Ok so Michael Palin does read my blog, he is not going to sue over my Finland song but I have been served noticed.

And I don’t have a song for Estonia but I am working on a dirty limerick which is what I am known for anyway.

I was in Lithuania a few years ago and really liked so on a whim I decided to hop on a ferry and go over for a couple of days. I am really glad that I did. Tallinn has a lot of charm and a real old world feel to it although the city hams up its medieval routes to the very last dollar. It was also a heat wave there in the mid 30’s. It was only a 90 minute ferry ride from Helsinki. The since of history was amazing. I was in one building that could trace it history back to 1345.

After a couple of days there and because of the fecking heat I decided to swim back to Finland. My time was not that great but I did have my backpack with me.

Old Town

It was tough to say goodbye

I was allowed to call her beer wench and not get beat up

This is me on a segway but how would you know

This was not on purpose I swear but that is me in the hat

Me again

Once I dried off I made my way to Sweden. Stockholm is a really nice city with old world charm, a very nice harbor and nice blonde people. I don’t think they men appreciate me calling every last one of them Gustav. Hey Gustave, were you the lead singer in ABBA. Feck off gringo they say.

Speaking of ABBA there is a museum dedicated to them here. I would go for all the kronar in Sweden but I did go to the Vas Museum.

The Vas was one Mofo of a ship.

It was warship built 1626–1628. The ship foundered and sank after sailing about 1,300 m (1,400 yd) into her maiden voyage on 10 August 1628. She fell into obscurity after most of her valuable bronze cannons were salvaged in the 17th century. After she was located again in the late 1950s in a busy shipping lane just outside the Stockholm harbor, she was salvaged with a largely intact hull in 1961. She was housed in a temporary museum called Wasavarvet ("The Wasa Shipyard") until 1988 and then moved to the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. The ship is one of Sweden's most popular tourist attractions and has been seen by over 29 million visitors since 1961.[2] Vasa has since her recovery become a widely recognized symbol of the Swedish "great power period". She is today also a de facto standard in the media and among Swedes for evaluating the historical importance of shipwrecks.

The ship was built at the order of the King of Sweden Gustavus Adolphus as part of the military expansion he initiated in his war with Poland-Lithuania (1621–1629). It was constructed in Stockholm at the navy yard under a contract with private entrepreneurs in 1626–1627 and armed primarily with bronze cannons cast in Stockholm specifically for the ship. It was richly decorated as a symbol of the king's ambitions for Sweden and himself, and when it was completed was one of the most powerfully armed vessels in the world. Vasa was dangerously unstable due to too much weight in the upper structure of the hull. Despite this lack of stability, she was ordered to sea and foundered only a few minutes after she first encountered a wind stronger than a breeze. The order to sail was the result of a combination of factors. The king, who was leading the army in Poland at the time of her maiden voyage, was impatient to see her take up her station as flagship of the reserve squadron at Älvsnabben in the Stockholm Archipelago. At the same time, the king's subordinates lacked the political courage to discuss the ship's structural problems frankly or to have the maiden voyage postponed. An inquiry was organized by the Swedish Privy Council to find personal responsibility for the disaster, but in the end no one was punished for the fiasco.

During the 1961 recovery, thousands of artifacts and the remains of at least 15 people were found in and around the hull of the Vasa by marine archaeologists. Among the many items found were clothing, weapons, cannons, tools, coins, cutlery, food, drink and six of the ten sails. The artifacts and the ship herself have provided scholars with invaluable insight into details of naval warfare, shipbuilding techniques and everyday life in early 17th-century Sweden.

Tomorrow I am taking a train to Denmark ostensibly (whatever the hell that means)  to cross the Oresund bridge and tunnel. When I do that I will give an update and will not steel the information from Wikipedia just like I didn’t steal the information about the Vas. Actually, can you even steal from Wikipedia.

As you know, I have been saying for a long time that any swinging dick can win a Nobel Prize. I think I have met at least 35 of them in my life. Blah, blah, medicine, blah, blah, physics and so on so on. Well I am now a Nobel Laureate. One of the curators (whatever the hell that is) was asking how many Nobel Laureates there were, I guessed 850 and I think there is around 852. It was not like the boy genius here was listing them in my head but I read it recently. So I have a Nobel Medal of chocolate and that is how littlefrankiesonofabitch became a Nobel prize winner and he is not making this up.

This is my hotel

Gustav and the lead singer of ABBA

 Onward