Stockholm

Well I had an adventurous day in Stockholm. We arrived at the train station at caught the train leaving at around 9:30. We arrived, and after a quick breakfast at McDonalds, I proceeded to the Greek embassy (eventually, after a lot of guessing and trying to find the tourist office). One of the members of our group will hopefully go to Athens in March and he needed to sort out some things. After the embassy trip, we walked down to the Vasa musuem. On the way I saw a Ferrari dealership and I looked at some of the ridiculously expensive cars they have there. They were cool to see at least. The Vasa museum holds a very large ship built in 1627 Gustavus Adolphus as a flagship in a war against Poland. The ship sank during its maiden voyage in Stockholm harbor because of a design flaw. In the 50's they were able to lift it up, which was quite a challenging process. They have done an incredible job preserving the ship and now it is in a fully enclosed musuem. The ship is very large and very ornately decorated. I have some more pictures on Picasa, but I think this gives you a good idea of the size of the ship. I enjoyed the museum. Then we took a ferry to another part of Stockholm, ate a bit, and then decided to head back to the train station.

Unfortunately our sense of direction failed us, we had landed on an island in close to land on the south and the north. We needed to go north, but we ended up heading south (thinking we were going north) When we arrived on the mainland we turned left (which is what we should have done had we turned north) and we wandered around for the next 45 minutes trying to figure out where we were (because of course, we could not find the streets on the map). Well we finally figured it out, much to our chagrin, but we survived. I have a new respect for the racers on the Amazing Race because it is so easy to get turned around. I think I would not fare very well. Stockholm as a whole was okay, but not too interesting, I think it will be better in the summer.

I also went to a meeting of the International Bible Study tonight, as they normally meet on Monday. I met a couple of other new people. But I am so thankful that I have found this study, because the leader and the people attending the study are all Christians who believe the Bible is true and that the gospel is true. I was very worried coming to Sweden that I wouldn't find any other Christians, but God has answered my prayers. It is also interesting to hear some of the challenges that Christians face here in Sweden. Well that is all for now, on Friday I will be going Estonia on a ferry, so we'll see how that goes.