Random news

I haven't picked a topic for tonight's entry, so I guess I'll just type whatever comes to mind.

Found out on Friday that because our address is technically a c/o address, all of our mail is being forwarded to the owner of our apartment...in Paris. As far as I know we haven't missed out on much, other than our new debit cards. Nothing wrong with a little old-fashioned banking though. Luckily, he's an incredibly nice guy and he still works fairly closely with our office here in Stockholm, so he'll be sending our mail to my office on Monday.

Friday night we met an old college acquaintance and his girlfriend for a few drinks after work. This was the same guy that hosted me for a night on a college visit to Luther. He was a long jumper and triple jumper, so I got paired up with him since he was on the track team. I'd been to Luther a number of times to visit my brother, but wanted another visit to see what life was like when nobody knew who I was. As the friend said, it's ironic yet fitting that he was there to welcome me to Luther, and now he's here to welcome me to Stockholm. We stuck around until the bar got too loud to talk, then split up for the night. It was an incredibly good time chatting and I have a feeling that we'll be meeting often in the future.

Saturday morning my coworker was doing a long run. I've run for years, but must say she's a crazily ambitious runner. She was a DI tennis player down in Arizona and has remained incredibly athletic. Her younger sister has recently gotten into running and talked my coworker into running the Goteborg half marathon, the largest half marathon in the world. My coworker bikes four miles to and from work each day (year round), plays tennis at least three days a week, hits the gym regularly and has now added running to her list of activities. But since she's so active, she only does the hard and the long runs (and likes it). Her view is that 10Ks aren't challenging because "everybody is in good enough shape to run 10 kilometers". Maybe in Stockholm, but that's not the point of this paragraph. Anyway, she hasn't been training for long and has not built up her distances like most runners would, but was planning a two hour run to do on Saturday, her third in four weeks. My coworker's friend and I joined her for about seven miles of the run. She picked a pretty scenic route, and it was good to run with people again, so all-in-all it made for a pretty good way to start the day.

Later that night Miranda joined up with those two girls for dinner and a trip to a night club. I stayed in to file for trip reimbursements and to do my taxes. Yeah, they had fun, but I like the looks of my future bank credits, so I won't complain. I had promised Miranda that I'd meet her later in the night, that way she didn't have to ride the subway alone. It was actually a really nice night, so we took our time and walked the two miles home, not realizing we were losing an hour to daylight savings time until we passed a church near the apartment that announced it was 4:15 in the morning. Ouch.

I welcome daylight savings time, or "summer time" as it is called here. Catchy, eh?

Right now our apartment is so bright at 5:30 in the morning that you'd swear it's the middle of the day. The days are lengthening pretty quickly here, so we'll have that same problem in about three weeks, but it'll be nice to sleep in darkness for a few more weeks. I really shouldn't complain yet. In another month we'll only have a few hours of darkness, and in nine months I'll be begging for more light. I guess the amount of light we get this time of year is probably the best balance I could ask for.

Slept in today, went for a run, then grabbed the sub of the day at our neighborhood Subway. We've started to form a friendship with the guy that regularly works there. He's been in Stockholm for about 18 months and is originally from Tunisia. He's been taking SFI courses since he arrived and they must be pretty good, because unless we're there he's always rattling off in Swedish. We got to talking about the exchange rate, so I need to get him some info on buying an iPhone in the U.S. Then we told him that the one disadvantage of such a good exchange rate for Swedes is that it's horrible coming from the U.S. to Sweden. We don't want to convert any of our savings to kroner. He teased that that's why we never order anything but the sub of the day. Funny, but true.

We finished our day with a hike across a huge bridge just to check out the view. It was around 50 degrees here, and once the temperature rises and the sun comes out, Swedes fill the streets. It's pretty cool to see so many people out, but it was also a bit annoying because every ten seconds you meet another group on the sidewalk. This sidewalk was pretty narrow, so it was kind of difficult to enjoy the view without accidentally bumping into somebody. After we made it across the bridge we made another trip to IKEA. We found a bench we'll be getting for our entryway, but didn't pick it up as I'm not quite strong enough to carry it around Stockholm on my shoulders. We'll be going back with a cart. We did end up with a few ice cube trays, and a hot dog and drink for each of us.

Don't know why, but Swedes appear to love hot dogs. They're weird hot dogs too, the kind that are really skinny and way too long for the bun. I wonder what they'd think of a Dome Dog?

Based on the restaurant frequency alone, I'd rank the three most common foods in Sweden to be kebabs, pizza and hot dogs. Miranda says burgers are up there too, but I'm not so sure.

I've mentioned running more in this post than in any so far. I've been able to build my mileage since arriving in Stockholm. Doing it slowly, as I always have, but still a bit more aggressive than normal. I logged 25 miles last week and although I was a bit tired today, it has felt really good. A friend is drafting a training program to target the Berlin Marathon on September 28. I'll start that plan in late May, so need to build up to 35-40 miles a week before then. Definitely attainable, it's just a matter of getting in five or six runs a week.

For the most part I've kept my routes on this island, but there are endless route possibilities in this city. Kungsholmen forms a natural 10K loop, most of which is made up of paths along the water. For those of you that plan to come visit, make sure you can hike about six or seven miles in a day. We don't hike that far every day, but the city is so scenic that the sights you see on those long walks make the efforts totally worth it.

The south side of Kungsholmen is quite scenic and the southwest side has some good hills. There is also a green-way running east-west through the middle of the island that's filled with paths, leading to even more options. Once I get off this island I'll have a million new running options. The city has been designed by people who love nature. The other islands offer a number of large parks, running and bike paths along the water, and because many people don't own cars, bike paths and sidewalks leading pretty much everywhere. The biggest problem is that I need to explore all of the places I hope to run, that way I don't get lost on the crazy crooked streets in this town. Anyway, it's a pretty exciting opportunity for any runner, so I hope to take advantage of it.

That's enough for tonight. Thanks for checking in.