Travel Day!

It's official, my journey in Sweden has begun! After an emotional goodbye with my girlfriend Keryn last night, I wasn't really sure how the traveling was going to go. Turns out, I'm most of the way there and still alive. Lucky me!

I proceeded through security with a great deal of things, including but not limited to two jackets,a backpack and a rolling carry on. I never want to pack a bag that heavy ever again: 35 pounds going through security in 2 airports. More on that bag later.

As I wait for my bags to come through the X-Ray machine, I see a TSA agent take out my backpack for a good old-fashioned hand inspection. She tells me not to touch throw bag while she's searching through it, and I agree to her terms. She reveals as she digs through that she's looking for a tube of some sort that came up in the X-ray. I have no idea what she's looking for. She says she has all night. I secretly admire her dedication to her job.

Then she finds the tube. But it's inside a pocket she can't find the opening to. She finds the opening, and it turns out to be my toothpaste that's been MIA for two months. Go figure.

On the plane to Amsterdam, I sit in a cramped seat next to an Indian woman,  who immediately asks to borrow my cellphone so she can call her son. I haven't hardly put my bag down yet and it takes me a few minutes to get awkwardly situated in my tiny seat. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed but the little Indian woman has asked to use my phone and I oblige her. She tells me she came from Indian to meet her one-year-old grandson in Boston and is returning back home to Bombay via Amsterdam. I eavesdrop on several interesting conversations that happen around me between American citizens and people from Holland, Ghana and others and realize that I am heading into a very different world. But I'm ready for it.

Our flight arrives into Amsterdam and I'm excited because I was told I wouldn't need to go through customs in Amsterdam. SIKE, turns out I do, just not with my checked bag. Remember that 35 pound bag from before? Well a man pulls it out of the X-ray and says, "Did you bring bricks from your house?! I can't be lifting this sort of weight." The bag then gets EVERYTHING in it turned over by a very pleasant Dutch woman, but this bag was full (more like overfilled) and needed to be put back together carefully. So she left me to do that, which I actually appreciated.

Then I saw the airport, and boy was it something. It was more of a mall than an airport, with duty free shops up one side and gates down the other. But these weren't your ordinary duty free shops. There were full-on establishments for handbags, alcohol, chocolate, and a walk-in humidor at a store dedicated to the sale of cigars and whiskey. Pretty incredible. I got a chicken sandwich from Burger King at 8 in the morning and didn't feel one bit bad about it because the guy at the BK was easily the most genuinely nice person I've ever encountered at a fast food restaurant. And with my BK I sat back and just looked at the airport, gorgeous as it was.

I cant wait to go back to Amsterdam to see one of my friend, Bryn, who's studying there this semester, because Holland looked beautiful from the window of the plane.

I slept practically the whole way from Amsterdam to Stockholm and pulled together all of my stuff again for another dismantling involving my larger bag, in which they would certainly be interested to know contained two feet of PVC pipe. But I didn't even need to talk to a customs officer at all. As I ride the train to Örebro,no one has seen my papers at all since I arrived here. Maybe I'm self-centered but j expected that someone would want to see SOMETHING, my passport at the very minimim. I think no one cares, which is great since I'm very tired of traveling now and I stink of must. At least someone is helping me from the bus station when I get there.

That's it for now I suppose. It's been a long day. Until next time.

Max

P.S. check out this picture of the express train from the airport to Stockholm. The highest speed I saw on the screen was 208kph. How fast is that Chris and JChurch? Definitely the fastest I've ever moved but I know Chris has gone faster :)