Sunday, January 16, 2011

Cycling Queen

Although I have to catch you all up on the past few days I have some breaking news: today I bought a bike! It's a red road bike and unlike a lot of bikes here in Sweden, it has hand brakes, which is a nice comfort. I never did like sports where you had to go back in order to stop (ex. roller blading, cruiser biking). So this is definitely a great addition to my Swedish life as everyone rides bikes here. Most sidewalks have a bike path to it so it's fairly easy to get around the city - and way way quicker than walking. Should be getting a basket and bell soon - how very European.

My jetlag is finally subsiding and it's been great to have the weekend to cathc up on a bit of sleep though both Friday and Saturday nights were late ones. Friday we went on a pub crawl and got to see some of the drinking establishments in the city. It wasn't crazy expensive (to a Canadian at least, whereas the Germans and Americans were up in arms about drink prices), I'd compare it to going out to like a nice lounge - that sort of pricing. The pubcrawl was pretty good but I was soo tired so went home at about 12:30am instead of the party animals that stayed out til 3 or so. Though, I am happy to say, that across the world, people eat McDonalds late at night. How very comforting. McDonalds here has donuts though! And a weird Mexican-ish menu.

Saturday we rode bikes into the city - kind of a scary experience for my first time riding a bike on the streets really. And of course, our activity of choice was shopping. Most stores are having sales (or reas) so that was nice - Zara and H&M are so much better here too. Also Nudie jeans are cheaper...just have to find my size! It was nice to be in the city on a weekend though, to see lots of Swedes puttering about and seeing what Swedish life is like a bit. We then went home and made some dins and headed to a party in another student accomodation. It was pretty fun to meet lots of people from all over the world and be comforted by the fact that even if people speak hardly any english, they know all the lyrics to all the poplular (and not so popular songs). Very funny.

And today, I went with Kat (from Germany) to get my bike. Now I'm soon off to go ice skating then a group dinner (savoury pancakes!).

Have more Swedish tomorrow as well as a tour of the city. Then off to my department to meet the international coordinator and figure out my schedule. Classes start Wednesday so that will be a whole new experience!

Some more facts:

1. The Swedes are actually pretty nice and polite. Unless 50 students barge into their intimate pub.
2. The liquor store closes at 2pm on Saturday. If that isn't blasphemous, I don't know what is.
3. People from all over the world have such different slang and terms. It can be a fun little game to figure out what one another are talking about. And of course, I had to educate everyone about the word "toque". Beanie is just a silly word.
4. I've really noted how things are all a matter of perspective. Maybe a beer costs 1 euro in France...so alcohol here is expensive. Not so amigos. Not so.

Ta.

xx

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