I AM STILL ALIVE

sorry for the lack of updates. It was a bit of a whirlwind through bergen and copenhagen. i am currently staying in the worlds worst hotel in new dehli with sunni. prisoners have cells better than this. as usaual things have not gone as planned. most of our train tickets were waitlisted so i had to rebook with an agent in town, everything is so seedy and crazy here that i hope i have not been ripped off. time will tell. the city is nuts. busier that the busiest street in nam with cows all over the place. me and sunni wandered into a temple and got cool orange dots on our fourheads. we are gonna go sleep now and hope we don't die. get back as soon as i can with pics from bergen and denmark.

oslo live pics

irish pub

goofy dancers on stage for diplo

santigold

olso at night

oslo+refugees+diplo+sanogold=awesome!

Oslo is great. It is dirtier and much less classy than Sweden (but somehow more expensive). Our hostel is super seedy. It is in the middle of what seems like a Sudanese refugee camp. It is completely surreal. The hostel had a few heroin addicts nodding off in front of it while we were waiting to sign in and we were told not to use the lockers in our room because they were not safe. The hostel looks nice, but it's run by idiots. I am down the street paying to use the net because theirs is down. After checking in we wandered into an Irish pub that was full of actual Irish playing traditional Irish drinking songs. We hung out there for an hour or so and then went to the Oslo live festival. It was out doors right next to some old castle. The opening act was a white Olso rapper!!! And he was actually pretty good. Then some dj and then DIPLO! He was great. I danced around like crazy but Steve stood there like a brick wall. All of these ridiculous guys were dancing together by us and Diplo ended up letting them dance on stage. Then Santogold. She had a full band and two back-up singers\dancers. She was great live: lots of energy, dancing and bass (plus she is incredibly hot). After the show the whole city came to life. Everyone waits to go out unitl like 11:30 at night. I think me and Steve woke up the girls who were sleeping in our room when we got back, I feel bad because we were just complaining about being woken up the night before. I have lots of good pictures but this stupid web cafe won't let me use my camera so hopefully the next hostel will not suck as bad.

sweden pics

Stockholm is beautiful but confusing. After spending three days here I do not feel like I understand it in the slightest. The city is so amazing that you almost stop noticing it. We went to so many museums that it is hard to keep track but here is a list off of the top of my head:

• modern art
• national
• vasa (cool ship that sunk hundreds of years ago)
• armory
• royal palace
• a bunch of cool old churches

I have a feeling that we only got to see the tourist areas of the city. It is a little disapointing that I can't leave saying that I know the "real" Sweden. It has still been a blast and I doubt that I will forget any of it. I think what shocks me most is the lack of shock. This place amazing, but still not all that different from the USA. I guess i'll have to get all my culture shock in India.

vasa ship museum

everything in sweden looks like this!

changing of the guard

iant calder outside modern museum

finaly the sun goes down!!!

royal palace (it is tacky and ugly in side, royals have NO taste)

on the boat back from the palace

sweden

Stockholm is beautiful. The streets are lined with amazing buildings. Every block seems to have a copper topped church that was built 300+ years ago. It is so calm and relaxing. I slept by the river today after going to like four museums and it was fantastic. The night life is a little weird though. No matter where me and Steve go the city seems to be "dead". This is clearly a hip place and we can not find any decent night life. We went to what should have been a cool bar called KGB tonight and it was a bust. We gave up. No luck last night either, but we did have lot of fun aimlessly wandering the city. I'll post a ton of pics soon. Everyting here seems to warent a pic.

last days in finland

I spend a few days with Steve at a hotel in Rovanemi so he could run a marathon. I got to see a bunch of great little museums, a traditional parade, and spend some time talking with a hot finnish metal concert promoter. There was also a TON of great graffiti in town that I spent some to photographing.

After that we went up further north to Ivalo wich is in the artic circle. they have 7,000 people and 40,000 reindeer!!! We stayed at an amazing private cabin that Steve's friend Arto's dad owned. It is used for making huge deals with Russian power company excetutives. We got to wear sweet white robes, take a great sauna, and swim in the lake. We also went to a museaum with Arto and spent some time at his uncle's cabin. He took us out on the lake and showed us how to reel in fishing nets ( he only netted 3 fish and Arto hit them all on the head with a stick to kill them). We spent the last night in Ivalo saunaing, watching Aqua Teen Hungerforce and hanging out at Arto's house. After that, a long bus and train ride back to Oulu and a plane to Sweden. More on Sweden later.

wild night in oulu

boys night out in oulu. notice that even though it is technically night the sun is still blazing and the sky is still blue!

seemed like as good a place as any to wait for my pizza to cook-

pizza on the grass in front of city hall-

karoke finland style!!! (sweet child of mine of course)