Stockholm to Lund

It was lovely waking up in a comfortable bed on the ship after a long night's good sleep, rather than having passed the night in various equally intolerable contortions without a cabin as I had the previous trans-baltic trip. I met my roommate who had come in during the night, a middle-aged man. He said something complicated in what I assume was Estonian and which I took to mean `good morning'. I got up and went up to the upper decks to check things out.

It was dawn and we were just sailing into the Stockholm archipelago, and it was a breathtaking sight indeed, cruising in through all the little islands with their little red houses and boats and such, towards a great and beautiful city, as the sun just rose up above the water, ice, and snow.

At 110 estonian crowns, the breakfast buffet on the ship was obnoxiously overpriced, but I didn't see what else I would do with my hundred and twenty remaining estonian crowns, so I gave them to the lady and had a nice breakfast, watching the scenery go by.

The rest of the journey back to Lund was uneventful. Luckily I was able to dig up twenty six Swedish crowns out of my backpack, twenty of which were needed to take the bus to the Stockholm City Terminal. There I waited for nearly an hour to change my remaining $150 into Swedish crowns at the FOREX. I bought a Flygbussarna bus ticket to Arlanda. I asked for the student price and explained that my student ID has been stolen in Tallinn, but the woman made me pay the full fare (seventy crowns) for which I was very bitter. (``too bad, you have to pay the regular price'')

Arlanda (location of the airport) was further away from central Stockholm than I remembered, and the bus took something like an hour, or maybe more like forty minutes. (Last time, two years ago, I took the train.) I wasn't in a hurry and the bus ride was comfortable. At Arlanda I bought myself a standby ticket to Lund from a vending machine for two hundred eighty crowns ($28), and then I went to wait for the plane.

Airline security on domestic flights in Sweden is rather endearingly lax. The girl in front of me, also flying stand-by, had forgotten to bring a photo ID. ``Oh well, try to bring it next time,'' was all that they said as they allowed her to board. Then while you're flying, enjoying the complementary newspapers and uniquely scandinavian lunch, you can look up into the cockpit and watch the pilot and copilot fly the plane; there's no `steel door' as they're always talking about in America.

So I arrived at the airport in Malmö, took the Flygbussarna bus to Lund (paying student fare this time), walked back to Delphi... and I was home again. Travel time from Tallinn was exactly 24 hours. Looking back, it felt like a tremendous journey.

Breakfast	EEK 110
Bus to Stockholm City Center	SEK 20
FOREX exchange	(SEK 1510)	USD 150
Bus to Arlanda	SEK 70
Flight from Arlanda (Stockholm) to Sturup (Malmö)	SEK 280
Bus to Lund	SEK 50
Bread	SEK 18

Postscript

Two weeks later I received my stolen passport, bank cards, and ID in the mail in an envelope with my address as written in my passport, bearing Estonian postage, and containing no additional explanation or return address.

I tried emailing the girl who'd given me her email address on new year's eve, but I had it written incorrectly and the mail bounced. I wrote to the people at "mail.ee" asking if they could search their database for similar addresses; they responded the next day with the correct address. Unfortunately the girl didn't know anything about the boys who'd robbed me, but on the bright side we've been corresponding via email which is pleasant and interesting.

I gave Eric my email address on New Year's Eve, and he wrote to me a few days later, having heard about what happened to me (and he called Rob and Piret's apartment on the first, and I spoke with him briefly then). I've written to him a couple times since then but he hasn't replied.