Swedish Nerd Vs. The World

The neighbouring country Norway got a visit from my whole family when I was almost two years old. My mom Annika, my sisters Linda, Åsa and Sandra and me were travelling in a blue van while my dad Björn and his friend Torsten went by motorcycles. I have some vague memories from the trip which lasted for three days and I remember it as an exciting trip where we slept in the van and were driving north of Oslo in the rural Norway. My mom remembers it as a horrible trip where us kids were going nuts in the van and we refused to wear seatbelts and opened the door on the passenger side while she was driving. She was scared that we would fall out of the van and she just wanted to go home again and she thought about taking the boat from Oslo to Copenhagen in Denmark to get us almost back home to Helsingborg in Sweden where we lived. This never happened but one year later when my dad's birthday was coming up we went on the ferry but in the opposite direction first, from Copenhage...

Me and my friends Johan and Pidor had been flying around Europe when we came to our last stop, which was Dublin in Ireland. I thought it would be England all over again but Ireland was something completely different, it has got so much more character. It started off with us looking for the hotel after arriving to the city center and we were tired after the other trips so when we couldn’t find it, we just got in a cab and figured he would find it for us. He started to drive 5 meters and I told him the street and he got confused and stopped. “But that’s this street”, he said. “The hotel is here”. We laughed and got out of the cab again, but he wouldn’t let us leave without paying the fee for starting the fare which was ridiculous since we hadn’t gone anywhere.  After checking in at the hotel we went out on the streets and every other building was a pub. It didn’t feel like a “lets-go-mental-because-we’re-drunk”-vibe like it's in Sweden on the weekends. It was more warm and cozy ...