Life in Lund: November 2013

Time continues to fly here in Lund, as the weather gets MUCH colder and the days get shorter. The sun begins to set around 3:45pm now and on average temperatures are between 35-45ºF (3-9ºC). It does make it a lot less appealing to go outside, but I've still been going on lots of walks with my roommates and for the occasional run. I keep meaning to invest in a real running shirt here but everything is so expensive. The sunsets have been very beautiful, despite being ridiculously early.

Luckily, the cold weather does provide an excuse to go sit in the cathedral for awhile, where it's always warm. Kate and I had a nice talk in the cathedral on Wednesday - it's crazy to reflect on the first time we sat there and talked (the very first week). Back then we were talking about how scared we had been to come to Lund and how we were glad to have each other as fellow introverts. This time we talked about how scared we were to go home and how hard it's going to be to adjust to all of us not being together. We also talked about how remarkable it is how close we all are as a group and how we truly do feel like family now.

"Hey Jaim"

Love her :)

A picture from the night of the Welcome Party - the first or second week in Lund

That day I also had lunch at Malmö Nation, which is worth mentioning because it was super delicious. We had soup with cod, garlic bread and chocolate pudding. I walked there with Linde (I'm learning to appreciate walking again - you do definitely see more than you would on a bike) and it was mostly Dutch people at the lunch, but they spoke English so I could understand most of the time.

Wednesday night, we had a girls night at Herkules. The night was pretty hilarious and resulted in some ridiculous pictures (that probably don't need to appear here), tape on my dress from a friend handing it out that said "Det er for vildt" or "It's crazy" and a late night snack of eggs on toast, of course. Thursday was fun as well - we went to the penthouse in Lunds Nation, this time with some of the boys. The nation was a bit empty, but it was still a fun night with lots of dancing..

We also had a sushi night this week - there is a sushi place about a 5 minute walk from my house and I had been restraining myself from splurging the entire time I've been in Lund. Our dinner involved romantic candles (naturally) and a side dish of teriyaki brussel sprouts made by Regina. It was magnificent.

SO GOOD

I'm realizing that a lot of my blog this week revolves around food/drink, likely because I haven't traveled and it has been too cold to do much of anything. Anyways, Regina, Alice and I decided to try "Glögg" or mulled wine, which is traditional for Swedish people to drink around Christmastime. It smelled fantastic, but tasted horrifically sweet. We heated it up, which didn't help much so I ended up just choking it down. Glad I tried it, now I don't particularly want to drink it again :)

One of the two kinds we got from the System Bolaget

Also notable: I finally opened the Ben & Jerry's that I splurged on about a month ago. It was SO delicious. Regina should be proud since she made fun of me for saving it so long.

Saturday night was our Spoletorp Family Sittning. We decided, somewhat on a whim, that we should all go to a sittning together. I was glad, since I missed the first sittning that everyone went to. Renate organised the dinner with Malmö Nation and we decided on a theme of "Retro Night." I basically ended up wearing Alice's closet (with the addition of Linde's jean jacket). There are the most pictures of the three of us because we were the most dressed up. We had a little preparty upstairs, then biked to a fancy dinner.

The dinner was delicious - I only took a picture of the first course (asparagus), but there was also chicken, carrots and potatoes. Dessert was a really thick chocolate mousse - wonderful.

Kate's binoculars

We had a middle party back in Spoletorp - so the nation could get the club set up where our sittning had been.

Linde...

The club was really fun as well! We all danced a lot and though the coat check at the end was a bit traumatic, it was still a great night.

Sunday morning we went to brunch (Linde's first time!) and then Linde and I went to a tour of the cathedral. To be honest, I spaced out for a lot of it and only got about 50% of what the tour guide said, but it was nice to be in the cathedral to sort through my thoughts. I felt better when we walked out after I asked Linde "did you like the tour?" Her response was "yeah, I didn't really listen to any of it." I'm still glad we went and it was a nice walk back in the sun.

A few small life updates before I write about our trip this weekend:

Earlier last week it was decided that we needed to have a girls night/slumber party. This basically consisted of "Beauty and the Geek Australien", candles, chocolate/pastries (thank you Sigrid), apple crisp, an air mattress in the middle of the living room, wine, cuddling, and yelling at any boys who entered the room (sorry Anubhav).

Cuddling :)

Regina and I also made a particularly good dinner this week. Brussel Sprouts with teriyaki glaze, asparagus wrapped in prociutto and quinoa made with chicken stock. Delicious.

I've still been getting out to run occasionally - last week I didn't feel like running at all but I went out anyways and ended up making it 5 miles (a little over 8km). The weather was actually really nice, but my feet/legs got covered in mud from running in the park. I need to get some proper running gear so I can keep going outside even when it gets freezing!

This weekend was our family trip to Stockholm. Twelve of us went in total: me, Alice, Linde, Lucia, Anubhav, Simon, Matthias, Sigrid, Izaskun, and Peter. We all woke up on 5am on Friday to catch the train (luckily we live 5 minutes from the station). We had all booked the train tickets at different times so we were scattered throughout the cabin - I sat with Linde and we ended up sleeping most of the way. I tried to look out the window for some of the ride, but that just made me train-sick, so I ended up going back to sleep. The train ride ended up going really quickly.

We got into Stockholm around 10am and trekked up to the hostel. Everyone was a little sleepy, but we made it to Skanstulls Hostel and dropped off our bags, then headed out to walk around. One of the first things we did was go up on a big walkway above the city. There were a bunch of stairs leading up to it and a really posh restaurant below, with an amazing view of the city. It was a bit gray out, but the view was still breathtaking. We hung out there for a bit, then headed out to explore the Old Town a bit.

Kate wrote this up on the walkway :)

Our token selfie, but missing Regina :(

The walkway

Along the way, we found tons of beautiful architecture and the narrowest street in Sweden (90 cm), called Mårten Trotzigs Gränd. We took a group picture there, but it's on someone else's camera :) it was a claustrophobic's nightmare, especially with 11 of us trying to walk through. Fika is always a must in Sweden, so we stopped at a cozy little place somewhere in Stockholm. It was a great little cafe with a cool wall of rock in the back. There was a table big enough to fit all of us and we huddled around to warm up and drink coffee/hot chocolate/chai. Anubhav has always made fun of the chai we drink here, since it's not proper chai from India, but he tried mine and surprisingly liked it. Some of the boys got hot chocolate with marshmallows and that was delicious as well.

Not a great picture, but you can see the wall of the cafe

Francesco looking like a model

Kate enjoying the wonderful Christmas decorations :)

So cute :)

Mårten Trotzigs Gränd

After lots of walking, we stopped at a restaurant that had been recommended by Renate. It had a deal from 4-7 of a nacho buffet with the purchase of a drink for 40 krona. The nachos were DELICIOUS and we all kept going back for more.

This past week, I had a small accident. I was running downstairs to grab something from my room and I was wearing my fuzzy (and extremely slippery socks). Somehow I managed - while holding the hand rail even) to slip on the stairs, fall flat on my back and slide all the way down a landing. I'm sure it would have been hilarious to see, but I was grateful there was no one else there (although Alice said she had heard a thump from her room and thought someone had dropped something upstairs - just me dropping my whole body...). I pretty much immediately had a gnarly bruise on my bum the size of a baseball, despite my icing and use of the various tips Regina gave me for treating bruises. Unfortunately, I had messed up my tailbone a bit too, so by the end of Friday - after sitting for 5 hours, then walking the entire day - I was in a lot of pain. Linde gave me some pain reliever at dinner which helped a bit, and on Saturday my back felt much better. I need to stop being so accident prone here.

Full and happy from our delicious nacho dinner, we headed back to the hostel. Our hostel was wonderful - the decorations were great, it was super clean and it just had a happy feeling. 8 of us were in one room, three in the other (Kate, Linde and Francesco) and Peter was staying in a different hostel since he had decided to go much later. We all had a little rest, then hung out in the kitchen/sitting area of the hostel for a long time just hanging out. Eventually we tried to find a bar/club, but we ended up at one where most of the people were 30+ and the music was very mediocre. It was still a fun time and involved singing "Single Ladies," which the boys definitely loved.

The next morning, all of us (minus Simon and Anubhav) woke up early to go on the free walking tour of Stockholm. Alice and Sigrid had been out much later than we had the night before, because they had gone to a club with some other girls in our hostel. The weather was UNBELIEVABLE - blue skies and hardly cold at all - much better weather than we had in Lund. We took the metro to the central station and met up with the tour. One of the first stops on the tour was Queen Street, an extremely busy shopping street in Stockholm.

Our tour guide was saying something about how the Queen of Sweden might have actually been a man, when I looked over and saw Alice lying on the ground. I guess she had felt really dizzy, turned to Kate and tried to say "I'm going to pass out." Kate had kind of broken her fall (luckily, since the ground was hard concrete), but she still bumped her head on the ground. If you look in the picture above (taken right before we stopped), we were right under the Christmas lights on the far left side. Alice tried to get up too quickly and passed out again. We all panicked a bit, since her eyes looked really scary and she was deathly pale. Kate said we should call an ambulance, but we realized after a minute that she was fine, just disoriented.

The tour left without us (not a loss at all - the tour guide did not seem as entertaining as the one in Copenhagen had been) and Alice still didn't feel up to getting up. We all sat in a circle around her on the pavement in the middle of this extremely crowded street and fed her whatever sugary things we had. Eventually we all walked to the metro station (we had only made it about 7 minutes away) and went back the hostel. We made sure Alice was okay in bed, then a group of us headed out to wander around some more.

We walked through a lot of random streets, and eventually ended up at a design museum. The museum itself wasn't too exciting - it was pretty small - but the view from the roof was beautiful.

Kate enjoying Christmas decorations again :)

After the museum, we walked to a metro stop, where we boarded an old tram. It took us across a bridge to an island called Djurgården, where there were tons of museums. As we were riding the tram, we went by a bench and saw Linde, Alice, Simon and Anubhav sitting on a bench waving off in the distance.

Lucia :)

Peter :)

We got off the tram and met up with the others, then we all walked the short distance to the Vasa Museum. The Vasa Museum is a maritime museum that houses the only almost totally intact 17th century ship ever salvaged - a warship called Vasa that sank about two hours into its first voyage in 1628 (thanks wikipedia for helping with the details I forgot). It was really cool - the ship was GIGANTIC and there were a lot of models and skeletons of people who had died on the ship.

What some of the people who died on the ship may have looked like

It's supposedly the most visited museum in Scandinavia and I could see why.

Francesco had to catch a train back home (since he was off to Spain the next day), so we all walked with him to the station and had a little fika. Alice and I both had delicious chocolate muffins and everyone else got pastries that looked wonderful as well.

The walk back to the hostel was a bit long, but Stockholm is really nice at night (or what felt like night - it got dark at 3:30 while we were there so the actual day time was pretty short). We hung out in the kitchen for a bit, then started making a huge pasta dinner for everyone with the free pasta provided by the hostel.

This entire pot (plus another) were almost completely full of pasta - there was hardly room for water

Oops.

The hostel's sitting room/kitchen

Our dinner of pasta and vegetables was delicious, and we all started drinking a bit with the intention of going out. We were all so tired that we never ended up leaving the hostel, but it was such a wonderful night. It's amazing how well such a large group of people get along. I do think we overwhelmed pretty much anyone that came into the kitchen because we were such a huge group. Once it got later, some of us went to bed and the rest took turns choosing songs to play and just talking. Linde braided my hair so it was over my head (oktoberfest style, without it clipped on top) and Simon had a photoshoot of my ridiculous hair with Kate's phone. We held conversations that consisted primarily of "Tak for kaffe," "Gangster rap made me do it," "Echt?," "Nej," "Stay hood, stay street," "Ja," etc. It was pretty much just a typical Spoletorp family night.

Kate's creation on the table :)

We all had a nice breakfast together the next morning, then set off into the city again.

We found some awesome hats along the way...Kate :)

The sun was so low and it made everything just stunning

One group of us went to walk around the city a bit, and Alice, Izas and I headed to the ABBA Museum on the island.

ABBA MUSEUM!

The three of us were so ridiculously excited the entire time

The sign says "The piano in this studio is self playing; it's connected to Benny's studio at Skeppshomen, so when Benny starts playing you will be able to listen.

The museum was super interactive - we got to record songs in a recording booth (we sang incredibly loudly unlike everyone else in the booths - it was a BLAST)

We also all got to dance up on stage as the "fifth member" of ABBA with holograms of them. I don't have any pictures, but we also got to make "music videos" with a green screen. The recordings are all stored online - they're hysterical.

Their original costumes from when they won Eurovision

The walk back was absolutely breathtaking.

We met up with the rest of the group again and we all walked to a restaurant called Vapiano's (recommended by Sigrid) for a nice dinner. The food was incredible - a bunch of us ended up ordering the same thing without even talking about it. I went to get water at one point and when I was walking back I saw everyone sitting around the table and just felt so happy. I think it's rare to find so many people that I really genuinely enjoy spending time with.

It was time to leave after dinner, so we took the metro back to the train station with all of our bags. The train ride back was boring at first - I had a seat next to a guy I didn't know. Alice, Regina and I were messaging me and Alice sent a message that said "Nobody wants to sit next to me. Come hang out with me #lonely." I went up to where she was sitting (a couple rows up) and we spent the rest of the train ride sending Regina snapchats and recordings of us singing ABBA music. I'm pretty sure the entire train car could hear us singing.