Swedish Nerd Vs. The World

The capitals of Austria and Slovakia are so close to each other that it took just an hour to get from Vienna to Bratislava by bus when my friend Erik and I had been visiting Austria for a couple of days. Now it was time to enjoy the poor side of the border and it's weird how two cities that are so close to each other can be like night and day. I just hoped our visit wouldn't turn out as bad as in the horror movie Hostel which is said to take place in Slovakia. We arrived in the autumn and it was raining down on the gray foundation that is the worn down suburbs of Bratislava. My first impression was horrible and I wished we had stayed in the grand and beautiful Vienna instead. Then I quickly understood that it was a big difference between the suburbs of Bratislava where the bus station was located and the city center. When we arrived at the boat hotel on the river Danube that floats through the city, it felt like coming home for me. I had seen the river floating through many...

I don't know why but I couldn't sleep the night before I went to the airport together with Nils to go to Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. It was early December and we were met by a gray, dull and gloomy city that still had its marks from the Yugoslav wars during the 90's. We asked for direction to our hotel called Hotel Union and the girl I asked laughed before she pointed out the direction, that's never a good sign. We arrived at Hotel Union and we could almost not see where we were going in the corridors because they wouldn't use any lighting, probably to save money or something. It was supposed to be a 3 star hotel but I would learn from this trip that you should go for the guest reviews instead of the stars. We had separate rooms next to each other and I thought my room smelled a lot of smoke, but as we were just there for 3 days we quickly went out of the hotel and into the streets. Nils had asked the receptionist for a recommendation of what to do and she s...

 "The poorest country in Europe!" is a tagline that made me and my friend Christofer the only tourists in the capital Chișinău in Moldova. At first I was a bit disappointed because I thought it looked richer than other poor countries like Serbia and Kosovo, and I had hoped to see the worst place I've ever seen yet. We arrived at the Moldovan airport with a flight from Istanbul in Turkey when we took a bus into town for 2 Moldovan leu (which equals 1 Swedish krona), probably the cheapest bus ride ever. I had heard that almost no one could speak English in Moldova so I tried to signal to the ticket seller on the bus that we wanted two tickets, as if he was deaf. He replied by asking in perfect English "do you speak English?" and I felt so ashamed for assuming he wouldn't be able to speak any other language than Moldovan. I tried hard to see the gates of Chișinău but we arrived late in the evening so I just saw darkness outside. When we flew over Istanbul i...

Me and my friend Michael bought a ticket to go to Switzerland, or no wait, we were supposed to go there but the airline called Swiss simply wouldn't allow us to buy tickets if we didn't have specifically a Mastercard credit card, not even a Mastercard debit card would work. It's like they don't want the travellers to be able to fly with them, it's so strange. I can see lots and lots of other people complaining to them about this, so I wasn't the only one who thought it was remarkably dumb. They always refer the customers to call and buy the tickets instead so I guess it's some kind of scam where they charge a lot for the call. They also try and confuse people that you need to pay extra for the seat when actually you don't, but they hide that information from you, so if you're looking for the worst airline in the world, look no further. Since me and Michael couldn't buy the tickets we ended up going to Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and Montenegro ...