Day 36

Slept in until 10am this morning then talked to mum and dad on Skype for almost an hour.  They told me about the ‘freak’ storm that had hit Melbourne today so I spent the next hour looking at youtube videos people had taken of the rain, hail and subsequent flooding.  Pretty amazing, wish I’d been there to see it.

Before I knew it, it was midday and I was still in bed.  Got up, had a shower then had some breakfast cereal and a couple of left over polpette.  The sun was shining outside but I couldn’t think of any reason to leave the apartment so I watched some Dexter instead.

Claire randomly popped up on Skype at like 12.30am Melbourne time so we had a good catch up.  It was great to speak with her and find out how things have been going back home.  I promised she’d get a mention on the blog today, so Claire – you’re welcome…

Went round to Johan’s for dinner tonight.  He lives about a 10 minute walk from my apartment in Landskrona.  He’d cooked up a fantastic spaghetti bolognese which we washed down with quite a few Carlsbergs.  After a while we ran out of beer.  In Sweden you can only buy alcohol from the System Bolaget – a government run bottle shop.  The stores are open until 8pm Monday to Friday, until 2pm on Saturday and closed on Sunday.  Basically this means you have to be prepared for the weekend – no last minute “Hey lets get some beers and have a BBQ”.

To get around this, Johan has a ‘smuggler’.  Not only does he get the beer cheaper, but the guy delivers!  Apparently these smugglers get the beer in Germany (for about 60 krona) and he buys a slab for 150 krona.  If he was able to buy from the System Bolaget it would cost upwards of 200 krona for the same amount.  Yeah, it’s criminal to buy alcohol on the black market, but you could argue not having a bottle shop open on a Saturday night is kind of criminal too!

Spent the evening with Johan and one of his friends, watched some of the Melodifestivalen (competition to decide the Swedish entry into the Eurovision song contest) and ended up watching heaps of Bill Bailey and Stephen Lynch clips on youtube.  Funny shit, had us all in stitches.

They walked me back to my apartment around 12.30am and then headed on to Tages.  I decided to give it a miss – two nights in a row is a bit much for an old fart like me.