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!