Saying goodbye is hard

Only a few weeks left here in Sweden. I am pretty sad actually. It is a fucking fantastic country. Sure it has its drawbacks but what country doesn’t? Sure people could be a little friendlier (at first at least) and the days could be a bit longer (it gets dark around 4 now). It could be a little cheaper (how’s AU$13.50 sound for a middie?) and it could be easier to find a place to live (did I mention I am still sleeping on a friend’s couch?) but I am going to be sorry to go. In many ways this has been an introspective period for me. Plenty of time to think about what the hell I am doing – not many conclusions have been drawn however. Ah well. The next stage in my adventures is imminent.

Two more weeks and then I am off to London to see the very hospitable Ben as well as Shirley, Fagberg, Muel and hopefully Lizze and Mitchell up in Leeds. Ben is preparing for exams so hopefully that will give me adequate cover to avoid blowing what little of my savings that survived the Norway/Car fiasco along with what’s left of my liver. I’ll soon find out. There I will stay until I fly out to Norway for the season. I will have just over a week or so there before I start the pre-season: plenty of time to get settled into my new place, strengthen up my knees and ease back into my snowboarding – I have a long winter ahead of me and I would like to stay out of hospital as long as possible.

At least I have decent health insurance.

Halloween is here and we are decorating the restaurant today for a big weekend of costumes and other shenanigans. We are sending off co-workers Quintin and Sandra as they head of on a 7month trip to South Africa and around Australia this Sunday and me and the boys are starting to line up our last few nights out together in Stockholm. This is probably one of the hardest parts of living the traveller’s life – you just start to get close to people and pow: off you go again to start it all over again. It’s a tough life but somebody has to do it.