Four things I learned this week

I explored more of Stockholm with some fellow IAESTE students yesterday. Check out a new set of photos, or see the additions to my favourite photos and panoramas. Some important highlights of this past week: 1. The North American art of subtle innuendo is lost in the Swedes. I saw this series of posters last week but thought it was just a milk ad next to some kind of champagne ad. But this time I noticed the right-most poster and everything just snapped together. I think you can guess what it says. Try reading a Swedish newspaper - full page ads of a similar theme are not uncommon. 2. Don't ride a bike on a flat tire. This is what happens. I had to abandon my bike and walk the rest of the way home, in the middle of the night. Luckily, the next day, I managed to fix it up and ride it home, but found that there indeed was a leak in the tube. My next big project: find and patch the leak. 3. If a plane ticket is essentially free, don't count on customer service. Foolishly after making a booking with Ryanair (which has some very cheap fares starting at "free"), I didn't copy down the confirmation number. Unfortunately no email confirmation ever came, and a pay-per-minute "reservation hotline" never had anyone to pick up the phone. Fortunately, the confirmation number showed up on my credit card (3 days later); but you really shouldn't count on that happening. 4. Don't assume anything about your visa. I foolishly made plans to travel without first checking if my work visa allows me to leave Sweden. A fellow IAESTE student from Kazakhstan made the same mistake and she was out of luck. Since Canadians are allowed to enter Sweden without a visa, I don't really think there should be a problem for me, but I should have made sure beforehand. Apparently ground travel in most of the EU is practically unrestricted, but air travel is another story. We'll see how it turns out.