Aus Hamburg; or This isn't Kansas, Dorothy

Is it strange that the first thing I noticed about being in Germany was the group of excited teenagers playing Foosball/table soccer in the corner of the coffeeshop/bar/club I ended up in? I think I have finally given up being jealous of people who are really good at Foosball; it doesn't interest me at all anymore.

It's hard to tell how I am feeling right now. I left Stockholm without really thinking about what that means. And right now what that means is I can't eat pepperkakor non-stop or go out and buy a kanelbulle for breakfast at noon, or go to Hötorget to get yelled at by the vegetable market people, or eavesdrop on people and understand some of what they are saying. German sounds like complete nonsense to me, and I didn't really realize that Swedish doesn't sound like a bunch of random sounds anymore - it sounds like Swedish which i sometimes somewhat understand.

Actually, I left Stockholm in a mess, perhaps epitomized by this picture. Ryanair's weight limits inspired me to wear as much of my clothes as possible, which as it turns out included 4 pairs of pants, with 3 skirts on top, three dresses, 3 shirts, 2 sweaters, 1 sweater vest and 2 coats. Oh yeah, and 3 scarves. Take that, Ryanair! Also I almost missed my flight, as in I was running towards the plane on the runways at 2:20 and the flight was supposed to leave at 2:30. Completely my fault, but still it had the feeling of "why is this ALWAYS HAPPENING TO ME at the end of the semester?"

I miss knowing where to go, at least sort of, even if I got lost walking Pepe in Gamla Stan and ended up in Slussen after walking to Statshuset, and I miss all of my Swedish friends. I don't have any German friends, although I thought about asking Erik's neighbors to play games with me, they might think I am a creep or mildly retarded or maybe they don't speak English; either way I'm afraid to knock on doors of complete strangers just because I'm lonely.