2005-06-15

Robin Smith: International Trollop

In Stockholm, in four days, I met three Scots, three Canadians, three Australians, two Irish, two Americans, one Dutch, one French, one Malaysian, one South African, one Syrian, one Colombian, one Japanese, and two Danes. And a partridge in a fucking pear tree, but I think he was local. I also met a couple of Swedes (in Stockholm of all places!), with whom I got on, er, quite famously as it happens. Ahem.

In other words, it was utter mayhem. God help me, I seem to be under some bizarre psychological compulsion to behave as badly and as irresponsibly as I possibly can. If someone doesn�t forcibly restrain me my liver is going to burst like a dropped water balloon, if I don�t fall into a state of complete mental collapse first.

Must�ve been a good holiday.

Day One

The shuttle from Skavsta into Stockholm runs on wide, straight roads through miles and miles of unspoiled wilderness. It reminded me a lot of Canada, actually; it was (literally) a breath of fresh air after spending so much time in London recently. When we arrived in Stockholm centre I was completely gobsmacked. I�ve never seen such a beautiful city. In the Miss World Capital beauty contest, Stockholm wins the gold tiara hands down. It knocks Paris into a cocked hat, I�ll tell you that for free.

I got to my hostel a bit later than I�d expected � only around seven-thirty, though, so I didn�t think there would be a problem checking in. Standing outside the locked door, I rang the �night watch� button three times and got no response. I used my mobile to phone the hostel�s main line and got voicemail. I was beginning to work up a pretty good �alone with no place to stay in a foreign city� freakout when an irritated-sounding woman finally answered the buzzer. She asked my name and gave me the code to the door. Inside I found a note directing me to the dorm and telling me to check in the next morning after nine o�clock. The hostel consisted of one large dorm room, a shower room, toilets, and that�s it. No communal room, no kitchen, no internet access, no bar. Oh well. It�s the only hostel on Gamla Stan, so I figured I was paying for location and not amenities. I went out for supper and paid a visit to what TimeOut calls �the best ale bar in Stockholm�, where I drank five kinds of Belgian beer and talked to a geeky Dane about travelling in the States. I finished the evening with a glass of Hoegaarden the size of my head and went back to the hostel.

Day Two

Brutal hangover. Sightseeing, museums; much gawping at the mind-boggling beauty of Stockholm. Even more gawping at the mind-boggling beauty of its inhabitants. I was expecting the Swedes to be tall and blond and gorgeous, but I was not expecting them to be SO tall and SO blond and SO gorgeous. I think we unfortunate mortals must humbly accept that the Swedes are simply better-looking than the rest of the planet. I felt like a misshapen, stunted gremlin skulking around in a land of radiant golden demi-gods, who on top of their physical perfection were all wonderfully friendly and personable, as well as being effortlessly multilingual, which just made it worse. Fuck off, Sweden.

Sweden�s weather can lay no similar claim to natural superiority, I discovered. Mid-afternoon it started pissing down rain and didn�t let up for the rest of the day. After looking at a really big boat (with bonus dead people! Bit ghoulish, innit?), I walked back at the hostel, arriving very wet, very hungry and very hostile; I couldn�t even change out of my wet jeans because my only other pair had been soaked when I�d gotten dressed in the swamplike shower room that morning. I sat on the bed, the bed being the only place to sit, and read my book, emanating waves of irritation.

Then the day took a decided turn for the better. My hostel mates (co-hostellers?) all got together, bonded over the crappiness of the hostel, and decided to go out for a meal. Sam (a female Sam), Robin (a male Robin) and Rebecca (who were Scottish), Izam (Malaysian), Celine (French) and I went out to a vaguely Greek-themed restaurant just around the corner in the Old Town. Hummous always makes me feel better about life. Beer helps too. The gang of Scots told us that they�d been to the restaurant the evening before, when the waiter had proved disconcertingly friendly, regaling them with stories of his amorous conquests. (Pay attention here: I swear I�m not making this up.) He�d told them, just by way of making conversation, that a few days previously he�d been hitting on a really cute girl, and had managed to get her phone number, when he realised that she had ONLY ONE ARM. He�d wanted input from Sam et al as to whether they though he should phone her anyway. Naturally they answered loudly in the affirmative.

It gets better. The night we were there, the friendly waiter was on shift. Rebecca asked him for an update on his amorous adventures with Cutie McStump. (Really, REALLY I swear I am not making this up.) Turns out that he�d taken their advice and called her up, and had even taken her home. �So how was it?� asked Rebecca.

�Great!� he said. �She made noises like a whippet!�

Stop for a moment and absorb the full genius of this scenario. I don�t remember the last time I laughed so hard. I thought I was going to choke up my lower intestine.

On a trip to the Bankomat (love that word), Sam and Rebecca bumped into an affable group of Swedes who invited them to a nearby Irish pub for some live music. This sounded like a jolly good time to the rest of us, and after saying an emotional goodbye to the whippet-amputee fucker we went up the street to what, as best as we could figure, was the only Irish bar in the vicinity. Unfortunately our Swedish contacts were nowhere to be found, and there was no live music scheduled. We made the best of the situation and drowned our disappointment in shockingly expensive pints of Newcastle, and things soon looked up: we met an Aussie and a South African who introduced us to the wonders of Snus! What a weird fucking thing to put in your mouth! Sam tried some and looked extremely distressed for the next half an hour; I decided to be a spoilsport and get my nicotine the old-fashioned way.

Then the Swedes showed up, having tracked us down somehow. We all decided to give the live music a miss and stay where we were. Things progressed, as things do, and I made the close acquaintance of Gerry, one of the Swedish contingent, who became my boyfriend du jour. He was lovely and tall and blond, although he was wearing one of those Kiwi bone-carving fishhook necklaces, which is a bit iffy. Anyway we ended up at a nightclub, and I got to chatting with a pair of Canadians (one of whom made me �prove� that I was a Canadian and not an American pretending to be a Canadian; the words �Degrassi High� did the trick nicely) and Gerry got bored and wandered off. Oh well. One of the Canadians offered to let me sleep at his place (in a platonic, fraternal, on-the-sofa sense) when I complained about the dodginess of the hostel. This seemed at the time like the way forward. Leaving the bar at three in the morning, the sun was already coming up. At the end of a very long taxi ride, I passed out cold, clothes and all, on the proffered couch.

To be continued