So, last time we spoke, One Eyed Mickey and I were on a ferry from Oslo to Denmark, drinking up the Prince of Norway in the lounge bar, and later wandering around in the middle of the night in my pyjamas to investigate the rocking of the boat and calculating the likelihood of the ship sinking and doom impending.

Bright and early the next morning we arrived in Fredrikshavn, Denmark, where JM again marvelled at the efficiency of Scandinavian border controls. You see, things run so smoothly because said border controls consist mainly of sleepy looking guy drinking coffee, and two customs signs hanging over the exit saying "Nothing to Declare", and, "Items to Declare".

Norway is really expensive, partly because it has really high taxes, and so lots of Norwegians go on these short and relatively cheap cruises for the duty-free shopping. And it isn't just duty-free as in cheap booze and perfume, this boat actually had a reasonably sized supermarket on board, and once we reached Denmark, there was a supermarket in the ferry terminal.

Funnier still is that, knowing that hordes of Norwegians drive over to Sweden for cheaper shopping, one particularly enterprising Norwegian built a massive shopping centre just over the border. Thereby ensuring that all the money ends up back in Norway, and hugely irritating the Swedes. But that really is a whole other story.

Where was I? Oh yes, Fredrikshavn. We sat in the station for 2 hours. Very nice station. Nice looking church across the road too.

The train trip to Copenhagen was fairly uneventual: I patted a dog; we saw lots of wind turbines; and the train went through an under-sea tunnel from one Danish island to another, meaning that there were special instructions on the safety onboard card.


Copenhagen was really nice when it wasn't raining, but again, it's probably much better if you just look at the photos.

Finally, after many trains, ferries and hours spent waiting in Gardemoen Airport along the way, we left Copenhagen to begin our return to Uppsala. We spent one night staying in Gøteborg with Adriana (mum met her through the Independent Women Travellers group on Couch Surfing) and Johan, who were both really nice and took us out to dinner/fulfilled our internet addictions etc. I think I'll try and go back there before I leave Sweden because like I say, Adriana and Johan were really interesting and nice, and I think that it's the sort of city where you can really explore quite a lot if you have time. Anyway, I have six months, so we'll see how I manage.

From there it was back to Uppsala for a few days of chilling out, doing laundry, and picking wild raspberries before JM left for Japan and I headed back to Oslo.

Next week I'm going to visit Viki in Milan which is going to be great. Then at some point I have to go back to Uppsala for class, even though I'm not registered and that crazy woman in the IBG office is on holidays so won't be able to do anything about it until she gets back (even though she managed to email me this and tell me that she couldn't help me right now). But right now I'm not going to bother thinking about it, this time next week I'll be eating gelato on the Italian Riviera and getting a tan.

Everything else can wait.