Saturday, July 5, 2008

Hedgehogs, Baby Pigeons, and The Tube

ÖREBRO - We traveled to Örebro in order to stay at Lena's apartment before the festival. The drive up was spent with Jenny, Tobias, music, and the occasional incident of me passing out in the backseat.

For all the not sleeping I tend to do, I sure have a problem staying awake in a car. Ever since I was a child, all you have to do is throw me in a car, have a little sunlight shining down on me, play some music, and sit back as I slump against the car door and start drooling on myself. Someone should get on inventing some sort of Auto Car that pumps in artificial sunlight while driving in a pattern on the highway. People like me would be sleeping for as long as you programmed it to go. Ten, fifteen hours?

Anyway, the ride up was successful and I had a chance to see Jenny's old apartment. It still contains a large majority of her stuff.

We were looking around and I found myself in the middle of a plastic sleeve/tube thing that was probably meant for a small child or a animal, waddling around, when Jenny's friend Siobhan arrived and walked in.

Strange look.

Pause.

"Hi, I'm Nick."

"I know."

Ha. Excellent first intro.

Tobias and I set out to try to get some pizza for a late dinner before the place closed down the road. No luck.

But, on the way back, I spotted a hedgehog, which I thought was great. He was a quick little bugger, but after scurrying behind him, I was able to snap a picture.



Jenny started making some pasta instead and we all sat around talking. Siobhan took ample opportunities through the evening to embarrass Jenny and I had some chuckles about it. Until I got embarrassed, of course.

On the balcony outside, a family of pigeons had taken up and the babies were there all the time. Not really a good picture of them, but it was all I got.



We watched Mama Pigeon regurgitate meals over the next 12 hours or so. Lovely.

Lots of listening to music through the evening and a late night overall. I have no idea when and how long I actually slept that night. The sun shone through most of the night and I didn't have a clock. I slept off and on, but felt good through it all.

Jenny, Siobhan, and I ventured out to shop the next day and picked up supplies for the festival. I took some money out of the ATM and felt like a rich man, flashing around a massive wad of Swedish cash that really only amounted to around $300. I had grand plans that day to become a Big Swedish Hip Hop Star and flash my cheddar on screen. As long as it gets sent over to America, no one will know how poor I really am.

(In related news, the dollar has slipped even more this week and my dollars don't even convert to a full 6 kronor anymore. It was exchanging for more than 6 kronor when I showed up here. Get your crap together, America!)

We grabbed a bit of lunch in what was kind of like a shopping mall/center and then headed back to the apartment. We dropped Jenny off and Siobhan was nice enough to drive me back in town for to look for a Swedish-English dictionary or some sort of book I could use to start learning something. Why didn't I get one before I left? Good question.

We found one at a reasonable price in one store and I settled on it after price comparing with some other ones in a more "upscale" bookstore. Be grateful for book prices back home. One regular sized book I found for learning Swedish cost around $50. I settled on a $10 dictionary and started learning random words.

When we returned, everyone else had left except Jenny. They took the trailer and were off to the festival. I went upstairs and helped her finish packing things. Then we were off to grab Jesper.

After a short stop at Jesper's, a visit with his dog, and helping him with some things, we were finally off to the festival...

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