In 1994 I was 18 years old (or young!) and very busy. It was just some months before my school leaving examination and I had to spend a lot of time with the studies.
Nevertheless our school organizied our typical study trip for the 12th classes, like every year. In this year we had the choice in-between 10 days in Spain, Scandinavia or a bike-trip around the Lake Constance.
I made a fast decision for Sweden and Finland, beacause that trip seemed to be the most dilly one. We started in august at our homecity near Cologne (Germany) by train. In Denmark our train was transported into the ferries and in Malmö, we reached Sweden. The tour went on directy by train to the capital of Sweden, Stockholm. I remember, we were all very fascinated about the countryside and nature, which we had seen along the railway. Our train passed large forests, long lakes, fields and small and nice villages and towns. The nature and the wideness, really amazing.
It was early in the morning and our train stoped now more and more, to pick up the commuter, who worked in Stockholms region. We haven´t sleept very much in this night, but we were very attentive about the new world. I remeber that the male students, certainly me too, were very, very impressed about the beautiful swedish girls;-)
As we arrived Stockholm, I understood why Sweden and travel north is so popular in Germany. The city is beautiful, clean and I directly feelt in love with it. It is a mix of green and blue, of old and young, of traditionall and modern. And everywhere you feel the liberal and friendly attitude. this is really a very all-round place. You can eat turkish, italian, swedish or chinese - nearly whatever you want. we enjoyed the long summernights with it´s special light like in a fairy tale. Our lodging station was the longholmen, an old prison on an separted island in the middle of Stockholm, which now used as an hostel.
One of the most interesting days were our trip to the archipelago of stockholms coast. We visited an island and it was like in paradise. We shipped with a small boat from mainland to our island. By the way we passed smaller and bigger islands, some like small rocks other islands with forestes and beaches. It´s a great feeling, so much place for so less people. and this area is one of the crowded ones in Sweden?! It is really fascinating, especially for visitors who come from middle europe, where you find one of the most density in population. and everything is clean and natural -and only some minutes away from the city-, but the water was coooold;-)
We spent a lot of funny days in Stockholm and Helsinki, visited the Vatten Festival with an amazing fireworks, meet a lot of interesting and nice people and since that time I´m a great friend of Scandinavia. On our ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki we spent a very funny night with people from sweden, finland + japan etc., disco, karaoke and taxfree vodka.
Sweden made me snoopy to explore the other scandinavien countries and since 1994 I visited also Norway, Iceland, Denmark and Finland. Also I hope to see Greenland and the Faroes in the future.