So we arrived once again in Stockholm. This was the big one. New Years celebrations. We did not have any plans at all. We arrived late at night and got back to the same hostel we were in last time we were here. We checked ourselves in, dumped our bags and head out to get some groceries for dinner and some beer. When we got back to the hostel, we walked downstairs into the common room area. What we saw next reiterated the fact that this was indeed going to be one crazy New Years. There were about 15 Italians, 15 Germans, a bunch of New Zealanders, Swedes, Danes and ofcourse, Americans, all crammed into this common room area, most of whom were completely drunk. So drunk infact, there was one Italian guy wearing the shortest shorts known to mankind thinking he was William Shakespeare. Every five minutes you'd hear him somewhere in the back... "to be or not to be". Believe it or not, he wasn't the craziest one there. This other Italian guy was handing out 'business cards' to every person he met. Federico was his name and my god was he awesome. These 'business cards' of his became infamous. You'd see one lying on the floor wherever you went in the hostel. There were about 6 on the floor in the toilet. The Italians surrounded us and told us that they hate Napoli (Naples). 'Napoli is a problem for Italy!'. That's all they seemed to talk about (apart from soccer of course). We decided to cook some pasta. Finding a pot was close to impossible with this many Italians. In the end, we managed to cook some pasta, even though Frederico insisted we try some 'traditional Italiano pasta'. According to the Italians, if it's made by Italians, it just instantly tastes better. We finished dinner and walked back into the common room area. The Italians welcomed us with open arms and immediately offered us drinks. We tried a wide range of drinks, including the best Sambuca we have ever had in our life. These guys were pulling drinks out of nowhere. There was seriously 10 bottles of vodka/whiskey/alcohol on each table in the common room area, with beer cans lying around all over the place. This was going to be a great new years. The funny thing is that it wasn't even new years eve yet. This was the 30th! But for Italians, every night is drinking night! So why not. We joined in and it was damn fun. The Italians came up with a name for Chris. Apparently he absorbs Sambuca like a sponge and one random guy in the back shouted 'Spongebob'. So Chris was now known as 'The Brother of Sambuca' or 'Spongebob' to the Italians. We then moved into the TV room where there were drunk Germans. I attempted to play ping pong whilst I was drunk but as you can imagine, that did not go very well. We ended up going to bed at 5am.
We awoke the next morning at 10am. It was New Years Eve! We decided to spend the day
'recovering' from the previous night of mayhem. Before I go on, I must elaborate on the people we have met from the previous night. Ari, an american guy who was travelling with his Danish mate, Ole. Johanna and Mikki, two Swedish girls who were staying in the same dorm room as us. There was their other friend, Pontus who was travelling with them (pretty much the most patient guy we have ever met, champion). There were the 6-7 New Zealanders who were pretty cool, an Irish girl Esther (who Frederico was fascinated with), some random Germans whose names I cannot remember, and of course, the Italians with their ring leader, Frederico! We had no real plans for New Years Eve, so like the trip, we were going to wing it and take it as it came. We spent the day hanging around with Ari and Ole, doing some laundry and gearing ourselves up for the big one. We had decided that we were going to join Ari, Ole and Johanna's group to go to a random house party somewhere in Stockholm. At about 5pm, we went downstairs to the kitchen to cook some dinner. Again, finding a pot was bloody impossible. We had to wait like 1 hour for a pot before and eventually managed to cook some pasta. There was a group of about 5 Swedish girls who had spent ages cooking their dinner and went through the trouble of making a nice candlelight dinner which I thought was pretty cool. There was an incredible amount of noise coming from the common room, so naturally, we decided to go take a look. If you think walking into a group of 15 drunk Italians is wild, try walking into a group of 35. The entire room was filled with Italians. They all migrated into the kitchen. They were breeding. They took over the entire kitchen, singing soccer songs at the top of their voices. Then came the Italian national anthem. You felt compelled to join in, they sing it with such pride. I was pondering what would happen if I just chucked a soccer ball into that kitchen area. It was crazy. They were all surrounding the group of Swedish girls (the ones who wanted a nice, quiet, candlelight dinner). One of the Italians was carrying around a laminated photo of some Italian pimp because apparently, they all aspire to be just like him. They then moved onto the topic of Napoli (Naples). Shouting/singing songs about how they hate Naples so much. It was like there were 3 Italian groups and they had just fused together to form some sort of flock. Federico however was no longer their ring leader. This role was filled by another Italian dressed rather smartly, wearing a tie, shirt (top button done up of course, Italian's wouldn't have it any other way), some pants and oh, socks and sandals. SANDALS. You can't beat Italian fashion. Bruno was his name and to the other Italians, he is known as 'The President'. They were all shouting the word 'RIVA', which we translated to mean 'Cheers', but later found out that it had no meaning. So we chanted it anyways. We then moved into the common room area and started drinking with the New Zealand girls and whoever else was generally in the room at the time. It was about 6:30pm. The Italians again offered us their drinks and we of course accepted. At one point during the night, I walked upstairs to our dorm room and found that it was surrounded by about 20 Italians. To enter the dorm room, you need a pin code. Only the people residing at that particular dorm room knew the pin code. They were attempting to get into our room but did not know the pin code. I asked them what they were doing and they said that they were waiting for the girls inside (Johanna and Mikki) to come outside. I walked inside the dorm room (making sure they did not notice me typing it in) and I nearly got bulldozed over by them. I barely managed to make it into the dorm room by myself. I asked Johanna what exactly was going on and she said she doesn't want to walk outside. I told her that if I was in her shoes, I would be scared too. Chris talked to one of the Italians and apparently the Italian guy was like "Do you have project?"... Chris was like, "huh?"... The Italian guy then said, "Girl". Seriously crazy. We made it back downstairs and continued drinking with some seriously random but cool people until about 11pm, when everyone went off to the clubs, bars and such.
We were going to the random house party with Ari, Ole and Johanna's group. Of course we were not invited and were not sure how it would turn out. Apparently it was in Stockholm, or so we thought. We walked outside and caught the taxi. We were driving for almost 30 minutes and were going in some random direction completely away from the city center. We passed through roads with no lighting and into some random forest. Where were we!? Even the taxi drivers were lost and they both pulled over and decided to figure out where in the world this house was. It just so happened that it was the stroke of midnight. So whilst the taxi drivers got out of the car to discuss how to get to this place, we took the liberty of getting out too. What we saw was amazing. Literally everywhere we looked, there were fireworks going off. 360 degrees. Everyone was doing fireworks. I have seen fireworks, but not like this. This was just crazy. It seems that when midnight strikes, every single person goes in their backyard and starts up some fireworks. Just imagine the whole of Sydney doing fireworks at precisely the same time in their backyard. The show went on for about 10 minutes. Once the taxi drivers had figured out where to go, we all got back inside the car to the house party. After driving for another 15 minutes, we finally reached the house. There was obviously a house party going on inside. Loud music, people congregating outside the house either talking to each other, passed out or dancing and bottles of alcohol everywhere. We were essentially gate-crashing a party. We were not invited, we didn't speak Swedish and more importantly, we didn't know anyone at the party. As we walked towards the house, we were immediately greeted by a group of Swedes. They were wondering who exactly we were. We explained that we're from Australia and they immediately welcomed us in. They gave us drinks and we wondered around the party meeting people. They seemed to marvel at the fact that we were from Sydney and by the end of the night, I think we must have met everyone at the party. There were about 40 people there. We drank the night away and numerous events occurred, most of which involved me getting eaten by the biggest bloke I have ever seen in my life because apparently I was hitting on his girlfriend. I can assure you that I was innocent and was pulled into a room by two girls until this dude came out of nowhere. Eurotrip could actually have ended right there. You can forget about me falling into a frozen lake, this was by far 10 times worse. Note to self: do not talk to Swedish girls who have gargantuan megasaurus boyfriends.
A Swedish house party. Tick it off. Thinking back, we were actually quite rude. We gate-crashed their party, drank their beer and then ran off back to Stockholm. At about 4am we caught the taxi back to the metro station and managed to get back to Stockholm in one piece (i'm not exactly sure how). Stockholm itself was buzzing. 4.30am, there were people everywhere having a good time. Every 10 minutes some random person would come up to us and just yell out happy new year. We were all hungry so we decided to go into the closest thing we could find. It just so happened that it was a Burger King. The girls went in first and then me, Chris, Ari, Ole and Pontus tried to follow. We were blocked off by an employee and were not allowed in. The girls however did manage to get in. We couldn't understand why but he barricaded us and locked the door. All we wanted was some Burger King. Seeing as the girls had already gone inside, we went round to the window area to tell them we couldn't get in and to call them back out. There we saw the same employee greeting the girls and shaking their hands. We all looked at each other and then at him. We were yelling at him, just what was he doing? He wouldn't let us into Burger King because he wanted to hit on the girls we were with? We got bounced out of Burger King. Yes. Just in-case you missed that sentence, i'll repeat it. We got bounced out of BURGER KING on New Years in Stockholm. We headed back to the hostel for the after-party. The Italians were back from their ventures and we continued drinking with them. We did manage to get to bed, albeit it was 7am. But what a night!
We woke up at about 12pm. We were not going to do anything during the day and just chilled out in the hostel. Ari and Ole cooked us some real gourmet pasta, arguably better than the recipe that me and Chris were working on perfecting. We said goodbye to Ari and Ole as they were heading to Denmark the same day. At about 5pm, we went back downstairs to the common area and the Italians were once again drinking. Bruno the ring-leader by now had figured out the combination to get into any dorm room in the hostel. I'm not exactly sure how he remembered the pin codes for every room seeing as he could barely stand (I am guessing too much Sambuca). We had to catch a plane the next day at 6.30am. The airport was a 90 minute drive from the city center and seeing as you need to arrive 1 hour before departure, this meant we needed to wake up at like 3am. We decided not to sleep at all and stocked up on some red bull. We were going to be awake the whole night just drinking red bull and watch the Italians get up to their usual antics. We had saved two beers from the previous night (don't ask how we were able to continuously drink beers, by reading this post it might sound like we have indeed turned into alcoholics, but I can assure you we have not). The problem was we could not locate a bottle opener. Chris went off to ask the Italians to open his bottle whilst I slaved away with a spoon. Then a random German walked up to me and grabbed the beer out of my hand, and was like "here, let me help you". He took an empty plastic coke bottle and opened my beer for me. I'm not entirely sure how, but he used the top of the coke bottle. Looks like German's are so used to opening beers that they can literally open them with anything. We stayed in the common room area and met a few other nice people. One of which was a German girl called Anja who was traveling with her mum and her sister. The other was an Italian bloke. I know what you're thinking, ANOTHER Italian! But this guy was quite possibly one of the coolest guys I have ever met. In a room filled with about 35 drunk Italians, he was traveling by himself and was literally the complete opposite of the others. He hated Soccer (yes there exists an Italian who hates soccer), he hated the antics the other Italian's got up to and he was generally a top bloke. He was going to be working for the Ferrari Formula 1 team, designing the aerodynamics of the car/chassis. Both me and Chris being avid Formula 1 fans, made him instant-cool. We talked until about 2.30am when we had to leave to get ourselves organized. We walked back upstairs, grabbed our bags and bid farewell to everyone.
Pretty much the best new years either of us has ever experienced. We love Stockholm, yeah we do, yeah we do.
Until next time...
Rishi
We awoke the next morning at 10am. It was New Years Eve! We decided to spend the day
'recovering' from the previous night of mayhem. Before I go on, I must elaborate on the people we have met from the previous night. Ari, an american guy who was travelling with his Danish mate, Ole. Johanna and Mikki, two Swedish girls who were staying in the same dorm room as us. There was their other friend, Pontus who was travelling with them (pretty much the most patient guy we have ever met, champion). There were the 6-7 New Zealanders who were pretty cool, an Irish girl Esther (who Frederico was fascinated with), some random Germans whose names I cannot remember, and of course, the Italians with their ring leader, Frederico! We had no real plans for New Years Eve, so like the trip, we were going to wing it and take it as it came. We spent the day hanging around with Ari and Ole, doing some laundry and gearing ourselves up for the big one. We had decided that we were going to join Ari, Ole and Johanna's group to go to a random house party somewhere in Stockholm. At about 5pm, we went downstairs to the kitchen to cook some dinner. Again, finding a pot was bloody impossible. We had to wait like 1 hour for a pot before and eventually managed to cook some pasta. There was a group of about 5 Swedish girls who had spent ages cooking their dinner and went through the trouble of making a nice candlelight dinner which I thought was pretty cool. There was an incredible amount of noise coming from the common room, so naturally, we decided to go take a look. If you think walking into a group of 15 drunk Italians is wild, try walking into a group of 35. The entire room was filled with Italians. They all migrated into the kitchen. They were breeding. They took over the entire kitchen, singing soccer songs at the top of their voices. Then came the Italian national anthem. You felt compelled to join in, they sing it with such pride. I was pondering what would happen if I just chucked a soccer ball into that kitchen area. It was crazy. They were all surrounding the group of Swedish girls (the ones who wanted a nice, quiet, candlelight dinner). One of the Italians was carrying around a laminated photo of some Italian pimp because apparently, they all aspire to be just like him. They then moved onto the topic of Napoli (Naples). Shouting/singing songs about how they hate Naples so much. It was like there were 3 Italian groups and they had just fused together to form some sort of flock. Federico however was no longer their ring leader. This role was filled by another Italian dressed rather smartly, wearing a tie, shirt (top button done up of course, Italian's wouldn't have it any other way), some pants and oh, socks and sandals. SANDALS. You can't beat Italian fashion. Bruno was his name and to the other Italians, he is known as 'The President'. They were all shouting the word 'RIVA', which we translated to mean 'Cheers', but later found out that it had no meaning. So we chanted it anyways. We then moved into the common room area and started drinking with the New Zealand girls and whoever else was generally in the room at the time. It was about 6:30pm. The Italians again offered us their drinks and we of course accepted. At one point during the night, I walked upstairs to our dorm room and found that it was surrounded by about 20 Italians. To enter the dorm room, you need a pin code. Only the people residing at that particular dorm room knew the pin code. They were attempting to get into our room but did not know the pin code. I asked them what they were doing and they said that they were waiting for the girls inside (Johanna and Mikki) to come outside. I walked inside the dorm room (making sure they did not notice me typing it in) and I nearly got bulldozed over by them. I barely managed to make it into the dorm room by myself. I asked Johanna what exactly was going on and she said she doesn't want to walk outside. I told her that if I was in her shoes, I would be scared too. Chris talked to one of the Italians and apparently the Italian guy was like "Do you have project?"... Chris was like, "huh?"... The Italian guy then said, "Girl". Seriously crazy. We made it back downstairs and continued drinking with some seriously random but cool people until about 11pm, when everyone went off to the clubs, bars and such.
We were going to the random house party with Ari, Ole and Johanna's group. Of course we were not invited and were not sure how it would turn out. Apparently it was in Stockholm, or so we thought. We walked outside and caught the taxi. We were driving for almost 30 minutes and were going in some random direction completely away from the city center. We passed through roads with no lighting and into some random forest. Where were we!? Even the taxi drivers were lost and they both pulled over and decided to figure out where in the world this house was. It just so happened that it was the stroke of midnight. So whilst the taxi drivers got out of the car to discuss how to get to this place, we took the liberty of getting out too. What we saw was amazing. Literally everywhere we looked, there were fireworks going off. 360 degrees. Everyone was doing fireworks. I have seen fireworks, but not like this. This was just crazy. It seems that when midnight strikes, every single person goes in their backyard and starts up some fireworks. Just imagine the whole of Sydney doing fireworks at precisely the same time in their backyard. The show went on for about 10 minutes. Once the taxi drivers had figured out where to go, we all got back inside the car to the house party. After driving for another 15 minutes, we finally reached the house. There was obviously a house party going on inside. Loud music, people congregating outside the house either talking to each other, passed out or dancing and bottles of alcohol everywhere. We were essentially gate-crashing a party. We were not invited, we didn't speak Swedish and more importantly, we didn't know anyone at the party. As we walked towards the house, we were immediately greeted by a group of Swedes. They were wondering who exactly we were. We explained that we're from Australia and they immediately welcomed us in. They gave us drinks and we wondered around the party meeting people. They seemed to marvel at the fact that we were from Sydney and by the end of the night, I think we must have met everyone at the party. There were about 40 people there. We drank the night away and numerous events occurred, most of which involved me getting eaten by the biggest bloke I have ever seen in my life because apparently I was hitting on his girlfriend. I can assure you that I was innocent and was pulled into a room by two girls until this dude came out of nowhere. Eurotrip could actually have ended right there. You can forget about me falling into a frozen lake, this was by far 10 times worse. Note to self: do not talk to Swedish girls who have gargantuan megasaurus boyfriends.
A Swedish house party. Tick it off. Thinking back, we were actually quite rude. We gate-crashed their party, drank their beer and then ran off back to Stockholm. At about 4am we caught the taxi back to the metro station and managed to get back to Stockholm in one piece (i'm not exactly sure how). Stockholm itself was buzzing. 4.30am, there were people everywhere having a good time. Every 10 minutes some random person would come up to us and just yell out happy new year. We were all hungry so we decided to go into the closest thing we could find. It just so happened that it was a Burger King. The girls went in first and then me, Chris, Ari, Ole and Pontus tried to follow. We were blocked off by an employee and were not allowed in. The girls however did manage to get in. We couldn't understand why but he barricaded us and locked the door. All we wanted was some Burger King. Seeing as the girls had already gone inside, we went round to the window area to tell them we couldn't get in and to call them back out. There we saw the same employee greeting the girls and shaking their hands. We all looked at each other and then at him. We were yelling at him, just what was he doing? He wouldn't let us into Burger King because he wanted to hit on the girls we were with? We got bounced out of Burger King. Yes. Just in-case you missed that sentence, i'll repeat it. We got bounced out of BURGER KING on New Years in Stockholm. We headed back to the hostel for the after-party. The Italians were back from their ventures and we continued drinking with them. We did manage to get to bed, albeit it was 7am. But what a night!
We woke up at about 12pm. We were not going to do anything during the day and just chilled out in the hostel. Ari and Ole cooked us some real gourmet pasta, arguably better than the recipe that me and Chris were working on perfecting. We said goodbye to Ari and Ole as they were heading to Denmark the same day. At about 5pm, we went back downstairs to the common area and the Italians were once again drinking. Bruno the ring-leader by now had figured out the combination to get into any dorm room in the hostel. I'm not exactly sure how he remembered the pin codes for every room seeing as he could barely stand (I am guessing too much Sambuca). We had to catch a plane the next day at 6.30am. The airport was a 90 minute drive from the city center and seeing as you need to arrive 1 hour before departure, this meant we needed to wake up at like 3am. We decided not to sleep at all and stocked up on some red bull. We were going to be awake the whole night just drinking red bull and watch the Italians get up to their usual antics. We had saved two beers from the previous night (don't ask how we were able to continuously drink beers, by reading this post it might sound like we have indeed turned into alcoholics, but I can assure you we have not). The problem was we could not locate a bottle opener. Chris went off to ask the Italians to open his bottle whilst I slaved away with a spoon. Then a random German walked up to me and grabbed the beer out of my hand, and was like "here, let me help you". He took an empty plastic coke bottle and opened my beer for me. I'm not entirely sure how, but he used the top of the coke bottle. Looks like German's are so used to opening beers that they can literally open them with anything. We stayed in the common room area and met a few other nice people. One of which was a German girl called Anja who was traveling with her mum and her sister. The other was an Italian bloke. I know what you're thinking, ANOTHER Italian! But this guy was quite possibly one of the coolest guys I have ever met. In a room filled with about 35 drunk Italians, he was traveling by himself and was literally the complete opposite of the others. He hated Soccer (yes there exists an Italian who hates soccer), he hated the antics the other Italian's got up to and he was generally a top bloke. He was going to be working for the Ferrari Formula 1 team, designing the aerodynamics of the car/chassis. Both me and Chris being avid Formula 1 fans, made him instant-cool. We talked until about 2.30am when we had to leave to get ourselves organized. We walked back upstairs, grabbed our bags and bid farewell to everyone.
Pretty much the best new years either of us has ever experienced. We love Stockholm, yeah we do, yeah we do.
Until next time...
Rishi
No comments:
Post a Comment