As every holiday begins the second you leave your house with your suitcase, my Stockholm trip began Wednesday evening. I took my suitcase with me to the Irish Pub, where I work. I completed a full shift at work, and then we went to the pub! We ended up at Rote Rosies in Kreuzberg, which was quite an experience and reminded me why I tend to stick to gay bars! My friend Natalie got her bag stolen, though thankfully noticed and handled it very well - she can be very intimidating I discovered! Then the guy returned to the pub and tried to start a fight with each of us, but thankfully I had an Irish Straight Man to protect me as I left the pub, kinda drunk, to head to the airport.

I got to the airport without a hitch, though I spotted some clear cultural differences between my travel companions. Felix, the German, had been at the airport for hours already when I arrived. Costas, the Cypriot, kept us waiting for ages. Then we realised we had missed the check-in deadline for Felix cabin baggage, so after some frantic rushing about, and the loss of my deo and shower gel, they accepted the luggage to go on the flight with us. While Costas and Felix were dealing with this, I went through security - I wasn't gonna miss *my* flight! ;) I caused a Major German Panic when I put my bag through the scanner, and then wandered through and round the corner without it. 6 or so Very Angry Germans charged at me around the corner yelling about it. They were kinda arsey until I apologised a few times, then they were all really nice. Odd. While Costas and Felix were struggling to see if they'd make the flight, I waltzed through Duty Free and bought some vodka. Priorities!!!

We landed early (tack Ryanair!) at "Stockholm Skavsta" i.e. Norrkoping (not so tack, Ryanair!). Buying tickets for the bus threw up another problem when both me and Felix bought Costas a bus ticket. We solved the problem with a quick bit of reselling to a Swedish girl. And we were on our way, on the 80 minute bus ride to Schlager City. As we got off the bus, we bumped into Danny and Caron. We sent Felix off with them to the Sheraton, as me and Costas went to find the hostel and Geert.

Throughout the day, Sild, Sam and Martin, Noel, Yair and Jonas arrived. I also had an hours sleep to make up for getting none at all the night before. We began drinking early, obvi. The soundtrack was ESC and MF songs from 2010, and the star of the night was Moppy Sandén. Other highlights included Sam asking for a glass of water - but don't worry - it wasn't to slow the getting drunk rate, but to pour over my head. Neither of us can remember why, but we both agree it was fully deserved. Before we could do the traditional Thursday step of heading to Torget, we were all very nicely drunk. When we left, we left sleeping beauties Geert and Noel together with Moppy Sandén in bed together. The rest of us walked to Torget, where we met many other friends and danced to Linda and Tick Tock and when the DJ (rudely!) played Lady Gaga and Beyonce we all left the dancefloor offended. I got some evils of some of the English Gays for enjoying myself too much, and Sam and Sild foolishly purchased a whole bottle of wine - that would be why they don't remember any of that night. The night is largely a blur, and when we staggered home people were in various beds, and we had to lift up a bunkbed containing a small Belgian to pull out another bed.

The next morning, Sild was first up, and went out to buy something I believe is called food. We all ate a bit of said thing cos apparently you can't live on alcohol alone, and at 9am we started up the playlist again with a nice bit of Jas Ja Imam Silata (Macedonia 2010), though some people (rudely!) wanted to sleep, so we stopped the music for a little while. Not long though.

At midday, we decided it was acceptable to begin drinking again, so we sent Costas out for beers. We eased back into drinking in no time at all, though sadly lost Noel to some new arrivals in the Sheraton.

That evening, Costas, Noel, Felix and me watched Unser Star fur Oslo in Felix's hotel room, with some more alcohol. The reaction to each Lena Meyer-Landrut song she sang in the final could be described as multiple orgasms, but that term should probably be saved for events that happened later that night.

After Germany decided, we went to Danny's hotel room, where we met Caron, Keith, Michael and loads more people who kept arriving, including Anthi! This lovely unfortunate lady had the pleasure of a very drunk me talking random crap in a strong accent in a big gay club for a while, until a Swedish boy pushed her out of the way to get to me. He then proceeded to say dirty things in Swedish to me, and helped me lose my phone.

Other highlights of Friday night in Paradise (or Heaven, as Costas calls it) were Jenny Silver performing three songs (insert sarcmark), and dancing with many fabulous people to many fabulous songs. Sadly, my night in Paradise was rounded off with a lost phone, a lost cloakroom number, and - worst of all - someone thinking I was Kevin Borg. If you don't know him, he is Maltese, won Swedish Pop Idol and is incredibly ugly. I think I told the guy who said this to me to "f*** off and die".

When leaving Paradise, me and Geert realised everyone else from the hostel was gone, and neither of us knew the code to get in. So we instructed Jeremy, Alexander and a Very Drunk Matt that we were going to the Sheraton with them. But first we went to McDonalds. Where a very surreal situation occurred. Very Drunk Matt spotted a woman (we think) who looked a bit like Charlotte Perrelli. So he of course started singing Hero to her. And random groups of other Eurovision fans joined in, and carried it on, until the poor lass(?) was getting abuse from all sides. (S)he then started milking it though, and was using her sunglasses and pretending she was Charlotte, so we took a photo of her and left her to continue preening herself.

Upon arriving at the Sheraton, Alexander presented me with my prizes for winning the DotNL 2009 prize draw. The fabulous gifts were a snowglobe with a windmill inside (obvi!), a pair of socks saying "I <3 NL" (which WILL be worn during Eurovision Semi 2 in support of Sinneke Vinniker), and a bottle opener in the shape of a red penis (which led to many occasions of telling people about "Alexander giving me his penis" and so on). After the prize ceremony, those 3 left and me and Geert ended up with a double bed each in the Sheraton despite the fact we hadn't paid a penny for the privilege! Though we soon had to budge up to make room for three new arrivals who shared our room that night. But the less said about that the better, really. ;)

And so we ended Friday night in luxury, and that is where the story will stay for today, in the Sheraton. Well, everyone else stayed there at some point, so why not?