Cruisin' It and Breaking the Couchsurfing Rules

Mandy and I continued on our journey after Tartu on up to Tallinn where we boarded a 'ferry' (cruise ship) to Stockholm where our flight home (that's right, new home Wroclaw) was destined to fly out of. We got off the bus and boarded the ship in incredible timing and with Duty Free wine in tow. After finding the room and unloading we went straight to sleep, because that lovely 12 hr bus ride from St. Petersburg was rough and we jibber jabbered the entire bus ride up to Tallinn. We were dang tired. We caught a 3 hour nap and still managed to wake before the boat set sail. We got up and explored and bought some dinner: sandwiches-so cheap and juicy! Then we began in on the wine. And we got into a situation in which the little club we were inhabiting did not like that we brought our own drinks and even worse that we even thought to drink it out of plastic cups. How silly, we were stuck on a ship in the middle of the Baltic and still got kicked out of a bar. :P
We woke the next morning to the beautiful sunny shore of Sweden. I've found that it's always very impressionable when you enter a country for the first time whether it's good weather or bad. I was in love! We took our time taking in the view from up top before we had to say goodbye to the Baltic Queen. We finally made it to a metro stop and discovered that, yes, Stockholm is very expensive. We hopped on a train to the center where we tried repeatedly to get in contact with our couch surfer but all in vain. So we stored our luggage at the train station so we could explore unburdened. That is one thing I am glad someone came up with, lockers at the station, it's genius really!
The weather stayed good as we walked through green green parks overlooked by blue blue skies. We found a spot on an inlet of water and whipped out what we had been saving up for so long, our extremely moldy loaf of bread which had traveled all the way from Poland, premold of course. That loaf of bread went through 5 countries with us with most of it becoming our breakfast under peanut butter and honey some mornings. Ultimately it became the dinner to seagulls right there on that shore. It was funny though because the seagulls were not like ones I've encountered at Myrtle Beach which would take your head off if they could. No these guys were scared of the bread we were throwing at them. It took them a while to figure out if it was food or not. Mandy and I still aren't sure whether feeding them was illegal or not.
We finally got in touch with the couchsurfer, Mikael, originally from Stockholm. We met up with him and took him to his centrally located pad. We met the two other girls who were surfing there, quite a stud wasn't he?, who were from Germany and were really sweet, one more so than the other. Then we went to sleep, glorious glorious sleep.
The next day we set to exploring again with the main event being a paddle boat ride down the Djurgardsbrunnsviken. The weather was super sunny so we aimed to get a tan as well as ride and relax. Mission was accomplished successfully. We found some food, the tub of ice cream we left in Mikael's freezer from the previous day, and sat in a park with the locals and chilled out on the grass. The Swedish locals are not in any way similar to Polish locals that I've encountered. For example: Polish Local- stares at the strange lack of clothing coverage even though you're in a tank top and shorts then when caught staring they give you a "where are you from look," a role of the eyes, then looks away. Swedish Local- may look your direction but it's just because of that dog barking or child laughing behind you and will smile immediatly if you make eye contact. I have to say I liked the Swedish people better; this interaction is what I'm more familiar with and is more friendly to me. We went out later that night for a really great evening of dancing and meeting some of Mikael's friends. Bardzo Dobrsze!