Swedish Event Cache

We're now in Stockholm.  It was a but sobering to read the news that in light of the Norway attacks, Swedish officials are looking at what they need to do. On another note, we learned Friday that this was Stockholm Pride weekend, and it was nice to see buses, buildings, and even our hotel displaying rainbow flags.

We attended our first Swedish event cache Ångbåtsblues yesterday.  We were the only non-Europeans, but 2 other couples were from outside of Sweden.  The event was to take the 9:00 boat from Stockholm through the archipelago to the island of Vaxholm, then meet up again at 3pm for a picnic. We joined what turned out to be the largest caching group -- it started with 10 people and dwindled down to 7.  The group walked to the other end of the island, and even to a nearby island.  Based on cache-to-cache distances, we walked 6+ miles over a variety of terrain and found 20+ caches. It was a very nice event, and we felt most welcome, though since (of course) most of the conversation was in Swedish we were in the dark much of the time.  That said, one can be confused and still walk with the group.  It was nice that each of the other 8 cachers made a point to say hi to us, ask where we're from, discuss our "holiday" with us, etc....typical of Scandinavia, everyone spoke very good English. Some of the cachers reported knowing of Oregon because that's the model of GPS they use.  It was fun to connect with other people, and we even got what turned out to be a good suggestion about a fun local cache to find....since we hadn't gotten any exercise (ahem!) we walked about a mile out of our way to find that cache. Might have to see if we can place something similar at home....

It was convenient that the rain that was predicted for yesterday held off until today.  This morning we managed to be out during what can best be described as a torrential downpour, and we heard thunder but saw no lightening.  The mildly annoying "trenches" in the sidewalks proved their value, as they did a nice job containing most of the water.  In a great example of Murphy's Law, it seems that the worst part of the downpour was exactly when we were on our way to a bus....but good Oregonians that we are, we had jackets, hats/hoods, and remained umbrella-less.