A leap into unknown. Where my heart belongs.

by Kristina Kachur (Ukraine)

A leap into the unknown Sweden

Stockholm was the city I'd been dreaming to visit for more than 3 years. The trip could be so perfectly planned with excellent time management , but it wasn't. I and my friends faced with so many problems, when we worried and laughed, were hungry and tired till the point of completed exhaustion. But if I had a chance, I wouldn't change anything, because that cases made my trip special and real. I got into Stockholm at 2 a.m and went to Metro station looking for my route and my stop. In a plan, we should pass 4 stops and go out, so we're waiting to see the name of our stop, but instead we saw a long line of unknown words that seemed more like bad words rather than our station. Overall, we passed 16 stops. Just imagine. 16 stops at the death of the night in a foreign country and city.Then we went to our hostel, had a very nice conversation eating Ukrainian chocolate and fell asleep. We didn't set our alarm clock and it was the worst decision we've ever made. The room we were in had no window, only the door.So each time we woke up,we thought it’s night and fell asleep again.We realised that our totem animals/birds were parots(when you cover their cage with blanket, they think it's night and sleep.Like we did)So it took 3 minutes for me to understand that 12 a.m. meant morning, not nighttime. So my company started exploring the city, little streets that were hidden for tourists, bought some sweets and icecream(it's winter time). Then we bought tickets that worked for 24 hours in public transport and started using it. We looked up some places to go on Google. We decided to go to the market with cheapest prices on products. We spent 3 hours to find the correct address. So when we came to the address, all we saw was «Tire mounting».No market, no atmospheric place.Went back to see the beautiful city. But here's the thing .It was getting darker and darker outside, we're getting more hungry and we saw almost nothing. Tomorrow was out last day there. So we went to our hostel, had dinner and then went out to explore the city FINALLY.We had been walking for 5 hours. We saw a beautiful sea, Old Town(Gamla Stan), the outstanding metro stop with rainbows,their University, the most expensive street. We looked on lights of the night city, felt moments of eternity, listened to music from restaurants, danced while we had energy, were looking for the heart of Stockholm and ultimately were lost in foreign part of the city. So we explored Stockholm, tried to understand their language, thought how people lived here, their job.We were exhausted, so we came back to the hostel and ate one more time. To buy Korean fast food was a bad idea. We were like dragons, expected to fire anything only opening our mouth.we had tears and our viscera was burning for a long time. It looked funny from aside.Went to bed Ovr last half of the day. We woke up really early, were in rush doing routine things and eating,went out to see each part of Stockholm where we’d bbeenthe day before to take photos and to buy souvenirs. It was all planned anf funny. «You have a few minutes for photo, choose where you want, SHAKE A LEG" and so on.We did it very fast and had extra time. During extra time my friend fond a ferry, where you can get on by your cart for public transport. I WAS SO FREAKING HAPPY coz I desperately wanted to go on ferry, but we're poor Ukrainitrasporteds that didn't have extra monet for ferry and we collected much money just to see the city of my dreams. So we were on ferry. It trasported us to the other part of the city, that we didn't know. At the end we're driven to Skansta Airport. It's too little words here to explain my trip. I'D Like to tell you more. Stockholm is the city of dreams, good people, mixed emotions and amazing friends. I feel like that's my place.Where my heart does belong.