Kim's European Adventures

Rome

2007-08-30T00:12:00.000+01:00

I can't believe I am finally on my last blog, and I thought this day would never come. Well, perhaps if I travel again I will start another one..my life is much too boring to hear anything about it right now.

So Rome. What can I say. Of course I expected great things, but wow, Rome is amazing!! There is just so much there, buildings, culture, sooooooo much history and so good of food.

Lets start with the food, my favourite part. Well not my favourite but anyways. Venice as we learned not only from our guidebook but also experience was quite a let down for food. Perhaps we were bad at picking good restaurants at this point and it is impossible to get away from tourists, but most of our meals were not so great. Florence was a pleasant change, the food was quite good but at the same time, not so much variety. Rome on the other hand amazing food, lots of different original things. mm. We soon got in the habit of having pizza for breakfast, gelato for lunch and pasta for dinner. We're healthy, I know. The take away pizza is cool though, they fold it over so there is crust on the top and bottom and no mess! We also had dessert a few times with dinner and that may be my favourite part, tiramisu. I like it in Canada and it must be 100 times better in Italy. Rather than a cake with cream filling it is cake in cream and is just so tasty. I was sad to part with it. Also the gelato was so good. Now that I am back all icecream is a disappointment, it makes me wonder why I enjoyed eating it in the first place. We found, oddly enough, that the gelato was best in Venice although all the other food was the worst there. Perhaps we just never accidentally ate at bad places since all the places in Venice seemed very similar. In Rome you had to be very careful not to go to the places that have just bought their's from the store rather than making it. It was also very cool, in Venice they did the conventional scoop, but in Florence and Rome they used a spatula to pack it into the cup, very different but cool! Of course, being in the birthplace of cappuccinos, we stopped for them frequently. Also very tasty and artfully done. Here's some yummy pics..

You know, just breakfast in front of the Pantheon. Fresh squeezed orange juice..hmm..perhaps that is why Tropicana doesn't seem that special anymore?

mmm..gelato..

and my favourite, tiramisu!

Alright, time for the buildings. You can probably guess all the popular landmarks we visited. One thing you don't predict, however, is how many things aren't on the map or aren't famous. We were so amazed when we first got there how we would cross a ruin or amazing palace and it wouldn't be on our map. We then realized after visiting all the things on the map how much more amazing they were and that it just wasn't possible to include all these other things. I think one of the main things we liked about Rome was how old the ruins were. All of the places we had already visited were boasting about buildings being from perhaps 1000AD but here we were seeing ones from 70BC. It is so crazy when you see that they were able to build such things so long ago and it makes you wonder if we really have advanced in our building technique, perhaps not having to use hundreds of slaves is a good point.

in the Pantheon

one of the ruins too small to be labeled, now a cat sanctuary

perhaps our favourite museum..it was this one guy's way of making a statement, there were about 15 of these set outside..very funny!

onto Vatican City..

some ruins..

a last glimpse..

a last chance to drink alcohol in a park..

Well, I hope that last edition was enjoyable. Thanks to all those people that actually made it all the way through the semester and through my European travels, sorry I wasn't update the whole time but I finally finished!! Well hopefully talk to you soon and keep in touch!!!

Florence

2007-08-28T23:51:00.000+01:00

Bonjourno,

Our next location was the home of the Renaissance, Florence. Here there is an awful lot of history which mean quite a few museums. I'll let you know which ones we did go to.

We decided to hit a museum right when we got there, it contained the paintings of people such as Michaelangelo, Raphael and Donatello. Really, I am not listing off the ninja turtles, they are all actually from Florence, well I think, don't google that. There was even a painting that had been unfinished by Leonardo that they had put in. We learned, however, they weren't so fond of him as he had left Florence at a young age.

The next museum we hit had pretty much one piece of art that everyone looked at, David. Our Lonely Planet told us to skip it but we decided, why not check it out. It was pretty amazing, it is much larger than I expected, about 20 feet plus he is on a pedestal. The details are pretty amazing, I'm not sure if anyone still reading this will enjoy this fact, but you could see the veins in his arms and hands, he looked very manly. ;) Also I didn't realize before but he made the statue showing David after he had killed Goliath. Before this sculpture most pieces of art showed David as being triumphant and strong. This statue, however, shows him very young and innocent as if these are the qualities that had let him win this war.

The town in general had a lot of cement and not a lot of parks. There were many beautiful countrysides surrounding, but you had to get high or to the edge of town to see this. Another main attraction is the main bridge. It houses all the jewelers and since they need room for the shop you can see them sticking out past the bridge.

We were very excited to see people actually did this in real life; we tried to jump into the picture but no luck.

There were a cool churches around town. In one part of town they had a very original green and white, striped appearance. There were several lines to wait in to see the churches and we apparently waited in the one to go to the top of the dome, we realized this after we just kept getting more and more stairs. This was right before we were going to go up to this fort on a hill at the edge of the city to see the view. I guess more than one view is always good.

While in Florence we also had to take a day trip to the countryside since we wanted the full Tuscan experience. We ended up taking a bike tour where we stopped a winery, a restaurant and just got an amazing experience of being in these cute towns. We actually got to go in a vineyard which was very exciting after the place in France not letting us into it. We also got to taste the wine and have a very delightful lunch that was very authentic.

Ciao, hope you enjoyed!

Venice

2007-08-28T00:37:00.000+01:00

From Barcelona, we next headed to Venice. Since this would be a little on the long side of a train ride and we really wanted to try out RyanAir, we decided to take a plane. In the long run I don't think it was that great of a deal with all the extra charges and getting to the airports which were neither in Barcelona or Venice. I suppose if it was a long trip it may be worth it.

Onto the city of Venice. First getting there it didn't seem so great at first. We took the crowded waterbus and the grand canal didn't seem so grand at first. I was surprised how many motorboats there was, although I guess it is much more efficient to use. Other than that, once we docked we realized the town had really stood still. It seemed old-fashioned but not in a corny way a lot of other cities tried to look, in an actual, I am back a hundred years ago and that's cool, kind of way. It really is amazing that there are no cars at all. Everyone either gets around by walking or by a boat. The other crazy thing is the number of tourists to locals. You have to look for locals. Not to foreshadow, but we were quite excited in Florence hearing all the Italian where apparently everyone speaks English since there are so many tourists and then even more excited in Rome where most people actually spoke Italian. Anyways. Once we docked, we started to see the real beauty of Venice, the cute little canals and alley ways.

The main square there is just amazing. We accidentally found it on the first night. Just to let you know, Venice is just crazy with the streets. You don't try to find things, you just wander around and while being lost, you come across all these amazing things. We found we were always lost since all the street names were the same name; this happened most often when we were trying to find our hotel right before the hotels curfew. Luckily we made it in time every night. When we were trying to get back, we would see a statue of a guy and think we were on the right track but apparently there are a lot of statue of guys. Anyways, back to the main square. It has this amazing church which apparently looks like an icecream cake, I agree. It also has this ugly tower which apparently fell down but they missed it so much they had to rebuild it. Lots of other buildings as well that are beautiful and old make the square look old but magnificent. There are bands playing at the restaurants trying to out do each other, very cool. We even paid 11 euros for a cappuccino just to sit at one and enjoy the atmosphere. Around the corner you can see the grand canal which is just amazing at night with all the lights and the boats. The gondola's have these cute lights on them. This part of canal is very cool since there are palaces all around.

Onto the gondola subject. Of course I wanted to go on one since that is all you ever hear about Venice is the gondolas. On our travels we heard, however, that they were 100euros for an hour. Crazy! When we got there I saw them and understood the price, they are pretty amazing. Gina and I were very torn whether or not we should take one. Would we ever return to Venice with a significant other to have this romantic experience? Well seeing as we were rather negative about the whole significant other subject in general we thought, why not take one (a gondola I mean). How many other romantic things have we done together and apparently Venice is sinking, who knows how long it will be there. Anyways. To shorten the story we ended up finding a walking tour (we were big fans of these after Berlin), that included a 40 minute gondola ride, all for 40 euros. We thought that was pretty good and it's kind of nice to share the gondola to get to meet people. It was definitely worth it, I don't know how to describe it, maybe as cool? By cool I mean neat. Just a different experience in general and nice to get to travel down the small canals and hear a local talk about it.

Venice was very nice and exciting as expected. Definitely not a place to miss just because it's over touristy or just for couples! Oh, but don't take the waterbus, not like a cheap gondola ride, crowded!!

Barcelona

2007-08-24T20:33:00.000+01:00

Hello,

Onto our next location, Barcelona. We weren't quite sure what to expect with Barcelona, other than the fact that everyone told me to definitely go there. We really liked it! It was the liveliest place we had seen plus it had so many things that the places we had already been didn't have. Gina thought it was quite humourous how much I enjoyed all the people selling fake brand name bags and sunglasses. We also quite enjoyed how they would have strings on their blankets for quick get away. Definitely planned out.

This was on Les Rambas, the main tourist street in Barcelona. It was a nice street just to walk down since there was always so many things happening on it. Barcelona had the best of anywhere for street performers. Even if it didn't have all the other amazing things I would go there for that. It probably helped that the last few places had pretty crappy ones, all those stupid ones with practically Halloween masks. Anyways. They were simply amazing there, the costumes were elaborate and very original.

That was for the statues. The other street performers were people doing things such as tangoing, break dancing, magic etc. We would accidentally spend our whole time on this street because we would head towards something on it and just not be able to leave.

Other cool things they had were the markets. I guess being farther south they had more exotic food and different ways of presenting them in the market.

This last one is fresh fruit juice, so yummy, it made me quite jealous of Gina when she told me she had these every day in Asia.

Ok, onto the buildings. By this point we had had a break from buildings but still weren't so fond of them. When we saw Gaudi's stuff though we change our mind. It also made us consider the definition of gaudy, perhaps this is where the word comes from? Perhaps it isn't so bad to have gaudy stuff. Anyways.. It is completely different than anything you would think you see in real life. The only way I can describe it is to say what the Lonely Planet told us, Dr Seuss would love it.

This last one was a church they started in 1882 and still have not finished. The tourist shirts even have the crane on the picture, it's almost just there to be humourous although I suppose they are making progress. They say it will be finished in 2082, then it will be huge since the part we saw was big and the center which is the biggest wasn't built yet.

Next we saw this park he designed. It was on top of this huge hill..good thing for escalators..

His designs in general are influenced by nature and when you are told what he is imitating you see that but it is just interesting that on first glance it looks so strange and different when really it should be more natural. Perhaps it tells you how strange normal architecture actually is.

I think that is all I will share about Barcelona. Hope you enjoyed.

Anglet

2007-08-23T19:51:00.000+01:00

Bonjour mes amis,

Our next stop was on the Atlantic coast of France, Anglet. We booked extra nights here since we thought we might deserve a bit of a break after non-stop touring before this. Apparently breaks just make your body want to catch up on its defenses and apparently make you sick, good time. Also, I went in with my burn I got from the glacier in Switzerland, strange, apparently you should wear sunglasses and bring sun glasses. Anyways, back to Anglet. When we arrived it wasn't the best weather which I hear is normal for the area. Luckily, it got much better and was sunny for most of the days we were there.

Us lounging on the beach..our main hobby

Day Trip to Biarritz, the tourist city nearby

Perhaps we had an obsession with sunset pictures..

A cute and very basque town we took a trip to.

*Cough* how did another one slip in..

Having wine on the beach watching the fireworks, I told you we were romantic.

mmm, moules et frites, our favourite

Well that is all I shall tell you about Pays Basque. Hope you enjoyed!

Carcassonne

2007-08-23T00:33:00.000+01:00

Hej viewers,

Today we are learning about Carcassonne. This is a small town in southern France that still has a medieval city containing a castle. Apparently is more of a tourist action for families, but you know, we fit into all categories.

Ok, I am done being a loser. Carcassonne was very cool since I really wanted to see a medieval castle in Europe and for some reason, so far, we still hadn't seen any. All of the castles were a different style that had rather disappointed me, so yay, castle. We were also quite excited to get back into France where we could attempt to speak the language, and, unlike Paris, many people didn't know english so we were forced to speak a little French. It was very excited to have someone continue speaking to you in French even though they knew you couldn't understand it. Especially after being in so many tourist cities where you were spoken english to. We also found that most of the tourists here were actually French, I guess it hasn't gotten out to the other countries as a good city to visit.

We're locals, we're having a baguette for breakfast..

The current town of Carcassonne

The first view while on the bridge..

The entrance of the actual castle inside the walled medieval city. The center thing is a defense system so if someone does get past the gate there is a good shot for the archers while they run through the open area.

Well that is all from Carcassonne, I hope you enjoyed.

Interlaken

2007-07-30T21:15:00.000+01:00

Hey Everyone,

So I am finally home and doing my blogs. Well I have been home for a couple weeks, but you know, have organized pictures and such. I thought I should finish this for everyone that I won't get to show my pictures to in person. :(
Anyways, I guess I was on Interlaken, Switzerland. We took the train there from Vienna. We had no idea it would 8 hours and were thinking we probably should have got a night train, but were very glad we hadn't afterwards. This train was the most beautiful trip on our whole Europe trip! It was just amazing, there aren't really words to describe it. The whole time we were going through these quaint little towns in the mountains seeing waterfalls. I guess it also probably helped that it was very sunny out which always makes everything look prettier.

Getting onto actual Interloken. It is a town similar to Jasper. It has a lot of people from other countries running all of these extreme activities you can do such as Sky Diving, Paragliding, Bungee Jumping etc. We decided to do Canyoning which we had never heard of before. It was very exciting, we put on Wet Suits and made our way down a canyon by repelling off one of the sides, sliding down the river like a water slide, jumping into waterfalls and ziplining. Very fun but things I definitely would have never done unless there was someone there telling me exactly how and who had done it millions of times before. I would put pictures on but right now I am too cheap to buy them from the lady plus I think if I put a picture from the internet of someone else doing it you probably wouldn't realize it wasn't me since we wore a helmet. ;)

We also did a fair amount of hiking while we were there. We were very excited about this since other than a lot of walking, we really hadn't gotten any exercise on our trip. It was nice to do here since it is so beautiful. The town has two lakes and a river running in between that is all a aqua marine colour since it is fed by the glacier.

Here you can see the paragliders, they would send a dozen down at once so it would be interesting just looking up and seeing so many.

We were quite hot and dehydrated on our hike so we wanted to cool off a bit in this natural shower.

Nice reward/lunch at the top of the hike. Unlike many of the other people at the restaurant we hiked rather than taking the funicular railway.

The Redbull Airshow just happened to be in town the weekend we were. It made getting a hostel a little difficult but we found one.

The other very exciting thing to do in this town was go up the Jungfrau railway. You head through all these cute mountain towns and then head up a tram that has a grip to be able to make it up the hill (much like a roller coaster) and end up in the middle of a glacier. It is really amazing since you just look around when you are up there and all you can see are glaciers and hills for miles (I mean kilometers of course but the saying didn't sound as good when it was with it). You go right through the mountain so you can't see any civilization around. Very beautiful.

Half way up with the cute tram..

Cute halfway village. We had toasties here which we were sure were like grilled cheese sandwiches but apparently they were very tasty hashbrowns..we learned later they are nothing like hash browns from a local though..

You can see the little path you can take on the glacier where all the ant people are. They have all these corny activities you can do on it such as sledding, skiing and ziplining. We walked all the way to this restaurant and then decided we didn't even want to eat there. Oh dear.

Here you can see the building from both sides that housed things such as restaurants, stores, where the tram docked, ice palace etc

On the trek, now the hill below may look not too bad but it sure was tiring after sliding back every step!

On the tram back we saw at least 50 waterfalls! It was amazing and they were all very high. If I had gotten the question of which country has the top 10 waterfalls I probably would have guessed wrong again and picked Switzerland.

Alright, I guess that is all for the update for today. I hope you enjoyed. I will probably get these up pretty quick now since Gina has been bragging about having hers done for a while...

Kim

Vienna

2007-07-22T14:11:00.000+01:00

Hello,

Impressively I am doing another post in what 2 days, 3 days? Anyways, I'm impressed with myself. It is also due to the fact that we are realizing future internet costs are going to be quite high and there is a possibility I won't be on again. We have just finished booking everything that was left for our trip. Makes me feel a bit like it is coming to an end, but I suppose we still get to see and do a whole lot more amazing stuff. Also it will be nice to be home to see everyone again!

Anyways, as the title says, I will get onto talking about Vienna. When we arrived there the weather was beautiful and sunny and thus our first impression of the city was that it was very nice. We decided to spend our first night just hanging out on the lawn infront of one of the historic buildings. I will miss getting to relax in places with such spectacular views and with so many cafes with outside sitting. I am already missing Europe before even leaving it, pretty bad eh?

Our hostel was probably the best hostel we have stayed in. It was super clean and had excellent sound proofing. There was a bar in the basement which, accidentally.. ok, not so accidentally, we ended up going to 2 nights out of our 3. We actually got to see "real" Viennese bars on our third night so I guess it is alright.

During the day we saw all the famous buildings on Ring Road. This is a very convienent road since practically all of the buildings are on it so you can just take the tram around. Nice change from all the walking we have been doing. We also went to a Viennese Coffee Shop. It was very cute, kind of like an old lady's tea party. There we finally got water with our coffee which was very exciting since we have felt a bit snobbed when we have asked for it at restaurants. They gave us our coffee in very cute tea pots and a little thing of milk which encouraged me drinking my coffee with milk, I know, I'm bad. We also had to try the famous apple strudel, which does taste and look a little different from home but is very good!

We had to visit the palace there since, well, we visit a lot of palaces. The one here was a bit different, which was a nice change since sometimes they seem all the same. It encorporated a lot of oriental themes which was pretty cool. The best part, however, was the maze and labyrinthe in the back. Gina and I enjoyed this for perhaps a little too long. You know how I like the ones made in the trees though. At the end they also had a place where you could watch everyone else trying to make it to the end and it was quite enjoyable. Here our people watching skills came into practice again. I mean hmm. There were also these random kid things you could do like make music on this jumpy thing and avoid water, climb poles. That kind of thing. Fun times. Oh, also, at the palace, we went to a cooking show where we learned how to make strudel, so you know what you will be getting when I get back. Well we'll see.

I think that is all I will share about Vienna. Apparently the good surfing time is approaching. It's funny writing about it now since I knew hardly any history and now I am reading a book about one of the Empresses and learning a lot. But anyways, time to go. Hopefully I will be able to come on sometime but if not I will see or talk to you again Aug 6!! Miss you all!!

Prague

2007-07-09T16:33:00.000+01:00

Hello,

So we loved Prague. I guess we have loved all of the cities we have gone to lately but Prague seemed to have everything. Beautiful buildings, forest, rose gardens etc etc. At the same time it just had to have the couples everywhere and was horribly romantic. Oh well. Gina and I like to do romantic things together anyways. It seems so long ago now that it is a little strange writing about it. It's funny how much it seems time has past since we have been traveling just because we change towns so often but really it has only been a month. Anyways, enough with the random thoughts.

Prague was also super touristy. We of course got the first impression thinking there wouldn't be English speakers because of the guy at the ticket booth at the train station. Oh how we are starting to love the rude ticket guys. Anyways. The train station was also a bit creepy, welcome to Eastern Europe, or Middle as Czech likes to pretend. The weather wasn't great so I guess that is why it seemed like that. Also there were way more people trying to get you to come to their B&B, I hadn't experienced this yet but Gina was very used to it from Asia. We arrived at our hostel alright, however. We had a private room in a residence. It was pretty good, clean, no noise prevention but whatever. The area was on this hill overlooking the city which we soon realized was a pain to climb down but had beautiful views. There are flower gardens and cute benches up there. There is also a cool finacular tram thing that goes down to the city. We thought it was going to be like a rollercoaster since it was so steep but it ended up not going too fast. Shucks.

Ok, what to tell you about the town in general. There are all these nice parks next to the river with benches. Also in town there are some amazing old buildings. We took a free tour there as well and got to see all these areas our LP didn't tell us. We also took up a hobby of tourist watching here. Perhaps it was an excuse to sit down after walking all day but we sat with this modern piece of art and watched the reactions of the people passing by. Good times. I guess it isn't surprising that my people watching hobby has carried over as you know I enjoy it.

One of the main attractions, other than the castle, is this bridge. From far away you can't tell what is special about it but once we entered it, through a beautiful arch, you..well I guess you can't see. It is packed with tourists and peddlers. But getting past that it has all these statues on it plus a great view of the castle. Getting onto the castle, I was actually a little disapointed, it has a beautiful church but the castle itself is the palace style we have been seeing everywhere. I guess I was expecting medieval. I suppose maybe I don't like castles anymore. Hmm.

Ok, this blog is really random, it's hard remembering Prague and not adding new insite from the places we've been in lately. Perhaps I just miss everyone and I feel like I am talking with them through this since it is too hard to email everyone.

Ok, back to Prague..really. For night life we went to a huge club. It had five floors each with their own type of music. That was pretty cool although we are too undecisive so we spent most of our time switching floors. It was really packed too. I think full of tourists though. We didn't actually meet anyone from Czech the whole time we were there I think. It is definitely harder to meeting locals than I would have thought traveling around. You are constantly meeting other tourists and having the same conversations. It's all good though. I try to make an effort to meet at least one local in each place.

Ok, onto another night in Prague. For our last night we decided to hang out on the river since there are lots of cafes and the sunset was quite beautiful. We ended up seeing fireworks that we had no idea would be on. Very exciting.

I think that is all that you will learn about Prague today. I know this wasn't that informative. Geese Kim, what a disapointment. Sorry. The weather was excellent while we were there? Although that prevented us from making it out of the tourist areas and thus the tourist prices, we would stop at a place just on the edge that was still probably double what a place around the block would be. Oh well. We still haven't quite developed the talent of finding the local places. One of these days..

Ok, now it is really over. Hope everyone is doing well and one of these days I will get onto the rest of my blogs. Talk to you soon.

Kimberly

Berlin

2007-07-09T15:52:00.000+01:00

Hej,

It is now time for the Berlin update. You almost didn't get it since internet is quite expensive in Vienna but we sucked it up. Ok, lets see how much of Berlin I remember! lol

When we first got to Berlin we had an excellent impression because the weather was very sunny and the train station is pretty amazing, huge and beautiful. Not in the old way but in the modern way. We got to our hostel by the excellent instructions provided on the site for it. This was the first place we used the local transport a lot since we were a bit out of town and it is quite convienent in Berlin. Another thing I enjoyed about it was that the subway was never packed, always a place to sit, and when you got onto it people were so patient and there was no pushing or shoving involved. Perhaps because it wasn't that busy.

Our hostel was excellent. We have finally decided big hostels are a good idea since they usually have a better common area. This one did. Although it was kind of hard to move around the three bunk beds in our room, but we didn't stay in there much. A lot of the time we would go to town for the whole day and not come back until night. Most of the time it was a good idea, except the last day it down poured and instead of being smart and going inside somewhere we tried to walk to what we wanted to see but apparently there was a line. End of story we were completely soaked and couldn't even go home and get something warm and dry since it was so far away and we wanted to still see stuff in town. Was almost tempted to get a Berlin sweatshirt just for the warmth. Anyways. I eventually got warm and that is good.

Ok, so I will start off with my favorite part. Well maybe it all was my favorite part but it's going to be random. Ok. So the people in our room told us the free tour was excellent, so we did this our first day. You don't have to pay anything but your suppose to tip at the end since they don't actually get paid. The girl who did the tour was from Australia, so she was a native English speaker which is always nice. She was also super enthusiastic and funny which made the tour and stories very exciting. We learned a lot about German history and how the German's treat their past which we were very impressed with. On the tour we saw many monuments which was super interesting and it was great on a tour since we all discussed what the monuments meant to us since they could be taken different ways. I think Gina put a picture of the Holocaust memorial on her page and it is just remarkable. Maybe one of those things you have to go through. As you go in the pillars get higher and higher around you until you get lost inside.

We also went up the TV Tower. You get a very cool panorama at the top plus if you sit in the restaurant it rotates so you don't even need to walk around. I mean I'm not lazy. This was pretty cool since you could look out at the west side and then look out at the east and it is like two different cities. It is just amazing how one city could have two parts like that and you can still see that. Anyways, I'll get over it now.

We also went on another pub crawl, this time on Independence Day, although the Americans weren't really partying it up. We hung out with Canada's this time. We really try to meet the other cultures you can see. I guess we spoke to some other people, one German just to make sure. :P

We also headed up the Parliament building which was pretty cool since it had a big dome so you could see the city from above as well as looking into the room where the laws get passed. Also the people inside can look up at the people they are serving. Good design we thought.

Lastly we saw a church that had been bombed in the war. It was pretty cool since how often do you see something left behind like that. It was funny since on the outside it looked pretty destroyed but when you were on the inside you couldn't even tell it had been touched since the beautiful jewels were still all over the wall and the top that is broken off is behind the ceiling. This is just one of the examples where you feel just overwelmed with history. It's funny too since a lot of the buildings were rebuilt so you look at a building which looks and was built in a certain period, but really it is only half a decade old since it had to be rebuilt. We learned the trick of knowing if it was an original building was that there were bullet holes.

Well I'm not sure if I'm continuing onto Prague. We will see. Hopefully I will caught up somewhat soon though!

Amsterdam

2007-07-04T21:28:00.000+01:00

Yay, I learned how to weed out more pics!!

Hey Everyone,

I am finally posted again, exciting?!? Plus it is no fun typing on a German keyboard but I will get over it. So perhaps I am lazy and not putting pics on but Gina has some if you want to see them.

Alright, onto Amsterdam. So as I'm sure everyone has heard that it's very liberal in several areas. We weren't sure if this would be all we would see in the town, but once there we found there is much to enjoy.

To start off with it is layed out really cool. There are canals that do a semi circle and roads going out. This may lead to you taking a much longer way than necessary but it looks pretty cool on the map. You need to be careful though since bikes and trams are very scary there. Coming from Sweden, where pedestrians always get the right of way, it is strange to always need to be looking out for vehicles while walking. Oh and apparently it is legal to charge whatever you feel if you are a cab driver and hide the meter.

Ok, so I will start off with the Redlight district because I know you want to hear it. I'm not sure what I was expecting when I got there but I was a little bit shocked. It is a long walking street and practically every window had a girl in lingerie being provactive to guys. (Ever other place on the street was a peep show or sex shop.) It was a bit dull walking down as a girl but watching them when guys walked past was quite entertaining. Also all the prostitutes are registered and pay taxes plus get health checks. I was quite impressed with that since this would keep the stds down and such. Plus most of them were pretty hot, which is surprising coming from the nasty ones in PG, although we did see a few that were probably cheaper. ;)

Alright, Amsterdam number 2, coffee shops. This wasn't too exciting. Every so often you would smell pot and sure enough you were next to a coffee shop. Well not all the time, they do it in public as well but probably just as common as in Canada.

Alright, maybe number three is nightlife? So Gina and I, being the party animals we are, decided to go out on Saturday and fine a good club. Apparently not so good though, since the cover was either 20 euros or dead or full of old people. Heading home, feeling a bit of disappointment, we decided joining a pub crawl would probably be a good plan. The next night was Sunday and Canada Day and we actually met other Canadians and were able to sing the national anthem together. As far as the nightlife, it was fun but I only met a couple people from Amsterdam, it was mostly just our huge group going to different clubs. At least I met a lot of people if they weren't actually locals.

Ok, now I am trying to think of what else we did. It was kind of long ago... There was lots of flower markets and other types of markets all over the place. We did a LOT of walking. I think we only used the tram to get to the train station when we were leaving. Also excellent street performers. We even saw some Swedes.

Oh I know what else. Food. So we weren't sure what came from Holland other than Heineken. (Apparently a lot of tulips but that's not the subject right now.) At first we had trouble finding the Dutch food, but then we saw pancakes. We thought they would be similar to home but they are somewhere in between a crepe and a pancake. They put all kinds of exciting things in such as cheese and ham or fruit. Even better than the pancakes were the friters though. They were mini ones with cinnamin and sugar and a bit gooey. To top it off they serve it with icecream and whipcream so we may have had an unhealthy breakfast or two. For dinner most of the time we ate at other nationality restaurants since they have so many of them here.

Other interesting things we did was visit the Anne Frank house and the Van Gogh museum. The Anne Frank house was pretty amazing since you actually saw the living quarters and watched videos of her father and someone that was helping hide them. The Van Gogh museum was interesting as well. Along with seeing a lot of amazing pictures we also got to read the story of his life and see how his pictures evolved as different things happened in his life.

Ok, I think that is all for now, hopefully we will find a place in Prague so I can write my Berlin experience. If you don't feel like waiting, the productive sister has already done that as well.

Paris

2007-06-30T13:33:00.000+01:00

Hey, so I finally uploaded some pics for you!! Sorry in advance for the quantity of ones of the Eiffel tower, I really did weed a lot out!

Hey Everyone,

So I have finally found an internet cafe again, after a long hard search with Gina! Anyways. We left Paris a couple days ago so I will just update you up on that. Sadly I can't seem to use the DVDrom if it is one, so no pictures for you. I will try to tell a good story though. ;) If you don't like my version, however, you can read Gina's: ginaasiaeurope.blogspot.com

We arrived in Paris early our first day; it was about ten when we left the train station. We decided to just go to the hotel first to drop off our bags before we started site seeing. The cab driver was a bit pompous and the part of town was a bit creepy on arrival, but good thing it all went uphill from there. We decided to head to the Notre Dame first. Very beautiful and huge and a huge tourist thing apparently. They were letting people through during a service and selling souvenirs at the end. Also in this area we saw the jail where Marie Antoinette was held and lots of other beautiful buildings.

We then started treking towards the Louvre. I told my family they would want to do this before close so we weren't stuck there for a full day, but they didn't believe me that they wouldn't be able to leave. Anyways. Once at the Louvre we saw that it was a rediculously huge palace. From the side we arrived on it didn't seem that big but once we went inside the courtyard it was pretty incredible. Disappointingly, the glass pyramid wasn't so clean, jeese these blockbusters get your hopes up for shiny things. I mean, very impressive. Inside we saw lots of interesting artwork. I don't know if you want to hear me go on about that, I'm sure you know which ones are in there. They were pretty impressive although not as exciting as everyone makes it out to be. Also the palace was very modern inside which was a bit of a disappointment since I thought it may be like how the museum was done in Russia.

On the second day we were there we ended up heading towards the Notre Dame again, well its on the way to pratically everything so we couldn't really help it. We went up in the tower which seemed like a million stairs (we were practicing for the Eiffel Tower). At the top the view was fantastic, well worth the climb and wait.

We then headed towards the Arc of Triumph. Before the Arc there is this long busy street leading up to it. It's cool since you can see it from far back, but bad since there are trees in between the sidewalk and the street so you can only take nice pictures while crossing the street. For this reason many pedestrians get caught in the middle island while taking pictures. Sadly this was us as well. It is quite crazy since it is little and on a very busy street. Anyways, once at the Arc we obviously went up. This time we took the elevator, lazy us! From the top of this one was an even better view. It is fairly close to the Eiffel Tower so we got great pics with that. Also it is just cool to look at the traffic below with all the streets coming out at different angles. (The arc is like the middle of a wheel or something with roads radiating out.) Sadly it started raining when we were on top of it.

We ended up walking to the Eiffel Tower in the rain and pretty much the whole time we were at the it, it rained. It was still very impressive! I think that was my favorite part of Paris. Just when you walk up to it, I can't really explain, but you get this excellent feeling. Anyways, that was very corny. We ended up taking the elevator up it as well, but don't worry I did walk down even though it was raining much harder and very windy. On top we tried to wait out the storm and eat dinner but it wouldn't stop raining. We waited mostly on the 2nd level but apparently should have on the 1st since we got there and there are much more things to do and see on it. Oh well. Also we couldn't go to the 3rd level since it was too windy. :( I was quite disappointed but I guess not that many people end up going up there anyways. One of these days I will. Anyways. When we were climbing down the lights turned on. That was pretty cool since we didn't even really notice, since it was still kind of bright out, but we looked down and the lights were on. When we were on the second level the sparkly ones came on. Very exciting. At first we thought lots of people were taking pictures but umm ya, no, sparkly lights. When we got down to the bottom it was even more beautiful with all the lights. I got a lot a lot of pictures even by my standards. Maybe I will find a place where I can put my pics on here soon.

Ok, third day. We went to Versailles. Here there is a palace where most of the French royalty lived. It was huge and furnished as it was when it was lived in. This was also amazing! We got an audio guide which is very fun and learned interesting things such as when they came to arrest the king and queen. Outside was also pretty amazing with huge gardens and two more palaces. I think the pictures would probably be a bit helpful here. ;) That night we headed to Moulin Rouge. As part of the deal we got to take a night tour of Paris which was pretty cool since we got to see the Eiffel Tower again. The Moulin Rouge was pretty cool as well since the costumes were very pretty and the dancing was good. Sadly they did not sing although there were comedy parts and odd talents. We were quite tired and it ended up taking the driver 2 hours to drive us home. Oh well, we got to see the Eiffel Tower a couple more times!

Alright, I guess that is all I will write for now. Hopefully I will get back on soon for the Amsterdam edition. Hope everyone is doing alright and sorry I can't talk on msn more!

Byes.

Copenhagen, Hamburg and Belgium

2007-06-23T12:22:00.000+01:00

Hey,

Sorry I haven't done a blog in such a long time but apparently it is a bit difficult when you have no home anymore. Something I have to get used for since now I will be traveling around for a couple months. Right now, at least, we have a temporary home at my parents' friends' house so that is nice. Anyways, time to start from the beginning..

We left Växjö on the 14 and headed to Copenhagen. This was my second time around but we hit some different places that I didn't see last time. Here is a last picture from Växjö, heading to the train station.

We got into Copenhagen around the afternoon. We decided to start heading towards Christiana since we heard it was an interesting place. Here's some pics on the way.

We headed up a church with a lot of steps and an excellent view..

Here is Christiana. It is run independently from Denmark which means they make everything legal. Apparently you weren't suppose to take pictures, but here are some before I saw that sign.

We then headed back for dinner and I introduced my family to the wonderful taste of Carlsberg. Plus the cheap price of it in 7 Eleven which was a nice change after Sweden.

The next day we headed to the Rosenburg Palace, which was very beautiful despite being only the summer home of one of the kings. It had the royal family jewels in the basement which were very impressive, a lot of diamonds and gold.

We then headed to the Carlsberg brewery which I had already seen, but it is quite enjoyable even the second time around. I bought myself a souvenir which I regretted not buying the first time and by the time we got to the bar to enjoy our free beers we only had half an hour left, so we ordered two at a time and drank them quickly.

Next we saw the mermaid again. To get there we decided to try out the subway. Perhaps it took a lot longer than the bus and didn't bring us as close...but it was an experience.

For dinner we headed back to Stroget since there are so many restaurants around there. Afterwards Gina and I were going to go into Tivoli for some rides and concerts but we found they were putting on a free concert in the square so we decided to stay for this and get some drinks from our favorite store, 7 Eleven.

Traveling there now was interesting since when I was there before there was snow and thus the fountains weren't on so a lot of statues were greatly improved this time when they were fountains as well.

The next day we were off to Hamburg. This was my first non-Scandinavian country in Europe other than Russia. I had been forewarned that English wasn't as well known as in Sweden but we ended up getting along alright. Perhaps because we were in the tourist areas. While there we did a lot of wandering around to see the buildings and canals. We accidentally had our site seeing day on Sunday so we were afraid a lot would be closed, but it ended being alright. When we were there some sand Volleyball tournaments were being held in the main square which was also exciting. For lunch, we went to a cafe nearby and were introduced to the exciting cookie that always seems to be given when ordering coffee there and also in Belgium. In the afternoon we took a canal cruise. It was in German and we got a brochure that told us what the buildings were, but many times the tour guide would make jokes. I felt a little left out thus I decided to laugh as well to pretend I knew.

(Don't worry I am only teasing the swans and not actually feeding them :P )

Our next stop was a small town in Belgium near Mons. This is where my parents' friends live. This is where I am currently writing this from. We have stayed for 5 days, which is quite nice not to have to move all my luggage. I have all the stuff I am moving back from Sweden, which is just crazy having to carry on the trains. We decided to send one bag back to Canada from Belgium, very nice not to carry that around anymore! From here we were able to do day trips. On our first day we visited a zoo nearby. It was very cool since all the animals are housed in ruins from an old monastery with a chateau.

This is the chateau. It has aquariums on the inside and looks very different than you would expect. It is very dark and they have put cement all around to make it appear as a cave.

This is where PETA has displays and some animals about cruelty and extinction. Interestingly they built the ship for this purpose.

We then did a day trip to Bruges. It is an old town that has a lot of old buildings still left. Here we got to try some typically Belgium stuff such as beer, chocolate and waffles. You can't go wrong in a place that specializes in these areas!! We did a tour of a brewery here as well. It was a bit different from the Carlsberg one, it was a led tour and we actually got to see where the beer used to be made and how it was done.

This is view from the top of the bell tower in one of the churches. With these steps and all the ones in the brewery we did quite a few. Of spiral staircases too! Apparently I'm not as afraid of them anymore.

The next city I saw was only for dinner. We headed to Mons. Even though we were only there for a short time we were shown all the sites and they were almost as impressive as Bruges. Lot of amazing buildings and also we saw a plaque showing that Canada had released Mons in the first war. Pretty cool. This was after a man in Bruges had told my parents that he remembered the end of the second world war with the Canada's releasing them as well.

Good luck!

Our last day trip was just yesterday in Brussels. I haven't decided if this was my favorite or not. It was very amazing though. We took a hop on hop off bus so we got to see all the popular sites. Also we wandered around town and accidently came upon the main square which is now my favorite square. Well I'm not sure if it beat the Red Square but it is up there. It was just amazing. All the buildings around it are beautiful and old.

I have no comment what is going on in this last photo. I will tell you, however, this is a very famous statue in Brussels.

Well that is all for now. I am trying super hard to be able to write shorter blogs with less pictures but it is very difficult since I have still be choosing from the same number of pictures! Well I will try to post again soon but who knows when I will get on the internet again. Sorry I haven't been on msn for a while for all those that I talked to on there. I am busy and have no computer. :( Hopefully I will talk to everyone again soon, I miss you all!!

Coming to a close...

2007-06-09T17:44:00.000+01:00

Hello,
To begin with, this post may be depressing, I will try to be happy but yeah, we will see. My time at Växjö is almost done. I leave in 4 days. I have already said bye to close friends and it is quite difficult seeing all these people leave that I have had so many great experiences with and not knowing if I can see them again. I guess the miracle of msn. Anyways, here is a little overview of what I have been up to since I posted last.

Here is a random pic of a post at the school, they paint on the events that are happening, it changes quite frequently, always impressed me that they kept up with that..

A couple weeks ago we had the VIS (Växjö International Students) organized goodbye party. At this point it still didn't feel like the end since it was still a couple weeks away from the end. It ended up just being a fun night at the student pub. Lots of memories with a slide show going of pictures taken over the semester.

We went out for dinner for the first time this week as well. Ok, I guess that is not entirely true. We have gone to pizza/kebab places and restaurants on campus, but this was the first sit down, being waited on place. It seems silly that we didn't do this before, but hey, we are cheap students. At this point we had decided we had to do it though.

We picked the restaurant solely on the name. Ok, perhaps not, but it is still funny. The food was pretty good, pretty much normal Chinese (Kinesisk) and for dessert we got deep fried banana, yum!

Hmm, I'm not sure if I have posted this on my blog yet, but around this time, maybe earlier we also got quite addicted to Scrubs, the tv show. They play it here and after enjoying many episodes we decided to download a couple seasons and watch it all the time. (Have to take in the Swedish culture. ) We impressively almost finished the second season before my Scrubs buddy left. :( (That is a sad face for my friend leaving, not for watching Scrubs, just in case that was a bit confusing.)

This week I also kind of had an issue with stairs and ended up having to take it easy for the next while, well pretty much still am. So yeah, kind of made my next few weeks a little bit dull.

This past Sunday my sister came and joined me. Very exciting!! It's nice to see someone from home and share all the interesting Swedish things I have been indulged in. We had an excellent bbq at a lake nearby...

This last one is an excellent background if I may say so myself. What is better than a sunset behind a castle?

So yeah, we have pretty much just been sight seeing stuff that I have already put on here. Also having goodbye parties..;( My parents arrive in a couple days, very exciting, then we are headed on a trip to some different European cities, I will try to keep you updated but who knows how the hostel computers will be.

Well, goodbye for now. (Ack I hate that word.)

Kimberly

Homestead, Kalmar, Glassworks!

2007-05-24T18:40:00.000+01:00

Hej Hej,

So another post from me since I went on an excellent class trip yesterday! (Well not really yesterday anymore..these posts take a while..) Part of my Swedish Film class and my Swedish Literature class is to go on this trip, not a bad deal!

Ok, so lets start on in Växjö. Being here over 5 months, you'd think I would have noticed everything now, like about general life. Apparently not. I made an excellent discovery, but first a bit of background information. So in Prince George there are cute little convenience stores called Mr G's, well Sweden has Presbyrans. Maybe they are more comparable to 7 11, whatever your fancy is. Ok, so I go there every so often to get convenient stuff, yesterday was one of those days. Usually I suppose I don't go there at 8:30 in the morning, so perhaps that is why I usually miss it, but it spelled startlingly like kanelbullar, Sweden's excellent version of the cinnamon bun. They are super good and cheap excellent. So anyways, this is what I saw.

Ovens, in a convenience store. Crazy, I thought at least. Like at home convenience store doesn't really bring the word fresh to mind. But I guess why kanelbullar are so good! Oh on another side topic I also have decided that the ICA where I normally buy my groceries (since it is so close) is not the place for vegetables. Ok, I've realized long ago that they suck from there but I like to compare the ICA to Overwaitea and lets say Willy's is like Superstore. You would think Willy's would have the crap fruit, Superstore has bad fruit for those non Canadians, but nope, Willy's has excellent fruit. Anyways, I thought I would share that, I should really start talking about the trip I guess though.

Ok, so we rode on the bus for maybe an hour and came to this homestead, very similar to Hubble Homestead, although less mosquitoes, perhaps it's too early for them. For anyone that has watched the Swedish film "The Emigrants", I know this will be lots of you ;) , it was filmed there. We heard a funny story while we were there too, the director needed an actor and saw this guy that wasn't clean shaven, perfect for the role so he told him to come the next day for filming. The guy ended up shaving and thus the director couldn't use him anymore. Pretty funny.

They bring young school groups here to learn about history. Our tour guide told us that people enjoyed this place since it was so quiet, but that day there were kids running and screaming everywhere, I guess it's not always like that.

We got to have fika, always a good time.

Downright in the picture, sentimental? If your even reading this?

Jen was very impressed that they had 2x4's in the 18th century.

This is how most of the fences are constructed around here, very cool. Apparently there is as many rocks below the ground as you can see above.

We then headed to Kalmar. It was one of the biggest cities in Sweden a couple hundred years ago. First off we headed to the museum.

This year they are celebrating Astrid Lindgren's 100th birthday, so they had a exhibit featuring her. It involved having a Pippi Longstocking's house and other fun things for kids.

They had some other exhibits too, like artifacts from a sunken ship.

Once the museum tour was finished, we got free time. By that point we were starving so we ate in a cute little cafe. Here's some pics on the way..

Some more pics of town..

It took me like ten times to actually get all our faces in this picture so I had to post it! ;)

Onto the best part..yay, castle!

Sadly we were not allowed to take pictures in the castle..so here are some pictures thanks to Paul.

Amazing woodwork on the wall panels!

We then headed back towards Växjö, next stop glassworks!

First off we got to eat a meal that was actually baked in the glass ovens. (This is what families that lived in the glassworks used to do, they also used the stoves for heat.)

We then watched the guy make a glass and got to blow the glass ourself!!! :D Very exciting.

He got us to blow it until we couldn't anymore, it was quite difficult as it cooled down. Some people were able to break the glass though by blowing so hard after it was cooled.

We then got cheesecake, yum! And got to listen to a band composing of an accordion player and guitarist. They played songs like the chicken dance song, O Christmas Tree in German, Lala Bumba and other fun ones.

After this everyone was quite exhausted so the trip back was full of people sleeping!!

Allkår Festivalen

2007-05-14T16:07:00.000+01:00

Hello All,

This week was exciting in Växjö since the whole week was the Allkår festival. Apparently it has been a tradition for 20 years, but I don't remember why. It pretty much composes of sitting outside during the day having bbq's and playing games and then some party at night.

One of the sports they had was vinbrännboll. This is similar to baseball. The batter gets to throw the ball up for themself and the field is much smaller. Apparently they have it all over Europe. The Swedish part, however, is the fact that there are tubs of wine sitting around and people just dip their cup in it to have a drink. Weird? Also, it was raining so they got self filling wine containers, excellent. Anyways, I didn't participate but it looked like a lot of fun.

A party I did go to, though, is the skumparty. Ok, I will say English, foam party. Fun fun since I've always wanted to go to one but never have. Apparently Swedish ones are even more crazy since the foam is super thick and it got waist deep! It was quite fun although my eyes did not agree the next day. Yeah, it sure took two days for my eyes to return to their normal colour, while no one else seemed to have this problem. Also my face is still peeling away. On the bright side though I felt super clean the next day and had really soft hair. Sorry, I was thinking of including pictures but ya, ask me if you want. They are just other people's pics since I didn't want to wreck my camera and bring it.

Okay, onto the big party. Grisfest!! (Pig party). They call it this because they actually have a pen with sawdust in it where people roll around and such. Quite fun!!

Here is a picture of them setting it up. For some reason I don't have many pictures that night either. Here you can see where the sawdust was, it isn't unpacked yet. Also in the background is a huge blow up obstacle course. Very fun but very tiring!! You also had to take off your shoes for it so very dirty socks that night! To the left of the picture there was a stage setup and there was a band playing all night. Then there was a huge tent set up like a disco with its own music and another tent setup as a disco which started off with Euro-vision. Like that run-on sentence? I thought you would. So it was a very fun night. It ended up raining but no one really noticed I think. Oh and I dyed my hair red for that night just because, the kind of hair dye that makes your hair crunchy, so the sawdust really stuck and I am still having issues with it. Good time. Oh and I finally cleaned up all the sawdust from my room today. Who knew you could keep so much in your clothes!

Well I think that is the end for my stories. I feel a bit disappointing since this blog is so short but I don't really have any exciting pictures. Ok I found one..

This is that night, you would have thought it would have rained.

Anyhow, that is all for now.

Kim about Lund

2007-04-29T11:37:00.000+01:00

Greetings,

Yesterday I headed off to Lund with Diana. Lund is Southwest of Växjö. Takes 2 or 3 hours to get to depending on if you start heading in the wrong direction or not. ;) It was founded in 990 so lots of old buildings. Also it has the second oldest or oldest University.

So anyways, onto the trip. We left at 9 in the morning and it was sunny and hot out, excellent! We arrived at maybe 12 in Lund or a bit before. We got there and decided to park outside this beautiful cathedral.

We paid for parking then found parking half the price down a block.

We count as social hogs right?

Just when I was wondering if any buildings would impress me here after my trip to Russia I looked down the street and..

Pretty cool.
Anyways...We decided we were hungry and headed into a cute little cafe.

After our delightful little meal...I had pasta with parma and pesto...we headed down to the exciting buildings. All the original University buildings are down in this area, although the campus is now in a different part of town.

A lot of the buildings have the vines, very pretty! The benefits of visiting in Spring/Summer!! Did I mention that fountains are also excellent?

Cool castles thingies on top.

Ok, so this is up there for my favorite churches I think. I have decided that sandstone is my favorite material. So I hope you will have a house finished of it when I get back Scott? ;) Just kidding of course!

In the church is this medieval clock which Diana's guide told us to see at 12 or 3. We headed back at 3 and it played this song that we attempted to memorize and the little people marched around. I have a video if you really want to see it. The clock is pretty cool. All the days of the year are on the white part and each shows the names for the day. Since I'm only on the new calendar I wasn't there. :( You can see what day it is since that guy is pointing to it with his stick. We could actually see it turning a tiny bit.

We then headed for the culture museum. On the way we found the city court or center.

Interesting bark, I had to look up close to check that it wasn't painted.

Yay, another fountain.

We got to the museum. It claims to be the world's second best open air museum. We though it was pretty cool. They had all these old buildings dressed up as they would have been or holding old artifacts. I have a LOT of pictures of them so I will try to cut it down. Sorry Diana, no flower pictures.

Yay, my first rune stone. Hmm, actually that is not true, but the one in Växjö isn't all that exciting.

All the houses' walls either had cloths or were painted, looked pretty cool.

I just like how the wall is built around the tree..what are you talking about, I wasn't trying to cut back on the number of pictures I'm posting. :P

Kid's playhouse, just what I had in mind when I was a child.

That's absolut on the table with the label still on it. Kind of cool relic.

Very small house! Apparently it homed a mother with 7 children and her husband left her.

Inside the walls were covered with old newspapers.

Onto another house. This one was huge, it was called a umm. I forget but we thought it might be some kind of business which included tables and beds. This picture reminds me of "The Princess Who Never Laughed". Same dress.

Cool typewriter. This is in another house, of the printing family of course. ;) It was quite large as well.

Here's another house I think. I kind of forget at this point.

Furniture show home!

I just like this.

So next we headed outside and oh look. It is raining. :( Well we decided that meant it was a good time for kebab. Once we headed outside again it was good. :) We headed to the actually University campus. It was comprised of two parts, north and south, a good pointer, go to the south, the north is all modern and unless your into that, pretty boring. But here is the south..

I wouldn't mind having this library.

Alright, so now we headed back. Here are some random driving pics for you.

Oh right and on the way we found a castle so of course we had to go!

Aww!! Look at my new friend. Ok fine, he just wanted to eat my coat, but he was awfully cute.

On the way home there was an excellent sunset. It is very hard taking a picture of it when it is on the drivers side of the car. The mission on the way home was to get one though. We even headed down a side road but then sun just hid on us..

Well I think that is all for this blog entry. Hope you enjoyed.

On the way back...

2007-04-20T14:31:00.000+01:00

So heading back we stopped in St Petersburg for another day since I guess it would be a little much on the bus if it was straight back. Once arriving in St Petersburg we got dropped off at the hotel and had free time until that night. So being in St Petersburg, exciting, nice city, oh what do I do. Lets eat. (Well I did mention the buffet was excellent.) So after that it was such a nice day we decided to walk to the fortress. The one on the smallest island, I think I told you about this before.

Fishing in town in the dirty canal.

One of the first street I saw walking on the first day..

This is my concerned face for the run down building.

We were all about showing the contrast of the nice buildings to the run down ones, I tried to take pictures of both sides of Russia.

They had these all along the streets where they were doing construction. Sometimes the boards wouldn't be nailed down and it was kind of scary. Especially since the first time we walked around was that first night when we were looking for the night club.

This is the island.

Russian style beaches. There were even some people in swim suits although it was cold out. Well like 10 degrees maybe. They were warming themselves on the stone wall which we tried, good time.

This picture honestly was just a blind shot but it was happened that I was centered under the gold thing, so I thought that was pretty cool.

That night was another optional program. A folk dance. It was super impressive. They did all the Russian dances like times ten. Ok, I don't know what that expression was trying to mean but they did all these like gymnastic (I know that is the wrong word) things.
After the show we headed out to get some Russian food since it was our last night in Russia and I sure still hadn't had any yet. We finally found a place where you.. guess.. weigh some of the food. Anyways, I'll stop thinking that is funny now. I had this beef thing that was pretty much a hamburger with no bun, it was meat with onions and tomato cooked onto it. Very good. Afterwards we headed to the hotel bar for a bit. Some guy from one of the other schools attempted to do a handstand on a table, it looked pretty cool but then he fell backwards on it and broke the table. At first the staff just kind of talked over there and then left. I left but apparently right after my friends tried to leave and they were holding everyone in since the guy wouldn't admit to breaking the table and taking responsibility for paying for it. Everyone was held there for an hour until the staff gave up. The next day they were trying to make all the students divide the cost of it. Luckily, though, the guy finally owned up to it.
That night we took the ferry back to Stockholm. I got to have chicken and scalloped potatoes, exciting, I haven't had scalloped potatoes since Canada. We yet again went to the disco and were very tired the next day on the train!! All and all it was an excellent Russian trip!! I hope you guys enjoyed my commentary and pics. Now that I am back in Växjö I can't find anything exciting to take pictures of since nothing compares!! But it sure is nice to be able to understand the language, and if not, have someone that speaks English! And did I mention how clean and beautiful Sweden is?

Moscow

2007-04-20T13:47:00.000+01:00

So lets put all of Moscow in one post. Sounds good? Good. Alright. So we arrived in Moscow very tired. The road was ridiculous. Imagine you are in a car on a dirt road with someone that has never driven on a dirt road before. Incredibly bumpy!! Apparently Russia is known for it though. So sleeping was just very very difficult. Luckily the bus had a tv so we watched a few movies. Well two. Anyways. Once arriving in Moscow we immediately did our bus tour since we thought that we hadn't spent enough time on the bus. Luckily we got to get off at lots of the sights so it was too exhausting.
Firstly and lastly we went to the Red Square, probably one of the most famous places in Russia. This is where I spent most of my time in Moscow.

They had little music boxes of this church. Very fitting since you look at it and think it should be one. I guess that would've been a good souvenir but oh well.

This wall is around the Kremlin, we got a tour around it the second day, I will talk about it in a sec.

It snowed during our tour and on the second day. Very exciting to see Moscow with both the sun and snow!!

This lake apparently inspired Swan Lake.

The university I think.

Spot that overlooks the city. (I guess that is apparent.) Newly weds come here to make a wish. We saw one couple! We actually saw a few different wedding parties while we were in Moscow, I guess they like to go to the tourist sites?

Yay, more men on horses.

This is inside the underground mall which had metal detectors at the doors that went off with almost every person but nothing happened. Really strange. We watched it for a while and saw the people react as the walked through. Good time.

This is Lenin's Mausoleum. We went through it the second day in the morning. We had to wait in line for maybe half an hour since they would only let a few people through at a time due to security. Inside it is very dark and quiet and there are lots of guards. Lenin has been preserved for 70 years but it is just amazing, he looks like he is sleeping. You aren't allowed to stop but just walk in a circle around him. Prior to entering they don't let you go in with a bag or camera and make you walk through a metal detector to enforce this.

The first night we went to the ballet! Very exciting since ballet and Moscow, you know. I wasn't sure if I would get to go to one since they didn't mention anything before it.

View from our hotel room.

McDonald's walk through, different eh?

Some protesters. I heard after getting back that a large number of people got arrested for protesting. Perhaps it's not related to this, not sure.

A fountain nearby. We decided that each of the statues are fairy tales although we could only guess one or two of them. It didn't have any water in it at first but after it snowed and that melted it had running water so we were wondering if it's only for runoff or if they pump water into it ever?

Inside the Kremlin..

There is a story about this bell but I forget. Maybe it is the biggest bell in the world? Maybe it broke before they first used it?

Lots of churches and gold as Russia always has.

We got to see the changing of the guard. That was kind of cool.

Eternal flame which wasn't guarded at night. Weird?

Lots and lots of snow. We were going to wait it out in the mall but then we got bored and decided to walk around anyways. But then it was too much so we waited it out in a cafe.

Did I mention Russia has a lot of stray dogs? They aren't violent though so it's ok.

I think this is the walking street. We looked all over for it on the second day. We found it after looking at a map though, apparently that helps. It pretty much just had a lot of stands and stores on either side. I finally bought souvenirs here. I found that it was cheaper in the stores that at the stands, odd eh? Perhaps it was just the store I was in since they were new. Here we ate at... take a wild guess.. Sbarro! lol Anyways. After eating we rushed back to the bus for another night sleeping on it to St Petersburg!

St Petersburg Day 2 and 3

2007-04-18T15:56:00.000+01:00

Hello,
I've decided to combine some days because who wants to read five million posts, or rather who wants to write them. Alright, I will still try to include lots of stuff! ;)

First off, at the hotel we got a continental breakfast and to our delight...another buffet!! This time it also included omelette's and Russian pancakes (crepes) made right in front of you. Deja vu Ramada? Well I didn't have the same company which I miss dearly. Hmm, I'm not homesick at all this week.. Anyways. So the breakfast was delightful.
First off we had a tour of the town. We saw palace after palace. Some interesting stories such as one palace that was made for a Queen, but they faced the statue of the horse away from her palace so she wouldn't live there since she could see its backside.

palace street..well one of them

I believe it was this one that was built to look like the girl the guy loved, blue eyes and gold for her hair.

I think my parking would fit right in here.. ;)

Blood Spilled Church..amazing mosaics inside and out.

Our first experience of tourist flea markets that are all over the tourist sights in St Petersburg and Moscow

Some not so traditional Matryoshka dolls

Hermitage Museum, the Royal Palace when St Petersburg was the capital. We had a few hours of free time here.

Not sure what these lions represent but there was a lot of them! Well by lots I mean like 15.
Inside the museum..amazing if it doesn't come across.

Once back at the hotel we quickly grabbed a bite to eat at the hotel restaurant and then it was time for our canal cruise!!

Waiting for us there was oranges, bananas, water, champagne and vodka.

On board entertainment!! Excellent since they not only did the cool Russian dancing, they also put on a good act of flirting with each other.

Beautiful sunset for most of it!

As we were getting off the boat there was even fireworks we could see over the canal! We headed for a nightclub. Not too much different from back home except they felt us for weapons I guess. They confiscated the orange I took from the cruise. I was a little sad about that. Oh well.

Onto day 3! This day we had another optional program. It was a tour of Catherine's Palace in Pushkin. Pushkin was actually one of Russia's most famous poets. There were quite a few landmarks of him in St Petersburg as well. After seeing the Hermitage Museum we were actually not all that impressed with this palace, horrible eh? It was actually quite impressive though. Here's some pictures.

Apparently blue is the new white for palaces.

We had to wear these around the palace, slip and slide?

After seeing this palace we headed back to town and had free time until 8 when we were on the road to Moscow!
First we went to the top of the church to get a panoramic of the city..

Also went to the subway which is the deepest in the world. It is 100m underground. We went down on the escalator for like 5 minutes. Well I don't know how long, I guess I should've timed it but it was going fast as well.

So we then met the bus again. Ready for a night of sleep on it. Ack!

St Petersburg!! :)

2007-04-16T12:39:00.000+01:00

Yay, I am finally at Russia. Well first I have to start out with the drive there. (Sorry for the disapointment.)

We had an excellent buffet breakfast at the hotel, I'm not sure if you've noticed by this point that I really like buffets? Well Canada Kim was sick of them but apparently not Europe Kim. Anyways. We had an excellent buffet that included all kinds of breakfast foods. We then started driving at 830. It was only a two and a half hour drive to the border. On the way we stopped at a Finish store and I participated in Finish Easter tradition.

They put chocolate into real eggs!! Very good. Although cracking it is a different experience since you don't really notice when you have broken it since it has something hard on the inside.

We first went through the Finish border where I got a stamp for leaving the country, yay passport stamps! We then drove for half an hour before reaching the Russian border. A bit odd? What is this place in between? Oh well. The Russian border was very exciting. We were told not to take pictures but there were the typical fuzzy hats on all the workers even though it was warm out. We all had to get out to show our visa in this warehouse like building. The people were very serious which was a bit scary since this was our first experience of it. They searched our bus to make sure no one else was hitching a ride and then to get back on the bus we needed to show our visa again. On the bus later there was another visa check and there was suppose to be another one but they let us skip it. Very paranoid!! I guess that is what happens when it is that difficult to get a visa etc.

Once in Russia we stopped at a random gas station and a guy came on the bus to exchange Rubbles. He held them in a ziplock bag which made us question their validity, I waited for a cash machine at our hotel, which, I'm glad to report now, did not charge me more than Sweden to take money out. We then drove a little more but then stopped again at a rest stop. The same guy was there but this time..

That's right, he is selling vodka, cigarettes and chocolate out of his trunk. Weird. We found out later that it was more expensive to get it out of his trunk. Also he gave the driver a thing of cigarettes as a favor, I guess, for bringing us.

On the way to St Petersburg we also stopped in this little town. I didn't know at first that it wasn't St Petersburg so I was like what the heck, this is a little too Russia for me, but ya, we just drove around it for half an hour to experience real Russia.

we actually stopped at this market on the way back

my first experience of Russian, doesn't look like a word does it?

We eventually got to St Petersburg though..

We checked into the hotel once we got there and then got free time. It was pretty much dinner time so we found a Chinese restaurant nearby, well not purposely found but it was the first restaurant we found. It was kind of similar to home, much more greasy but perhaps that was just mine. Afterwards we were going to go to a bar we heard about. After getting a taxi there (yes we had to barter the price in advance..perhaps with a black cab) we found they were trying to charge us a ridiculous amount for cover, way more than the locals and more than some of the other tourists. We walked around to find the other bars but had no luck, no one spoke English and the one that did had just been beat up at the club we wanted to go to. So eventually we gave up and got another cab. At first getting a cab seemed difficult but we went out to the main street and put up our hand and all the cars stopped and they would stop while you were bargaining too. Weird stuff. Well we finally found one that knew our hotel so we headed back and off to bed.

Russia Almost.. Helsinki

2007-04-15T19:57:00.000+01:00

Alright, onto part 2. We docked at Turku at 630am, ack early! There we took the bus to Helsinki. It was about a two hour drive, time to get to know the people on the bus! Once in Helsinki we had a tour on our bus. They showed us all the important sites..

perhaps pictures from the bus not so good?

cool church, kind of hidden outside

some modern art

our hotel room, very nice!!

We had the rest of the day to wander around on our own..

ya, not an important turtle, but why not put it on.

we lucked out since there was a choir practicing when we went in this church!

did I mention on here I love train stations in Europe? they are excellent.

another beautiful church!! we lucked out at this one as well and got to go inside, although pictures were not allowed. everything was very gold!!!

anyone need a background pic? ;)

more modern art

That night we found an excellent pizza buffet including icecream!! :) We also went to a bar called Aussie bar where the guys were..take a wild guess..from Australia, an odd combo since I heard a Finish person trying to understand their accent and it didn't go over so well, oh well. Everyone was also quite excited about the fact that our hotel had bathtubs..our res ones don't..so many people took advantage of that and the hotel sauna!

Russia Trip Beginnings: Stockholm and Ferry

2007-04-15T16:05:00.000+01:00

Hey,
So as you can see from the title I am going to break up my Russia trip since it was over nine days and that is a lot to write about!! So I will slowly progress and add more entries.

We had to get to Stockholm on our own for the trip. Susi and I decided to go 4 hours early to site see around a little, she had seen it before but not I. It was pretty amazing, as everyone had told me. Very beautiful. It helped that it was a gorgeous day.

Train station

yay, real take out Chinese containers

I dunno, everyone takes their pictures with it, apparently it is important.

we sat next to the ocean for a long time, very nice, very popular spot for the locals!

old part

view as we're departing

yay, Swedish and Finish time

so we were sure on the anchor deck, the windows were pictures of outside!

Sorry there's not a lot of writing in this one. Not too much to tell, we got on the ferry at a bit before 9. We had to meet out front at 7, however, so lots of waiting. During the day we locked up our baggage at the train station so we were weight free!! Very nice. That night on the boat we checked out the restaurant, pay by weight, excellent. We also saw this super cute bar that had all these old couples dancing, sadly I could not find a dance partner, oh well, I guess I don't know how to waltz or do the foxtrot anyways. Afterwards the disco opened and was taken over by our Russian group. There was about 150 of us I think? We tried to head to bed early since the boat docked at 630am. Helsinki might come tonight, or soon at least! ;)

Food and Korridor Crawl

2007-04-01T13:46:00.000+01:00

Hey,
So you get a new post already, very exciting. I decided since I am leaving for Russia tomorrow I should post since when I get back I will be writing just about Russia. Yes I am going to Russia for a week and a half if I somehow forgot to tell you! Scary and exciting at the same time. I will tell you about that once I go and have excellent pictures.
Ok, so this week. It was nice and relaxed since one of my courses ended and another one started up. I'm not sure if I wrote on here that the courses are consecutive rather than at the same time? Well they are if I didn't. It's good in some ways, bad in others. Just a change. The weather has been clear and hot every day, so it was a great week to relax. Very nice. This week was right after the time change (yes we do it later here than you guys I guess) so walking home from my language lesson at 7:30 is very beautiful since the sun is setting so I have a LOT of sunset pictures..

Also this week I tried Swedish fastfood. Of course they have the normal ones here such as McDonalds, but Max is huge here. Actually, interestingly enough there is a wiki article about it that is interesting, you should read it.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Hamburgers
The burger was bigger than what you get from McDonalds and very tasty. It was hmm maybe 60sek? Which is like 10 bucks which I think is the same as the McDonalds here although more than home.
This week I also got a French dinner. Very good. Sebastien, the French guy on our floor, just went home for a bit and brought all kinds of excellent things back with him.

I even ate patte which I was afraid to try before but it was quite delightful. Also bloody or just very rare meat, it is good like that I have decided though.
The day after that I went to my other French friend's birthday party. I got to eat charcuterie which I'm not really sure is in English or if we even have it in Canada. It is in sausage form but kind of like jerky, very good.
Lastly, Saturday night we decided to have a korridor dinner of taco's and some traditional Swedish food, meatballs and potatoes and then have a korridor crawl. Very good idea, we had lots of fun.

We all drew numbers to see what order we went to the rooms. I got to go first!!

Some good old fashioned whisky, I actually had never tried this kind before, but out of the four types of Canadian whisky they had there was no Crown Royale. Oh and interesting fact for you, Crown Royale is the most popular Canadian whisky in North America, apparently that is not good enough for Sweden. Anyways, my drink was gingerale and whisky, yum yum.

Next was Da Jong from South Korea. She gave us the choice of creme de cacao with milk or lime vodka with 7up.

From Diego from Spain we got whisky with some of the random juice that I accidentally bought and keep trying to get rid of.

Akane from Japan gave us sake that was over ice or frozen orange juice. A very nice way to serve liquor, I will have to remember that.

Ivan from Spain gave us jello shooters and

Lime vodka with 7up (bottom left)

Sebastien from France served Tequila Sunrise Puff (I forget the name). To take the shot you first lick cinnamon off your hand, then hit the shot on the table, take it, and then eat an orange. It was surprisingly tasty and I didn't even get horrid flashbacks of the time I ate the spoonful of cinnamon.

This is apparently in a lot of the rooms. Not mine, but I thought it was very funny. The different hooks mean me, guest, guest's guest and uninvited or a direct translation is violent guest. Very funny.

Sun Young was next with the South Korean version of sake. Most people she gave it mixed with cider but I tried it as a shot, pretty good. I felt Asian.

Alex from Sweden was next with Irish Coffee complete with whip cream. Apparently whip cream can get messy..

Oh and we have the paper in our mouth since when the Spanish people are drunk they like to do that, I don't really get it.

Lastly Susi from Germany made us vodka and coke.

All and all it was a pretty fun night so we've decided we should have more crawls since this was our first. (The other floors are on their 2nd or 3rd crawl by now.)

Name day, Culture Medley and Kronoberg

2007-03-25T20:16:00.000+01:00

Hello Everyone,
So I have had an excellent week, perhaps because the weather has been so great? Apparently today I mentioned how nice the weather was a little too many times, but that is ok. The sun just makes me so happy, especially after winter when it is dark all the time.
Alright, onto the weekly update, and no I don't purposely update every week, it just seems to happen. Ok, so I think I left off with mentioning my name day. The celebration was excellent. The cake I ended up buying..

Look delightful? They actually sell these things in Willy's for 30 crowns which I thought was a good deal. I don't think you can get them that cheap back home. They are frozen. Pretty cool. So yes, this cake was delightful and we decided we should buy cake more often and of course I think to try all the different types of cheap cakes you can buy in the freezer section. Also I was happily surprised that I got a name day present.

It was multicultural with Swedish candies (red and blue box), German chocolate (red and white kinder, apparently not related to kinder surprise) and American poptarts. Again, I didn't realize how much I missed poptarts until I had them again. It's excellent to have things from home every so often. Oh and I guess I should mention that they don't have poptarts here, she brought them with her.
Most of the week was pretty boring since I did a lot of studying for my Data Security exam that was on Saturday. I wasn't quite sure what to expect from exams here, but it ended up being alright, pretty similar to home. The time they give you is 5 hours so I was quite concerned if it ended up taking that long. It ended up taking about 3 hours so pretty close to home I think. The weird part was the room we did it in. It was huge, there was people from all classes, probably about 300 people with desks all in a nice little row.

I think they recently built it since the pub just opened this semester. I haven't been to it yet. Apparently not so great. But ya, it was very nice to get that exam done and over with so I could stop studying!! Especially since the weather was so nice and all I wanted to do was frolic in the sun.
So onto Culture Medley business. I don't think I've said anything about it on here so I will go into full detail. It is a VIS (Växjö International Student) event. 11 teams sign up and they provide a sample meal and entertainment. The Canadians wanted to participate of course. Also, kind of off topic, apparently we are the most participant Canadians they have had. Well that is what most of the locals have said, they all seem to think that there haven't been Canadians on exchange here before, which I know is false, but ya, interesting stuff. So back to the medley. We decided to prepare nanaimo bars and beaver tails. We were suppose to prepare a main course and a dessert but since we could not think of anything Canadian that would be good if it cooled off (the room it was held in had no heating devises). Anyways, eating beaver tails is kind of like breakfast right? We made the nanaimo bars on Friday so that the chocolate would harden. The beaver tails were made on Saturday so that they could be freshest.

Ok, onto the actual Culture Medley. We decorated with some famous Canadians, mostly movie stars and sports. Our embassy sent us some posters after Laura contacted them, got ignored, had to contact her aunt in Canada who told them to send us stuff. Germany on the other hand got all kinds of stuff from their embassy. Oh well. Lets not promote Canada then. At first no one was buying our stuff so we were a little worried that we would never get rid of it. But once everyone had had their main course we sold out in like half an hour. It was excellent since we could leave our table then. I also tried some excellent Greek, Mexican, Turkish, South Korean and Polish food. There were also drinks from each country, caesars are Canadian I learned, so that was ours. I tried some Spanish sangria, Polish red dog (raspberry syrup, vodka and tabasco, pretty good actually) and Swedish beer and cider of course. The countries also performed entertainment. Ours was a Celine Dion concert. Jessica wore a formal dress and we put tinfoil on a spoon. Very funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBRcmg-tmxU
(sorry it's a bit dark)
On Sunday we had an excellent day. It was International Waffle Day, I'm not sure if you guys knew. It actually started in Sweden, exciting. So everywhere was selling them.

And being the unhealthy Canadian, I got the whip cream from Diana's as well so I had a lot of unhealthy, but it was good. We then decided we needed to head out to a lake since it was beautiful weather!! Like 15 or something!
Alright, finally onto Kronoberg castle. It is actually just ruins of a castle. They took stones from it to build one of the buildings in town. It is very beautiful, however, especially when the weather was like it was. It is on a nice lake. So we lounged on the dock for a little while. Apparently I announced too many times how nice it was out and how exciting it was that a castle was so near by, but the Germans just didn't share my enthusiasm.

me excited..

them excited..do you believe them?

aww so hot, need to cool off, ok the water was quite chilly

nice lounging?

some carrot jelly to finish the day off

Karlskrona

2007-03-18T23:01:00.000+01:00

Bonjour!
Ok, I just read a French blog, I cannot help it. Alright, onto the latest developments of my life. I went to Karlskrona this weekend. It is Southeast of Växjö on the coast. Apparently I am developing quite a liking towards the sea, maybe I will have to move to Vancouver or something when I get home. Alright, but to the story. Should I start with before Karlskrona? Maybe, chronological is always better. Alright, beginning of the week it is...

This week was very nice weather wise!! I am not saying this for conversational purposes, it really was and I liked that. We had a completely blue sky for most of the days and one day the temperature actually got up to 14!! Very exciting. Here are some beautiful day pictures for you..

We had a bit of icecream..ok, perhaps it wasn't that warm but icecream is always good!

We learned that that day was the name day for the Queen of Sweden so there were a lot of flags up. I thought it was kind of odd since don't they just always have flags on flag poles, I don't know. Apparently not here.

I wasn't sure if I posted about how much they like bikes here.

Look familar to anyone?

So ya, beautiful day. Makes you want to lounge in the sun all day and not get your homework done, alas I am in school and that is not possible. Oh well, it was a nice day anyways. That night I had Swedish language class and I had heard about a water tower near campus that was pretty cool so I convinced Sarah to come along to check it out. By that point it was 7:30 and a bit dark out and since we had never been there before we had no idea how to get there. We asked our teacher during class.. Var är vatten torn? Our teacher gave us directions and promised it would only take 10minutes to get there. The directions, however, were in Swedish and since we had bad memories we kind of wandered. Luckily, on the way, we found a guy on a horse and he told us some more directions. It involved walking on a path with no lights, Sarah was a little bit frightened especially after I told her moose liked to trample people. The sky was nice and clear so we got an excellent view of the stars. After a while we finally found it glowing in the distance..

Ok, perhaps I will go back during the day for some better pictures. It's a pretty huge structure which you can go underneath and it echoes back and forth several times. Pretty darn cool, unlike what my friends had told me about it being boring. We then hurried back to campus since we were chilly and hungry! It definitely took longer than 10mins to walk there!! Oh well.

Some random pics I took..

Mail delivery..

Yay, fruit. Food is definitely my main vocabulary I know for Swedish.

Ok, onto Thursday or as we like to call it, pretend St Patrick's Day. The student pub had a celebration for it on Thursday including an Irish band or a band that played Irish music, not sure which. I was a little concerned about how good it would be in Sweden since a lot of my friends had never heard of St Pats day, I know, how could they? It ended up being excellent, though, green beer included!! :)

Alright, time for Karlskrona, I knew I had to leave it until last so you would actually read the other stuff. ;) No I am just kidding, I hope your enjoying this a little maybe, very small. Ok, anyways. I heard about the trip to there on Thursday night, that a bunch of girls were planning on renting a car. Since I had not gone anywhere for a couple weeks I thought exciting. We left at 9 on Saturday morning, it was pouring, a little concerning but we were determined. Karlskrona was built for military protection against attack from the sea. I'm not sure if it is still a Naval base today, but there are still a lot of the old buildings. You know how I like buildings. Alright. We first decided to go shopping since shops here like to close early. Most of the stores were the same as Växjö since it is about the same size, but we still felt like checking them out. We did a lot of random walking around town as well as along the harbor..

This is helpful right? Where the stores are. I thought it was pretty cool but the Germans laughed at me for taking a picture of it.

We went out to this cute island, it was super windy on the mainland, but on this island it was rediculously windy!!!

We went for fika at this point since we were quite cold from the wind. Of course we went to a coffee shop that Växjö has. Very tasty, though, I had a wrap with chicken and guacamole, yum! They had muffins that looked delightful as well, chocolate, the one in Växjö has them as well so you know where I am headed soon.

They love pussy willows here!

This is suppose to be one of the best town squares.

Weird Easter tradition?

We were wondering if this was a real museum, the guy yelled at us for coming to it, hmm, perhaps he would've liked it better if we wanted an illicit substance?

Very impressive museum although we didn't look through it, we did look through the gift shop, however and I had to restrain myself from buying something since I didn't actually go through the museum.

Went diving, alright, decided not to.

Very friendly swans, people must feed them I think. It is silly that I have a lot of pictures and videos of them?

Did I mention it was windy?

This is just in Växjö but it always makes me wonder how often those stairs are used.

Once we got back we decided to go to the sauna. Not sure if I mentioned, there is a sauna in our building, it is a required utility along with the laundry. Afterwards, we had a nice dinner of pasta with ice cream and brownie and espresso for dessert, very delightful!! And it was St Pats so of course celebrations. I forgot to wear green this day and the Pudas day, oopsy, apparently I'm not a good Irish representative.

I think that is all for now. Tomorrow is my name day so I am off to buy cake, oo. Talk to you soon.

Kimberly

Procrastinating

2007-03-11T12:13:00.000+01:00

So perhaps this post is due to the fact that I don't want to do my Swedish homework, but we'll ignore that, really I have new pictures. Since my last post Susi/my sister has come home. That night I decided to finally buy semla which I have been dying to try.

It was from ICA (the grocery store) which means it was cheaper but also apparently not the best quality, so now the mission is to have it from a cafe. ;) It was still quite good since almond paste is up there in my favorite things. The song I am listening to just said one of her favorite things, funny, anyways. Oh I was going to mention they have a lot of cakes with marzipan here!! :D They even have it in the frozen section at the grocery store. I have to buy a cake in a couple weeks since it is my name day soon. Perhaps I should put a picture of the calendar on here? Hmm, ok.

So I am the 20th in case it is hard to find. Oh and here is a picture of my plant.

Okej, I realize that picture is kind of creepy. Ignoring that, however, you will notice the plant is actually from my bouquet, the part that is still alive, we will see how long it last since I am horrible with plants as I'm sure everyone knows. Yes, it is in a pop bottle. Oh which brings up how much they like glass here. Everything seems to be in glass, nutella, peanut butter, pop etc. They just love it. I wonder why it is more common here.
Oh back to the other day though. Before Susi got back I went to a Canadian dinner where we ate poutine and hamburgers, which I didn't realize before, but I miss. Greasy food is nice to have every so often.
Ok, what else. The other night, well Thursday, we had a going away party for Taichi, a guy who used to live on our floor.

Do you like my new shirt? I actually bought three the other day. Well it was a pay for 2 get the 3rd. So official first purchase of clothes in Europe, very exciting.

So yes, fun night. What else. Oh I went to my meeting for Russia where I had to pay 555euros so I have some bills to show you..

So I was carrying quite a bit of money around the other day, a little paranoid I was going to be mugged. No, it was fine. At the Russia meeting I was a little bit nervous. I guess I should have already been nervous about Russia but he was telling us to carry around tp and not bring valuables and to not go to just any hospital if we get hurt because they may want us to stay under observation for no reason or well so they can get more money. It sounds like it should be fun though. I saw some pictures of the ferry we will be going on and it looks more like a cruise ship, I will definitely have lots of pictures of you guys soon. (I leave on April 2.)
I have some sunny Växjö pictures for you guys since it was gorgeous yesterday..

Well I think that is about it with this post. I suppose homework is needed to be done. Oh, I think some of you will enjoy my latest homework assignment for data security.. http://hackquest.de . He is going to set a certain amount of credits we need to obtain to pass the assignment. Cool eh? I mean homework is no fun. Ok anyways, bye everyone, miss you.
Kim

Göteborg Trip

2007-03-04T12:09:00.000+01:00

Hello Everyone,

Hope everyone is doing well. This past Friday and Saturday I went on a road trip to Gothenburg. Very nice place if your planning on coming up to Sweden. I went with the road trip girls...Tanja and Diana plus Sara and a friend of her's, Sabine.

We left on Friday at noon since Thursday night was Pudas night and I think most of us were up until 3 or 4. Gothenburg is about 3 or 4 hours from here and we went in Diana's car. On the way we stopped at a reststop which I thought was interesting, different than our rest stops? Free though so that was quite exciting. Apparently clean for rest stops in Europe. Also, about later on the trip, lines for washrooms are excellent here since you don't have to pay!! You just wait until the person opens it and don't let it close.

Ok, onto Gothenburg. We first got to the city and it is around a million people, so quite large. We decided to take the scenic route, we didn't get lost, really.. Oh which reminds me, is there a word or the long route? Like the roundabout way, indirect way? I don't know, apparently there is a word for everything in German and English just doesn't compare, that is what I have learned lately. Also that I should go to the toilet not the washroom. Now I have to think about my sentences!! Anyways, off topic. Here are some of the pictures I got as we drove through town, I was stunned by the magnificent buildings and how everything is made around the rocks here. Perhaps after my 10th large European city I won't get blown away by the buildings every time.

Scandinavia's largest amusement park, unfortunately closed for the winter, so I will have to head back. A lot of the activities were closed for the winter, apparently not the time for touring.

We walked up here to find the hostel to find that there was no path down on the other side. We ended up finding a way down through the church though.

This church was right near where we were staying so we saw it pretty much every time we left the hostel but every time it still amazed me. So beautiful and grand.

The hostel..my first hostel in fact, easing me into it because apparently Sweden hostels are cleaner than most as is everything in Sweden.

We took a little rest in the hostel and decided we wanted to head out to the Cultural museum. On the way to the tram..

So we took the tram to the museum and yes very exciting, surprise surprise, I have never been on a tram before. It was very exciting although very similar to a bus I suppose. Long and more like a worm. Also like every thing else in Sweden, on the trust system for paying. Don't worry, we did.

Then once we got there it started getting dark..

This last one is the museum. There were three exhibits, we found human trafficking first. I am now scarred for life. That is the scariest exhibit I have ever been to I think. So now nice safe Sweden is ruined for me, ok not really, I knew that kind of stuff happens everywhere, the presentation was done a bit too well though. They had all these videos going so you could hear all these creepy and horrible descriptions and I don't know. Hard to explain. Very sad stuff. The next exhibit actually had happy in the name so we thought it might make us feel a bit better. It was a country in South America and I think my favorite part was the end where they had all these hammocks set up in this dark room and with them talking about these myths and there were lights in the sky depicting the southern hemisphere sky, very different constellations, don't even look like constellations. There was also a fire on the tv. Very cute. In the middle they also had this foamy floor that you could lie on and look at the stars so Sara and I made up our own constellations. The last exhibit was about Africa, a lot about the slave trade and Africans in Sweden. They had a movie about Bob Marley and some other bands that started out from there with nothing.
We finished looking at the museum at 730 and we hadn't ate since our little snacks in the car and lunch right before we left, so we were all very hungry and felt like it was more like ten. We ended up finding a cafe near by and got pasta. Chicken and curry, I think that is pretty popular here. I have a similar frozen dinner that I like to buy. In the cafe we looked out the window and we saw lots and lots of people on the street. I tried to take a picture but it being dark and through glass didn't work so well. We thought at first there was a demonstration or something since they have been happening lately. We then saw though someone with a flag and someone with a jersey so I guess the hockey game had just gotten out nearby. We also heard cars honking so I guess that celebrates a win everywhere.
After dinner we decided to head back to the hostel to take a little break. We decided we wanted to go to a cafe or bar, we had heard they were open pretty late here, like 5 or something. The lady at the hostel told us a street that had a lot of pubs on them so we headed over there. After the trafficking exhibit, however, we were a little frightened. After living in Växjö we were used to hardly anyone on the street except perhaps drunk students, in Gothenburg, however, there were old men peeing on the side of the street and we even came across this guy on drugs that was bleeding and this other guy wanted to borrow our cell phone to call the police but then the other guy found out he was and was swearing and yelling so we tried to get out of there but the high guy kept following us, super creepy! Anyways, we found a pub and went inside so it was all good. The pub was pretty much the definition of a pub back home, no dance floor or anything, just lots of tables with music. We missed the hours for the kitchen so we missed food, but you know, all good.

I think I have posted in here that Swedes are shy? Well I guess drinking makes them a little more outgoing. First we got this younger guy that was very drunk. He pretty much told us his name, tried to get us to chant it and then kept repeating Göteborg, which was helpful since now I can say it, but ya, funny drunk. They we talked to these other two guys which we tried to get information about where we should site see the next day, but they kept telling us to go to a place, trying to point it out on the map and we would have to correct him to where it was. He also told us to go to the arts museum although he had never been there himself. We though that was pretty funny. We headed back at 2 since we wanted to get a full day of site seeing the next day, there was another place farther away that was suppose to be good, however, this was from the unreliable drunk. The walk home was uneventful and we were quite glad of that.

Next morning..we had to be checked out by 11, so we decided to get up at 9. I set my watch but turned it off and went back to sleep...luckily I woke up half an hour later and Sara was just about to get up. For breakfast we had the traditional jam and cheese on a bun. This is at the same time not just one or the other. This was a bit odd for all of the nationalities there. I thought it was rather delightful, the cheese taste and sweet jam. You should try it. Kind of tricky spreading jam on cheese though.
We decided to walk to the old part of the town first. Here is along the way..

Rapping or frolicking?

Ok, now into the old part. I'm not sure what year the buildings are around. I think Gothenburg was created sometime in the 1600's. There are lots of cute cafes, health stores and dogs. So I have a lot of interesting dogs to show you. Apparently it was my theme of the day. Diana had doornobs and signs, I had dogs.

We then headed up to this old military fort.

Like my stitch work? ;) Open it in full view. It was a beautiful day!!

Old part

So yes, beautiful pictures. I think this may have been my favorite part of Gothenburg. I would definitely be there often if I lived there!! Lovely lovely lovely..ok you get the point.
We then headed to the old part again to go in one of the cute little cafes. Choosing what to eat was difficult..

But I settled on a pastry that had blueberries in it. Very delightful!! I still need to try semla which is the one with the cream in the middle. Apparently it is suppose to be eaten right before lent but now they have it from Christmas to Easter. It is bread that is dug out with almond paste and whip cream. Yum yum. I'll let you know when I try one. The food I did get..

Did I mention that they always serve lattes etc in glasses? It makes a very nice appearance but I still have to do a double take every time I see it since hot drinks in glasses is so weird to me and hot on my hands.

We then walked down to the part where the castles used to be, it is encased in a mote! This is where the canal tours are.

This is actually a school.

Is it geeky that I think this is really cool?

Aww, closed :(

Indoor market.

Clocks on buildings are very popular..this is all in the same place for the record.

The drunk guy told us about this statue and actually was correct about its location. Apparently it is the King saying he wanted Göteborg to be at this spot.

This is actually called the lipstick building. I think it got nicknamed after that after it was built.

These last two are in front of the Opera house.

Me and my best friend Evert, accidentally dropped that rose he gave me by his foot.

Maritime museum, very cool, definitely going to at some point.

My new boat, everyone is invited.

Walking back to the hostel..had to hurry since they would only let us park the car there until 4 since we had checked out that day. Hurried pictures..

This is in the brick structure, you can see it in the picture before and after. It was creepy because this heat was coming from it. A lot, my glasses actually fogged up in seconds.

We decided that last night wasn't actually the bad part of town, this was. Perhaps because half of it looked in construction and the other half was covered in graffiti.

Perhaps from the demonstrations earlier in the week? There were lots of these posters on the statue. You should read up on the riots that happened in Copenhagen if you haven't heard about it. Interesting. I missed them though..

Well that is the end of Gothenburg. We arrived exactly on time due to our excellent navigators, Diana and Tanja. Time for some heading home pictures..

Oh I forgot to mention at the pub the other night someone asked if Sara and I were sisters, she is the one in the middle. Apparently whoever I'm with is my sister? So that night we decided we were and alternated being from Canada and the US.

Nice stop at cute lake as we always need to do on these road trips.

So now I have seen deer here.

After a couple more hours it was time for dinner..

I finally got Kebab which is huge here. I think it's like ordering pizza? That kind of deal. Look, I finished and yes I was super full, but I had excellent training from Scott. Don't look at these pictures Gina, really its not meat..

Well that is the end of our trip. I probably did not remember all of the stories, but you know, I will tell you them eventually. Göteborg is very beautiful and exciting though. Definitely a bigger place than Växjö which is nice to experience every so often. Hopefully you enjoyed my blog and didn't find it too long and boring. I tried to cut the pictures down, did I tell you I took 500? Well I did. It took me like 3 days to do this. Anyways. Talk to everyone soon hopefully. Miss you guys. Was rather homesick yesterday.. Ok, I'm getting to it.
Goodbye.

Return of the Pudas Dinner

2007-02-28T21:34:00.000+01:00

Hello,

Another post in how many days? I'm doing good. I thought I would post because I went to the Pudas dinner and you know how much I like it. I'm not sure if I wrote this, but I missed a couple weeks since my language class goes until 730 that day and your suppose to be there at 7. Today we decided lets just try again to see if they'll let us. Sebastien ended up asking at 7 if it was alright so we didn't feel too bad going in at 8. But anyways, tonight was Swedish meatball night!! Swedish staple food. I hadn't tried it at all since I've arrived here even though there is a lot of frozen ones etc. The meatballs were very tasty, they had a sweet gravy, kind of reminded me of the one that comes on the stuffed chicken at Cimo's. Sorry for the lighting in these pictures, I guess I should have used the flash but this is what I could see, a bit odd since it's good to see your food.

But ya, back to the meatballs, not that other people's aren't good, cough cough (that is you know I am talking about you and they are good but you know), but the meatballs taste really good, like not like meat, almost sweet and I don't know, something you just have to try I guess.
Ok, onto the dessert which was exciting as well. It was rosehip soup. Ever heard of that? I hadn't. It reminded me of when I was little and we were camping and try to make rosehip tea by boiling them. Good times. I hope you remember that Gina. Perhaps a little rock climbing and speaking foreign languages? Ok, enough random memories. The rosehip soup was very different, it tasted like rosehips which is hard to explain if you've never had them before, not sweet, just kind of umm tealike? Okay, I give up, but then the texture was thick and they put icecream in it and these sugary candies that were chewy. It was pretty enjoyable. I looked it up on the internet and it's called nypon which is everywhere in the store, so perhaps I will buy some and have it at home. If you come visit me in Sweden I will make it for you. ;) cough cough, ignore this other exchange students...ok, just kidding, I will make it for you too.

Here is some pictures of my walk today on my break at school..

Aww, home..
Oh, that reminds me. Today I took an English literacy test. I can still speak English, yay. No, the reason I took it was so the International Office could prove that Swedes can speak English as well as a person that has it as their first language, or at least that they can wave the proficiency test. I was a little nervous but all it was was seeing which sentences made sense, very easy. Afterwards I was the only Canadian that answered questions to the students that were planning on going to exchange to Canada and it was a bit weird. They asked me all these questions about universities in Ontario so I was guessing they would be like BC or Alberta ones. Finally a guy came in that was going to UNBC so I was very excited to tell him about it. Also they were asking the differences between Canada and Sweden and I suck at that question. But I think I told them the important things, they seemed to figure out on their own that Swedish university food is much better than Canadian. I forgot to tell them they would probably have to share a bathroom though, oopsy. Anyways, I guess this isn't that interesting. What else..

beach picture?

Alright, I think that is all for today. I will probably post again pretty soon since I am going to Gothenburg on Friday!! :) Hope everyone is well. I miss you. :(

Kim

Copenhagen

2007-02-26T14:58:00.000+01:00

Hello Everyone,
So as you can see from the title, I went to Copenhagen on Saturday!! :D It is a wonderful city and I recommend it to everyone!! Okay, a lot of exclamation marks in a row, I will calm down.

This trip was a little bit last minute. I found out a girl in my Swedish class was planning on it on Thursday but I wasn't really convinced until Friday and then I hadn't convinced others to go until about 20:00 so it was a bit late. I thought it would go nice and smoothly since there is an online site to buy train tickets, but guess what, it doesn't accept international credit cards even though it keeps saying it will on the site. Oh well I guess. So by that point the train station was closed so we decided we would get to the train station in the morning and hope the train tickets weren't too expensive the day of. The train left at 7:20 so it was an early morning!! We ended up getting our tickets, they were 100sek more than if we would've bought them in advance, but oh well.

This was my first trip on a train, I know, sheltered me even for Canadian standards. It wasn't quite what I expected. Apparently even the train in Harry Potter are fictional. Perhaps I will find a train with separate compartments at some point during this Europe trip.
The train was 2 hours, we had a lot of time to look at my travel book for all the landmarks we needed on our list.

The train station in Copenhagen was interesting, it had the appearance of being inside but was very cold and had some occasional birds in it. We got some cash from the ATM's there. Denmark uses Danish Kronor. It is a lot more different than the money I have seen so far.

We first headed to the information center to get some maps. In that building there was also a cafe, and being in Denmark we of course had to buy a danish..

Honestly this was the best danish I have ever had. It was delightful. It was raspberry and the filling was just, ya good, I can't explain it. After our nice little snack, we decided to split up since Derek and I wanted to do more outside touring while the others wanted to hit more museums and shopping.
We started off then walking to City Hall and then down the longest shopping street in the world, Stroget. Here are some pictures along the way.

Kind of sad Tivoli was closed for the winter, definitely hitting this place up in the summer. It's a fair.

City Hall

One with the statues.

Mary Poppins?

Stores from all over the world..ok, bad example

a little swimming

perhaps some cup girls recognize this brand?

So ya, I think the best part of Copenhagen or at least the first thing I loved about it was how old everything was and every single building was old and amazing and there are soooooo many statues. At first we were like, must take pictures of all statues but by the end we weren't bothering since there were so many. I guess all the bigger European cities are like this. We will see. Next we headed to the Carlsburg Brewery.

So part of the tour was enjoying 2 beers afterwards. They were very tasty, especially after reading the descriptions, that always makes you taste specific things. This one actually has chamomile in it and it really tastes like tea, it was a little weird. I also enjoyed the glasses, each type of beer got a different glass.

It was only 15:00 so a little early for drinking but you know, it's all good. Perhaps a meal before would've been good but there was no food places around the brewery.
So we decided after the brewery to head out to the famous little mermaid. I'm not sure how many of you know this, but the Disney movie, The Little Mermaid is actually a story written by Hans Christian Andersen who is from Denmark and I'm not sure if the statue mermaid came first or his story, but it is a big tourist spot. Here are some pictures on the way..

Some modern building just for fun.

And finally..

me and Ariel are such good friends..

There was also an army base or something near here...

Then we decided to go back since we were suppose to meet for dinner at 6. On the way back we ended up taking a double decker bus!!! A first for me so that was quite exciting.

When we met for dinner the others wanted a real restaurant, but we felt like being cheap, so we headed to McDonalds, I had to try some European McDonalds of course. Leave it to McDonalds to even have a spiral staircase. Did I mention they love that here, even the fire escapes are spiral, and kind of scary, I think I like ladders better.

Copenhagen at night..

Ya, I thought there would be more lit up buildings as well, perhaps it was because it was cold out and we didn't want to walk in it too long.

Last of all, apparently it is important to have food from street venders in Copenhagen, that is what my travel book told me. I guess I haven't seen it yet in Europe so exciting I guess. It was a bit more gourmet than at home. I had a hot dog wrapped in bacon with guacamole, ketchup, onions and some random crumbs which was a nice finish. Not sure what the crumbs were however. Added some texture though. Do I look delighted?

And alas, our bus was to leave at 21:20 so we headed for the train station. The trip back was sleepy but compared many stories with our fellow travelers. Also read a Swedish magazine which is oddly enjoyable, I think I really am getting good at the language. Well kind of.

Well I guess that is all I will share on that. This post is horribly long I know. I'm sorry, I was bad at picking which pictures to put on, I have 300 and went through 4 batteries!! So now I have decided rechargeables are good and we'll see how that goes.

Kimberly

Swimming Adventure

2007-02-18T13:01:00.000+01:00

Hey,
So yesterday I went swimming in Växjö lake. It was kind of cold. Ok, fine, I am lying. Yesterday I went to the swimming pool/adventure park, it was quite fun.

So I only have an outdoor picture of it. I went down both of these water slides, the blue one is quite fast, it ends in a straight part like some of the ones do at the West Edmonton Mall if that helps put in perspective how fast. Red is kind of boring but a longer ride. Also inside there was a climbing wall, well it was more horizontal that you needed to climb and your completely out of water and then there is a pool below that is a little over waist deep that you fall in if you can't make the next step. You get to go under a waterfall, it is quite exciting. Also there is a lazy river, it goes through a dark tunnel, kind of cool. There are these slides that are crazy. There is one that is about four people wide (I know this since four of us went down at a time) and it is almost a 90 degree angle down, pretty crazy, into a pool. Another slide is like one of those
ones that you go down with inner tubes and it has pools and then rapids into another pool. Here, however, there was no tubes, pretty crazy. So you just get pulled down the whole thing and hold on for dear life before the last one since it is crazy and you need to go down one at a time. Half this stuff we decided wouldn't be allowed in Canada because of safety standards. Like there are all these attached pools everywhere but one is higher than the other so the water falls in and your suppose to side on the wall then fall into the next pool. I think it would suck if the place was busy, but it had a good amount of people in it so it was good. Also there was a pool outside, well connected to the inside pools. You could get out on the edge though, so that was fun. It was maybe 0 degrees outside, so nice. Also they had a hot tub, it was interesting since it needed to clean every ten minutes so you had to get out for that. The jets in it were also super strong, almost painful on the back. They had little inputs of cold water as well which was a new experience. They were like on the bottom where you were sitting and where your feet were. Odd. So ya, lots of fun activities, I will probably head back there since it was lots of fun. Oh also, one of the big culture shocks which I guess I should have expected. When you think European you think..well yes, naked. In the change room when there is like one crazy old lady in Canada walking around, that is everyone here apparently. They don't even have any stalls that you could dress in. Just everyone is naked getting dressed, showering, in the sauna. I almost felt guilty going in the sauna with my bathing suit on. So ya, I am at a record about the number of naked ladies I have seen in one place, weird but ya. At least I was with other Canadians that also thought it was weird so I am not that crazy. I think that is it for my swimming experience, we walked to campus after and look at this beautiful sky..

Oh and today I woke to see this out my window..

Bike in a tree, good time. Perhaps you don't need to lock it if you put it high enough.

Here are some random pictures that I have recently got from other cameras..

Pudas site..hmm..there are actually lots of me this week so you should look.

Oskarhamn trip

(early morning)

Anyways, I think that is it for this one. Hope everyone is well. Time to do some Swedish homework so I will leave you with..

Varför älskar du mig inte? lol k, jk!! But some emails would be nice.

Byebye.

Happy Valentines Day!!

2007-02-15T00:46:00.000+01:00

/*disclaimer- those celebrating National Singles Awareness Day or just plain don't like sappy you might want to skip this post, I'll try not to be mushy but you know..and yes I'm commenting this in*/

Hello!!!
So I am in an insanely happy mood!! When I got home from my language class today..

Very exciting to have flowers on your doorstep!! So I was very surprised since when I talked to Scott last he acted like he didn't know my address, so I really thought I wasn't going to get any mail period let alone flowers. And yes I am hiding behind the flowers in this picture. So I was super impressed being in another country, Scott sent me flowers!! :D Apparently it was quite difficult however. The places that say they deliver flowers everywhere don't. But after several international phone calls to hotels etc he was able to find a flower place. Perhaps that story is better heard from him. Anyways, I was super excited to get them. Apparently everyone else on my korridor was also very excited. They arrived while I was still at school so they put them in front of my door and everyone that came home saw them and waited for me to get home to see my reaction. So there was an oddly large amount of people in the kitchen when I got home looking at me expectantly. Anyways, very exciting. Since I could not find a vase that could support them here is their current state..

Perhaps I will find a vase tomorrow? We'll see what these stores have around here. I actually saw some very nice glass vases yesterday, but this is the only picture I have to show for it..

That's right, Jen and I went to the city museum. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside though. I guess that is normal. We saw a hell of a lot of glass stuff, most of it dating between 1800 and 2007. It was pretty cool. Then there was this special exhibit for Linné who is this famous scientist that created the way we organize species and such, I'm sure you've heard of him. Anyways, there's huge celebrations for him right now because it would have been his 300th birthday or something. The exhibit was oddly random, they were all labeled with numbers and had odd stuff like, which noise causes you the most chaos or sort the cutlery and then when you close the drawer it falls and becomes disorganized but it went up to 150. We didn't do it properly but it was interesting but then they were closed so we didn't quite finish, we'll probably go back.

Anyways, back to today, I had my Swedish class and I don't know if I told you pronunciation sucks? I don't remember having this much difficulty with it with French, perhaps French is more similar though. Swedish is like German and some of the letters are just totally random in how you say them and sometimes they sound like normal but sometimes you have to make a hucking noise or spitting. Anyways, I will try hard so I can talk to you guys in Swedish when I get back. Perhaps it will be like my version of 99 red balloons. ;)

After I got back and saw my lovely flowers I went to Pudas with Susi since it was dinner night. My class, however, went until 7:30 and so I got back at 8 and with all the excitement I probably didn't get there until quarter after so when we got there it looked kind of dead and they were like, you know it starts at 7 right? Luckily however, they still gave us some and it was excellent!!! It was Flying Jakob which is apparently a Swedish thing but it sounds familar. It had chicken and bacon in a creamy sauce casserole with rice and they gave us banana's and peanuts to mix in which was quite delightful. Odd with the texture and the coldness of the bananas but good. Then for dessert we got fruit salad with ice cream, I suddenly am a huge fan of ice cream, not that I didn't like it before but now when I eat it it is like heaven. Perhaps because I don't have it in my freezer? I always think about buying it but then I am like, it's winter. Ok, here's pictures of both, the Flying Jakob looks kind of creepy since I only remembered halfway through eating it to take a picture..

So maybe it all looks kind of weird, but it was very good. I also tried the conventional drink here. I don't know if it's Swedish or European or if it's weird that I haven't had it before but it's Fanta, this orange pop, pretty good. Tastes like orange pop. lol Anyways.

I know I have babbled randomly and lots in this one, so sorry for making you read through it!! Summarization paragraph, umm I got flowers, Scott is great, I ate food. Oh and went to the museum. I'm sure there was other things I wanted to tell you but oh well. How much can you put in one blog.

KC

Third Ocean!!

2007-02-11T14:11:00.000+01:00

Hello Everyone,
So as you can see from my title I saw my third ocean today, well if a sea counts as an ocean.. Yesterday I went on a road trip with three Germans, we headed east. Here is the route we took, sorry for my horrible mouse skills.

We started our trip at about 8:30 on Saturday morning. Here are some exciting road signs along the way...here we are headed to Oskarshamn.

The distance was about 100km, I just took this long to take my camera out.

Exciting roundabout sign..

Yay, we are in Oskarhamn. This is the harbor. We then headed to a campsite, well luckily came upon one so we could go closer to the ocean(Baltic Sea).

I'd never been to the ocean in winter before, at least that I remembered so it was very exciting with the water and snow and ice!!

I was also very excited to see that they had mini golf!! :) As well as there is mini golf just down from where I live so I am so going to go!!

Aww, snowy gazebo..

On the one side you just saw the pictures of the open ocean, this side has a nice little bay I guess people swim in when it is summer. Excellent, a beach. I almost had to pull Susi away from swimming in it..ok, that is a lie.

Also in the back your can see a cool diving board thing, too bad we couldn't go on it, dock was too slippery.

We then headed back into town to see if we could go on a ferry to an island nearby.

Tourist place was closed however.
Once we headed back to the harbor, we found the ferries only ran in the summer, so when you cannot go on a ferry...

..eat some pizza. This last picture is the view from the place we ate at. I had Hawaii pizza here, yes they do call it that here too. It was ridiculously big, like a large pizza at home, but, being the champion I am, I ate it all!! Also the crust was smaller and less topping so I guess I'm not that impressive. When we were done the guy that worked there came by to collect our plates and he said something in Swedish, so I said the pizza was good, a good response I thought, thinking that usually waiters ask how the food was. But then when he asked Susi the same thing she said she was from Germany and that I was from Canada. So apparently I need to learn some Swedish so that I don't confuse the locals too much or look too silly.
After eating we walked around the town a bit.

I quite enjoyed this. Especially the fact that it is in English.
The town was cute but not the most exciting thing, so we decide to get back on the road and look at some cute little fishing villages..first..

This boat is adorable!! Too stereotypical.

And this is what we think of Sweden so far.

So I realize this sign is perhaps a bit unreadable. This next town is... ok, I forget what it is called, maybe I will update it later. Anyways, it had a lot of inhabitants.

A kind of cool sled thing. Although I don't think that dog is rated for that.

And finally, we started heading back..some coffee on the way.

A beautiful sky to drive back with.

And reclining seats in the back, excellent!

Alright, onto last night. A guy on my floor from Spain made sangria, so I was very excited!

I learned some excellent drinking games last night such as having to have a symbol and then doing other people's symbol but you have to do it to a rhythm, I think we have this one back home? Also we did one where three people drink and the other person has to guess which person just took the shot and which ones just had water. (The drinkers don't know in advance which drink they have.) Lastly we played quarters or perhaps they call it ore here? I actually got the coin in the glass several times, I was very proud of myself.

Well I think that is all I have to tell you guys right now. Hopefully I will get some more to post on here soon.

Kimberly

Castle Reception

2007-02-07T22:12:00.000+01:00

Hey Everyone!!
So today I went to a reception in a real castle! Well actually I don't know if it counts as real since it was made in the 1900's but you know, it was pretty cool. We first listened to a presentation about the city of Växjö, then looked around the tour and had a snack. The castle and the land that the university is on was apparently sold in the 1960's to the city for 1SEK. Crazy!! I wish I was there to buy it!!lol Apparently doing the upkeep is rather expensive and I suppose having almost free university, but you know. They also rent out the castle or just a room in the castle if you want, but it is like 200 dollars a night. But ya, I guess nice hotels are that much. Anyways, here's some pictures I made.

Beautifully painted ceiling, reminds me of another painted ceiling that got painted over but is now being restored...

They love their spiral staircases here, even in the new buildings!! And I think I've already mentioned this but oh dear they can be dangerous in bars.

How romantic, me with a candle and flowers..okay, maybe just plain creepy.

We got bagels with bree cheese and veggies plus veggies with dip and coffee or juice. It was very tasty and more like dinner than the snack they told us it would be which is good! Oh and also I went to a restaurant on campus today for lunch, it was excellent. We had fish that was battered with this cheesy broccoli filling, excellent!! With shredded carrots of course, they love that there. Anyways, now I am done!!