the Vasa Museum or go on a cruise in the area, but unfortunately our slow morning made us miss most of the highlights. Instead, we went sightseeing a bit. We stopped for a while in front of the Parliament while Tamer tested out his new SLR (note these photos are mine from my puny point and shoot ... hint hint mom, if you're reading ... no not really).

Tamer was deeply excited about his camera. This left Victor (a more seasoned photographer) and him deeply enamored with the camera, as well as with themselves. Kaz and I sat bored while they took photos of each other in a shameless back and forth of ego-maniacal, narcissism (yeah, I know they're basically synonymous, I just need to fit a certain number of 4+ syllable words in each post).
While they were doing that I snapped a few quick photos and chatted with Kaz while we both slowly froze to death and died inside. Below is the city hall (frequently pictured I'm sure at various points in this blog).
After they were done loving themselves (OK, I'm pretty sure they didn't stop loving themselves) we headed to Gamla Stan to catch a Manchester United match. On the way we ran into some locals wearing typical day-to-day Swedish attire.
While Tamer and I watched the match, Kaz and Victor headed to their hostel to check out. To save $$$ they decided to get a hostel for only one night and stay up since their flight was so early in the morning. They headed to the train station to leave their things in a locker (stay tuned boys and girls, this will become important later). Courtney met up with us at the pub, and we had a few drinks before heading to the Absolut Ice Bar. You'd think Egyptians would be well adapted to the freezing cold temperatures of the Ice Bar, but before long we decided to call it quits and head out.


But of course not without a few pauses for more photos! Here's "Courtney's Happy Tower" on the left (she, like all great explorers, put her name on it).
Confession: Courtney and (to a larger degree) I are addicted to Ramlösa. Don't worry mom, it's just lightly flavored carbonated water. We've taken to calling it crack partly because of the addictive nature of it as well as the fact that we've taken to smoking it and stealing teenagers iPods to support our habit.

After our chilly walk we ended up at a random pub in Gamla Stan. The place was pretty busy except a big back room with a huge conference table. The 5 of us monopolized the table. Here's Courtney waiting for a gallant ginger stallion to buy her a drink ...
pshh ... keep waiting.
The bar had a bizarre music selection. Victor and Kaz got pretty into it as you can see.
Victor tasted liberty, and it tasted delicious ...
So after this fun pub, the night got a little hairy. The guys wanted to head out to a club. Victor went to ask some locals what they suggested. They gave one suggestion for if you liked "plastic boobs" and one for if you didn't like plastic boobs. We found only the plastic boob option in our guide book, so off we went.

This adventure turned out to be a disappointment as covers at these bars ranged from 120-200 kronor (note currently the exchange rate is roughly 7 kronor to $1) and we were not about to drop that much money just to get in. Here's a photo of a rather happening, yet rather expensive club, courtesy of Tamer.

We strolled from club to club trying to find something worth going into, but ultimately everything started closing down around 2. We decided to kill a little time and so we headed to a burger joint for something to eat. After enjoying a delicious Max Burger, which is possibly the most awesome fast food place ever (after Zips ... God bless that Inland Northwest chain) we headed to the train station to pick up Victor and Kaz's stuff so they could take their bus to the airport and fly out. Unfortunately ... the fucking train station closes from like 2-5 am.

Uhh, are you serious? The whole stations closed down. It was the most bizarre thing. We all as a group scrambled around trying to find a way in before finally Kaz got a security guard to let him in. I say this casually, but this took 45 minutes to an hour before they finally were away. At this point, everyone was exhausted, everyone was pissed at the train station, some of our guests probably hated the city of Stockholm and it basically was one of the biggest busts in the history of busts. Which was really a shame because everything up until we embarked on that "plastic boob" quest was so damn fun.

At any rate, the next day passed without incident as Tamer was able to get on his Span Air flight and head back to Barcelona before eventually returning to Cairo.