Reflections on Sweden

From Last week or so

From Last week or so

Well, here I am, back in Bolton. I've been home for 3 days now (got back on Wednesday night), so I suppose it's about time for me to round up the first leg of my travels.

I've had a great time in Sweden, though the whole experience was quite different to how I expected it to be. The country as a whole suited me a lot less than I had first expected - it's a very nice place, but perhaps not the best situation for living the student lifestyle, especially not in a place the size of Västerås. Nontheless it was an amazing experience, and I'd like to thank all the great people I met there from all over the world for contributing to that - you know who you are :) I managed to get about the country a bit, though perhaps not as much as I'd hoped, but had plenty of interesting trips outside the borders of Sweden as well - lots of great memories!

From Last week or so

On the purely academic side, my Swedish improved a lot during my time in Västerås, albeit after a slightly shaky start, though I can't help feling it would have got even better if I'd not been put in international accommodation. That said, I probably wouldn't have met most of the new friends I did if that had been the case, so I'm glad things turned out the way they did :) I'm going to try and make sure I'm with native German speakers in Berlin though.

Anyway, the festive season is more than underway, and there are Christmas preparations to be made. Planning is soon to begin for the next phase of my travels - backpacking through eastern Europe, Austria and Germany. That's due to start in February, so I have some time to get details sorted yet... Until then, God Jul och God Nytt år to all, hope everyone's well and keep in touch!

Ian

The Final Countdown

From Last week or so

From Last week or so

So, here I am, only 4 days left in Sweden! Obviously this is both a bad and a good thing, due to leaving here and everyone I've met, but also I'll be going back home, and Christmas, and things... I'll reflect more when I've got time after my return, right now I just wanted to put a brief update on recent and upcoming events.

Obviously there's a lot of partying going on, but I'm somewhat restricted in this side of things, as I'm also in the middle of my final exams for the semester. This a shame, as most people come back to do theirs in January and are thus free now, but I'm doing my best to spend as much time with people as possible :)

On Monday, Danielle, Jane and myself went Christmas shopping in Stockholm's gamla stan, which was fun...and for once it was actually cold! Much fun was had, and things bought.... Then Wednesday was the farewell dinner for all the international students, and also Lucia day! for those who don't know, Lucia is a Swedish festival of light meant to bring warmth in the darkest days of the year...well, that's the short version. If you really want to know more, you can read the 1000 word project I did on it in Swedish...

From Last week or so

Anyway, that's it for now, just thought I'd keep up to date. Another exam this afternoon, then another party! So I'll leave anyone who's reading with this sign, spotted in Stockholm central station - clearly symbolic of my imminent return to Bol'on... :) (click on it to make it bigger...)

From Last week or so

Road trip up North

From Road trip up ...

From Road trip up ...

And so it was that, tiring once more of Västerås, and wishing to see the real Swedish Winter, 5 of us happy go-lucky native English speakers did decide to hire a car, rent a cabin and go 8 hours up North to Umeå in Norrland. Many potential activities were on the agenda - dog sledding, elk-spotting, general snow-related fun...but we'll get to that later.

Last Friday, on the first day of December, we picked up the car from a rental service in Västerås went food shopping and began the 8 hour trek up north. With only a few stops along the way, but many wrong turns and confusion (Swedish signposting is weird), we eventually made it to our cabin just outside of Vännäs at about 10PM. The cabin was great, nice and homely, inside shower and toilet, kitchen....oooo. By this point we were pretty starving, not having eaten much on the way up, so we promptly demolished half our supplies for the weekend. We then had quite a quiet, chilled-out evening eating Smores (an American thing - melted marshmallow and chocolate between two crackers, or in this case, Swedish Pepparkakor) and watching DVDs. Cabin life is fun :)

Saturday morning we got up reasonably early and made our way into the centre of Umeå to pop into the tourist information and see what we could do. This is where things started to go wrong - Umeå tourist info is shut at weekends. Being in Sweden, we should have expected something stupid like this, but I mean really, when do they expect people with jobs/study etc during the week to visit? This, coupled with the lack of snow, scuppered our plans for dog-sledding somewhat, so we had to go off on our own bat. We drove around a bit and followed roadsigns for points of interest to tourists, but these pretty much turned out to be anti-climaxes too; the sculpture park, for example, was in fact an industrial park with about 3 sculptures in it. It did, however, boast a tower with an iron horse at the top....no, I don't know why either. After this we drave 30km to the elk farm, only to be told it was booked up for a business all day, but we could come back in summer...great. At least we weren't exactly busy with other things!

By this point (about half 2 in the afternoon) it was pretty much dark, so we decided to head back to the cabin. The night then consisted of drinking glögg (Swedish mulled wine), playing cards, watching films and eating macaroni cheese :) Not much, but the company was good, and it was nice to be somewhere different and see more of Sweden.

From Road trip up ...

After leaving the cabin on Sunday we began the long drive home, stopping on the way in Sundsvall, a lovely little town/city with plenty of life and Christmasness (yes, it is a word). Christmas market, little snowboarding event, general nice atmosphere. Good to see things starting to feel warm and wintry in Sweden, the atmosphere's good :) Thanks to Zach for doing all the driving, and to Danielle and Jane for organising the whole thing!