Julia goes Stockholm: September 2012

Alright, so now I just need to dedicate this post to the nature of Sweden! And maybe to its people aswell. As you might have noticed we're being quite active here, with lots of hiking or other stuff outside the city, in the nature. Just this last weekend, on Saturday, I went to the half island Gålö with a small group. We actually were planning on doing the big tour of 12 km, but after about 8 km we arrived at a camping place, got some ice cream and decided to take the next bus from there – and that was a pretty good idea, since once we sat on the bus it started raining. But back to the topic, the nature. This hiking trip I just mentioned was of course not the only beautiful nature I have seen here, but it was certainly quite extraordinary! That half island (it's actually just attached to the main land by a very small piece) is pretty much split in the middle my a wall of rocks. On the way there we went on one side, on the way back on the other side of the rocks. And we thought we were on a different island! There were basically three kinds of landscapes on that small piece of land. On the one side there were conifers, some dry moss and some blueberry bushes quite low on the ground. On the top of the rocks (there was some serious climbing needed to get up there, at least compared to what you find around Hanover ;)) there were also blueberry bushes, a little less trees and lots of rock surface. But once we got on the other side, there was a beautiful broad-leaved forest (closer to the rocks more of a mixed forest), with lots of soft, bright green moss on the gound, more of a boggish ground (at least closer to the water) and fern. (I hope all those botanical words are translated correctly, I had to look up most of them ;)). So, there were these three different landcapes, all within a few hundred meters (have a look at a map, Gålö is quite long but narrow!) Anyways, it was amazing! I cannot say it often enough… Another thing I like is that Sweden is just covered with nature reserves/parks. There they try to leave everything just as it is. That means, that most paths are just paths because every once in a while people walk along. So it's quite common that the way is not always well-maintained or even artificial and you need to climb up rocks or over trees that fell down since those are not taken away either. This actually made me be happy for the hiking shoes I got ;) One time we even had to walk through the sea since there was no other way around. I am pretty amazed by that, I mean just imagine, a piece (actually quite a lot of pieces) of untouched nature this close to the capital! Until now we could reach everything with our public transport ticket to Stockholm (which makes those trips quite cheap aswell). Alright, I guess I babbled enough, now I'll show you a few pictures, even though they can never show the real beauty of it all… So you'll just have to get over here and look at it yourself ;) Oh and btw I finally put up some cloud-pictures as promised and some of them are from the Gålö-Trip aswell (which are of course part of the nature aswell – and that makes it even more amazing :))

Wow! There is so much going on here, and even though my last post was only one week ago I have so much to tell!

A little over a week ago on Saturday we had our final exam for "Swedish 1". I have no clue whether it went good or not – I'll find out some time this week ;) After the exam we went to the Triathlon taking place in Stockholm that weekend. That was awesome! First the "Elite Men" started. We saw the start and the swimming right at the water, since we were there early and got good spots ;) After that we went to another part of the course and saw them biking and running past us a few times – quite amazing what they were doing there! But I found the "Elite Women" a lot more impressing, since Lisa Nordén was part of it. She is the swedish woman who almost won the Triathlon in the Olympic Games this year! (For those of you who did not see it – about 100 meters before the finish line she was quite a bit behind the swiss woman and in the end Lisa had caught up so that they crossed the finish line exactly at the same time! The time for Lisa said +0.00 and even the picture was not really clear, but the swiss won and Lisa got second.) So now, here in Stockholm, they both started again. And Lisa won – she reached the finish line about 5 seconds before the second – a woman from the netherlands I think. That was a really special experience, since all the swedes cheered for Lisa each time she went by and when she took the swedish flag with her for the last meters everyone just went crazy, the atmosphere was amazing!! A few impressions:

After the triathlon we then all went home to get something to eat, change, get ready, whatever. Well, for me the change- and getting-ready-part was kind of cancelled since I live a little away from the centre and only had about half an hour, which I used to eat :D Afterwards we met at the central station (T-Centralen is where all the metros (tunnelbana) meet) and went to Lappis, which is a big student housing complex where a lot of international students live. There we had the cider we had bought that afternoon, but it was not really great… I guess I still need to find the right one for me ;) They're always either too sweet or somewhat sour and wierd… Afterwards we went to Östermalm, that's a quarter with lots of fancy clubs and bars. They have a system here where you have to register on a "guest list" if you're under 23 and then you can get in and don't have to pay (as long as you're there early). Well, that did not quite work for us and since we were such a big group they didn't let most of us in – the guy who checked the IDs and guestlist told us, we weren't on the guestlist, even though we were… Oh well, we wandered around a little and in the end me and three friends ended up just getting something to drink and icecream (cookie dough, yummi!) at the 7-eleven (stores where you can get food that are open until late but are of course not the cheapest) and eating it in front of an outside bar, enjoying their music without the entrance fee ;) Personally I did not really like Östermalm, at least for partying, it seemed way too fancy and snobby for me – Södermalm seems to be a looooot better (later more about that).

The next day, on sunday, 3 of us went to the national park "Tyresta" south of Stockholm. The good thing was, we got there with out public transport tickets and it was really beautiful there! The bad thing was, that we got completely wet…^^ But we had lots of fun and will definately go there again, with more time and better weather ;)

On monday and tuesday I finally got to see some more of Stockholm itself, especially the old town "Gamla Stan". It's really beautiful, with lots of old houses, small streets, cafés and small stores.

Then we also walked through Södermalm, the part of Stockholm south of Gamla Stan. I fell in love with it right away! It is more the alternative, multicultural, cool part, maybe a little comparable to Linden, the part of Hanover I live in. In Södermalm are a lot of pubs and bars and second-hand-stores and all those cool things :) Definately found my favourite part of Stockholm! Later that week we went to a pub there and it was pretty nice – felt like home ;)

On tuesday there was a pub crawl on campus. Here there is one big student union and then all the facultys have their own little pubs that had open that night (usually they have open only one night per week). It was fun, but I was a little disappointed by the music since it was just the stuff you always hear in clubs… Oh well, but it was fun and one time, while we watched the swedish people dance some freaky dance one guy came to us and said something in swedish – when he realized that we didn't understand a word he said "Oh, sorry, I thought you were swedish!" YAY! :D

Well it's not all just fun and free time here, the tuesday night was not that late though, since I had my first classes on wednesday… All day! First there was a lecture from 9 till 12 and in the afternoon a workshop from 13-17, where we had to solve a really complex problem right away… We'll see how that goes. And then I finally managed to be enrolled in the right swedish class, since they did not manage to read my second email… But now it's all good.

And then there's another nice thing the swedes do. They have something called "After Work". That's pretty much a club, but only on weekdays and from like 16 – 22. And the people really party the whole time and at 10 they just turn off the music and go home. I like that ;) And on Friday we went to such a party at a club called "Trädgården". That was awesome! It's outside, under a huge bridge, and for those of you from Hanover, kind of like Faust and Heinz and Glocke, all together (just without the good music ;)). They even sold Club Mate, which I have never seen here before!! Aaaah that was nice :)

On saturday then two other girls and me went to a café called "String" in Södermalm which has a really good breakfast buffet! They had pancakes and eggs and everything you wish for at a breakfast buffet ;) But not only the food was good, the café itself was pretty cool aswell! The whole furniture seemed to be second hand (or even older) and nothing matched. I like :)

And yesterday, Sunday, I finally got to see the Archipelago (swedish: Skärgården, the many smaller and bigger island at the coast of Stockholm and other parts of Sweden). We went on the island Utö, which is about 11 km long and 3,5 km wide. We went there by train and ferry and then rented bikes to tour the island. They had bikes with gears or without, which were cheaper, so we asked the guy whether the ones without are okay and whether there are many hills where you might want to have gears and he said no, the ones without are totally fine for the island… Well, shortly after we left we regrettet not having paid 2€ more… But oh well, the ride was nice anyways and the island is pretty :) I love swedens nature! In the end we returned the bikes at the lower end of a second island, Ålö, wich is connected to Utö by a bridge, and went back from there after we had a "fika" at a little fisher's hut. A perfect swedish trip :)