My trip to Sweden and Lativa

During the last weeks I made a small but very nice trip to the north, fliying from Dusseldorf to Stockholm (ryanair), taking the ferry from Stockholm to Riga (Silja Lines) and flying back from Riga to Dusseldorf (ryanair).
For accomodation I chose the community couchsurfing.com which I can highly suggest to anyone out there wanting to travel "the special" way. The cool thing with couchsrufing.com is, that thre are people from all over the world who host you on their couch. So of course, no money for hotel etc. but most important: you get your guide for free ;) I really liked the idea of getting connected to people who live in the towns you visit - and it really worked out for me, getting to know Stockholm and Riga from the "insight view" (Thanks to Olov and Agnija). These guys where so helpful and pleasant, that I had a wonderful time in both cities (photos following ;) ). What really excited me was Riga, the capital of Latvia, with their young people, fully addicted to the internet - first thing I discussed with Agnija was the impact of converged media - she is studying somethint like media science. I was a bit disappointed by Stockhom, because during my stay, streets were nearly empty - but this might have to do with holidays and it was quite cold, so no need to go outside for the Swedish, only stupid german tourists like me were walking around... ;)
I think my next travel to the north will be in summertime - because Riga and Stockholm are really beatiful towns, with lots of green and water.
Now, refreshed, and back to work, kickin 2009...

The special hotels: escapio.com

Worked a year without holidays: now I´m finished, and my girl and I just want to escape. But all the well known travelling sites just offer the same: "all inclusive in turkey, Robinson Club in the mediterranean, ...." That´s not what we are looking for: we are searching for the nice, small family driven hotel somewhere in the Toskana. I found a very good site for this issue: escapio.com (english version here). It is very nice designed, and has all the features you really need: direct-contact fields, a lot of pictures, remember-lists, send-a-freind,.. So, if your looking for a special hotel/pension/appartement throghout europe have a look at escapio.com.

Update: Had a special question and got answer within half an hour.