Monte came back from Prague and we stayed in. I don't think he slept much in Prague. He said it was dirty and made him glad to come back to Sweden where everything is clean and people don't look at you like they want to rob you. The next morning we started drinking at 9 a.m. and then headed out to El Giganten electronics store to buy a certain DVD player which came with a free mountain bike which I being the cheap bastard that I am was going to give to Linda for her birthday present. Well she wants a bike, I reasoned, and and I want a DVD player so it all works out.
But like everything there is a catch. I used to be a bicycle affecianado and I can't buy her just any bike, it has to at least be something decent. The ad is short on the details of the bike so I haven't bought one yet because the store doesn't have them in yet. Monte noted that the salespeople looked in dread of the whole bike giveaway deal. That last thing they want, he noted, was to deal with 10,000 bicycles being shipped to the store on top of the usual retail hassles.
When I checked the store with Monte, the bicycles weren't in yet so its a bit of a stalemate. I was feeling paranoid in the place and I was afraid of having a panic attack and freaking out. Luckily I didn't. I had a whole host of irrational fears running through my head that I cannot explain. Monte and me pointed ourselves to the closest drinking establishment, a nice outdoor cafe in Medborgarplatsen and stayed there until 5:00 when the indoor pubs openened.
We hung out in the area because its where all the cheap drinks are. Cheap means between 5 and 7 bucks a beer mind you but at least there is none of "that tipping bollocks" (as an old Welsh mate called it) like in the USA. I justify it to myself to that every time you pay $7 for a beer you are putting kids through university and putting food on the table of old folks and subsidizing the Swedish welfare state. I am all for that, as I will soon be benefitting from it, especially if I keep up my drinking.
Monte and I hit some pubs in the Slussen area, inlcuding a disappointing O'Leary's Boston Pub that I was hoping would be showing some American sports but only had lame Champions League football like the British and Irish pubs. The guy that started the pub wasn't even American, he was a Swede who married a yank back in the 80's and decided to capitalize on it. The place was filled with Boston sports memorabilia (8 million kronors worth apparently) but the beers (Sam Adams in bottles for 36 kronors) were cheap although the atmosphere was a bit corporate and we are not that corporate (especially when we've been drinking all day)so we went to Kellys for shots, beers, and dinner and then to Stringfellows in Saint Eriksplan for a final beer before washing down with a Lapin Kulta at 7-11 before coming home and passing out.
Today I went shopping at H&M since it was there Spring sale and some cool Winter stuff was now on sale (its still freezing here if you ask me... spring or no). Then I went to sign up for Swedish Immigration classes. I love the idea of being an immigrant. How cool. I hope when I have kids and they find out they are children of an immigrant they don't get alientated and turn out to be crack dealing vandals that tag the Tunnelbahn with indeciperable scribblings.
More drinking to come...
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