Sweden, part 4: The awesomeness

So, the trip didn't work out according to plan. Who cares? I wasn't going to let a little thing like being in the wrong place spoil my trip.

(Continuing from part 1, part 2 and part 3)

It turns out I hadn't written down the name or address of the hostel, so we had to use my vague memories combined with tourist maps and dumb luck. (My vague memories consisted of a hostel beginning with Slottss, on a street called Vegetarian.)

We walked for hours in the sub-zero temperatures, past frozen rivers and stinky trams, stopping only for an awesome pizza each.

When I spotted Slottskogen on the corner of Vegagatan, my heart swelled with joy and I announced that we had arrived. Bob eyed the shiny building suspiciously and asked, Does that really look like a hostel to you?

The place looked so much like a fancy hotel/apartment block or casino complex that we continued searching up and down the street, desperately trying to contact someone who could look up the details. Of course, it turned out that Slottskogen is just one of those clean and modern hostels that charge half of the going London rate.

Other memorable parts of the trip:

• The creepy Californian paedophile who told us all about his S&M sex fetishes, blood rituals and 16-year-old Norwegian girls before he told us his name. He thought Peter Jackson should be raped and killed for making good movies that were too long.
• Trekking through the snow-covered hills, following animal tracks and a barbecue.We saw a moose!
• The curry-pineapple-banana-peanut pizza. Beat that, Filedelfio's!
• Using ferry-boats and trams on the same 90-minute ticket as a public bus. Cheaper than a 2-zone Tube journey, too!
• Attempting to learn Swedish by looking at newspaper adverts, kebab-shop menus and MTV.
• The enormous statue of the town founder or a Norse fish god or something—wearing a fuzzy red Santa hat.

I've put up some photos of the trip if you're into that sort of thing.