Stockholm, Sweden

Well its time to get moving again. I leave Sweden tomorrow morning and go to Denmark.I have had a great experience here in Sweden. It is so vastly different than the life in Asia. There are positives and negatives of course but overall it is positive. I still have trouble getting my head around how expensive certain things are over here. I hate having to pay almost an american dollar to use a public toilet. A small jar of peanut butter is $8.00. It is so costly to drink in bars. A pint of the local beer (which is called Pribbs Bla and is delicious) costs about $6.00 a little shot of Sambuca is $8.00.
Good things are the museums, most of you who know me know how much I love paintings. I went to 3 museums in 8 days. and saw a bunch of great pictures. Lots of excellent impressionists and old masters, including some of my favorite artists, Renoir, Cezanne, Pissaro, Van Gough, Picasso, Matisse, Monet,Manet Dali Rubens and that guy R. van Rin, ahh the list goes on and on. Also in the museum of modern art some very intense and often disturbing images, I am lovin it, can you tell?
I went today to the Nobel museum and looked at a lot of acheivements that people won Nobel prizes for and listened to a few tapes of acceptance speeches, notably one of my heroes Martin Luther King.It really gives one hope for us humans when you realize how great some of our achievements (as a species) have been.
What I love best is the music scene. I have heard 5 Jazz bands and they have all been good with three of them being better than good.
A trio on the island of Vrango with an amazing drummer and an excellent keyboardist and a very good sax player. A quartet in a tiny hot,smokey little club called the Glen Miller club here in Stockholm had a white guy playing sax who you could tell was a big Coltrane fan, he had the fingers and the heart but not quite the wind. Reminded me of Spike Robinson or Phil Woods, he was that good!! and with a stand up bass player and a really fine guitar player who sounded like a cross between Charly Byrd and Al DiMeola if that is possible, Al4s speed with Charlies soulfulness. Then last night I went out with a Korean guy named Chan who just graduated from Law school(just a baby snake) (no offence meant to Matt Kennedy) and we heard a 6 peice brassy band with a trombone player a coronet player and a clarinet player and a nice rythnm section featuring Stand Up Bass, piano and a tasty guy on the drums who used the brushes really artistically.They played a lot of brassy standards like Struttin with some Bar b que, lookin for Turner, Basin Street Blues, and Baby all the time.
Well you know me folks, I was really diggin it.Eating a lot of herring Maceral and salmon and drinking a bit too much, I have to lighten up a little on that and save some brain cells for cheap excellent beer in Czech and Absynthe shooters. Yee-hahh, I love the life I live cos I live the life I love. It is true what they say about Swedish women, they are truly very beautiful to look at. And its really a fun sounding language when the piano players says a couple of totally unintelligable sentences and then says "Basin Street Blues". And he counts to four in Swedish and they all begin to play. I am staying in a really shitty hostel here in Stockholm but its very cheap. everything is booked in town and no wonder the weather is perfectly beautiful but I have to tell you I like Gothemburg better, but the cultural stuff is better here in Stockholm.
Well my hour is about up here in this internet cafe, I will update you all from Denmark soon.
Your wandering friend,
Robert