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Even before arriv­ing at this con­ti­nent, I knew there was one place I wanted to go; it was Swe­den. Why Swe­den? Two main rea­sons, firstly I know Swe­den is as hockey-crazed as Canada, so that was a big insen­tive to go, and sec­ondly, I wanted to see if its true what they say; a coun­try full of gor­geous blond haired blue eyed women. My room­mate Kevin has always wanted to go to Copen­hagen, Den­mark, and so we decided to go, and while over there check out Swe­den at the same time, since there is a bridge that goes to Malmo. I wanted to go to Stock­holm, but this was a good compromise.

Malmo, Swe­den

The moment we got to the Copen­hagen air­port, we took the first train to Malmo, Swe­den. When I got sight of the ticket prices, I knew this coun­try wasn’t going to be cheap; $20 for a train pass to go over the bridge. So, we bought a ticket, and took the first train to Swe­den, with no idea where we were going to stay for the night. The first thing I see when I arrive is a Burger King, and if you know me, that made me very happy; until I saw the prices that is. A Whop­per combo came out to an equiv­i­lent of $12 CAD. I like Burger King, but not that much. But, it turns out that these are the typ­i­cal prices in this city, every­thing is extremely expen­sive, the cheap­est thing we found was $3 CAD for a muf­fin and a coffee.

Kevin with our cof­fee and muffins in a burger joint called Max

So, with caf­feine in our sys­tem, and our stom­achs slightly more filled, we decide that its time to explore the city. Now, while in Scan­di­navia, we didn’t do the typ­i­cal tourist thing, like find spe­cific mon­u­ments or find places where Vikings died, we just went off and explored (although one thing I found that was pretty cool is when you actu­ally find a statue/historic area, there is a num­ber that you can call and a voice recorded mes­sage tells you all about it, might be a good idea in other places of Europe as well). There were a lot of things about Malmo that reminded me of Van­cou­ver, there were plenty of nice parks, there was lots of green, and the build­ings were sig­nif­i­cantly more mod­ern then Prague in most areas.

Town square

After a cou­ple hours of explor­ing, we decided it was time to find a place to sleep for the night, and while explor­ing we did step into a bunch of hotels to get some prices, but when we asked a lady at a Best West­ern where the cheap­est place to stay was, she directed us to a hotel on the other side of the Cen­tral Sta­tion. We went to check it out, and hey, what do you know, she was right, it was the cheap­est place to stay for the night (~$55 CAD for the night, yeah, Swe­den is expen­sive). But, not only did we have our own room with two beds, but we got a free all you can eat break­fast the next day, and all you can eat waf­fles all day long. This was the decid­ing fac­tor in choos­ing our hostel.

Waf­fles, we could made these all day, any time. Awesome.

So, after get­ting set­tled in, we went out to buy some food and beers from a super­mar­ket we ran­domly found when tak­ing the wrong direc­tion back to the city (starv­ing stu­dent style). After hav­ing a few, we decided it was time to see what the nightlife had to offer. It turns out Swe­den was stricter then we had ini­tially hoped, not strict by North Amer­i­can stan­dards, but def­i­nitely by Euro­pean stan­dards. Alco­hol was no where to be found on the side stores, the only drink we could buy were beers that were 3.5%, quite a weak beer. We went to a cou­ple pubs in the main area, but unfor­tu­nitely the pubs were quite expen­sive, and we couldn’t find any real clubs. After a bit of bar hop­ping, Kevin and I found a big line into a build­ing, so we decide to go check it out.

Line in the distance

We ended up meet­ing a really awe­some Swedish guy who answered a lot of the ques­tions we were hav­ing. We found out that we couldn’t get beers over 3.5% because that was the max­i­mum any cor­ner store could sell, any more and you have to buy alco­hol from a des­ig­nated liquer stores, just like Van­cou­ver. We also found out that the club­bing age in the city is 20, mean­ing I made the bare min­i­mum, but Kevin wasn’t old enough, so the line we were in was com­pletely point­less… We headed back, and went back to the burger joint were we got the cof­fees in the morn­ing, and got a cou­ple burg­ers and fin­ished off the night talk­ing to a forty year old Swede who was com­pletely out of his mind.

Frus­trat­ing night in Sweden

Copen­hagen, Denmark

The next morn­ing, we took the train and headed over to Copen­hagen. This was almost the same sit­u­a­tion as Swe­den, we had arrived in the city and really didn’t know were we were going to sleep that night. The plan was to stay with one of the girls that Kevin and I had met in a bar in Prague, but we were still com­mu­ni­cat­ing back and forth, unsure of any­thing. Copen­hagen was a very gor­geous city, large and full of cool look­ing land­marks. A big bonus was that in this city, we could get alco­hol almost any­were, and there­for the guy we met in Swe­den was right; Den­mark has a much bet­ter drink­ing cul­ture. But the big down­side was the price of this city, a Whop­per meal came to ~$15 CAD.

The archi­tec­ture to me seemed like a mix­ture of Ams­ter­dam and Vancouver

Turns out that we had a place to stay for the night, Sille (dan­ish girl) came through, so for night two, we had a bed. The house was on the out­skirts of the city, a decent bus/train dis­tance away. The house itself was very cool, made of brick on the out­side, and the inside was filled with what you would see in a typ­i­cal fam­ily house; kids draw­ings on the wall, a cou­ple rooms, and a (inter­est­ing look­ing) fur­nace. Luckly the fam­ily wasn’t there that week­end, they were in Swe­den, although I wouldn’t have minded meet­ing a full Dan­ish family.

Where I slept; Sille’s sis­ters room

After we were all set­tled in, it was off to the city to see what the nightlife had to offer. Sille went to go meet up with some friends, while Kevin and I went to go to a bar that offered cheap drinks for a Sun­day night. There wasn’t many peo­ple in the bar, but we made friends with the bar­tenders, whom we bought drinks for. One was a Columbian who came to Copen­hagen on a stu­dent exchange, loved it so much he decided to stay and bar­tend (a big insen­tive was min­i­mum wage is equiv­i­lent to $20 CAD). The other was a gor­geous blond haired blue eyed bar­tender, the one who ini­tially cought our eye when we were pass­ing the bar, we later found out that she sang as well, and was pretty decent. The bar­tenders rec­om­mended us to some event, and so they marked it on a map and won­dered across the city to this place, which ended up being an hour and a half walk, and it turns out it was were Sille was going as well. Along the way, she tells us not to go there, but to go to the bar she was at, and so we headed over there instead. This bar was quite a grungy bar, and we were def­i­nitely the only tourists in the area, we later found out it wasn’t the safest area in Copen­hagen. While in the bar, I noticed three Danes who wanted to play foose­ball, but clearly needed a forth man, so I offered my ser­vices, and they were happy to have me. We played a cou­ple games, and for each game, the loser bought the win­ners a round of shots; my part­ner and I won twice.

Foos­ball part­ner; Turns out his wife is Per­sian, and he spent a lot of time telling me to go to Teran, Iran

After­words, we headed back with Sille on a bus, and thank­fully we were with her, because there is no way Kevin and I would have found it on our own using the bus, it was a big maze. We went back, passed out, and woke up to a new day. Sille made us cof­fee, I took a shower, and we were on our away. Her par­ents were com­ing back that night, she said it would be fine to stay another night if we couldn’t find a place to stay, but we didn’t want to over­stay our welcome.

Thanks for tak­ing us to Dan­ish secret nightlife, and the free place to stay. We owe you one Sille!

We ven­tured into the city, and we needed to fig­ure out what to do. The ques­tion was, do we find a place to sleep, or do we tough it out and stay out all night. We decided on the lat­ter; we fig­ured we were get­ting back late any­ways, we would really only get 4 hours of sleep at most, and con­sid­er­ing the cheap­est hos­tel was ~$60 CAD, it wasn’t worth it for us. That night in Copen­hagen, we were home­less. We walked over to the Cen­tral Sta­tion, bought some lock­ers, and kept our bags there for the night. The first thing we decided to do was to finally get some­thing to eat, we had been liv­ing off the food we bought in Swe­den for the last cou­ple of days (bananas and nuts). We found an amaz­ing mid­dle east­ern all you can eat buf­fet, and sur­pris­ingly for a decent price.

All you can eat din­ner, the can­dle in my opin­ion was kind of mis­placed, but who cares when you get unlim­ited food. But hav­ing so much food made me real­ize how much my capac­ity to eat has gone down. I may not eat the most food at the next Christ­mas eve dinner…

We decide to look for a pub, and to our sur­prise, the bar has the same deal that it had on Sun­day. This time, we tried a bunch of Dan­ish shots. One tasted like licorice, one tasted like chil­drens med­i­cine, and one tasted like some­thing I can’t com­pare, its a drink that old peo­ple drink; I hated it, Kevin liked it. It was a lit­tle more lively this night, a lot more locals. After about eight shots or so each, we decided to find a dif­fer­ent bar. We won­dered around aim­lessly, and we hap­pened to see an mid­dle aged cou­ple, and we asked them if there were any good pubs in the area. They said they were head­ing to a jazz bar, and we were wel­come to come of we’d like. So we fol­lowed along.

Myself, Kevin, Hen­rich and Henne

We ended up spend­ing a cou­ple hours with this cou­ple, they bought us a cou­ple rounds of beer, and we did like­wise. They also bought every­one a shot of the old peo­ple drink; I wasn’t very excited about this, but I’m not one to turn down a drink. We found out that they were both teach­ers; Henne was a teacher for the dis­abled, and Hen­rich was a his­tory teacher. They told us a lot about their lives, and Copen­hagen as well, they marked a cou­ple places for us to go. After­words, we headed out, and almost every­thing was closed, so there was noth­ing left to do but find a place in Copen­hagen to sleep. The first place we found was a lit­tle enclosed space we had pre­vi­ously ran into when going the wrong away, we saw it and fig­ured it would be a good place to sleep.

Tighe passed out, I didn’t sleep here, I wasn’t tired so I played Wolfen­stein on my iPhone instead

While we stayed there, a white truck pulled up, and it kind of freaked us out since we didn’t know who it was, and we were in an enclosed space with no other way out, so we got out of there as fast as pos­si­ble. The next stop was to see if we could sleep at the Cen­tral Station.

Cen­tral Station

Unfor­tu­nately, we were kicked out by a secu­rity guard. The next thing we decided to do was to go to a early morn­ing break­fast place that the Dan­ish cou­ple told us about, and it was a pretty far walk on a cold night, but we decided to give it a go. We get to the exact loca­tion that she marked, but there was no break­fast to be found. We found a church and slept on the out­side bench instead. It ended up being too cold to sleep, I couldn’t do it so we con­tin­ued to walk. We found a bak­ery that was open­ing in an hour, so we slept out­side of it until it opened. I fig­ured, if I bought a sand­wich, they wouldn’t mind if I rested my head on the table for a bit, but I was wrong, they kicked us out after I paid for a $10 CAD sand­wich that was worth about $2. By the time that whole ordeal was over, we found an open McDon­alds, bought some burg­ers, and took a nap. Clearly, I can always count on McDon­alds to save the day.

Me out­side of the bak­ery, extremely tired

There were a cou­ple more places we slept, like the park, and I’m sure there are more that I can’t remem­ber. Over­all, it was a ridicu­lous night, and I have new found respect for the home­less, its not easy out there. We headed back to the air­port, and our Scan­di­na­vian adven­ture had come to a close.

So, a cou­ple of week­ends ago I went to Vienna, and it was great. It was more of a low key trip, did more and drank less for once. We took the stu­dent agency bus, it wasn’t as long of a bus ride as Budapest, maybe about five hours or so. We stayed at the Wom­bat hos­tel, which is located at the end of the main shop­ping street in Vienna, a street most women I know would kill to shop at. I was more impressed with the donairs.

Don­airs, 3 Euro

The hos­tel was fan­tas­tic, it was very clean, and very mod­ern. When we walked in, we awoke a sleep­ing Korean man, who was star­tled by our entrance. Hora and I talked to him, and it turns out he was in Vienna for the Inter­na­tional Atomic Energy con­fer­ence! The first thing I thought to ask was “What the hell are you doing in a hos­tel?”. But I guess sci­en­tists don’t make as much these days. The beds were very com­fort­able, more so then my own bed at the Kolej. This hos­tel had a great bar in the base­ment, on the first night we went down and ended up play­ing foose­ball with the bar ten­der, who had the key to the machine and kept the ball rolling all night. He was pissed of when he lost though, it was Greg and I vs Hora and him.

Hos­tel

Dur­ing the day we went explor­ing, and it was very dif­fer­ent from Prague in a lot of ways. The city was quite a bit more mod­ern look­ing in the main down­town, the build­ings not quite as old as Prague. Another thing about the city was that it was it was more spaced out, much less cramped then Prague, although I’m not sure if thats a good thing, they def­i­nitely didn’t get the most out of the land, but it was a nice change. We walked down the main shop­ping dis­trict to get to the main down­town core. Once we got there, there was a ton of build­ings to take a look at, most of them we’re pretty cool.

Some cas­tle I thought looked nice

Later on that night, we went to a Hukka bar and smoked some fla­vored tobacco with the rest of the stu­dents who were on this trip from the dorm. Appar­ently there is a large Turk­ish pop­u­la­tion in Vienna, so these kinds of bars are quite com­mon. We also had some beers and just chilled out.

Chillin’ at a Hukka bar

The next day, it was an amaz­ingly sunny day, the first time I’d walked out­side in Europe with just a t-shirt, and it was about damn time. We walked to Schon­brunn Palace, which is the palace that Kaiser Franz Joseph lived in. This palace was absolutely enor­mous, so big that it had its very own zoo inside, and it wasn’t just some small zoo. We spent almost all day at this palace, both inside and out.

All the land in this pic­ture is part of the palace, not even close to the total amount

Huge bat

Ran­dom cool lookin’ fish

Later on in the night, I went out with the stu­dents to a bunch of bars, and I wanted to go to the main bar dis­trict called Bermuda Tri­an­gle, but no one else wanted to go. I was fine with it because I fig­ured I’d go out there myself the next day and meet some ran­dom Ger­mans, but lit­tle did I know that Vienna prac­ti­cally shuts down on Sun­day, almost no bars were open… Oh well, I know the next time I go to Vienna.

One of the bars we went to, the sign says “Put your phone in your ass”. Dou­ble you tee eff.

The next day was the night I found out the Bermuda Tri­an­gle was closed, but we did find a dif­fer­ent cool bar, and it was play­ing hockey! It was the play­offs for a Aus­trian team, the hockey def­i­nitely wasn’t NHL cal­i­bre, but it was fun to watch none the less.

Pub

The next day we had to check out at 12, so we packed our bags and headed on over to an amuse­ment part that was beside the bus sta­tion. The way it worked was a lot dif­fer­ent from the PNE. Basi­cally, you don’t have to pay to get in, you walk in for free, and you pay for each indi­vid­ual ride set by the com­pany who leased the plot of land on which they build their ride. Each ride was four to five Euros, but most of them were worth it, espe­cially this one in particular:

I also enjoyed this one, it was a com­bi­na­tion of the swings and the hellevator:

I got a pretty good view of the city from up there

After­words, we kind of ran out of money, so we went explor­ing until our bus came. We walked across a bridge that leads us to more of a residential/industrial area of Vienna, which was pretty cool because we found a ran­dom Microsoft con­fer­ence where they were going to talk about Win­dows 7. We took a cou­ple fly­ers and watched them set up, but unfor­tu­nitely it started when our bus came…

Over­all I had a great time in Vienna, it would have been nicer (espe­cially in the palace) if it was Spring, but it was still great. Good beers, inter­est­ing peo­ple, and great food, that’s a good com­bi­na­tion for a great city. I ate at least 10 don­airs, I kind of went to town in that coun­try when it came to food, sig­nif­i­cantly more then I spent in Copen­hagen, which was after this trip, but that blog post will have to wait for another day. To see the rest of my pic­tures, go here:

Vienna Album

Ran­dom graffiti