|
Home >
On Tour >
Jungle Adventures >
The Europe Tour 2000-2001 >
Stockholm, Sweden |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
We arrived in Stockholm and boarded some busses for a long ride to the hotel. There were only about 8 people on my bus, and we were all pretty good friends, so we had some good chats on the way. My bus was the last one to arrive at the hotel. I saw the line at the check-in desk and decided I would just sit down and wait for it to clear. So I grabbed a beer from the bar, and sat in the lounge area as the rest of the group pushed and shoved to the front desk and elevators. Meanwhile, I just sat sipping my drink and chatting while waiting. This hotel has free internet computers in the lobby, so I jumped on one of those for a while also. After the lines had cleared out, I went up to the room and moved in. After a visit to the grocery store, I went to the bar again to solcialize with some friends. Then it was bedtime, since loadin was the next day. Loadin Wednesday went extremely fast. We were nearly show-ready within about 10 hours of starting from scratch! For this show, that's amazing! Afterwards, I returned to the hotel for some internet and sleep. The rest of Stockholm was work. Every day was a full day from morning till night. Thursday was from 11am until 10pm finishing loadin and a show. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were three-show days, from 9:30am until 10pm (Sunday was until 4am with loadout). So nothing really happened this week. Saturday night, however, was the last night for our head sound guy, Scotty B. So he and a bunch of people (including me) decided to go in town to a bar/club place called Bullwinkles to celebrate his last night with Feld. Since I was busy at the moment, I told them I would meet them there and got directions. NOTE TO SELF: NEVER TAKE DIRECTIONS FROM ANYONE, NOT JUST SKATERS. The directions were "It's just 3 stops on the Metro, no problem! And the place has a big moose on the front, so you can't miss it." I tried to get more info, but that's all I could get. I happened to hear one person mention something about the Centrum. I didn't even know where the Metro was, but I finally found it. The I found that there were two lines going through this station. Now which one was I supposed to take??? And which direction!?!? Ugh...I hate these directions. Just 3 stops, no problem. Not knowing where I was going, I just picked a stop. Just before boarding the train, I realized the train I was about to get on was the wrong line, not going towards Centrum. So I boarded another train, which meant I would have to make one stop and change trains before getting to where I thought was the right place. When I finally got to my destination, I had no idea if I was in the right place. But I saw that the area was packed with bars and clubs, so I figured I might be right. So this place was supposed to be obvious, a big bar right there with a big moose on the front. I walked about 10 minutes down several streets before happening to see a small bar with a small sign with a small moose picture on it around a corner about 1/4 mile from the metro station. Just right there, huh? With a big moose? HA! Anyway, I went inside and no one from the group was there, so I left and walked around the area some more seeing if I could find them in any other places. I never did so I left and went back to the hotel. As I walked into the lobby, I ran into a small group who had just done the same thing!! So I'm not the only one. It would have been nice if I had run into them there, then maybe we could have done something. We decided just to stay in the hotel bar and party there for a while. After an hour or so, the other group showed back up. It turns out that Bullwinkles had been checking IDs and some of the group were under 25 (they have some really wierd rules around here: 18 is the drinking age, but you have to be 25 to get in most bars), so they went somewhere else, somewhere totally nondescript and impossible to find. I hate it when people do that, knowing that more people are coming to meet them and changing locations without any way for the others to find them! Oh well...I lived and had a fun night. Sunday's loadout went extremely fast, and we probably could have finished in under 5 hours (our fastest time to date is 5:15) had the trucks been able to get in the building faster. At one point we just sat and waited for half an hour for the next truck to come in. After packing and just a few hours of sleep, I boarded a daytime bus for a long trip to Goteborg, Sweden. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||