So we arrived at the zoo in Jarvso, called jarvzoo haha. Anyway, it consisted of a longish boardwalk viewing animals such as lynx, moose, reindeer, and lots of owls. The enclosures were quite large (not for the birds though) and the setting was a forest with a slight incline up the boardwalk. It was interesting enough for us as we hadn’t even seen the animals before (except for a brief sighting of a moose and a few stray reindeer on the road on the way). You have a problem when you go to a zoo. You are almost sacrificing the animals enclosure so that you can see them. In the larger enclosures you just cannot see the animals. I guess it is a tossup between the conditions being goodish, and the conditions being like a indo zoo – concrete floor and mouldy food. One you get to see the animals, the other you might not. I prefer the latter. We then drove our way to orsa – near lake siljan. We were arriving at the hostel after the designated times of reception. There is something that you must know about swedish hostels. If you arrive outside the reception times, then it is quite difficult to get into the place – if we hadn’t of booked a room it would have been impossible. Anyway, the whole hostel was locked up tight, the only way we got in was a person eating in the room open the door – he gave us the wrong code to the lockbox (which we assumed had keys) I had a few guesses and fluked it. Keys! And a note saying welcome. How he expected us to get in without a code, and without a phone number I don’t know. But we were in. That night involved a call to get the internet password to update this blog, and a late night due to some camera research.
The next morning we were up (well 2 of us were) for breakfast and enjoyed our first swedish breakfast (we think.. it was cereal and muffins with jam and spreads, fruit and vegetables. Could have been anywhere we thought. Anyway we went to the nearby famous bear park, and had another go at seeing the animals we missed at the park beforehand. It was much better I thought. It had interactive scenes (eg: how fast are you compared to other animals.. well I can outrun a squirrel quite comfortably, but a bear is catching me in about 20 meters. It also had a lot more information in English which is always good. We saw polar bears, snow leopards, lots of bears, and finally the wolverine. Andrew stayed at the hostel to do washing. We then went for a drive to the longest pier in scandanavia on lake siljan– 728m long I think on a lake that was caused by an old meteorite. It was interesting for about 5 minutes. But to be out and about was good. We continued around the lake to the tower with a museum with a few stuffed animals that we had seen that day and went up the tower to see good views of the lake. Most of the museum was in Swedish, and as we were leaving we saw the sign saying that they had an English booklet! Dah!... oh well. We headed back, had dinner and accidently went to bed late again. 2:00…
It is quite difficult to find somewhere to stay in major cities in summer in Europe with couchsurfing. I sent a few requests to stay in Stockholm but got nothing. So we waited until this morning and booked a hostel, which wasn’t our first choice but the other ones we wanted were booked out. We stopped at fulam, the site of an old copper mine and had a tour there. It was interesting, the guide knew her stuff, but needed to have a few pep pills like the brewery tour guide in brugge. An Australian company is currently drilling for gold down here to see if it worth digging up. The interesting thing being – that I had recently gone to the Bendigo mine, I knew a few things about mining there – it was very different. Things were not done the same way, very primitive and not so big. So we then headed off via an icecream stop to Stockholm. When we arrived at the hostel in stockholm, we saw we had a hot plate and sink, so we went out and bought heaps of food for dinner to return to find out that the cord had been cut - and the sink didn't have a tap!!! so some wood fired pizza later, and stockholm tomorrow.
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