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 :)

nordic adventures!!!

well in an effort to procrastinate packing more i thought that i would start a blog so that you all can keep track of my adventures in sweden this winter...

i hope to be traveling, and eating lots of hopefully not so weird fishy nordic food and this is where i will keep you all updated on it...

headed home to boston on thursday -- flight for stockholm leaves monday!

back to packing!