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!

2nd class & plans for this weekend

nothing too exciting to report today... had my second class still psych of financial markets my other class entrepreneurship in developing countries doesn't start until next tuesday.  class was fine... but the exciting thing that i have to report is that i am going to switzerland tomorrow more specifically geneva to meet up with ali puffer... we are going to explore and i am even going to get a chance to go to the small village that she is currently teaching in! woohoo! we might even ski! hopefully i will have some good pictures and stories for you on monday

museums and laundry

i woke up this morning and took my first run around the big lake just down the hill from my apartment - don't think that i will be doing that again... wayyy to slippery, so need to find a second hand store where i can get skates or skis because it is so pretty down there!

this afternoon ankur and i decided to go to two museums that are right next to each other.

first we hit the vasa museum which houses a large viking ship that sank after sailing for about 20 minutes on its first voyage, not so great.  anyhow it sank in 1628 and was under water until the 1950's.  because the water in the baltic sea doesn't have as much salt in it the worms that generally eat through shipwrecks in the open sea can't survive there, so the ship is still fully in tact.

the ship is huge and pretty impressive, and there was a free movie about the restoration and a tour both in english!  the ship was huge and the restoration was amazing... however apparently it was a bit too narrow to be sea-worthy.

right next door to the big vasa museum is the nordic museum... according to the guy who gave us a lecture last week nordic countries include: norway, denmark, sweden and finland whereas scandinavian countries include only norway, sweden and denmark... so this is sweden's kind of national museum and it was pretty interesting... they had a free audio tour which was actually fairly interesting and the museum focused primarily on what old nordic houses and outfits looked like... i really wish that i had socks like these to keep warm

or mittens and hats like these from the people who live far north in the laplands... the one with the huge pom pom is my personal favorite.

then we got to the best part of the museum the entire exhibit devoted to laundry.  one of my parents friends warned me before i came here that swedes are obsessed with laundry and laundry rooms.  i didn't quite know what this meant... but it turns out it is true.  i did laundry for the first time yesterday, this involved navigating a complex electronic booking process entirely in swedish and then there were a wide array of laundry machines inside the laundry room that magnetically unlocked for me during my scheduled period. mimmi the housing director at SSE warned us during our orientation that laundry rooms cause 95% of the fights in swedish apartment buildings... ankur and i got to witness some of the bi-products of these fights at the nordic museum today.

these are all letters that have been left in or outside swedish laundry rooms... definitely click and zoom into read them, they are pretty hysterical... hopefully nothing like this gets posted in my laundry room!

i knew it would happen eventually...

so this morning i got dressed and decided not to wear my green rainboots that i have worn literally every day since i got to sweden.  bad move... walked out of my building safely made it down the stairs and then immediately fell right in the middle of the big parking lot at the bottom of the stairs... best part was there was an old man with a cane and he didn't fall, nope just me.

so moral of the story back to the rain boots... i am doomed to wearing them everyday or at least until all this snow melts, which i doubt will happen before i leave.

after my fall i had my first class, psychology of financial markets, the professor was pretty typical: glasses, goofy hair, tweed jacket with elbow patches and he was pretty funny.  definitely thick swedish accent and every time he told a joke he would say directly afterward, "that was a joke" which we all found infinitely more funny than the actual joke he just told.  for chicago kids this class is seems to be identical to epley.  which i am totally ok with.  we have to do a big 20 page paper and take a short multiple choice test, for my paper i am in a group with two exchange students from unc and two swedish students... should be fun!

ok on to my next adventure - laundry

liljeholmen and buying books

the "suburb" of stockholm that i live in is called liljeholmen... i think it is still within the city bounds of stockholm but not quite sure.  my school is right in the city center and from there it is about a 20 minute tunnelbana ride out to liljeholmen.  the subway system here is incredibly efficient... subways generally come about every 2 minutes so it is very easy to get into town.  liljeholmen is a very cute little place and has a huge torget at the bottom of the hill which has literally everything one could ever need: ica the grocery store chain, of course an H&M as well as a sizeable food court (which seem to be very popular here even outside of large malls) and even a mcdonalds (with $8 big macs).

sadly i doubt i will be doing much shopping outside of the grocery store at the torget as everything in stockholm is incredibly expensive... especially food and eating in restaurants... to give you a sense of it a slice of pizza in the food court at the torget is $12 and a big mac is $8.  generally set lunches at fast food places in food courts are between $12-$20 and i haven't seen any restaurants that have dinner entrees for less than $35-$40.  kinda rough on the student budget!  although there are a couple of cute food stands outside that sell kebabs and other reasonably priced things.

below are other some pictures from my neighborhood all taken between 3 &4pm so you can tell it really does get dark early here

my little t-bana stop

the treacherous stairs - there are about 10 flights of these stairs on the way up to my apartment... my mother suggested that i jog up and down them - i told her that was not an option

my building... i am on the 6th floor which here is the 7th floor... the elevators here don't have doors that close together they just have swinging doors and so if you were to get something caught in the door it could kill you... which results in my favorite sign in sweden so far

after my mini-liljeholmen photo shoot i decided to go buy my books i took the t-bana to the middle of town the bookstore that i thought i was supposed to buy my books at is right next to the konserthall which is where all the nobel prizes are awarded each year (except for the peace prize which is awarded in oslo.  here is the pretty building in the snow... and all the cute stalls in the square outside.  it is painted bright blue which you can't really notice in the dark... but it is a nice contrast to the mostly orange and yellow buildings nearby.

across the street is my favorite stand alone food court in the city so far... i ate there twice this week while at school which is just a few blocks down one of the main roads sveavagen.  there are about ten or fifteen restaurants inside some sit down some not but all pretty great.

some of the christmas decorations in the city center are still up and especially since it gets dark so early they are really pretty -- anyhow, i left the city center with no books as the bookstore didn't have them... so hopefully i wasn't supposed to read anything before my first class tomorrow... i am kinda interested to see how this all goes.  at least i get some time to ease into things one of my classes psychology of financial markets starts this week the next entreprenuership in developing countries doesn't start until next.

 

here!!!!

well i have been in stockholm for 5 days now i guess... and it has flown by!

i left boston monday night and had a five hour flight to iceland before my three hour flight to stockholm, i hadn't been to europe recently and forgot how relatively painless these flights are... the only bad thing is that i didn't get any sleep and had to navigate stockholm having had no food and no sleep - NO GOOD!

the twenty minute train ride from the airport to the city center was absolutely gorgeous... basically a winter wonderland - for some reason here snow sticks to all the trees for weeks after it snows and so everything was white and perfect, lots of small villages and farms and animals... it was AMAZING!

got into the city center and had to navigate my way to SSE with two rolly suitcases (one big one carry-on) and a duffel bag... this wouldn't have been too bad but apparently the swedish do not believe in shoveling, plowing or salting anything so rolling suitcases on the snow covered side walks was not easy - the only thing they do put down on the snow is gravel which got stuck in the wheels of my suitcase making the rolling effort EVEN WORSE... so finally making it to SSE i then had to wait two hours for the woman with my keys to show up even though she had promised me she would be there when i got there... anyhow it was an adventure.

after getting my keys i made my way to liljeholmen which is a very close suburb of stockholm where i live (about a 20 min tunnelbana ride). my building is at the top of a very steep hill which is accessible either by 7 flights of very steep stairs or a tram needless to say with all my luggage i chose the tram option. ankur had warned me that finding our building was quite difficult and i ended up wandering around at the top of the hill for about 40 minutes before locating the building

once i made my way up to the apartment everything was great... my apartment is as expected in sweden totally efficient - lots of built in storage

shower sans stall which reminds me of the fun old days of elizabeth and my short lived apartment in beijing (although i don't have to plug in the heater in this one for 20 min before i want hot water :) )

fairly large living space

cute little kitchen

and my bed complete with $4 duvet cover from my first trip to the world's first ikea

and the view of the city from my apartment

anyhow thats all for now, i already have all sorts of other little stories... i promise my next blog update won't take me another five days and will have a lot more pretty stockholm pics, hopefully before all the snow melts :)