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<\/a><\/p>\nI’m in a eight bunk bed room. My number is room five, bunk b. I can only assume if I skip out on the bill, Inspector Javert will hunt me across the sands of time.<\/p>\n
There’s no window (windows cost extra) but there’s also apparently no towel. I should know better having been a proper adolescent geek boy and thus a fan of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. One if it’s key life lessons is that you should always carry a towel. Yet this listing was explicit – no window but linens included. I made an ass of you and me and assumed all linens included sheets and towel.<\/p>\n
Sigh. How many backpackers died in this murder hostel I wonder? The death toll is probably higher than the area murder hotel. But there I go again – making assumptions and asses.<\/p>\n
I weighed the option of using my bed sheet as a towel and keeping the duvet to cover up with at night. But that’s ridiculous. I’m a 40 year old man. I can buy a towel… except I can’t find a department store or towel store or really any store except a 7-11 every fifteen feet and a series of corner grocery stores. I buy a dish towel for 31 kroner, the closest I can find to a workable solution. Forty years old and I’m toweling off with this:<\/p>\n
Live by the murder hotel code, dry by the murder hostel code.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n After dropping my stuff at the highly rated murder hostel … 8.9 on the booking.com scale!…<\/p>\n I headed down to the Asics Stockholm Marathon expo. It was being held at the Stockholm Olympic Stadium, homeboy more track and field world records than any other venue. I should note it’s 1912 marathon was held prior to the standardized 26.2 miles and was short… just about a 25 mile course. Tomorrow’s race is adhering to the 26.2 mile length. Dammit.<\/p>\n I say that only because I’m exhausted. The burglary thing left me with a sleepless night before the red eye… and the red eye to Europe was a non-sleeper. My legs feel like lingonberry sauce. And despite a yelp review raving about a nearby spot for Swedish Meatballs, they were out of them when I went for lunch. This is how things are going. Could be worse; definitely could be better; but definitely could be A LOT worse.<\/p>\n The expo was the usual, usual. Hawkers of merch, gear, other races.<\/p>\n It was fun to ponder a few “exotic” locales but later I’d realize once again that such notions are all relative. Folks here in Sweden probably shrug their shoulders at a race in Amsterdam. But then again this pub advertises Pabst Blue Ribbon as a fancy imported beer.<\/p>\n I did stop for a rotating Matrixian bullet time photo. I realize now I should’ve tilted my knees differently to better sell my jumping… as it stands here it looks like, well, I’m just standing weirdly and they greenscreened me above the ground. But I was jumping! Honest!<\/p>\n I didn’t have a set plan before traveling here of sights to see. There doesn’t appear to be an equivalent Roadside Sweden listing strange and unusual countryside attractions. The real draw here seems to be people watching and strolling. As I said, it’s very IKEA writ large.<\/p>\n But it IS a good place to people watch and stroll. And though the wind was a bit chilly, it was a beautiful sunny day here in Stockholm. I set my GPS for the Nobel PriZe Museum and just veered off course if I saw something intriguing down an alley or on the horizon. I went past one of many Central Park-ian natural spaces. I tossed my bag down and curled up in a sunbeam in the grass, letting exhaustion take me to slumberville. I needed far more than the 40 minute catnap but it was a start. To be fair, I was not the only person conked out on the greens. It was a good day to nap in the sun.<\/p>\n But given my limited time here and the rain forecast for Sunday, I thought I should take better advantage of the day. I rallied, groggily, and headed toward the museum.<\/p>\n I found myself easily distracted. I was just in time for a quick changing of the guard at the ceremonial Royal Palace.<\/p>\n I sat amidst one of the waterway ampitheater risers.<\/p>\n And I just snapped photos as I walked of the streets of Stockholm.<\/p>\n I couldn’t tell you where I was or how I got there; there were no breadcrumbs left by me to retrace my steps and the signage was mostly Greek… as in Swedish is all Greek to me. But it was a pleasant way to spend the afternoon.<\/p>\n The 120 kroner admission fee to the Nobel Museum seemed a bit steep given the size of the place. But I think I’m still glad I did it. I didn’t realize that Nobel in his will specified the categories for the prizes, insisted that the Peace prize be given in Oslo, and the others were to be given in Stockholm.<\/p>\n I didn’t know “peace” in Swedish is “Fred.”<\/p>\n The economic prize wasn’t in his will and the prize committee added it as a one-category expansion exception in the 1960s. They also don’t call it the Nobel prize for Economics… it’s actually the Nobel *Tribute* Prize. I didn’t know the prizes are announced annually on December 10th because that’s the anniversary of Nobel’s death.<\/p>\n I also didn’t know four people were double prize winners – Marie Curie and three others.<\/p>\n Even on my best days I’m really only good for about an hour or two at any museum … and here I felt I’d exhausted my learning attention span faster than that. I was and remain sleepy… so it’ll be an early night even though the marathon doesn’t start until noon tomorrow. But with time zones, that’s 6 am east coast time… so almost the usual, usual, no?<\/p>\n I have no idea what time it is. I have no idea where I am. But I do know tomorrow I’ll be running. \u00a0Or at least that’s the plan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In many ways, Stockholm feels like one giant IKEA. I find myself wandering, seemingly aimlessly, yet it’s a methodically curated realm of streets featuring umlauts and d’s and k’s. IKEA may be the ideal Swedish synecdoche. My hotel… well, hostel… is Tatooine chic, as if all the sand dune hovels were painted taupe to give […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0 <\/a>\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 <\/a> <\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n