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.