*** EH, FISH SOUP COUNT? ***
HEY! That's how the Scandi greeting sounds (spelling varies according to country).
STOCKHOLM (SWEDEN): Big city built on islands, bridges
& waterways, spouting 20-letter street names that end with
"gården", v confusing. BUT English spoken, important. And
Swedes ARE friendly and helpful, luggi more important. Cute
& unassuming guys too, MOST important, haha..
Visited Gamla Stan (Old Town), veer onto a scenic
bridge and you find yourself going off on another island
without knowing it. Kungliga Slottet's a real living
Royal Palace all gold and riches.
If you find the
British royal guards' bear hats funny, the Swedish
walking lampshades are a hoot. The marching lamps, I
mean military band, are a crowd favourite though and put
up an entertaining performance, well-worth my perching
on the high column edge of the Royal Palace in the hot
sun for an hour. Nearly fell off when the guards did
their comic slow-mo run-march thingee. And when the
spear guards spent an eternity disentangling the
flying flags from their faces 
After all the royal opulence, I nearly laughed out
loud at the English sign in the ROYAL Stockholm
Cathedral declaring that they are a poor church and
therefore need to charge entrance. Why, the stingy
royals..
Finally, I was mightily inspired by Nobelmuseet 
, must
go invent
something so that I could be a laureate
signing under the cafe chair 
, pinch the expensive
crockery like the guests did at the inaugural Nobel
banquet, and
yah incidentally, cart home a gold chunk 
plus prize money of some few million euros. Hey,
money's not the object!
Daylight hours are forever but the Swedes only open
their museums from 10 or 11 to 4 or 5. They must spend
their time on better things, like lugging an entire
sunken 17th century ship intact from the seabed and cleaning
333 years worth of mud, sludge, grime, and er.. skulls.
Fascinating Vasamuseet that..
My turn to go on a ship 
, touchwood, no Titanic or Vasa please.
David Tao songs sound really good when you are relaxing on the
sundeck of a cruise ship from ABBA-land to Nokia-land. It's
called Viking Line, no less.
* I did not realize then that this was my last sunset in a long long while..
HELSINKI (FINLAND) like dunno much, but I was only here a couple of hours
and only popped in the Ateneum (National Gallery).
KUOPIO's a smoke sauna place, but I was there wrong day of the
week, drats. On such a flat piece of land as this,
they sure treasure the Kuopio Hill - as much as we
do
our Bukit Timah - so much so they built a tower on top 
.
Usually tower views are a letdown but you pay to go up anyway.
This one some more v nondescript Finn-style, but when you
get to the top, WAH!
So inspired I spent the whole
afternoon hiking in the nearby spruce forests and
visiting a beautiful lake.
I wonder if the Finns are like that too, they are
indeed 'mysterious' as described in Lonely Planet as I scarcely
had much contact with them, things seem to work around here even
without sign of anybody around. No fuss, common sense
folks I guess, where train lockers are put for real
use, not for exhibit like the french ones.
Incidentally, after the french debacle they call train
transport (the french fast train TGV really stands
for To Go Vanish), I was finally able to enjoy 'normal'
train travel at long last in clean and efficient
Finland. The train's even got a mobile corner, yes I
know you are Nokia. So relaxed and comfy I was in danger of
becoming a nuah nuah slob, er better not miss my next
stop up north at Rovaniemi - HINT: it's the home of
some chap who gets a million fanmail every Christmas...
to be cont'd.
| * Even the animals amuse, @ Stockholm's Skansen & Kuopio lake.
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