Borstal breakout

The town is alive with the sound of screaming college students. But more on that later. We had to go somewhere and Karlstad is where we went.

It was more of a random choice. Stockholm was where we need to be in a few days (the aforementioned stupid English test) and there wasn't enough time for Copenhagen and Falsterbo, so where to go then? Oland sounded cool, but that might not be possible, how long we have before we need to be to Moscow and how much time are we willing to give up in Finland. So, halfway between Oslo and Stockholm, hmm Karlstad, sounds interesting. There is a big lake there, supposedly some birds and other nice outdoor things, might as well try that. And after 10 days straight of camping (and pouring rain all night last night in Oslo), we totally deserve a nice hotel with a real bed and no tent to set up.

It was a soggy morning, making breakfast in the campsite kitchen instead of over the stove, and trying to pack things up without getting them all wet. Which is why there are tents and all sorts of things laid out all over the hotel room trying to get them dried. Back to the Oslo train station, the office away from home with wireless access so that we could plan the next week or so of the trip and get reservations and tickets and bookings all set up. Oslo was too wet to walk around and we didn't actually have that much time by the time we got to the station.

The train was cute, a sleek two coach train with very few people on it, and we were off to Sweden. We passed lots of pretty lakes and a lot of rural farms and then they made an announcement, oh we just passed into Sweden. Not much fanfare. I was a little worried pulling into town, the outskirts looked typical warehouse industrial ugly small town, but once we got to the center, it got a lot nicer. And it totally feels like a university town, especially since it is the first week of school and there are packs of students roaming the streets doing initiation things. It reminds me of pledge week, lots of singing and shouting and public drunkenness. Still, there is something really nice about university towns. And there are thousands of cycles all around, people happy and cycling about. The town even runs a free bike program, just show up and they let you take a bike for the day for free.

Tomorrow looks hopeful, the lake is just a bit south of here and it looks like a beautiful place to ride and hike and supposedly some nice varieties of birds. It seems worth staying another night before we head on to Stockholm. Now if I could just get the screaming students to go to bed...