Goodbye Stockholm/Hello Linköping

Our second day in Stockholm consisted of me forgetting my water bottle in the fridge after we’d dropped the keys off (followed by two weeks of me occasionally going, “I really wish I had my water bottle,” to the annoyance of Vimbai), exploring more of Gamla Stan, heading to Drottninggatan to see if I could maybe find a water bottle (I didn’t. It was too soon and my standards high.) as well as a place to print off our tickets for our football match later that day in Linköping. 

Stockholm gave us two really interesting free reads. One was a newspaper like, English written overview of some interesting things happening in Stockholm/around the world. It’s called Totally Stockholm and was totally worth picking up. The other one I found in The English Bookshop and is in sort of the same vein as Magasin that we found in Copenhagen, except that it’s not store published. It’s called We Love: Gamla Stan and this one is in Swedish, though does have bits and pieces in English. Design wise it’s flawless and does interviews with people/businesses in Gamla Stan. It covers food/drink, shopping, where/how things are made, day in the life of and has a map of everything it includes in the magazine, which I think is pretty neat.

I just want to know who buys these things. In a non-judgemental, I’m really just curious kind of way.

So, one of the main reasons Vimbai came to Sweden was football. Which she was straight up front about it and since I had a chance to visit, figured I might as well let her realize that want.  It wasn’t just any football, mind you. UEFA Women’s Euros, to be exact. And the one match that the dates worked out for just happened to be the France v. England match, which was probably one of the most eagerly anticipated matches of the tournament. And we had tickets.

 

The match started at 20:30, but we arrived early because, at least with us and travelling, you never know what’s going to happen. We were given directions to the stadium, which we later saw was clearly marked with UEFA Euro flags. On our way there, part of the path stopped off by the hotel where the England WNT was staying and they were having their pre-match meeting. Disclaimer: I do like women’s football. However, I have one NT that I cheer for, which just happens to be the Canadian WNT. Because Sincy guys. I was just there for the football. Vimbai, however, is a fan of both England and France (as you can see, this match was just going to have ‘feels problem’ written all over it) and so we did that weird, slightly creepy thing where we stopped and got ice cream (I may have a problem) and discussed how appropriate it would be to gate crash their meeting and ask for autographs. In the end we decided that would be a bad idea and so instead just creeped through the window from a safe distance. Then made our way to the stadium.

 

Now. Let us take a minute (or four) to discuss the photographers at this match. Because I have an issue with them where: they did NOT look like they wanted to be there and as if they’d gotten the short end of the sports photography stick. As I was sitting there, wishing I could have that job. Life is just so unfair. And then there was this guy who was just leaving his 5D Mark III lying around as if no big deal. There may or may not have been a discussion about whether or not I could slip through the rails and grab it without anyone noticing. (In all honesty, there was a chance. There really was.)  After leisurely strolling around for most of the second half, he finally shot video footage of the group we were with.

We were supposed to be in a neutral zone. Which was not the case. As you can probably tell from the flags, this was decidedly a pro-France fan section. With poor Vimbai finally deciding that she just really wanted England to win. (They lost 3-0.)

 

We had some time to kill after the match and headed back into the city centre, where we found food at Burger King and ran into the group of England fans who had given us directions and joined them for a drink at a bar afterwards where they were all very English and drinking and we were trying to stay as long as possible without missing our train. WHICH ACTUALLY ALMOST HAPPENED. We arrived at the station and the train was there. As we crossed to the right platform it started moving, even though I am positive that the train attendant saw us coming. I was so not cool with missing it, so I ran after it, managed to slap my hand against the window where said train attendant was. He spoke into his walkie talkie, I pulled out our tickets and we got onboard for our ride back to Lund.  Things that are certain: travelling with me is never dull.

Things I’m Loving:

+ This mock up – (For inspiring me to do my own.)
+ These illustrations – (For being so sweet.)
+ This photography – (Because it’s nice to look at.)
+ This suggestion – (For being spot on.)