Wednesday and Thursday in Nora, Sweden

On Wednesday we took the train from Gothenburg to Örebro, which was about 3 hours and quite boring.  Our new friend Zoltan picked us up and we drove to his town, Nora.  We are staying at a brothers apartment, but he is gone so we have it all to ourselves.  There is no internet or tv there, its really strange, and also the cause of us not writing for a bit.  (When we first walked in we noticed right away it is a bachelor pad. Then after walking around a little we started getting nervous because there was no tv. We are going to be there for over a week so it might have gotten boring. -Eric)  After we got there on Wednesday Zoltan had to work, so we were left in an empty apartment, starving.  We walked down to the local ICA grocery store and set off to buy groceries, something we don't do very much.  After lots of debating and wondering around, we decided on some bread, cheese, sandwich meat, corn flakes, and milk.  Not exciting or delicious, but it gets us through breakfast and lunch cheaply.  (We had a little arguement over getting lettuce.  Don't worry we got some.  We need some healthy food. -Eric)  That evening we went down to Zoltan and Berit's house for hamburgers and beer, and met a few other local brothers at their house.  (But then after dinner we went back to the flat and discovered dozens of dvd's many of them being in English.  We can use this laptop to play the movies.  So now we have some entertainment if we get bored. -Eric)  There are about 10 Witnesses by our estimation within a 3 block area, so you run into them quite often.  On Thurday we took Zoltan's rowboat out to a nearby island, and then went swimming.  The water was very chilly again, but not near as bad as the ocean.  In the evening we went back for a spagetti dinner, and talked about our plans for the weekend, convention.

Cliff Diving Pros

All Monday we had been trying to figure something do to for Tuesday, and in one of the tourist brochures we found something. In order to make it in decent time, we had to get up at the ungodly hour of 8:30. By my request we had Swedish pancakes for breakfast again, and then left on our journey. We were under the impression we needed to go to the train station to trade our e-tickets for real ones(for our Wednesday train trip), but after waiting in line half an hour we found out the e-tickets were sufficient. O well, live and learn. We found the bus we needed and hopped on. It was about a 40 minute ride down to Ammodun Island, a nature preserve right next to the shore. We got the bus and walked 10 minutes to the bridge and another 15 minutes to the other side of the island. The terrain was tradiional Swedish coast, with large smooth cliffs and patches of pine/evergreen brush. (Smooth if you are in shoes, but if you are barefoot like i was my feet were a little tender after awhile. -Eric) We hiked past the entrance area that was infested with little kids, and walked to the southwest corner. We had heard this was a good place to dive off the cliffs, and were looking for the perfect spot. We finally found a good place and dropped all our junk. I went down to the water to check the temperature, and gracefully slipped on, fell on my butt, and slid right in the water. The rocks were so slick that i had difficulty getting out, and Eric was laughing histerically the whole time. We then found a small ledge, about 6 feet up, and took the plunge. The water was a brisk 16*C, or about 60*F. We barely got out on the slick rocks again. This time i realized i was bleeding from multiple places on my hands. Lesson learned and advice to potiential Atlantic swimmers: Barnicles on rocks are sharp as razor blades, watch out for them. I later discovered cuts on my stomach and legs, so watch out for those things. We decided to go higher, picking a ledge about 10 feet up. After these jumps we were freezing and bloodied, (The Barnicles really screw up the knees and hands. -Eric) so we just got some time to lay in the perfect sun, cooled by a sea breeze. It was our first real vacation from vacation, first time we had been able to swim all summer. We went around exploring the island, giving the Swedes a wide path(there were no apparel rules here, and they used their freedom). After hiking around for half an hour we went back to the bus stop and took it to the mall. We picked up a few items and went home to dinner. We went to the Swedish meeting at 7, and got ablsoultesly nothing out of it, but met some really nice people. Afterwards we had ice cream with strawberries, and went back to our apartment to pack. (Which we really didn't do. We just relaxed and watched some tele. -Eric)

Exploring Göteborg

Monday morning was the best one of the trip, for we were treated to Swedish pancakes. The pile disappeared rather quickly, and we set out on the town with Atti. (Swedish pancakes are the only food that Blythe has either ate as much as me or more than me. He really enjoys those things. -Eric) The first stop was the phone store to remedy our mobile issues. After 3 stores it was finally resolved and we went on to lunch, and oh what a lunch it was. We went to a small place called Steinbrenner & Nybergs, a cake company with a restaurant attached. The gimmick here is that if you buy lunch you have access to all-you-can-eat cake. We got the soup of the day (Cream of broccli, very nice - Eric), and good fresh bread. Then it was on to the cake, at least 7 different kinds to my memory. Because of the late breakfast and early lunch we were pretty full, but still managed to cram down a fair amount of cake. Afterward Atti went home and we headed off for the mall. (We walked randomly through most of the stores and scouted out some stores that we will return to later. They have some pretty cool sports and clothes stores. -Eric) When we were done there we walked down to the water and checked out the boats and such. Finally we walked up the main street, Avenyn, to look at the sights and stores. We finally had enough and went back home for dinner. That evening we admittedly did not much, except planned our trip for the next day.

Sunday, Sweden Day 1

After our little delay at the airport resulted in a mega long travel day, we were a little tired to say the least. (We were up at about 22 hours. -Eric) After a nap until 12, we went up to my grandma Atti's for breakfast. After some food and catching up, we went down to rest some more and relax. Then again at 3 we went for dinner, so we could leave for meeting at 4:15. We took the tram, and got there about 10 minutes before it started. I was able to talk to many that I met here last year, and will see them again this weekend at the District Convention. This week was their circuit overseer's visit, and both of his talks were exactly the same as when the CO visited my hall in May. (Its weird to have a Sunday meeting so late. It felt like a Tuesday or Thursday or something like that. -Eric) After the meeting Grandma Atti invited us back for ice cream and a beer. Needless to say we accepted. That night we watched a Mythbusters marathon and went to bed.