Travel plans

Some good news from the Swedish Migration Board: I'm quite welcome to visit any Schengen country and return to Sweden with no problems to my work permit. I actually had no idea what the Schengen agreement was before three days ago. In any case, my planned trips:

• July 24 - 28: Paris, hosted by Christy
• Sept 03 - 08: Bratslava and Vienna, travelling with Brian and hosted by Kari, whom I must say has had much less luck with foreign beaurocrats than I've had.

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4 day weekend

Jermaine was here to visit, and I took a 4 day weekend. We spent most of our time walking around Stockholm, but this time I actually knew more or less where I was going. Photos coming right up. This was hopefully the first of many 4 day weekends I'll be having. Discount airlines here operate more like bus companies, which makes fares cheaper than bus or train in many cases. I've planned a trip to Paris this month, Austria with Brian to visit Kari in September, and possibly one or two more vacations in between. The boss was nice enough to grant me days off whenever I'd like as long as I make up the hours, which works great because weeknights here are a little dull and I might as well stay at work.

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Midsummer weekend

Midsummer is like Christmas in Sweden on the important holiday scale, and the IAESTE committee in Gothenburg is hosting a weekend of fun on the island of Bohus-Malmön. Apparently a midsummer traditional activity is dancing around a huge decorated maypole... Hopefully the food is good. Leaving tomorrow morning at 5am, back on Monday morning by an overnight bus, and going directly to work afterwards. Joy! I'm sure there will be plenty of pictures.

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Backtracking - Zürich

This post should have been the first, but I didn't get around to setting a blog up until now. Better late than never. My flight from Toronto on June 1 had an 8 hour stopover at Zürich, so I had a chance to visit the city. My camera's batteries didn't allow me to do the visit justice, but at least it's something. Hopefully I'll have a short video for this one done up soon too.

A side note - I've noticed numerous people back home (not only aquaintances and friends, but TV personalities too) confuse Sweden and Switzerland, "Swedish" and "Swiss", presumably because these countries share the same first two letters in their English names. "You're going to Sweden? Bring me back one of those knives!" I was probably guilty of the same 6 months ago. Seeing both places on the same day cleared me right up.

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