Hello internet. Where to begin, where to begin. This very second I'm soaking my hat in warm water and detergent. You know the hat I always wear. Well, I don't wash it much and it shows. This water is now pretty disgusting with a color normally seen in a toilet. This hat has been with me through a lot so I don't care what it does when it's not on my head. I wish it would clean itself more often. Whatever.
So foremost in my mind is my trip back to Jonkoping from Paris. The day started at 3:30 when my alarm went off. I snoozed it. 3:40 and I turned the alarm off, got up a few minutes later dreading what was before me. Let me tell you that I went to bed only a couple of hours previous and was insanely tired at this point. The reason why I'm getting up this early was to catch a train to go across Paris to bus that will take me and a couple friends to the airport. This early the trains aren't that frequent. We said our goodbyes to people we may not ever see again in life and walk in the cold dark morning to the first train station. This train ride takes 45 minutes to get to the metro station we needed to switch trains. We waited at this train station for what felt like an hour. It very well could have been an hour. I was so tired I only hated it. Another 15 minutes on the metro, then an hour and a half bus ride to the air port. This airport hosts Ryanair, easily the cheapest airline I've ever flown with, and it shows with the airports it flies into. They're crowded and very ill informative. Two hours of this then 2 hours of flight to Skavsta. Here's where things went wrong. Remember two sentences ago when I wrote that we flew to Skasta? We flew there but we didn't land there. We flew to Arlanda, the airport north of Stockholm. What this does is totally screw with the travel schedule that everyone has to get to where they're supposed to go, including mine. At this point the mood of the crew I'm traveling with takes a down turn. Not only are we super tired but now we may have to eat our tickets and buy new ones to get home. I'm not sure how much money I've got in the bank. Parents were supposed to put more money in but I didn't know. So I only had a few hundred crowns with me and I didn't know what it would cost. I was going through a bunch of scenarios on what to do and not liking any of them. Ryanair was kind enough to provide a shuttle back to Skavsta which took us awhile to find and a lot of heat searching. Yeah, it's pretty cold here in Sweden now. It took over an hour to get back to Skavsta and by the time we got there we were over two hours behind our original schedule. This is where luck and kindness pulls its weight a little. I notice that one of the buses on my original itinerary was sitting next us and that there wasn't a time table of when I was supposed to take that bus. This was would be free and get me closer to home where I would at least be able to buy a cheaper ticket. An hour and a half I get to Linkoping and luckily for me the next bus was waiting to take me home. So no waiting in the cold. I show the bus driver my ticket that was for a bus 2 hours a go, but he was very kind and let me on the bus. 2 hours later and I was home. I was very glad to get back in Jonkoping and at this point I was having a hard time staying awake. I stumbled back to my door and I remembered that I left my card key with someone staying. They needed it cause they had to turn theirs in. I called this person and they were over a half hour's bus ride away. to be honest I wasn't mad. I was a little past feeling at this point. So I went to get a pizza which was the first thing that I had eaten that whole day. It was about 7 in the evening and very cold outside. Let me mention that this pizza was free. I had a card that got stamped every time I ate there and the eleventh was free. This was my eleventh pizza. I ate in the restaurant all by myself with no one else in sight, even the workers were somewhere else. I just felt weird. Anyway, I got home and my friend was there to open the door for me. It was nice to be in my room and to go to bed. I quickly got out of my cloths and headed for bed. Just before I was about to fall asleep I remembered that I was supposed to get a key to someone coming over at 10, about an hour or so away. I had to hold sleep at bay for just a few more minutes. There was a great battle between me and sleep this whole hour. But I did the deed and was off the dreamland. One of the longest days of my life.
I'll write about Paris later. Pics'll be provided as well, but later.
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