Dateline: 11:08 06 Sep 1996
Location: Stockholm, T-Centralen
Streeeeeeeeech. Being the incorrigible cheap-ass
that I am, I just walked from my hostel at Zinkensdamm to T-Centralen to
save 13 kroner. No trivial excursion, either: walking fast, with
2 pauses of a few minutes to make a phone call and eat an apple (breakfast!)
the trip clocked in at just under an hour. And I was carrying my
fully-loaded backpack, too. But when you've got time to spare, not
much money and want to work up an appetite for the all-you-can-eat buffet
deal you're going to...
The hostel deserves a few words. It was expensive,
but this is Sweden so that was only to be expected. The shower was
most pleasant, but what truly flung me to the heights of ecstasy was the
bed. It was so big I could stretch out in full for the first time
in 3 weeks! The pillow was less than a metre cubed, so you could
sleep on it without breaking your neck. And the mattress was juuuuuust
right. Add on a nice, thick, fluffy, warm sheet and truly, I was
in heaven. For the next 10 hours, at least; around 7 AM I was woken
up by the most remarkable snoring. A faint attempt to replicate it:
...nnnNNNNRRRRROARRRSNORTT!!!ffrrr...
The position, duration and volume of the <SNORT> changed at random.
At times, this came in chorus when from the wall behind a much quieter
and more normal "rrrr" was heard, sometimes as an echo, but they tended
to fall in and out of sync. Around 9, the snoring stopped when the
poor guy sneezed so violently ("ats-BOOM! BOOM!") that we thought something
just exploded. Shocked by the sound he himself had generated, even
Mr. Snore-O-Tron woke up, and there ended that saga.
Ooh boy. After almost giving up hope, I spotted
a Pizza Hut and promptly dove in to get the buffet: all you can eat pizza
& salad, plus a drink (singular), for 65 kr. Well, I interpreted
the instructions literally and downed a personal record of 8 large slices
of Pan Pizza, crusts & all, plus N plates of salad. Hey: it's
yesterday's dinner plus today's breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The amount was enough to garner a few looks from the employees, being some
3-4x more than the average. No matter, at least I won't be hungry
for a while; I suspect I just consumed more calories in the last hour than
in all of last week combined. Oddly enough, I wasn't the only Finn
in the place or even close, with perhaps 50% of the clientele jabbering
away in Finnish. Even though the Pizza Hut buffet is identical and
cheaper in Helsinki. Small world, small country, small city.
The day's budget
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