Checking in Tallinn is always quick and is the airport in which I have been treated better so far, they even told me that my passport is the most original one they have seen there :P ironically Maiquetia’s airport (the one in Caracas) is the worst one in the list, in this case they even asked me to sang the Venezuelan national anthem to probe that I was not lying about my nationality, but as I read from a friend’s nickname: shit happens :P
After one hour across the frozen sea we made it to Stockholm and oh my God you must have guts to be an airplane pilot. We were about to land and I was wondering “where is the runway?” because all I could see was some clouds on the wing, then all of the sudden the clouds disappear and one second later the airplane was on the ground, and in that moment I noticed how easy is my job seated in front of a laptop 8 hours a day, compared to that pilot landing a 50ton airplane at 200km/h through the clouds.
Arlanda airport (Stockholm)… is beautiful and as the matter of fact it doesn’t look like and airport. The place is huge and this time it’s decorated for Christmas with big green and red rings hanging from the roof, unfortunately the luggage belt was broken and there was a looooong queue to check in and since I was going to take a domestic flight to Kalmar I had no other choice but to enjoy the queue.
Kalmar airport, before continuing let me remind you that Kalmar has approximately 60.000 habitants, ok now you can Imagine the size of the airport, I have seen houses bigger than that :P but on the other hand it has a Swedish touch that just some images can explain, anyway I took pictures of the place and you can take a look on my picasa.
I didn’t had the chance to withdraw money in Arlanda because of the queue so I was expecting to do it on this airport or at least to exchange money, but the place didn’t anything like that, lucky me that Swedish people love cards just as much as I do (I hate cash) and I could pay the taxi with the card.
Everything looks in order in this town except for the fact that there are no taxis! So I waited along with fifteen other passengers our chance to take one of the four or five available taxis on the place. After waiting for ten minutes an Iraqi driver chose me between the Swedish people, probably to have a chance to speak with somebody about the problems of having a life abroad. The guy’s pronunciation was awful, so it was kind of hard to establish a conversation with him, but now I know that in Iraq Chavez is respected and they would like to have him as president, I told the driver that we hate him and many Venezuelans would be happy to send him as a gift to Iraq if they want him over there. I heard that in India they also like Chavez but I’ll confirm this with my Polish-Indian source (Eliza) and probably we can also send him there as a gift for a couple of years.
Back on the taxi, the chat was nice and gave me a different point of view of the life in Iraq and also from Sweden if you are a foreigner, but the guy decided to take me to the wrong address (I noticed this a few minutes later) even though the freaking taxi had a GPS. Once there I decided to call my contact in Kalmar and the new surprise was that my mobile is not able to call or send sms in Sweden. No mobile, no internet and an empty street, what would you do? I decided to walk a bit and find somebody alive that can guide me to a solution. I found two elderly talking in a street, one of them knew some words in English and after explaining him the situation he told me that I was on the wrong address and gave me a ride to the right place, despite he lives on the other side of the town.
Before living me there I asked him to call my contact to pick me up on the entrance of the building, but he didn’t have a mobile. I was not going to stay there waiting for something to happen, so I stopped a girl entering the building and kindly asked her to make the call for me, finally she managed to talk with Victor, a guy from Netherlands living on the company’s apartment in Kalmar, and Victor explained her that the address they gave me in Tallinn was wrong and I was in another street but he came to pick me up and after a weird evening I was having some rest on my new bed…
Now I’m on Arlanda Airport again, this time waiting for the airplane back to Tallinn, and after five days in Sweden I can say that the people is really nice here, if I told you before that a lot of people speaks English in Estonia I can say that almost everyone here speaks English so that makes it easier if you are a tourist. This is my second visit to the country and it’s different from what I use to imagine when I was in Venezuela, a lot of blonde tall people with snow covering everything, well I can tell you is not like that, there are more blondes in Estonia and here you will see many people with dark hair.
I love food and they took my out for lunch every day in Kalmar and every time they asked which kind of food I wanted to eat I said the same thing: Swedish food! Come on! I am not going to visit Sweden to eat Italian food, anyway the first day I went for lunch with the “Chivos”, in Venezuela we call Chivo (goat) to somebody important in the company. We ate Swedish fish with potatoes and lingonberrys, tasty and very good, it’s not common for me to have something sweet with the main dish but anyway it was nice and it seems to be popular in dishes here. The next day I tried another dish which was basically a big fried pancake with big pieces of bacon and again lingonberrys (Raggmunk med fläsk), it’s easy to imagine that is not very healthy but it won’t kill you if you eat it once in a while although the guys in the office eat it every week.
The architecture is another thing I noticed and the difference between Eastern Europe and Scandinavia is quite obvious in the colors and the types of buildings around the city, I took a walk across Kalmar to take some pictures but unfortunately I spent the whole day working and I only have pictures in the evening but at least they will give you an idea of what I am talking about, anyway I think I am coming back on two weeks and probably I will stay for the weekend and then I will do a better job ;)
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