new blog

well since sweden i have missed blogging - so i decided to start a new blog just for my every day stuff... the new blog is emilycotton.blogspot.com i hope you come visit!

2nd day in iceland

i woke up early my second day in iceland and packed up all my stuff... i think that people thought i was crazy for having so much stuff for such a short trip... little did they know i was hauling three months worth of stuff along with me :)

anyhow i set off for the blue lagoon which is definitely the most famous tourist location in iceland.  it was a very pretty drive from downtown reykjavik to the blue lagoon and it was a nice relaxing morning sitting there and hanging out... the springs were amazing and very warm which was nice in chilly windy iceland.  there is a bus directly from the springs to the airport so i headed back there and snapped some shots of the scenery along the way.

then i hung out at kef airport for a little while and waited to head back to boston...

iceland!

i have wanted to come to iceland for about 5 years... i don't know why but it has always been on my list, and now i am finally here!  given that icelandair had the cheapest flights to and from stockholm my way home seemed like the perfect place to come.

i arrived in kef yesterday afternoon, now many people fly through kef to other destinations in europe - but clearly not too many get off in iceland... after the transfer area which was quite large i got to the baggage claim area which was smaller than the one at the good old manch-vegas airport... i was shocked - this was supposed to be a capital of a country!!! the size shocks just kept coming...

for those of you unaware here are some iceland facts.  the population of the country is 317,000 and 2/3s of the population lives in reykjavik... so that means that the population of reykjavik is about 200,000 but downtown reykjavik is about the size of downtown concord (a town with 40,000 in population) with fewer large buildings... CRAZY!

anyhow, so last night i walked around reykjavik and got myself some dinner... although iceland's currency has been greatly devalued it seems to have had little effect on prices here... although hotels are incredibly reasonable food is even more expensive than it was in stockholm!

the city is beautiful, i can see the ocean from my hotel and there are all sorts of little brightly colored houses.  this morning i did some blogging and emailing and then got up had breakfast and walked around the downtown, i bought my customary print and found the 66 north hat that i had been wanting since stockholm... otherwise no shopping for me...

this afternoon i went on a horseback riding trip.  icelandic horses have been bred in complete isolation so they look really different kinda short and stout and very furry and when they run they go kinda sideways. anyhow it is quite cold in iceland and VERY windy but the horseback riding across the lava field was quite fun... however the pics are pretty bad, it is not easy to shoot with a slr while riding a horse- sorry :(

there is currently a volcano erupting in iceland - it started on march 21st and is apparently quite a big deal... i guess everytime this small volcano has erupted in the past it has triggered a HUGE volcano next door... so people are thinking that might happen again soon the last time it happened in 1783 BAD THINGS happened... so obviously i wanted to go see it - but also obviously since i didn't know about this until yesterday all the tours were booked... oh well

so tonight i am going to go get myself some icelandic fish and chips - repack my bags and tomorrow i am going to go to the blue lagoon before the airport back to boston!

thoughts on trip as a whole

so not that i haven't written enough about the past ten days - but it was a really fun trip :) first it was nice to not travel by myself but also not to travel with a HUGE group, which business school seems to lend itself to.  i think 4 people is the perfect number and we had a great group... we all seemed to be interested in pretty much the same schedule, getting up early, seeing lots of stuff, having a drink or two in the afternoon, having great dinners and heading to bed at a very tame hour.

so yay! the girls were lots of fun and we had MANY laughs along the way... in terms of cities i think that vienna was my favorite, it was so beautiful and especially at eastertime the markets and the eggs were amazing.  budapest we had a great time but it was not at all what i was expecting - it is still very european whereas i guess i thought it would be more similar to turkey? or just more eastern?

prague was the only city i had been to before and it was great to go back... my family oftentimes travels in the winter and it is amazing what a difference a few months can make - prague was packed! and it was warm and just sitting out in the square with a drink was great.  i remember on my last trip which was in december we were all FREEZING the entire time...  this also makes me want to go back to scandinavia in the summer, i think that traveling during the winter is just more difficult, you can't pack as much in during the day.  i certainly don't want to join the hoards of tourists in july in august but i think in the future i will try to take more trips in the april-may and sept-oct ranges.

prague

so unlike the train from vienna to budapest which was only 5 hours and where we could play bananagrams the entire time the train from budapest to prague was 7 hours and cramped and our car had a heating issue in that although it was 65 degrees outside the heat could not be turned off... i had a total heat attack and had to leave the car... but otherwise we got there safe and sound

so by the time we found and checked into our hotel it was definitely time for some food.  we headed to pivovarsky klub where we had awesome beers and some great czech food... we sat for quite a while and soaked up the ambiance as well as the beer.  on the way home from restaurant to the hotel we faced quite the conundrum, we got to the train station at 8:55 apparently the stands that sold tickets closed at 9, however, at the station we were at they were already closed.  so having no way to buy a ticket we just got on the train anyways, they had a similar systems in vienna and budapest and although we had always purchased tickets we had never seen anyone get caught for not purchasing them.  well when we got off at our stop we were busted.  now i would have been fine being busted if i had the opportunity to purchase a ticket but we didn't!  initially the cop wanted to fine us each $35 when a ticket costs $1, we talked him down to just fining us $35 for all four of us... but still pretty annoying.  we headed back to the hotel and played more bananagrams... it was starting to become a theme.

the next day we set out early for the jewish quarter.  prague has a great jewish history and the 7 buildings that comprise the museum are definitely a must see.  i had been to all of them when i visited prague with my family in 2003 but it was nice to see them again when it was a bit warmer.  we had lunch at kolkovna good old schnitzel and our first of many $2 .5L pilsner urquells YUM - nothing like cheap beer and fried meat!  after lunch we walked back through both the old town square which had a crazy crowed easter market and made our way over to wenceslas square and the mucha museum.  i had really enjoyed this museum the last time i was in prague and this time it was no different.  mucha is a very interesting figure and had a huge impact on prague and the entire czech independence movement.  we ended the day with drinks outside of the astronomical clock where we got to see the clock chime twice and then had a cute dinner followed by bananagrams, hearts and some european candy :)

saturday we decided that we didn't have enough left to do in prague for the two whole days that we had left and it was supposed to rain so we needed some indoor activities... we took the train about an hour and a half away to the pilsner urquell brewery in plzen.  although plzen is a sprawling industrial town it has a cute old town area where both the brewery museum and the museum restaurant are.  the brewery museum wins hands down for best audio tour they had hysterical characters that constantly talked about how disgusting the beer in the town used to be.  the museum restaurant where we had lunch was fabulous, they serve unfiltered unpasturized pilsner urquell which cannot be bought anywhere else that was fabulous.  we all had yummy czech treats including marinated camenbert and i had some great pork with deep friend potato pancakes - YUM!  we walked around the town quickly and went on the brewery tour in the afternoon then headed back to prague and grabbed dinner... followed by even more bananagrams and cards :)

sunday we got up and walked over toward the charles bridge... we walked up the hill to the castle and saw all the major sights up there as well as the changing of the guard.  then we had our only truly terrible meal - we asked for hamburgers and instead got this weird mystery meat that NONE of us could eat it was pretty hysterical.  after that we walked around got some food to eat on the train and once on the train we celebrated carol's 29th birthday with some warm grocery store champagne :)

budapest

so budapest was probably the city that i was most excited for prior to this trip i had already been to prague and i was guessing that vienna was just similar to the rest of europe so budapest was a real draw for me...

we got to budapest in the rain which was too bad but we went down and walked around the market and had some lunch, we were staying on the pest side just a couple of blogs from the main tourist drag... the pest side definitely had more going on than the buda side so i was glad that we stayed there.  we walked down the tourist drag and found pest's easter market which was fun, we also stopped at at h&m, one of our books told us that the schezenyi (totally butchered that spelling) baths were a must see... after cobbeling some pretty ghetto bathing suits together we walked through pest's easter market where one of the major dishes being sold was rooster balls - ICK... we had coffee at gerbeaud caffe mia and alexis had some drink with a ton of caramel in it that they were talking about for the rest of the week.  

we found a cheap pizza joint for dinner and went back to the hotel.  the next morning we headed out to the baths... this is when the real fun starts.  there was a huge line for the baths so we waited for a little more than a half hour, during which we got to watch this video that told us all about the electronic bracelet system that they use that lets you in and out of the baths and unlocks your locker... so i purchased our tickets and after some delay we went to go into the baths... well then the shit hit the fan, apparently their entire system completely crashed in between them running my credit card and us walking over to the turnstile with our bracelets.  no one could get in or OUT of the baths, no one could open lockers, EVERYONE was freaking out.  this lead to old fat naked local men screaming that they just wanted to get out, but employees couldn't let them, we couldn't be let in but because the system was down they also couldn't give us our money back - it was hysterical.   

obviously we didn't want to waste our entire day in pest sitting at the baths waiting until they got their system back up so after about 45 min we left, taking our bracelets with us and telling them we would be back in an hour or so to get our money back.  as we walked out the door a man came up to us and was like please don't steal our bracelets - it was insane.  we walked over to a little fake castle and saw some statues and came back upon our return they refused to give us our money back... even though they were the same people who had said they would give us our money back an hour earlier... but they had a huge sign that said "Get refunded for time not used" so i pointed to it and said that we hadn't used any time therefore we should get a FULL refund... finally it worked and we were on our way.

we took the train down to the terror house which was a great museum and definitely a must see for anyone in budapest.  it goes through both the nazi and communist occupation of hungary in a very cool very modern art inspired way.  definitely my favorite museum of the trip.  then we went to lunch at a fabulous restaurant we all had the lunch special which was incredibly cheap and wonderful (menza) afterward we walked down toward the basilica and walked around inside and then sat and enjoyed some warmth on the steps then headed over to the great synagogue which is the second largest in the world, we walked back over to the basilica area where we found a really cute old wine bar that only served hungarian wines, we initially just ordered a bottle for the four of us but then they offered us a six wine tasting so we left quite tipsy :)  then we had what i think was the best meal of the trip in a little restaurant behind the synagogue, i can't remember the name and am too lazy to look it up right now but i had the most amazing pear and gorgonzola risotto YUM.

the next day we got up and went over to buda, we took the tram up the hill to the castle area... we walked through the underground caves... honestly skip these they were bad and gave us cave hair.  we then walked over to the matthias church which was beautiful and took some pictures of pest from up on the hill.  we walked to the palace and looked around and mistakenly went into the city museum which was also bad... i would not recommend going into either of the museums in the palace they both look not so great.  so we decided to go back to pest and take a tour of the parliament we knew that they last tour started at 4 so we got there around 1 to buy tickets... but they were already sold out! so we took some pictures found a sandwich place for lunch and then walked back to the basilica area to sit out in the sun and eat some yummy rose shaped ice cream cones we had seen the previous day.  

that night we went to the ballet at the hungarian state opera.  we saw anna karenina and although we basically had no idea what was going on the entire time it was great and very pretty and the theater itself was very beautiful too!  we went out and got dinner and beer and headed back to our hotel for the night

vienna

alright so no uploading pictures because it turns out that the internet connection in my hotel in iceland is SUPER slow... but luckily i uploaded to picasa before i left stockholm this morning so there are little slideshow thingys at the bottom...

anyhow, i met carol, alexis and mia late friday night in vienna... our hotel was ok a bit outside of the city center but vienna is expensive so that was fine with all of us :)  we were pretty good about getting up in the morning most days i think that we left our hotel at 9 at the latest quite a few days we left earlier :)  our first stop was the hofburg to try and buy tickets for the lippanzaner horses, my dad lived in austria for a bit when he was growing up and gave me a list of must see things - the lippanzaner horses and the boys choir were obviously on that list.  well the horses were the start of a series of complete fails on this trip - don't get me wrong we had a REALLY great time but a number of things that we specifically had been interested in seeing ended up being cancelled etc.

so we got to the hofburg the line for horse tickets was super long we get to the front and we are told that the horses are sick and will not be doing a performance but we can see them practice... so we went in and saw the practice which mostly involved horses walking around in a circle and not really doing too much interesting - but it was still packed as a result of the cancelled performance.  the rest of the day we took a tour of the state opera house, walked through a crypt or two, and went to stephansdom... plus demels and a few other cute vienna stores, we also walked through a bunch of easter markets... the easter markets were amazing - so many beautiful painted blown eggs... we all wanted to buy them to bring home, but only alexis was brave enough, i knew with all my upcoming travels that they would be broken in no time... we ended the day with some great austrian wine and then ate dinner out in the square outside of the synagogue, during dinner we watched the kids play what seemed to be some austrian version of red rover - it was quite cute!

the second day we got up early again to go see the boys choir... however after waiting in line a bit again at the hofburg we were told that this was one of 2 sundays during their season (from sept to june) that they do not perform - UGH again!  neither of our guide books mentioned this of course... anyhow, we hung out and waited for the hofburg to open and toured the imperial apartments, the silver collection, the treasury and the sissi museum... the austrians seem to looooooooooove sissi and franz joseph... we heard A LOT about them, including the fact that she was 5'10" 90lbs and ate only raw meat juice - GROSS... then we got giant sausages on the street and went to hotel sacher for sacher torte... another one of the things on my dad's list... the torte was definitely good but not quite what i was expecting... i was thinking it would be some SUPER chocolately thing, but it was more apricot-y... still very good and a fun experience...in the afternoon we went out to the summer palace and heard even more about sissi and franzy... they were pretty much our best friends at that point... afterwards we came back into the city and had some wine at another restaurant near the jewish museum, probably our favorite place of the whole trip, it was tiny and adorable and had great austrian wine

we finished off our last night in vienna with dinner at a diner - we tried a million other places but people there don't seem to eat terribly late and places were already sold out of food!

we got up early monday morning and headed to the train station for budapest...

catching up

so i have been away for the past ten days... i spent the 19th-22nd in vienna, then 22nd-25th in budapest, 25th-28th in prague then back to vienna for a day, got into stockholm late late last night and am currently in iceland for two days... the good news is i am iceland by myself so i am sure that i will have plenty of time to catch up on my blog tonight :)

last day in stockholm

yesterday i got done all my last day in stockholm stuff... went to school to take a couple more pictures, bought a SSE sweatshirt, paid my last internet bill, walked from sveavagen through the palace all the way through gamla stan.  i have a little tradition that i buy a print in each country i visit so i got my print yesterday too.  it was a nice day but it was quite gloomy - not shocking given that it is still winter in stockholm :)

anyhow today is full of packing and cleaning i will certainly miss stockholm but i am excited to leave for vienna tonight!!

xc skiing with the king

yesterday i met andrea for lunch at un momento a place next to the student palace behind school... it is quickly becoming one of my favorite lunch places - it is cheap and they have an amazing chicken bulgar salad with tatziki... i don't know if i have mentioned this here before or not but the swedes are totally obsessed with tatziki - they have it everywhere!!!

after lunch we went back to the big dorm near school to meet anna and jana our two czech friends to go watch a xc ski race that was taking place at the palace.  it was a world cup sprint race just over a kilometer and they had built a track around the palace in stockholm... the swedes were quite into the race all the commentary was in swedish so of course i didn't understand what they were saying - but it was really fun... we even got to see the king who came out to open the race... it was quite cold in the shade of the stands and so afterward we went to cafe mistlen in gamla stan for some yummy hot chocolate!

oh the sun

so when i first arrived in sweden it was quite dark, all the time... as in the sun would come up around 10 and then set around 2 and in between those hours it wouldn't be "sunny" it would be hazy and just kinda blah

well because sweden is so far north things regarding the sun change QUICKLY here... now the sun comes up before six and sets after six which is great... but the unfortunate thing is that my bedroom faces east and i have no curtains - so while in january i had a hard time waking up before 10 or 11 now i wake up at 6:30 every morning without fail...

although it would be lovely to be here in june for midsummer i would definitely need some blackout curtains!

LAST DAY of class in SWEDEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

woooooohooooo i am done... yesterday i had my presentation in psychology of financial markets and today we had our presentation in entrepreneurship in developing countries... which means i am done done done done done with class in sweden... and i can't say that i am too sad about it

tonight after class ankur, paula, andrea and i went to a bar called pet sounds in sodermalm for a drink and some food... it was quite cute and reminded me of a slightly classier garlic & shots, one of the restaurants i went to while my parents were here

i basically only have 2 days left in sweden which is pretty crazy... tomorrow a bunch of us are planning on going to watch a world cup x-c skiing race that is finishing around the palace in stockholm... should be pretty cool

nice saturday and lovikka mittens

today for some reason i woke up at 7am... so i watched up in the air, i had just finished reading the book last week and i have to say after the book i was pretty disappointed in the movie, but i guess that is pretty much always the case, i don't think that i have ever seen a movie that i thought was better than the book it was based on.

so i started my day at the wayne's in liljeholmen, which is basically the swedish equivalent of starbucks.  i sat there with all the dads having fika with each other and their toddlers which is definitely one of the cuter things about daily life in sweden - you always see men out with their children - at least as much as you see women if not more.  i stayed at wayne's for quite a while... my mom was reading game change when she came to visit and left it with me - i started it a couple of days ago and just haven't been able to put it down!

then i did some shopping in sodermalm, gamla stan and hotorget... it was a beautiful sunny day and then out of nowhere it started snowing or maybe it was hail - not sure it was just like snowing large snow pellets it was really weird

anyhow, last night i knit the first of my two lovikka mittens they are traditional swedish mittens that they sell everywhere here that are adorable i found the real pattern but only in swedish this is the best that i could do in english but i don't think that the pattern is quite right.  anyhow because the mittens are fulled i wanted to knit one and full it before i  knitted the other to make sure that i wasn't making the wrong size

the fulled mitten is on the left and the not yet fulled mitten is on the right for comparison:

i think that they are pretty cute :) in my shopping expedition today i checked out some more lovikka mittens to improve on the pattern a bit

only one more week in stockholm

so next friday i leave for my trip to central europe with carol, mia and alexis... which means that i have one full week in stockholm and then i am pretty much done!

i have been back in stockholm since monday and for the first time since i came to sweden i actually feel like i kind of live here... i don't really notice that everyone around me is speaking swedish anymore, and i feel pretty at home... also this past week i actually had to do a lot of school work and i think that made me feel more at home too.  i wasn't trying to take advantage of all the touristy stuff instead i was sitting in the computer lab and library all day.

but most of the work is over now and so i have one more week to enjoy myself here!

some random observations since i have been back:
-when we got to liljeholmen 2 months ago there was one grocery store... now there are three
-found a really cute new restaurant near school this week
-went to hermans again for lunch with andrea and ankur on monday
-knit my first lovikka (traditional swedish) mittens tonight... will post pics tomorrow

north of the arctic circle...

last thursday upon my return from turku i left about 5 hours later to head to lappland in the north of sweden the trip started with an 18 hour overnight train ride.  luckily there weren't too many other people on the train so we got to spread out a bit

note that we are really really really far north of the arctic circle.  luckily when we got to kiruna the weather was great - it was sunny and amazing!  we started with a trip to a large iron mine in kiruna... other than tourism the mine is a major source of employment in swedish lappland.  the tour was interesting and we learned that because the mine had become so deep they now are in the process of moving the entire town!

after the mine we grabbed lunch and headed for the ice hotel!  i had been looking forward to the ice hotel ever since i had watched the 2 hour discovery special... now you expect it to be like arctic tundra up there but really it was just a lot of woods with snow and rivers.  the ice hotel was built along the river that they harvest all the ice from... apparently real ice from a river is a lot more clear than fake ice that is just frozen still water so they prefer that for building the hotel... it was really cool!  sadly the power was out at the hotel so it was hard to see in a lot of the rooms, but i still took a lot of pictures and you can get the drift :)

we then drove another two and a half hours to the forest hotel which is where we would be staying for the weekend... it was very cute - bright red building set against the pretty white snow... we had a dinner buffet and got outfitted with our awesome snowsuits and CRAZY think boots, hats and mittens

the next morning we had what i definitely viewed to be the highlight of the weekend - DOGSLEDDING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  we were paired up and given a 1 minute tutorial on how to break and then were sent off on our own sleds with 5 very adorable and very loud dogs... it was so amazing and serene being out on the river with the dogs and mushing them was really fun... i was the first one to drive and ended up getting to drive for basically the whole time... which was awesome - i would do another hour of that any day.

after dogsledding we went skiing - cross country skiing - with our huge snowsuits and gynormous boots on we strapped on wooden army skis that looked like they were from the 1920s it was pretty fun...

after a long day outside we had another great dinner - this time reindeer and i tuckered out early... on sunday a bunch of people went to the reindeer farm... but i decided just to stay back and got to sit by the fire read all the wonderful american magazines that my mom brought for me and talk to some of the other exchange students which i don't get to do as often as i like since i don't live in the dorm with most of them.  we ended up having a really interesting chat about healthcare with a student from canada and germany who both HATE their countries' universal healthcare programs... anyhow, nothing like debating healthcare on a sunday morning :)

sunday afternoon we went ice fishing... we drilled our own holes and everything!  went to bed very early sun night because we had a 6am flight monday morning and we had to leave the hotel at 2:30am to get to the airport on time!

one of the most interesting things was at the airport no one ever checked our id - at all - ever - not when we got our tickets, not when we went through security, not when we boarded the plane... CRAZY... can't imagine that happening in the US, guess it really is much safer in sweden :)

anyhow i got back on monday EXHAUSTED and decided to cancel my trip to oslo that i was going to take this week... i have just been traveling sooo much and still have so much traveling ahead of me that i didn't feel like i really needed another trip...  but lappland was great and i am very glad i went - must see for anyone who comes to sweden and has the time

turku!

well this is my much delayed post on finland... more specifically turku.

we arrived late late monday night into turku, my dad had left earlier monday to go back to stockholm and then the states so it was just me and mom on the train...

first of all, if you are ever in russia and considering a trip to finland, definitely fly!  we spent about 2 of our 5 hour train ride to helsinki sitting on the border having the russian border patrol walk back and forth with their dogs... what fun.

tuesday my mom's friend megan met us at our hotel and gave us a wonderful tour of turku, we had lunch at a great restaurant called mami where we all had wonderful pumpkin soup and then went to the cathedral in town and a bunch of adorable little shops.  we headed to the grocery store that afternoon to buy the ingredients for that night's dinner - REINDEER!!!


we headed over to megan's that night and had a lovely reindeer dinner with her family.  wednesday my mom and i spent the day exploring the sights of turku that we hadn't seen the day before, walked to a few more cute shops and went to the finnish equivalent of a saluhall, although i can't remember the finnish word for it.  we also made it to the turku castle and an interesting lecture on finnish religion with megan and her husband chris.  we went to another great restaurant that night which was really fun.

the next morning mom and i headed back to stockholm.  it was really fun to see finland and compare it to sweden given that they were a part of sweden for so long.  lots of things looked the same, same stores, lots of similar food etc, but i think that under the surface the countries were really quite different... megan and chris were really knowledgeable about finnish culture so it was great to compare and contrast the two countries with them

thanks again megan for the great tour!!!!

update from lappland

well i have been a little mia because i have been traveling so much. spent monday in st. petersburg and tuesday and wednesday in turku finland. rushed back to stockholm to do some laundry and then left thursday night for what turned out to be an 18 hour overnight train ride up to lappland more specifically kiruna.

didn't get in until around noon yesterday had a quick tour of the big iron mine here and the made our way to the ice hotel before checking into our own hotel the forest hotel right before dinner. it was a long and exhausting day but i got a great nights sleep last night and am ready to head down for breakfast and some dogsledding :)

saturday and sunday in st petersburg

we got to our hotel in st petersburg around 6 friday night... it is a marriott of course and after a yummy marriott burger and some olympics watching we planned our day for saturday and headed to bed.

we started our day on saturday at the hermitage... i am sure everyone knows this but it is HUGE i don't know how long we walked around there for, but it seemed like forever! room after room after room filled with rembrandt and davinci and all sorts of other things that i definitely remember from my college art history book, it is so big that after a while you just become desensitized to all the pretty things you are seeing... but a great and again huge museum.  i am sure that we missed many amazing things but really it was just too much to take in.

afterward we walked over toward the church on spilled blood which is probably the most famous church in st petersburg it was very pretty both inside and out, we had lunch in a cafe and went to a souvenir market.  we made the long walk back to our hotel and got ready to go to the ballet at the markiinsky theater.  we saw three one act ballets, the first one was a little modern but the second two were beautiful and it was really fun.  afterwards we had a dinner at a restaurant called sadko across the street... the waitresses there were all also actors and students at the opera so they would occasionally break into really impressive song!

today we got started a little later and it was really dark and rainy/snowy outside.  we walked over to st. andrews cathedral which had quite a few icons in it and then continued on to menshikov palace.  afterward we walked to the fortress of peter and paul where we saw the graves of both czar alexander and the remains of the last romanov family that were laid to rest in 1998.  we went to the commandents house which had a good history of the city and then after 6 hours out in the rain were definitely ready to come back to the hotel.

tomorrow we plan on going to the russian museum and st. isaac's cathedral which are nearby, and then my dad heads home, while mom and i get on a train to turku finland.

mom & dad's visit to stockholm

the rest of my parents visit to stockholm turned out a lot better than monday.  although it was VERY VERY cold the entire time that they were there.  stockholm got what i guess was a huge snowstorm for them, so all transportation was very slow and delayed which was a bit of a bummer in such cold weather but otherwise here is a run down of what we did.

tuesday - went to skansen museum which is basically the swedish equivalent of plymouth plantation or strawberry bank.  it was fun but given that it was winter not quite everything was open and the walking around outside got old fast.  after skansen we went to the blue door for lunch which is also on the island of durgarden, it was a great little restaurant and i had a yummy sandwich and some awesome carrot cake.  after that i sent my parents to the vasa and nordic museums while i went to class.  after class we met up and i took my parents out to liljeholmen, they got to see the famous lake and arrduous set of stairs for themselves.  we then went to a great traditional swedish restaurant on sodermalm called pelikan i had some very rich and very good quiche, but i don't think my parents liked their swedish fare as much as i did.

wednesday - we started out by going to the palace on gamla stan (the old town) and watching the changing of the guard - not quite as exciting as the ceremonies at other bigger european palaces but still nice.  we then toured the royal apartments and treasury which was fun.  we spent the afternoon walking around gamla stan seeing all the cute old buildings and stores, we headed back to the marriott for a rest before going to glenn miller jazz cafe for dinner i have been there before and it is just too cute, my parents agreed.  also my goat cheese salad was great.

thursday - i met my parents at radmansgatan right near school and showed them SSE and the city library we then walked around sveavagen, hotorget and stureplan over to ostermalm.  we ate lunch at the beautiful ostermalm saluhall and then unfortunately i had to leave to go take my one test of the quarter... the test was tough!!! all pure memorization which is definitely not what i am used to in the US!  after the test we went to dinner at garlic and shots in sodermalm.  it was a really fun restaurant which as the name indicates incorporates LOTS of garlic - my dad even had garlic beer which was quite potent... afterwards we made a trip to the infamous stockholm ice bar, i had heard from some friends that it was good - but in my opinion just a major tourist trap, not worth it at all... hopefully the ice hotel is much much better.

and then friday we left stockholm for st petersburg!

right now our connection in st petersburg is too slow to add pictures so i will add those in later

lonnnnnngggggggg day

so today was a long day... back to that later

i had a good weekend full of olympics watching and apparently record breaking snow here in stockholm and yesterday the one and only duo of rob & bob arrived... yay! i was so excited.  we checked them into their hotel and they learned that everything i said about stockholm and snow is true... it isn't shoveled even on the stairs and the snow is white and beautiful

we went to dinner at my favorite greek restaurant and then walked over to school had some coffee and headed back to the hotel to watch some olympics.  after watching bode dominate in the men's super combined i headed home planning to meet mom and dad for some walking around monday morning...

but the small stomach ache that i had sunday night turned into terrible pains and i couldn't sleep at all, by this morning i had decided that i should probably see a dr... sadly when traveling in another country the only option for medical care is often the emergency room so to the swedish emergency room i went and there i stayed for NINE HOURS... in big time pain - argh!

luckily my parents were good sports and hung out in their hotel for most of the day... while i went through many tests and many many hours of nothingness... for all the pros of socialized medicine the endless waiting is definitely a BIG CON, anyhow they don't really know what it was potentially kidney stones who knows... but nothing a little codine wouldn't solve and then tonight we went to herman's!

ankur and i have been planning on going to herman's ever since we got here... apparently they have the best vegetarian buffet in the city - and it was great! the view was beautiful too... will definitely be going back there in the short time i have left in stockholm...

so all in all very long day - but in the end everything turned out ok and it ended with great food - what could be better than that!

go lindsey!

obviously the best part of yesterday was the gold and silver finish for the u.s. women in the downhill... but the second best part was definitely the huge crash by swede anja paerson... because just like a classier version of nascar really people watch downhill for the crashes

because of the craziness that is proprietary country-specific olympic airing rights here is a video of what was probably anja's best super-g crash before yesterday's downhill debaucle

yay bode!

well bode miller can be a bit of a jerk sometimes... but he is a great skier and he did awesome yesterday and he is from NH :) it was a super close race only 9 hundreths between gold and bronze!

simultaneously watching american and swedish coverage :)

lost children

so on my daily skate this morning i saw something hilarious... the local daycare brought all the kids down to the ice skating rink i guess just to walk around and be outside they all were wearing their snowsuits with lots and lots of reflectors and florescent vests which i am assuming said the name of their school the kids were all holding onto a rope and occasionally one would just wander away... honestly the teacher didn't seem to notice - or really care all that much.  i guess it is a testament to how safe sweden is - when the class was done with playtime one of the kids remained at the rink and i saw an old woman go up to him (or her hard to tell with the christmas story-esque snowsuit) and call the number on his vest.

my friend andrea has seen this many times in the park where she goes jogging and it is just too funny... i didn't bring my camera skating but andrea brought hers jogging and i stole this picture from her of a lone child in the park :)

yay olympics!!!

so ski racing is definitely one of my favorite sports to watch... but it isn't on tv all that often - so watching ski racing is part of the reason that the winter olympics are so great.  sadly the alpine events which usually start the first day have been delayed... but men's downhill is supposed to start tonight - 7:30pm sweden time and i will definitely be watching

for your viewing enjoyment here is a video of the best ever downhill crash - hermann maier (the herminator) at the nagano games... i totally remember watching this and wondering if he had just died - oh and btw he won two gold medals after this fall in gs and super-g... ski racing is the best

olympics, semla, shrove tuesday and valentines

this weekend has been a bit slow, originally i was planning on going to gotland an island between sweden and latvia... but it turns out that i was looking at the wrong ferry schedule and the proper ferry schedule was not so agreeable

so that left me in stockholm without too much to do... good thing the olympics are on! i love the olympics and i think unlike most people i farrrrrrrrrrr prefer the winter games over the summer ones. friday night i stayed up late to watch the opening ceremonies and then today i alternated between watching swedish coverage (online) and american coverage (on slingbox) both were very entertaining.

tomorrow i am going to have a fun little valentines day celebration by myself... one of the great things about sweden is that everyone here speaks english - mostly from watching american tv and movies... so i am going to see valentines day (yes i can hear half of you groaning) and then am going to have a late lunch at one of the great saluhalls and i might even try a semla.

i have seen these in bakeries in sweden since arriving and it turns out that they are a seasonal food, meant to be eaten on shrove tuesday.  i am guessing i won't like them too much since i hear the cream tastes similar to marzipan but i will give it a shot - at least they look really pretty!

happy valentines day!

great skating day

i waited a little later today to go skating... and as a result i really lucked out, it was sunny and beautiful! honestly i was a little shocked at how sunny it was it was kinda disorienting.  skating was great although i did have fall #2 but it was amazing i only was lapped by a v. pro looking skater guy 2 times in 4 laps :)

here are some pictures from my balcony (which i never thought i would actually go out on) taken at 3:15!!! and its SUNNY!!! and i swear i didn't edit any of these at all - no blue added to these skies!

ostermalm saluhall

today i met andrea for lunch at the ostermalm saluhall  the place is so old timey and beautiful, it makes all the food in there just look that much better!  after doing a couple of laps of all the gorgeous food we sat down for lunch.  i had a big beer and some gorgonzola ravoli - YUM... andrea had a proscuitto and melon sandwich and a glass of wine.  the food was really excellent, although i do think that i have to go back there sometime and have a little bit of a reindeer lunch :)

after the saluhall i walked through ostermalm and stureplan over toward hotorget.  it was a nice day to walk around and see more of the city going into lots of cute little shops etc. it was nice to have a day of not doing too much after such a busy weekend in copenhagen.  tomorrow i have class and then friday i leave for gotland, which might be an adventure given that i don't know how much is open on the relatively small island during winter.

lots to look forward to!

i have now officially been in stockholm for a month! WOW time flies! i can't believe that i am so far into my swedish experience.... it actually makes me kinda sad - sometimes i wish that like the non-US exchange students i was staying until june, so that i could see stockholm in all its summertime glory :)

but here are the things i have to look forward to in:
-2 days trip to gotland an island half way between sweden and latvia
-12 days my parents arrive in stockholm
-17 days trip to st. petersburg and finland with my parents
-23 days trip to lappland with other exchange students
-36 days trip to oslo
-38 days trip to vienna, prague and budapest with carol, alexis and mia

and then sadly only 49 days until i head back to the states for my final quarter at booth :(

malmo & copenhagen!

ankur and i took a trip to malmo and copenhagen this weekend and it was quite fun - although also fairly exhausting... we started with a 5 hour train ride south to malmo.  this train ride was way better than the one to uppsala.  we got all the way out of the city and got to see some really pretty countryside even though we didn't have a window we meet due.

it was a beautiful ride although we were delayed by about 2 hours we ended up getting in around 2.

malmo is the third largest city in sweden after stockholm and gothenberg. we started our visit at a restaurant called cafe siesta which naturally we thought might be mexican food, but instead we both had really yummy coconut curry pasta.  after that we walked over to the kings garden (one of the many kings gardens we have been to) and went to the slott (aka scandinavian word for castle) i just love saying slot! it sounds funny!

but this wasn't just any slott this one housed six museums: art, city history, war, acquarium, royal, and special exhibitions and all it cost us with our mecenat cards was 20 sek - basically the best deal in all of sweden.  but we were quite surprised with what we saw inside.  the acquarium was probably the best part and the other parts were all just plain old ODD! there was a random fake security guard and all sorts of other stuff you can see in the slide show below.

malmo was also home to some frozen fountains and the twisting torso which are the first of which was just kinda funny and the second is the only tall building in the entire city and although architecturally interesting mostly just seemed out of place.

after we had our afternoon in malmo we took the half hour train over a BIG suspension bridge to copenhagen.  we made our way over to the hostel which was actually quite nice and met our roommates some israeli dancers who were in town to try out for a modern dance group.  we had a great vegetarian buffet in slottsholmen at a mediterean restaurant and then lucked out big time.  we found a jazz club in the lp called lafontaine we went in and although the atmosphere was SMOKEY there were 2 for 1 beers and we met some friends of the band who were playing which were GREAT and generally had an awesome time.

saturday we got up and we walked - A LOT... seriously all day.  we didn't plan our day very well and although we saw a lot we ended up criss-crossing the city many many many times.  a few of the things we visited: a wonderful coffee shop, another kings garden, another slott with a great museum and the crown jewels of denmark, the national museum, the cristiann commune... phew it was a long day.  we had a beer on christianhaven or something spelled similarly and then trekked all the way across the city again in search of a tapas restaurant we had read about... however that tapas restaurant did not exist - but it lead to us finding an amazing indian restaurant where we sat at a communal table with a french girl working for the OECD and 4 american college students studying abroad.

sunday we had to get up early to check out of the hostel.  we again walked VERY far to see the little mermaid statue as well as views of the kastellett and the opera house all of which were beautiful.  everything is closed on sundays except for museums so we had a rough time finding someplace to eat but eventually we managed and this was the view out of the restaurant.

after our long walk we went to a statue museum which had palm trees inside (amazing for this cold climate) and then made our way to the louisiana museum which was about a half hour north of the city by train.  it was a very modern but beautiful museum right along the coast.  i wasn't so into a lot of the art but it was great nonetheless.  we ended the weekend with a trip back to malmo, dinner at a chinese restaurant and another long ride back to stockholm this morning - all in all a wonderful weekend!

copenhagen this weekend

today was a great day it was beautiful in stockholm - 34 degrees which is definitely the warmest its been since i have been here, and the first time it has been warmer here than in chicago!

tomorrow ankur and i are taking the train to malmo (one of the southern-most cities in sweden) and then spending a couple of nights in copenhagen which i am really excited about.  my college roommate elizabeth studied abroad there during our senior year of college and i have always wanted to go.  there is a jazz festival so hopefully we will hear some good jazz and see some fun stuff :) mostly i am really excited to take the train and see more of the swedish country-side (if the sun comes up)

funny swedish lesson

so someone sent me this swedish lesson today and it is too funny... i feel like it is pretty representative of the way i feel about swedish - it is really confusing, the swedes speak amazing english which makes you feel dumb and the word slut is written everywhere

drottingham palace

today ankur and i took a little day-trip to drottingham palace... both of our guide books said it was can't miss and we could get there by taking a subway and a bus seems simple enough

but no it is winter in sweden - we got there and it didn't seem terribly crowded or populated - because it wasn't open... every guide book for this country is written for summer ONLY... we need a special winter sweden guidebook telling us about things that we can do instead of all of the fabulous things that you can do in sweden that aren't open!

anyhow, we took a few pictures and stood around outside for 20 minutes to wait to watch the changing of the guard... then we got back on a bus and back on the subway and went to a great saluhall in sodermalm, we had a wonderful vegetarian lunch... i had lasagne and ankur had these really yummy veggie burger patty type things.  we walked around and bought some yummy cheese and bread.

now i am sitting in my apartment - watching the view (yay!) and eating my yummy cheese and bread while i do my laundry - great if not entirely successful day

skating day 2

no falls - 3 laps around - yay!

in the infamous words of kate moseley...

TOEPICK!

in case you aren't as big a cutting edge fan as i am - this means i went skating this morning.  it was great my goal was to make it around the lake once... i think the track on the lake is about 2 km and i made it around twice which i thought was pretty impressive.  the not so great thing is that even though the track is plowed there was about 2-3 in of snow and because it is a frozen lake there are lots of bumps and divets that you can't see because of that snow... about halfway through the second lap i hit one of those bumps and went flying forward belly-flopping on the ice.  it didn't really hurt, but i was wearing my fleece and when i stood up i was covered in snow - it was quite exceptional.  so besides that and the 70 year old man that probably lapped me 4 times it was great... i am going to try to add a lap each day so hopefully by next week i will be skating 10 km a day!

uppsala

today andrea, anna, ankur, lin and i headed up about an hour north of stockholm to uppsala.  uppsala is the big university town in sweden and is also home to scandinavia's largest cathedral.  we all had a great time walking around the city even if it was a bit cold... we were even lucky enough to have camilla who grew up in uppsala and is now a second year at SSE come out to show us around... all in all it was a great day in a cute little city... i'll let the pictures speak for themselves!

skates!

so i bit the bullet today and bought ice skates... i feel like it will be nice to get some semblance of outdoor exercise and cross country skis are prohibitively expensive - so skating it is!  i am sure that this will lead to more falling down as i have only been skating once a year probably since i graduated from high school... but given that the pond is just down the hill - i am committed to going at least a couple of times a week! YAY!

sunny and snowy...

today i woke up around 10 to an AMAZING sight... SUN in STOCKHOLM... it was crazy!  i went outside for a walk around the big lake next to my apartment it was gorgeous.  but then i came back inside and by the time i had taken a shower the sun was basically gone - back to the grey skies.

this afternoon i met up with andrea in skeppsholmen (one of the many islands) to go to the modern (art) museum, the walk over was so pretty - it was snowing lightly and from the bridge you can see most of gamla stan (the old town) and djurgarden (where the vasa and nordic museums are).  the modern museum was nice... for a modern art museum - we looked around for an hour or so and then met up with ankur at the attached architecture museum which is free on friday afternoons.  the architecture museum had wayyy to much text and reading involved for my tastes so we didn't last too much longer there.

after museuming we walked through gamla stan and found a cute coffee shop where we perused all of our various guide books for a somewhat affordable place to eat dinner... something that is not too easy to come by in stockholm.  we decided on a thai place in sodermalm but when we got there it was really crowded so we went to a vegetarian restaurant nearby instead... it was great!  they had a set menu which was all you can eat, but the first plates of vegan-gluten-free food we got were so wonderful and big that none of us went up for more... we will definitely be going back there.

after dinner, we tried to head to a jazz club but again it was too full, so we ended up at an irish pub right near the center of town adnan, anna and jana (more of the exchange students) joined us and we had a pretty fun non-club weekend night!

lazy day

it is snowing here in stockholm... and so i haven't left the apartment all day... which is somewhat crazy given that my apartment is only 30 sq meters.  but i did some laundry and planned my travels for the rest of my time here in europe.  on the schedule: a day trip to uppsala, a weekend trip to malmo and copenhagen, potentially a quick trip to paris and of course the trip to the laplands planned by the school, and my trip to st petersburg and finland with my parents -- as well as my spring break adventure to vienna, budapest and prague with carol, mia and alexis.

i am definitely excited for my remaining adventures and for the opportunity to get to know stockholm better... hopefully this weekend i will explore some new neighborhoods - i've heard about a good brunch place and apparently the architecture museum is free on fridays so that is on tap too!

stairs update and my other class

so remember last week when i complained about how the stairs up to my building were covered with snow making them basically impossible to get up... well this weekend someone shoveled them, when i got back on monday from the bottom of the hill they looked better and i was excited... well i was wrong - big time... the stairs had been shoveled but all that did was get the snow off not the 4 inches of solid ice that was under the snow, so now the stairs are COMPLETELY impassable, turns out that it is a lot easier to walk on slippery snow than ice, both ankur and i almost fell today - a NUMBER of times.  now when i walk down the stairs i don't lightly hold the railing in case i slip, i cling to it for dear life - terrified... looks like i will be taking the tram a lot more until the ice melts, or it snows more.

  

in other news i had my second class today for the first time: entrepreneurship in developing countries... because SSE is under construction they had to move some of the classes to university of stockholm - which is about 20 min north of downtown, once we got up there we walked around for about 45 min... couldn't find the building anywhere! and it is a LARGE campus, not one tiny building like SSE.  after that debacle the class was ok, a little bit of a let down after my awesome entrepreneurship class with waverly last quarter - but we will see how it goes.

switzerland!!!!

alright get ready for a LOOONNNNGGG one!

yay! got back from switzerland this morning and it was amazing!

flew into geneva on friday morning and found the hostel where i would be staying that night... turns out geneva is a tiny city so everything is relatively easy to find and to walk to plus when you can't walk there are trams that are free if you are staying in a local hotel so all in all easy city to get around.  walked around the city friday afternoon and bought a great new pair of black boots so that i finally have something else to wear other than my rubber boots in stockholm.

ali's train from leysin got in around 8 and we set out from the hostel for fondue.  we ended up here and if you are in geneva and want to eat a whole lot of great wine and cheese i highly recommend it, the rest... the lonely planet did not lead us astray :) it was the first time that ali had fondue and as you can tell she was pretty excited!

at the restaurant we met two hysterical lebanese by way of england and switzerland guys named george and cyrian.  i would guess that they were about 45 and about half way through dinner decided to strike up a conversation with us... we are pretty sure that george thought that ali was in high school when he started hitting on her, but he later told us that he was only 12 so it was ok... for the rest of the night he called ali "auntie ali" given her old age in comparison to him.  cyrian was definitely embarrassed by his friends behavior, but george definitely spiced the evening up a bit.

we got to hear many stories about how he has his christmas party each year in nyc and his birthday party in monaco... and when he heard that ali was going to paris next weekend he immediately started texting friends in paris trying to find a party for her to go to.  basically he was HILARIOUS!  we went for a drink with them after dinner and george offered to buy ali the bar, and then spent about 10 minutes telling ali and i how much he just loves buying jewels and how sad it is that he doesn't have anyone to buy them for... shortly thereafter cyrian decided it was time to take george home and george gave us both his number and told us to google him - LOVE IT.

we slept at the lovely hostel that night (not so much) and spent saturday walking around geneva.  although it is a lovely city it is definitely a city that you can do in a day... we walked along the waterfront saw a lot of place that sell watches and a LOT of swiss flags.













we walked around the old town - the cathedral was beautiful and had croissant and espresso at this little cafe

after our walk around town we decided to go out to the united nations and the red cross museum.  mostly we just took a picture of the UN and of another beautiful museum down the street... the red cross museum was interesting but very avante garde and very very strange.  mostly it was all these really new age type exhibits and pictures about what the red cross had done over the past few years and what they do now.  but the way they displayed that was ODD rooms full of prosthetic limbs, a padded room with strobe lights to simulate interrogation - WEIRD

saturday afternoon we bought some wine and chocolate for the train ride and headed off for leysin which is where ali is teaching this month at the american school.  the train ride up there was BEAUTIFUL and it is exactly what you would think teeny-tiny little mountain town.  sadly it was dark by the time we got there so no pictures - but we hung out with another girl who worked at the school who went to bates with ali and two of her friends - one of which was from NH - small world!  we also went out to the one bar in leysin which was quite cute and crowded!

sunday morning we went skiing - so pretty... the views were great! the mountain itself actually reminded me of skiing in the andes but the views were so much better and it was sunny which was an excellent change from stockholm.  i got to ski in sunglasses, knit mittens and fleece pants - so i felt a bit silly, but it was well worth it!

we had lunch at a little chalet that was really really cute... and it was so warm that we could eat outside - it was great even if our lunch of salami and butter sandwiches were a bit odd

all in all it was a great ski day and a really great weekend - i have traveled a lot by myself over the past few years and it was so much fun to meet up with ali and see where she is working... i am looking forward to a few more trips this quarter but this was definitely a great start!