Sweden 2010, Day 14

13.30. This was the time we all actually began to slowly emerge from the fog of alcohol-induced sleep. I know how to drink, so I knew that I would not have a hangover, but I was quite surprised that of all the drinking the boys did, only Henrik seemed to wake up feeling a teeny bit ragged. We all indulged in a little hair of the dog and went about our day.

Johan had forgotten his jacket at the venue yesterday, so we went into Uppsala to retrieve it and do a bit of sightseeing. As always, the drive was very entertaining, except when Jocke farted so bad that we had to roll all the windows down in the rain to keep from vomiting at the stench. Retching, I quietly began to plot my revenge.

Our first stop was Uppsala Domkyrka, the head cathedral for the Church in Sweden. As you know, I have a passion for architecture, and often sacred buildings are history’s greatest examples of this art and science. Construction began in the mid-13th century, and the structure was completed and consecrated in 1435. There was a terrible fire which damaged the roof, the towers, and interior of the church in 1702. Two major restorations were carried out in the late 1800s and again in the mid 1900s.

The windows, frescoes, sculptures, tapestries, and the building itself damn near had me in tears, it was so beautiful. I have been fortunate to see a great many of these sacred buildings in my travels, and this one is now in my top 3, the others being St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, and the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul, Turkey.

Since the boys had ignored the parking signs, we got back to the car to find we had a ticket. Great. At least it was not terribly expensive. We had really good internet reception so since we already had a ticket, we just hung out in the car while I used Jocke’s laptop and iPhone to upload the last 2 blogs. Sweet. Darth Farter was forgiven.

After getting Johan’s jacket, we headed out of town to a place where Viking kings of old are buried. Buried? Strange. I always thought that Vikings launched their dead into the water on boats which were set afire by flaming arrows shot from shore. The weather was pretty bad, so I had dressed for it… several layers, including gloves, hat, and scarf. The guys thought it was pretty funny, until we started walking around the gravesites, which are really just huge barrows of earth. They didn’t get half a kilometer before pussing out from the cold and rain. I was quite bummed; I had really wanted to explore and further feed my Viking fetish.

We stopped at a restaurant near Uppsala for an early dinner. It seems almost every food establishment here is owned by immigrants who were political refugees from the middle east countries, so everywhere it is “pizza – kebab – pasta.” The pizzas here are just strange to me. It was hard to find one that had the kind of toppings that I enjoy, but they sure as hell get the crust right here. Nice and thin, not floppy, but not stiff as cardboard either. We had a nice meal and of course the company was excellent. Even Timo behaved… sort of.

We stopped at a large store to buy some scissors because Timo needed his hair cut. For reasons unknown to me, he entrusted this task to Henrik, who was laughing so hard he could not cut a straight line. I took over and finished the job properly, with a total of about 5 inches removed from his four-foot-long tresses.

The rest of the evening was relatively unremarkable; a bit of drinking, joking around, movies, deep conversations, and Timo composing music for the next CD already. I did get a bit of revenge on Darth Farter… Jocke cries now to know that girls can fart too.