Tallinn, Moose, the Volcano,and Hockey

It's been an eventful couple of weeks here in Europe!

A couple weeks ago I and what seems like half of the international students from the university took a cruise to Tallinn, Estonia. It's a well known cruise that happens every year called the "sea battle" and over 2,000 students from universities all over Europe, mostly Scandinavia, drink themselves silly and buy cheap alcohol. The first night the waves and white wine did mix well so I was sick and missed out on most of the fun. Then for some unknown reason security banged on our door around 4:00 in the morning with an extremely drunk person from our university and asked us to take care of this person. Apparently they couldn't find the correct room. This person got sick and made a terrible mess that forced us move rooms. While we were dealing with the mess and switching cabins we missed the window of opportunity to disembark and didn't get to see Tallinn. It must be a busy port because the ship was at dock for less than an hour each in the morning and afternoon. After the previous night and missing out on touring the city I was in the mood to join the party the second night. The trip was basically a 1150 kronor bust.

I also went on a much more successful and exciting day trip to see moose in the forests of Småland. It was a two hour bus ride deep into the countryside on which we took a moose quiz and watched a movie. Upon arrival half the group went on the 'safari' and the rest of us walked around and looked at the caged moose and gift shop. The animals are somewhat docile and let us pet them through the fence. Despite their friendliness they kick with the front feet so we had to stay behind a fence. When it was our turn we clambered into old military wagons and entered the fenced-off field. The very nice moose farmer gave all a lot of apples and potatoes to feed to the animals. Moose are so gentle you can put food between you teeth and one will come and eat it and not hurt you. I tried which was very fun and sticky. After the short ride around the farm we had a fika outside with cheese sandwiches, cookies, and coffee or tea; a typical fika. After the moose and snack we watched another movie and announced the winner of the moose quiz. I apparently don't know much about Swedish moose. It was a fun trip although a little far for how brief the safari part was

I hadn't scheduled any travel during the whole volcanic ash disruption but several people I know were stranded or had to cancel their trips. One friend was stuck in London for 7 or 8 days! Luckily she had a place to stay. Flights in Sweden were canceled for a while but not as long as mainland Europe. There was and is a little part of me that wanted to get stuck here in Sweden which is still possible because another volcano on Iceland usually follows the first. On the other hand it didn't stop my family from coming to visit which was lovely. My local contact family had us over for a nice and took us too the small mountain that overlooks the city and lake. It was a fun time and I'm glad they were able meet over their short visit. My mother and brother are visiting Denmark now before they head back to the states.

HV71, the city's hockey team, beat Stockholm for the national championship on Saturday and was it an exciting game and night! HV won in overtime at the opponents rink in the 6th of 7 scheduled matches. The championship is done like the baseball world series. Downtown was a mad house, cars horns, singing, dancing, hugging, and drinking of course. There was another big party downtown last night to congratulate the team. The weather has greatly improved lately so it was a pleasant evening.

I leave for Norway on Saturday and I'll write a post dedicated to when I get back!

Swedish Spring

Last weekend I went horseback riding with the international association. It was a one night trip into the Swedish countryside over the Easter weekend. We rode a charted bus for about an hour outside of the city to horse farm where we split into two groups. One rode horses to our lunch and the rest of us walked there. It was one of the warmest days we have had so far this year and the sun was shining bright and high in the sky. We had a simple, quick lunch by the swiftly moving river. Originally we were supposed to canoe to the picnic site but the river was too fast for us to safely canoe there and the water was still very cold from the last of the melting snow. There was a surprising amount of snow in the woods and shadows. The horses we rode back are of an Icelandic breed that is smaller, but equally powerful, and rather hairy. I could tell the horses were trained to mostly follow each but we did get to gallop which was really fun and a little scary. The horse I rode was named Glanni and kept stopping to eat.

After our ride we walked through the woods and along the river to a very big, old house where we tried to have a bonfire and did have a party. The wood was too wet from the snow to make a strong fire but everyone brought enough alcohol and games to keep themselves entertained. However, before the usual college student antics we had hand-made Mexican food for dinner. I never tire of watching people from around the world bond over drinking games. There were a lot of people I hadn't met before and it was great to get to know them a little.

I have the same professor from last quarter teaching both of m courses. I am not pleased because is a very poor lecturer. Luckily though one of my housemates is in one of the classes so we can help each other stay focused. The beautiful weather isn't going to help either. The classes themselves don't strike me as all that difficult but time will tell.

I was supposed to go to Copenhagen today with my friend and her visiting family but her mother has food poisoning and couldn't go. It was only going to be for the day so we wouldn't have been able to do much anyway and we're planning to go for a weekend later in the quarter. In other travel news, I will be leaving Monday for the cruise to Tallinn, Estonia. Two thousand students from all over the Nordic region will be on the ship. It's a three day trip that I expect to be even wilder than the last cruise. Norway is also officially in the plans. It, like the cruise and Easter get-way, is a school organized trip. They all kinds of exciting things planned which I detail in a later blog entry.

Otherwise I'm simply living the quiet Swedish life and loving it!

The Mid-Point

Hej Hej everyone!

Sorry about the big break between posts but it's been very quiet around lately. Which is how the Swedish like it. The university here is on a quarter system and we're at the very end of the first one. It's hard to believe that the adventure is half way done. I've been busy with exams and papers; our grades are essentially determined by one and only one of those. I'm not a fan of that. What happens if you have a bad day or are a bad test taker? I am looking forward to my classes next quarter though. They seem more interesting.

The weather has improved markedly over the past few weeks. The daily high has been consistently above freezing and the snow is almost completely gone. I finally know what Scandinavian soil looks like! The leaves have yet to come out but when they do it's going glorious. We live on the edge of town around large yards and woods. I've even managed to go outside a few days without my heavy arctic jacket.

I haven't done any traveling lately but I have few trips in the works. The student union has organized an Easter weekend getaway with canoeing, horse back riding, and other fun things like that. A friend on my hall can't on the school cruise to Tallinn, Estonia so I'm going to buy his ticket. It's a little more expensive but the weather will be much nicer and they arrange everything for us. My cousin in London was kind enough to invite me for a weekend but we're having trouble finding convenient and cheap flights. RyanAir the amazingly cheap airline here in Europe flies out of the most out of the way airports often at odd times. He works and has a family so we're working around that.

Last weekend my contact family invited us over for a meal. One of the other students, who is from Romania but ethnically Hungarian, labored hard to make us a goulash. It was too spicy for my weak stomach but the little I had delicious! Her grandfather also sent some homemade vodka called polinka and was flavored with plum and peaches. It's quite strong, one of the other students fell asleep while we watched TV and talked. We watched a Swedish show along the lines of 'Idol' or 'America's Got Talent.' The host would read a word or a phrase and a group of talented singers would have to sing a song on the spot that had that word or phrase. Another American was there and mu some fantastic chocolate chip cookies that we snacked on while we watched.

There have been parties and the usual dorm wackiness too, of course. Tomorrow brings a new quarter and more adventures!

Brussels & Back

Sorry for the delay. I don't really have an excuse so let's jump right in.

The check out time at the Bruges hostel was 10:00AM, like it is in most, and we made to the desk right on the hour. We threw our bags on our backs and walked through the old city one more on our way to the train station. Again we made the hour long trip connection the two cities and crossed the blurry language and cultural boundary. When we arrived in Brussels it was beautiful sunny day. It was almost warm enough to walk around in a t-shirt! We got off at the central station and decided to walk to our next hostel which look easy enough to find on the map. You can probably tell where this is heading. We walk through the tourist trap squares and gorgeous buildings for a while without much luck finding our way. One of the other guys asked someone where our hostel, royotel, was and followed them. Then we made it to the corner they said and there was no hostel. A kind older women could tell we were lost tourist and gave us directions to the she thought we were staying. As we approached the front door the sign Royal Hotel. We decided to check with the front and see if the name had changed. It hadn't, we were at the wrong place. So we got directions form the young who worked at the front desk and strode determined down the street which was Royal Way or something. Everything on that street was had royal in the name, hence the confusion. In French the two words are very similar and a non-speaker can barely discern the difference. Royotel is a place somewhere between a hostel and a hotel and kind of a rip-off. We decided to do some exploring and find somewhere to eat.

We were there for such a short time and saw so much that the days blend together but I'll share my impressions and a few stories. We saw a pompous but gorgeous plaza and garden with sculpture surrounded by impressive architecture. There is a impressive Church at one end of the plaza although it looks more like a city hall. (Not pictured)

We also found our way to the Royal Palace which are at opposite end of park that is undoubtedly beautiful in the warmer seasons. The path between the buildings is lined with tall and old trees. The buildings appear to be of the same style and period.

Royal Palace

Connecting Park

Belgian Parliament

We continued to walk around the city center and ended at the very large and impressive cathedral. We went inside for a moment but were in a rush to see as much as possible as we walked away the clock hit the hour mark and we heard the lovely bells.

We bought some delicious Belgian fries and sat on the stops of the commerce and wwatched the city go by.

That concludes what we did on the first day... I think. The next morning we checked out of that hostel and explored the famous big market that the city has. It was basically a giant flee market with all the usual junk and stuff that was probably stolen. We visited the surprisingly large and impressive home of the European Parliament. It was closed that day so we couldn't take a tour. We didn't really have time and tho other guys would've been bored out of their minds. European integration fascinates because all those willingly give a part of their sovereignty to a cross-national institution. Can anyone see proud America doing that?

Next up was the Belgian war museum which has a large collection of planes, tanks, and other war related things. The museum was free for a change. I'd grown used to paying for museums since coming to Europe and this was a nice surprise. I've been spoiled in D.C. with the Smithsonian.

After the museum we walked to the nearest metro station passing the European Commission on the way. We needed to get to the outskirts of the city to see and climb some strange giant sculpture and find our new hostel. Our friend from Mexico was leaving that night because of test he had to take so he had to leave early. My Canadian friend checked into the new hostel and had a pretty quiet evening. My legs felt as though they were going to fall so I rested he did a little exploring and bought us dinner. He also was also typically Canadian and had to watch the USA vs. Canada gold medal game. We had to get up and make our way to the airport, which was rather uneventful. They actually check to see if my bag was of the right size this time and it was barely I had to do some creative repacking and squashing. Like any good college student studying in alcohol strict Sweden we bought duty free liquor in the airport. The flight was nice and uneventful. We welcomed back to Sweden by a fresh snow storm. My friend remarked how impressed his was with the pilot because you can only really see the ground from a few hundred feet in the air. I hadn't noticed but he was very right it is impressive. We had a bit scare with out bus tickets but made it home safely. On the bus ride I listened to a student from Italy talk an American who'd met and married a Swede and now lived in J-town. She mentioned a lot of things that I had already noticed and some that I didn't. There is an endless amount of fascinating stories that you here while traveling and I love it.

The weather back here was about the same as when we left, cold and snowy. But the last week or so the temperatures have been above freezing and the snow is beginning to melt. I might actally see what the Swedish ground looks like in a few days if the weather holds! We coming up on the end of the first quarter which means exams and post exam parties. One last story that I find interesting and hilarious. I was catching the bus back to the house with two big bags of groceries when I heard something you almost never hear in Sweden, strangers talking to each other. The bus driver said "hej hej" to every person as they got on the bus and poor Swedes were a little startled and confused by this. People never say "hej" to people they don't know. It was funny to watch them take a second to figure what they were supposed to do. Aren't cultural differences fu?

In Bruges

I'm dividing my Belgium trip into two posts with the first today Bruges and the second later this week about Brussels.

Three of us went to Belgium from Thursday morning to Monday afternoon. We were a North American invasion because each us was from Canada, the US, and Mexico. Originally we had an Australian friend coming but he had too much school work to catch up on. Our trip from the house to Bruges took almost exactly twelve hours! Our flight was in the six o'clock hour so we had to take a bus to the airport around 1:30. Since it was late on a Wednesday we there were no buses running and we had to walk to the central station. It was a typically frigid night as we past the frozen over lake. We had left late because of last minute packing so we made it to the bus barely on time. I slept most of the trip but was woken up by a person coughing. It sounded like he or she had the plague because his or her cough sounded a lot like vomiting. We dropped at Nykoeping's central bus stop where we had to take the city bus to the airport. The bus only accepted cards and no cash which seems really strange to me. My debt-it card doesn't always work in Sweden and this way one of those times so I tried my credit card. In Sweden and apparently the rest of the world credit cards have PIN numbers and are used instead of signatures. I didn't know mine because I've never been asked for it in the States. In town I explain that I don't have and hey let me sign but the driver didn't speak English and was very rude, the Swedes on the bus apologized for his behavior. So I friend bought my ticket. We made it to the airport, the smaller of Stockholm's, on time and checked in with the famously cheap RyanAir. The flights are extremely cheap and you get what you pay for. They charge if you have checked luggage and if you carry is a little too big. My bag was close because of its awkward shape. The plane had free seating so you can wherever you want. We all managed to stay together. We slept again during the flight which was only about two hours. We landed at one of Brussels smaller airports and rode a bus to Brussels. The bus cost a pretty penny but the driver didn't even check if we had tickets. The bus ride was an hour and a half because of traffic. Once more we slept.

We were deposited at the massive southern train station where we wondered around confused trying to find the train ticket counter. After a few false starts and rude people we found the domestic ticket and bought tickets for Bruges. The train ride was only hour but a world away. Soon as we left the Brussels region the language immediately switched to the Flemish dialect of Dutch from French. I had knew the country was bilingual so I expected everything to be in both. I was very wrong. It turns the two major groups, the Flemish and the Walloons, are very proud of their regions and share little in common other than a flag. Brussels is a large modern city with skyscrapers and all the other trappings one would expects. Bruges on the other hand is almost completely comprised of old building and cobblestone streets. In was really the other town in the region to survive both World Wars intact which is way it has become a tourist mecca.

After the train arrived in town we took a local bus to our hostel where checked in and left our luggage while our room was cleaned. We walked across the town, which isn't very big actually,

and saw the old buildings and streets. After getting lost we made it back to our hostel and found our rooms. It seems like all hostels are labyrinth constructions in ancient buildings. They have lots of narrow hallways, split levels, and often spread out of several unconnected properties. This place was very nice but no exception. The days have already blended together because they were all similar; they were filled with lots of walking and old buildings. i'll tell you a few of the stand out moments.

There's is a very famous and old tower on the main square of the town and we climber to the top, up spiraling and even ever narrowing staircases. On the say up one can stop and look at some of the equipment used to run the large handmade clock. At the top the winds are ferocious but the few is spectacular. One of the nights we discovered a hole-in-the-wall bar thankfully void of other tourists and started talking to a local young man. He was very drunk and very strange but a lot of fun to spend a couple of hours with. I got to ask about the very complicated nature of the Belgian Kingdom and its politics and he told us about local life. We toured the beautiful city palace and several churches, one of which is connected to the palace. So local royalty or nobility wouldn't have to walk I presume. Once afternoon after touring we decided to try some famous Belgian Fries, not FRENCH, and they were quite good. Though the truly unique part of them are the sauces that you get on them. Later on we tried some Belgian Waffles which are to die for! Mine was dipped in sugar and very delicious. One of the other guys had ice cream on his. The number of chocolate shops in such a small area is astounding! Bruges is a fun little tourist town that I'd recomend going to if you're ever in Belgium!

Brussels in a few days!

Riga, Stockholm, and the Things Between

The trip began on Friday around noon with shoveling out the car. We had had our first significant snowfall in a while the night before covering the Renault in a few inches of the white stuff. While some cleaned the windows others packed luggage or made. Always have to have your hot tea. Five of us rode in the car and three took the bus; the boys in the car the girls on the bus. It took about four hours to reach Stockholm but I'm not sure I kept drifting in and out of sleep. At one point we stopped to clean the windows again. The condensation on the inside of the windows had frozen too! My ears popped the further north we drove although it didn't seem like a significant change in elevation, then again I fell asleep. We drove through the downtown and got to see a slice of the capital. We pulled up to the port, trudged through the snow with our luggage, reached the terminal but the girls were not there. We waited and eventually called them. It turns out that they were waiting at the Tallinn cruise terminal. They ran over, we checked in and boarded the ship.

It was bigger and nicer than I had expected. I originally had an image of an old barely floating no-amenities boat that took poor college students to buy discount liquor. This was image was created buy the unbelievable cheap price of 60:- and the destination of eastern Europe. The ship is smaller than the big cruise liners I had been on before but not by much. It also had a deck dedicated to cars which I would have expected because how else would someone get their car from Scandinavia to the Baltic states? A long drive through central Europe or Finland.

We made it to our cabins which were on the 5th level like the majority of cabins and the boarding areas. There was some juggling about who was staying where but it all worked out. We went ot into the frigid to watch the boat pull out from the dock. The boat plowed through the ice covered easily. It's a strange sensation to watch a still surface while moving on a boat. It was almost like we were on a giant train crossing the Arctic. We made our way to a lounge where we played a card game and had a few drinks but then the ship broke through the edge of the ice. Once we hit the ice free part of the Baltic Sea the ship began to rock. We all started to feel sick not soon after. The three girls all got really sick by the end of the night and the guys weren't feeling well either. We all went to bed early which turned out to be a good thing because we did a lot of walking and running the next day. The running is a good story. A lot of the other passengers didn't seem to be bothered by the seas and had some loud crazy-sounding parties.

The boat arrived about 9:30 in the morning and we all woke feeling much better. The harbor was equally as frozen as Stockholm's so the ship was still. We got off the boat without any passport control thanks to the European Union and walked through the city passing by the mix of contemporary, Soviet, and older buildings. It was interesting to see all those periods sitting next to each other especially in the States we seem to tear most buildings down within forty years. Sweden has a similar mix of old and new but it was firmly in the prosperous west during the cold war so the buildings from that period aren't as stark. I also saw the combination of communist and capitalist system in the cars people drove. Most cars are modern but I did see, but mostly here, old Cold War cars rumbling down the road. Some of the trams looked like relics and others were the same as those in Sweden. The local currency, the lats, was surprisingly strong. One dollar only bought two lati. It's still a fairly cheap country though.

We grabbed tea and coffee at McDonald's, I can't seem to escape it, and started touring the old city. We wondered through the narrow snow covered streets to the city's large old Church. The view from the Church tower is beautiful but also puts you right in the middle of Arctic winds. We bought some souvenirs from a street vendor and stopped at one of those stores that sells local trinkets and random stuff that seem to be in every tourist town. We wondered around some more and saw the presidential residence, the old King's castle, parliament, and some statues. We all started getting tired and hungry and decided to get a late lunch.

It took us a while to decide where and what to eat as it does with any large group of people especially one as diverse as ours. We were four Poles, two Brazilians, a Burundi born Belgian, and me the American. We eventually went to a Latvia buffet style fast food restaurant. I tried a dish very similar to Polish pirogies, a fried cheese bread (which is exactly what it sounds likes), and bread sop for desert. The first two were very good the dessert was not so tasty. That's when the debate about when the boat was leaving started. Some thought it was leaving 4:30 Swedish (central European) time others thought it was was 4:30 Latvian (eastern European) time. We debated it one the way to the grocery and liquor stores. While we were getting groceries one of the girls remembered she had taken a picture of the schedule which said the boat was leaving at the earlier tie so we quickly payed for our things and began walking back to the harbor. The closer we got the more panicked we became the minute hand kept ticking towards 30. When the boat was in sight we started to run. We even ran through a field covered in snow up to our knees. We kept running, becoming more and more spread out along the route. One of the Poles was first to reach the terminal, I wan't far behind, and we ran though its empty seating area up the gangway to the ship. The crew was already starting to pull the gangway away from the ship but stopped when got there out of breath. I was about a foot from the ship and a couple burly sailors grabbed our arms and helped on the ship. It sounds more exciting and dangerous than it was. It was mostly just tiring. Eventually everyone got on board and the guess n they were able finishing closing the doors. They didn't check our ID's or boarding passes. I geuss they figured if we'd tried that hard we were passengers.

After almost being stranded in Eastern Europe we all needed a shower and a nap which we all did. The seas on the way back were much calmer. The ice also extended really far out. The bay around Riga is pretty big so maybe it was shallower? We had dinner which mostly consisted of toast, cookies, and other junk food. The Polish had brought a travel toaster which was smart but probably against the rules. That night we bought liquor on the ship since we didn't have the chance in Riga. It wasn't as cheap as the city but still better than the Systembolaget. The store onboard was about as big as a typical ABC (state owned liquor monopoly in VA) with a big selection except for gin, my choice sin.

The night was fun, full of watching karaoke and drunk people generally making fools of themselves. A man proposed to his girlfriend in the middle of karaoke. Classy. I was exhausted after hour Baltic adventure and went to sleep around midnight which again was smart because we spent the next day walking, but not running luckily, all over Stockholm. We pulled into the city port about eh same time we had in Riga and went to the Renault to drop of some things and then caught the bus to our hostel. Of course the bus stop at which we got off was not really that close to the hostel so we had to walk though the snow covered streets with our luggage. My bag was on wheels so that made it doubly fun. The hostel was housed in a hundred year old building in the old city about a block from the royal palace. The palace is mostly a tourist attraction now but the King holds a couple ceremonial cabinet meetings a few times a year and maintains an office in the complex. After checking in we took a tour of the treasury and old royal apartments in the palace. After that we wondered around the narrow streets and alleys of the old city. We walked around other parts of the city saw the parliament building which was only built in the 1970's and a little of downtown. We made the free pasta provided by the hostel and then I went to bed. The heat in room went off at some point in the night and I woke up freezing. Of course I was too much of achicken to ask for a refund.

The next day, Monday, we visited the Royal Coin Museum which I really liked because I'm a bit of a novice coin collector. Then we walked to other side of the harbor to a wonderful museum about all about a ship that sand a few hundreds years ago in the Baltic Sea. The ship was found a few decades ago and raised fairly intact. The museum was built around the ship and you can see it form all angles. Next we walked back to the old city to have a quick meal before I and one of the girls had to leave. We ate a rather disappointing Mexican place near the hostel. Then she and I grabbed our bags from our friends' room and started walking to the central station. We passed by many of the buildings we'd seen including the palace, parliament, the foreign ministry, and others. The station was easy to find even though we didn't have our Polish guide. One of the guys had become our leader and map reader over the weekend. We had a Swedish course we couldn't miss so we had to leave a day earlier than everyone else. See, this isn't a total vacation? It's a large nice station located near downtown. We had a little trouble finding our gate because there were signs saying "1-8 this way" and "11-19 that way" which left ours out. It turned out ten was between those signs and behind the information desk. We boarded the train and got settled for our 3 hour ride. The train was stuck one stop from home for two hours because the tracks were frozen, but I guess that's life in Scandinavia. I highly recommend Stockholm. There's a lot of history and culture to see. but go in the warm months. It was miserable to that much in that cold of temperatures.

Once we made it to town we had to wait for our bus. We talked to a friend who had been on the same train; she was coming back from her own vacation. It was really nice to be back in familiar territory. It's strange how quickly my new dorm has started to feel like home. The town had gotten a lot of snow while were gone but being Sweden it was mostly already mostly plowed or shoveled. The dormies appear to have their own wild weekend. The common room was in a state I've never seen! Furniture was upturned, trash was everywhere, and we seem to be missing a couch... Also someone jumped out a window on to the igloo. Dorm life is never dull, I've missed it.

I'm off to Brussels and Bruges next! I'll bring my computer and do some blogging from there if my one small carry-on can hold it. These long after-the-fact entries are exhausting to write!

Riga After All

It's a short one this week guys, sorry.

Well, it seems I typed to soon last week because I am going to Riga after all. I wasn't able to go on the Riga cruise this past weekend because of poor planning but an opportunity came up to go this coming weekend. My Polish-igloo-engineer friends were planning on going and had an extra space. The cruise only last 40 hours and ost of it is on the boat. It seems that most people go to party and buy really cheap liquor. We're driving to Stockholm on Friday and then setting sail that night. We'll have most of Saturday to explore the city and load up on booze if we so wish and then we sail back to the Swedish capital. On Sunday and Monday we'll explore the city and then some two of us have to come back Monday night because of a class that has required attendance. The others are staying another day or two to explore.

The school week was pretty typical. Classes, homework, and all of that. The interesting things happened on the weekend. We were planning on having a big party for the fake holiday of Valentine's Day it was facebook official (joking, of course) and it looked like it was going to have a lot of guests. But somehow the never-responds-to-email landlord found out and put up posters all over the dorm stating the police would come and shut it down if we went through with it. I don't know how he found out or why decided to care all of a sudden because we've had many parties before with no cops. The party was cancelled by the organizers at the last minute so a lot of people showed up anyway and so did the cops. Apparently though there weren't enough non-residents to violate any fire codes and meet the legal definition of a party. Though there was a lot of running around and some wrestling.

On Sunday I had a lovely dinner and fika with my contact family. They made a French dish because the wife is a French teacher and in love with all things French. We chatted for a few hours and then had the traditional Swedish fika. We talked all about our families and countries. It was a really good day. They sent me home with some Swedish bread and a promise to meet again. On the drive there the husband to buy flowers for his wife for All Saints Day which is a national way to celebrate.

Today in Swedish language class we had a substitute teacher who told us about the traditional way to celebrate Fat Tuesday. They eat a traditional baked thing that is like a giant cream puff. She said that over six million of the tasty treats are sold on this one day every year. That's quite for country of nine million!

I'll post another short entry next week between my two trips but I'll write a long one about both the my trips, Riga and Brussels.

A Polish Igloo, Fires, Hockey, and Brussels

It's been another fun week here in southern Sweden!

Earlier this week several Polish engineering student friends of mine built a real and structurally sound igloo. They had talked about building for a while but I was a little skeptical to be honest. But when someone mentioned that they were actually building one night early in the week I raced to my room, threw on my coat, and flew out the door. I was very excited to see a real igloo. I had tried to build a couple when I was a little kid but it never worked so I was doubtful it could be done by non-polar inhabitants. I arrived to a nearly completed snow and ice dome. They said it took them about four hours to build. They let me slide in, which I had to do on my back because it had a small entrance. It was surprisingly comfortable inside it. I wouldn't say warm but a lot better than outside. Well done boys! They have talked about building a bigger one eventually

Wednesday saw quite a bit of excitement around the house. I was working in my room when

the fire alarm went off. It sounded more like a fast non-stop school bell. We all left our rooms to

leave but someone said the was not fire and it was burnt food form the first floor kitchen. We went

down the spiraling concrete steps to investigate. They were right. I and a few others didn't want to

pay a possible fine so we exited the building anyway. The fire department is downtown so it took

them about ten minutes to get the house. The pulled up and jogged inside. The funny thing is that we

were scheduled to have a fire safety seminar with them later that night. We got quite a talking-to at

it. We each got to put a gas fire with the extinguisher and put out a fire on a dummy with a blanket.

On Thursday night a group of us went to see the Jönkönping hockey team, HV71, play. The team is in the elite national league here in Sweden. The game play was a little slower than North American and there was no fighting, much to the dismay of my friend from Quebec. The game also ended in a tie which was disappointing. Instead doing a "shoot out" like in the NHL they added time to the end of the game with the hope that someone would score. Overall it was fun though!

On Friday I tried going to another "afterwork" cheap buffet; this time it was at a Irish pub. The

food was as bad as the others. It did come with a decent white wine though. The bar also required

you to check you coat for 20:- so that made the meal not so cheap. I don't think I'll be going to

another one. My Finnish friend and I decided to go for pizza afterwards and managed to find a

place that had American (thick crust) pies.

Today I walked from downtown to our dorm which is 2-3 miles. I took the path I mentioned in an

earlier post. The path is on the edge of a cliff overlooking the lake and the fishing and boating

cabins that seem to run all along its edge.

Plans to go on the cruise to Riga fell through because of multiple factors. There weren't enough

cars and people didn't want to pay for bus tickets. Even with bus tickets we'd still going on a cruise

to another city for less than a $100.00.There is good news though. Four of us will be going to

Brussels, Belgium at the end of the month. We found really cheap tickets through RyanAir and it

looks like bus tickets to and from Stockholm will be a lot more than the flights. I'm really eager

to see the historical sites and the European Quarter. The EU fascinates the geeky government

major side of me. Hopefully there are tours of the European Parliament and Commission!

It's very curious to watch the "snowpocalypse" from a Nordic country. Fairfax County, VA has

had more snowfall in the last week than I think we've had all winter. Sweden has been covered in an

seemingly permanent layer of snow since December but it's not that deep. Shouldn't it be the other

way around? The weather forecast, at least the one I look at, always predicts snow within the next 2

or 3 days but it never seems to happen. The forecast gets pushed back every time. I don't want to

sound like I'm complaining because we'll probably have our own snowpocalypse, or in honor of local

Norse mythology "winter-ragnarök." Credit goes to a friend back for that one. The picture of a GMU

parking lot was taken by my good friend Blaine Darnell. It's his unfortunate car covered in feet of

snow.

Random Observations:

1. The flusher (is that the right word?) on every toilet is on top of the tank not the front side.
2. Swedish people rarely say "excuse me" when passing. There more likely to shove you.
3. Europeans think it's strange to only have cheese on a pizza. Good luck finding that here.
4. Cars are legally required to have their lights on all the time.
5. Modern buildings are built with spiral staircases that only let one person walk at a time.

Apologies if the formatting is weird but blogger doesn't seem to take well to having Word 2007 docs posted in it:

This past week wasn't as exciting as the past few but I'll report my observations. My classes are plodding along well. Swedish is very easy, grammatically speaking, the pronunciation is nearly impossible. I've probably mentioned that before but it's true for me. I'm enjoying the class nonetheless because we're all in it together and misery loves company. We learned the Swedish word for flashlight, ficklampa, which made all the German speakers giggle me included. "Fick" means something dirty in German look it up if you really want to know. It is also similar to the Swedish custom of fika, which is the requisite twice-a-day, long coffee and pastry break. We were told during induction week to go for a fika break. Another amusing example of the fun of language is the Swedish word 'gift' pronounced yiiift. It can mean marriage or poison!

I finally got around to buying a alarm clock-radio this week and observed something unpleasant: electronics are expensive in Sweden! The cheapest, in all of its negative connotations, was 200:- and that's about $28.00! I bought it at a Best Buy type store so that might be the reason, but that still seems overpriced even for Best Buy. I was hoping to listen to Swedish music but all but one of the songs I've heard has been in English even the Swedish artists! I did discover the winner of the Swedish version of Idol, Erik Grönwall. His number one hit and winning song is a decent cover of "Higher." It probably didn't hurt that he's easy on the eyes.

I took the wrong bus by mistake one day this week. It gave me a chance to the outskirts of the city. The bus I wanted, #26, was supposed to come at 3:25. A bus did come at that time but it definitely wasn't the one I wanted. Instead taking the lakeside road north to Vilhelmsro it went south. Soon as we kept going around the roundabout I pushed the button, instead the usual string in the States, for the driver to stop. Once I got of the bus I started walking towards what I thought was downtown. Well it wasn't the right direction so I ended up in God-knows-where-Jönköking. I almost flagged down a passing police officer but decided against it. (Side note: The police drive station wagons. I’m not sure if they’re Volvo but his is Sweden so that’s a safe bet. Offices also wear uniforms almost completely covered in reflective material. At least the ones walking around do.) I trudged back to where I got off and followed the road back to the Juneporten the main transportation hub in the city. Once I finally got on the right bus I ran into one of my dorm mates I hadn't met yet. He was a very nice, shy, engineering student from Poland and one of the guys who built our welcoming snowman.

Several people from the "house" as we call it went to Copenhagen for one the Australian guy's birthdays. I wasn't invited which was fine they probably went to change their drinking scenery. But it did spur discussion among the rest of us and we've started planning trips of our own. Destinations include Copenhagen, Stockholm, Gothenburg, Tallinn, and London. I'll let you know if and when things come together.

I gave into temptation this week and went to McDonald's. If anyone has ever told you that it tastes different in Europe, they're lying or delusional. It tastes the exact same, at least in Sweden anyway. It was nice to have a little slice of home even it was mediocre fast-food. While wondering around downtown in the middle of the week I decided to try pizza in Sweden. I picked a small place on a sidestreet. I think i was the one restaurant where they don't speak English! After trying my five phrases in Swedish and gesturing I finally ended up with a ha and cheese pizza. It was very thin, uncut, and baked with a slightly sweet bread. It was different than home but not bad. I could grow to like it.

We are all assigned various cleaning duties throughout the semester. This week I was assigned to clean the corridor I live on. So a nice but kind of odd Russian guy vacuumed and mopped the orange hallway. It was surprisingly quick and easy job. It only took us about a half-hour; other people have taken a long time on there tasks such as cleaning the bathrooms and kitchens.

One day while waiting for the bus by the Soviet-esque grocery store I decided to walk back. I found a beautiful trail that follows the edge of the lake from Vilhelmsro to downtown. I’m sure it’s a lovely walk in the warmer months. I’ve decided to follow it to school once it’s warm enough.

I forgot to mention this last week but it's a good story. Last Friday those of us who didn't have class were sleeping in the morning. I was starting to get moving when there was a very loud, brief ring of a ball. I thought it was a dream and laid back down. It happened again so I got up and popped my head out. A few other people were doing that too and I had an image of prairie dogs in mind. We wondered around to see if anyone knew what was happening. It turned out to be the landlord testing the fire alarm. According to the housing office he was supposed to warn us and hold a real drill. That didn't happen. I've stories form others about him and they're not good.

The weekend saw the usual crazy dorm antics. There were wrestling matches, chasing, and knocking furniture over. A French Canadian and English Canadian got into a couple wresting matches and had their own Civil War. A Mexican guy and a Bulgarian girl also got into a match. It was very entertaining to watch. They also chased each other around the house. When I walked into the common room on Sunday morning, I use the term loosely, many of the coaches were knocked over apparently in an attempt to create a bar?

I had to end it on a drunken note but that’s a major part of life in Sweden so there you go.

Random Observations:

-Pizza places always serve kebabs

-Many stores have red carpet out front. Not for elegance but so you wipe your feet

-If you speak Swedish with a foreign accent expect answers in English

-The liquor is only open for four hours on Saturdays.

The Routine Begins...

This past week was the beginning of classes at JIBS. I had a grand total of two, very difficult. ;-) The first was "The Constitutional State" with an ancient, soft spoken Swede. The classroom and class structure was similar to classes back in Virginia. Meaning the professor talks at you most of the class and occasionally asks a question. The only people who answered them the first class were foreign students much like the coordinator said. Swedish culture is known for being reserved and very collectivist so expressing your opinion, especially if it's different, is counterintuitive. That class only meets once a week and has a reading list similar to the States. My other class last week was Swedish. I was much more impressed with the prof. she was very expressive, interactive, and had a good sense of humor. It appears that the grammar is going to be really easy because verbs aren't conjugated in the present tense. The pronunciation is another story. I cannot roll 'R's at all and there are apparently two different forms of it in Swedish for regional dialects. The different sounds for o, u, and å game me trouble at first. I have Swedish on Tuesday and Thursday. My third class, "Classic Political Theory," starts this week. I'll update that later.

I've also gotten into a Swedish routine in other ways. I go to the grocery store every few days because I have to carry my bags on the bus and walk a ways from the bus stop to the dorm. I bring my own bags because you have buy bags there otherwise. I found a much cheaper grocery store on the way to downtown called Netto... or something. It looks like what I imagined an upscale Soviet grocery store would have been. Little to no decoration, food stacked in crates, industrial style fluorescent lights, that kind of thing. The grocery store at the A6 mall is much more like what Americans would be used to, it's almost a mini-Wal-Mart.I also find myself going to bed a lot earlier, because the days are so short, and waking early to darkness, which really doesn't bother me. I thought it would after a couple of weeks. Every Friday in a lot of bars and restaurants have really cheap buffets from around 4-8 called "afterwork." The food was mediocre but there was a lot of it.

The dormmates continue to party every night. The walls are pretty sound resistant so that's fine. One night a Russian guy was very drunk and started singing ABBA on the karaoke game. It was very funny. On Friday just about all of went to a party on the otherside of the city at the new dorm. It was late at night so the buses weren't running a lot so we decided to walk form the juneporten. It was a far walk but some of the girls had "pregamed" and were singing American hip-hop songs all the way there. The party itself was kind of lame. The dorm was apartment-style and the rooms open on to a common courtyard; so you had to either stay in one of two cramped rooms or stand on the deck in the midnight cold. We all left pretty quickly. It was another entertaining walk through the city. Most people went to Centrum again but me, a German, and another American didn't feel like paying a cover charge and 45:- for a beer. ":-" is the symbol often used to denote price in crowns.

Saturday night I stayed in and made dinner with a few people. All four stove tops were being used at once along with the oven. Our little kitchen was crowded and hot but it was fun. Some people went out to the Student Union's club Akademien. I stayed in with some others and watched movies and played games. Everyone came back completely inebriated. I heard them coming for what seemed like minutes. They were rowdy, loud, and hungry. They made hotdogs, play fought in the hallways (which ended with a large heavy bench somehow turned over), and being generally crazy. A typical night in Vilhelmsro!

I also went to the pool on Friday with two friends to swim some laps. The are very strict about keeping the pool water clean. You have to take off your shoes before you even enter the locker room. You cn't where shorts or boardshorts that you've walked around in all day in the water. Sorry surfers. Showering before even stepping on the deck is required not simply suggested. The pool was shallow the whole length and only three lanes wide. My friend said it was attached to a school so it closed for a couple hours in the morning and afternoon. One of my friends is Finnish and he ran into some fellow Finns in the pool. They were elderly women who, like many Finnish people, immigrated to Sweden. Everyone in Finland is required to learn Swedish so moving isn't as difficult as it would be for other nationalities. Being Finnish he knew how to regulate the sauna just right and we had a nice one.

Random Observations:

-Spinning doors are really popular in Sweden. They keep warm air in better?

-Floors around entrances are always wet. Everyone tracks in snow.

-Europeans really like McDonald's

-Sweden has a lot more round-abouts and far fewer traffic lights.

-Swedes are really extroverted and musical when intoxicated.