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Writer's picturePeter Antonucci

Stockholm, Sweden (III)

Wednesday | June 22, 2016

Today was a long and complicated day. I woke up early because I had to meet at 7:10 AM in the Plaza to head out to the golf course. The ride out of town was interesting and I noticed a large number of people in Stockholm ride their bicycles to work. Bicycles are absolutely everywhere, and even our large bus had to sit behind bicyclists, going only as fast as the slowest one. I even saw a bike truck carrying hundreds of bikes.

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Its surprising to note that majority of the cars here in Sweden appear to be Volkswagens, and not Swedish Volvos or Saabs. It was also interesting to see how the bus drivers here wave at each other. I was sitting in the first row so I saw our driver lift his arm every time a bus approached. I first thought this was just a friendly habit of his, but I noticed that every other bus driver coming the other way did the same thing.


The golf course, Bro Hof Slott, was one of the most beautiful courses I’ve seen or played.

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Slott is the Swedish word for castle, and that is exactly what the clubhouse was. Our golf pro, Dave, forgot to order carts so we had to walk what was an extremely long, Robert Trent Jones Jr. course. The sun finally came out, but the temperature did not get much above 75°, so it was a really beautiful day. The greens were lightening fast and the fairways extremely long. My score was horrific, but it was a great day on the course.

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Interestingly, although we walked the course, they gave each of us these little bags of dirt and seed to carry with us to fix our divots.  In a riding cart, this would have been fine, but carrying the extra weight was not exactly ideal. 

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After the round, I was in a hurry to get back because there was a Meet the Candidate party being hosted for me. We got stuck in traffic and a 45 minute drive turned into a two hour nightmare. I arrived at the ship two minutes before the event was to begin, so I had to shower and dress quickly and get downstairs to meet the guests, my putative constituency. The event lasted a full three hours, one hour longer than it was supposed to. At one point, I was asked to give a speech and I did so, but kept it to only four minutes.


After dinner, we took a walk through the Plaza and stopped for one dance as the Yacht Club was hosting an event there.


The sunset from our balcony was enchanting.

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And because the days are so long, the sunsets can last for up to an hour.

By the end of the day, I had achieved a personal best above 30,000 steps for the day.  

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