Not the best time for a holiday
Jun. 3rd, 2006 08:16 pmWe have another of the amazing Swedish four-day weekends when no-one works from mid-afternoon Friday until Wednesday morning. The trouble is, I am in a very poor position to take advantage of this holiday. My primary problem is that I have no money. I mean, literally none; I had to get a new bank account for annoying bureaucratic reasons, and of course the new card didn't arrive til Friday after the banks had shut early due to the holiday, and I can't activate it until places are open again at 10 o'clock Wednesday morning. I have food in the storecupboard, so I won't starve, and I have a season ticket for transport, so I don't have to stay at home. But the number of fun things I can actually do in a strange city with no money is rather limited!
The second problem is that my phone chose the extremely inconvenient time of Friday afternoon just before the holiday to die. So I can't phone my friends here and suggest hanging out together, nor can I occupy my time by phoning my friends in other countries, which is one thing I was hoping to do with the bonus free time. And of course I can't even start the process of getting it fixed until Wednesday...
However, in spite of these annoyances, the weekend started well. Some work colleagues invited me to a pubmeet held by a largely virtual group of English-speakers living in Sweden. I had a very enjoyable evening, because even though pubbing isn't really my scene, it was outdoors so not smoky and the background music was ignorable, and because I suddenly got to meet 70 new people at once. Social contact is very, very good, and they seem an extremely pleasant, and pleasingly mixed crowd.
The downside was paying over £7 for a shot and mixer (which I wouldn't have ordered if I'd known!) and over £5 for a beer. Apparently this is normal for Sweden, but eek! And that ate up my entire "budget" (the cash I happened to be carrying in my purse when I realized I was not going to be able to get any more late on Friday) for the weekend.
The second problem is that my phone chose the extremely inconvenient time of Friday afternoon just before the holiday to die. So I can't phone my friends here and suggest hanging out together, nor can I occupy my time by phoning my friends in other countries, which is one thing I was hoping to do with the bonus free time. And of course I can't even start the process of getting it fixed until Wednesday...
However, in spite of these annoyances, the weekend started well. Some work colleagues invited me to a pubmeet held by a largely virtual group of English-speakers living in Sweden. I had a very enjoyable evening, because even though pubbing isn't really my scene, it was outdoors so not smoky and the background music was ignorable, and because I suddenly got to meet 70 new people at once. Social contact is very, very good, and they seem an extremely pleasant, and pleasingly mixed crowd.
The downside was paying over £7 for a shot and mixer (which I wouldn't have ordered if I'd known!) and over £5 for a beer. Apparently this is normal for Sweden, but eek! And that ate up my entire "budget" (the cash I happened to be carrying in my purse when I realized I was not going to be able to get any more late on Friday) for the weekend.
