Thursday, December 30, 2010

Stockholm, Sweden.



Stockholm, Sweden.

I got about… 3 or 4 hours of sleep. Left Triolo with Rosalind, who is also beginning a journey today, at 5:45am. Luckily, I bought my ticket for the train to Tournai on Tuesday, because I made it to the platform and hopped onto the train just two minutes before it left the Lille-Flandres station. In fact, I decided to travel with a ticket of Lille to Tournai (just over the Belgian border) and then a slot on the Go 10 pass from Tournai to Charleroi-Sud. It cost me a total of 5,40. Deal! Way better than direct Lille->Charleroi –Sud ticket for €22. The problem with trying to make my 9:30am flight was that my earliest possible arrival at the Brussels Charleroi Airport (a large Ryanair hub) was 8:20am. Not a lot of time to check a bag and get through security. Luckily, I made it and my flight was actually late leaving. I couldn’t sleep, but did indeed manage to start drifting during the 90 minute coach/bus ride into Stockholm from the airport. When I got here, I was fairly lost. I had completely run out of time to plan my maneuvers outside of booking plane tickets and hostel beds. I wandered, backtracked, and eventually gound my hostel. It’s about 10x’s better than the one where I stayed in London. Quick let a few people know I was alive via the hostel’s wireless and my iTouch, and then decided to wander down to the National Museum. The museum was small, but nice all the same. On the walk down, I discovered some beautiful buildings and sights. (Pictures to come once I’ve returned!) Perhaps more importantly, while walking, I realized it had been about 10 hours since I’d eaten 2 bananas for breakfast, so I was on the search for a place to eat when lo! I saw a stand selling hot dog things. My heart lept! I gasped in excitement! TUNNBRÖDSRULLE!!

Yes. Tunnbrödsrulle. Anthony Bourdain featured the food on his show and I knew when I came here, I would have to try it. :D If you don’t know, tunnbrödsrulle (which they had translated to ‘flatbread’ in English) contains:

A hot dog

Mashed potatoes

Shrimp salad

Mustard

Ketchup…

And it’s all wrapped up in a tortilla (I guess that’s where they get the ‘flatbread’.)

In all, it may not have been the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten, but it was much more than tolerable! I would certainly eat it again.

After leaving the museum, I spent some more time wandering and taking photos. I’ve wound up here in Wayne’s Coffee, drinking the hugest mug of tea I’ve ever seen. Coincidentally, the man and woman who sat next to me on the flight have also made it here.. And presently, there are about 7 Swedish women doing some sweet cross-stitching and talking on the other side of me..

My plan is to stay here a bit longer before I meander back towards the hostel. Then I’ll type these up and post them, mplan the things I want to accplish tomorrow, and go to sleep.

But first, to give you a better idea of this place…

6 Things I Have Learned About Stockholm in Approximately 6 Hours:

1. It snows a lot.

2. It is dark very early (by 3:30?)

3. There is an H&M on every corner. (Really.)

4. Everyone speaks English.

5. Even if someone isn’t speaking English, it sometimes sounds far, far too similar to a British accent for my comfort..

6. There is a McDonald’s on every corner. (Still valid, but not as prevalent as H&M.)

Further experiences in Stockholm:

Upon my return to the hostel, I discovered that I couldn’t figure out how to access the internet on the computers in the lobby, so my updates will have to come somepoint after the fact.

I decided to take a quick cup of tea (the hostel provides free coffee and tea!) and met this Australian named Nick. (Actually, we only discussed names about 40 minutes into our conversation.) He’s super nice, if every quick to share tales of his drunken experiences. We were sitting next to three friends from Perth who were doing some extensive traveling. They played chess the whole night and talked with us too. I don’t remember all the subjects that we discussed, but Nick is now fully aware of the Platform 9 and ¾ in King’s Cross (he’s been living in London for 5 months) and told me he’d definitely be going there. Job well done on spreading the Harry Potter gospel, Self!

I ended up not sleeping until after 1 and still hadn’t made any real plans. Woke up until way late and said hello to the 3 Australians (once more playing chess…) and Nick while I had tea for breakfast. I made my way down to Gamla Stan and walked around, enjoying the lights and cute shops. I bought myself some earrings and went into a “Taco Bar” for lunch. It wasn’t great, but it was fairly cheap. 38SEK is about 3,80 Euro is about 4.50 dollars. Kept walking and caught Riddarsholmen out of the corner of my eye. Wandered around the island taking photos and then headed off to the Modernamuseet. I paid 80SEK for a ticket to the museum and the Arkitekturmuseet was free between 4 and 6! I spent an hour or so in the modern art museum. It was okay, really. I guess I’m just not a “modern art” person. You know, pieces that look like someone threw paint at a canvas and decided it was groundbreaking.. Some was cool, and the Dali piece was bizarre, and I, for some reason, like Matisse. The Architecture Museum had a cool temporary exhibit of gingerbread houses constructed by Stockholmians (I think), and a really neat collection of models of buildings around the world and of Stockholm. Afterwards, I walked over to Gamla Stan again with the goal of seeing the gigantic Christmas tree up close. Goal accomplished. It was decorated with some huuuuge ornaments and apparently real gingerbread men! Also, it turns out that the Stenbeck Tree (as it’s called, for the guy who suggested Stockholm make it a tradition) isn’t actually a real tree, but instead there are a bunch of trees that “donate” their best, fullest, greenest branches to the cause of the “biggest and most beautiful Christmas tree”. I left and walked to the Royal Palace and the church next to it. I certainly plan on going back tomorrow to see if I can go inside the palace and church. So far, I’ve been going places at the wrong hours.

:)

So. It’s 5:35am; I’m once more in Skavsta Airport. It’s also Sunday morning. My plans didn’t go exactly.. according to plan (harhar.) Honestly, the last thing I have written in my notebook is a big, green smile that I drew, I suppose, as a recap of yesterday (see: Friday). I will try to explain further atthis point.

Ahem. So, while in the hostel drinking tea and pouring my adventures onto the paper via my sweet Union Jack pen from London, the TV in the kitchen/common area was on with some music. A guy was changing the channel occasionally, and at some point, he asked if I was interested in watching something. I explained that I didn’t mind at all since I was writing. He asked if I was writing about my trip to Stockholm. I said yes and told him about my blog. This turned into 3 hours of conversation between us and no more recapping my day’s discoveries. And I don’t mind at all. :)

Tom is from a small town close to Hamburg, but speaks flawless English, certainly helped by is year spent as a highschool exchange student in Florida. He mispronounced “alibi” but I think that’s the only mistake I noticed. We spent a good deal of time talking about traveling, schools, America.. And that’s the only remembering my mind can do at the moment.

In any case, when we became tired, we exchanged names and emails to stay in touch and suggested possibly seeing each other the next day to walk around and maybe get to some museums.

Back in my still empty (!) room, I got ready for bed and looked through my maps a bit, planning to hit the us terminal to check departure times for the airport, get to the royal palace, stop in souvenir shops on the way home, try to get some sleep between 5pm and 1am when I would need to check out. If I saw Tom, maybe we could do something together as well. Simple. Sleep. (And good sleep. I had a legitimate mattress and pillow and extra cushiony mattress pad thing! Way,way, WAY better than those terrible 2 inch foam pads they call a bed in Triolo..)

Saturday morning, I very reluctantly got out of bed and gathered my things for the day. As I had tea and watched an incredibly varied selection of music videos on the TV (including Fatboy Slim’s “Praise You” and J. Lo’s “If You Had My Love”) I ran into Tom and we made the decision to go out together for shopping and some museums. First stops were some stores: one with a collection of ties so fascinating and creative that I wished I were a suit-wearing business man; one with tons of Halloween costumes, gag gifts and overall bizarre items that reminded me of Spenser’s in the USA; 2 design/furniture/stuff stores that were cool but far too expensive for me. We also stopped in a mall where, rather than going into stores to search for Christmas presents, we instead had gingerbread flavored gelato. SO. WORTH. IT.

We went to the Dansmuseet (for free!). It was fairly interesting to be honest. The exhibit included paintings and sculptures of dancers, costumes from performances, and a neat video showcasing a lot of different styles of dance, complete with a scene from Bride and Prejudice! We found an indoor food/farmer’s market and managed some free samples of Chocolate, then went to the Kungliga Biblioteket (aka: the Royal library), but quickly departed so we could make it to the East Asia Museum to see the Terracotta Army! Unfortunately, it cost about 15 euro to get in and neither of us were looking to spend that much. We did enter the permanent exhibits on China, which included loads of pottery and a nice little section on the history of bookmaking. On our way home, I bought some postcards, a cute moose figure thing, and my Swedish flag!

Back in the hostel, we had some dinner and spent the evening watching more (mainly terrible) music videos and talking with Nick the Australian. Once more, I’m at a loss to recount the subjects we discussed, but we did sit around together for hours. By 10:45pm, we snapped a quick photo (one I’ll hopefully receive from Tom very soon!), said our goodnights/goodbyes, and I went to nap for just about 2 hours before repacking, checking out, drinking more tea, reading Harry Potter et le Prisonnier d’Azkaban, freezing on my way to the bus station, drifting asleep on the bus ride to the airport, waking up abruptly to a screaming child upon my arrival at the airport, and now putting my pen and notebook away to get my flight!






Recapitulation.

16/12/2010.



So. Exhausted.

Really. I totally haven’t updated in a serious manner in what seems like forever. It’s simply been go, go, go to finish the end of fall semester. Let’s talk academics for a hot second:

I had 6 exams: DEFI French, Persian, Arabic, Thème (French to English translation), Tandem conversation/interview and History of the English language. All are done, all have (hopefully) been passed..

Right, so, my last exam was yesterday morning at 8:30. It wasn’t awful, but I’ve been having trouble falling asleep, so it was terrible getting up to take it.

Immediately after, I found Clémence (she offered to give me a sleeping bag for when Katie visits!) and then Laura and Georgie. We came back to Triolo (their very first trip here!) and met Raashnie and Rosalind for a nice, homemade brunch. Rosalind had those pancakes down, Raashnie’s reheated canned Auchan brand corned beef (no hash) was sooo god, and my scrambled eggs were, of course, beyond the tastebud imagination of anyone. We chatted and laughed and someone may have been a bit teary with goodbyes… Overall, lovely. I went back to my room so I could finish doing my laundry and then pack up a box to send home for Christmas! After about an hour, I was out the door, to the post office, the metro to Marbrerie and then arriving Chez Georgie/Laura/Katie. Some more ‘goodbyes’ or at least ‘see you soons!’. Home several hours later, I began packing for my traveling adventure, but was soon distracted by skype with Rutvi and Hetal…

Shortly thereafter, Christine and Sarah stopped by ma chambre for saying goodbye as well. And, though very sad to see Christine go home and Sarah go to Jordan, as we reiterated several times: it’s not like we won’t talk to each other all the time via facebook/skype anyway… I eventually finished packing and fell asleep around 1.

BUT before I continue my first update from abroad (well, you know, abroad from my home abroad…) I’d like to throw some other happenings in here:

On December 7th, Laura, Brian, and I went to the Orchestra National de Lille for an evening of Berlioz. Seriously amazing. It was honestly the first time I’d really opened myself back up to music/performance and the results were a bit emotional and painful. Its all okay, though, and hopefully I’ll soon be in the possession of a cheap 50 acoustic guitar to feed my need for the myoooozak.

I had a beyond enjoyable evening with Rosalind, Christiane, Raashnie, too much wine, and too many potato chips. Speaking of, there are some wild flavors of them here in France:

Bolognaise, barbecue, original, rotisserie chicken, salt and vinegar, three cheese, smoked ham, paprika, kebab… (I’m sure there are others as well, but these are the ones I made note of..)

I’ve recently watched a lot of movies instead of doing homework/studying. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkbana, Leap Year (trash), When Harry Met Sally (soooo good I watched it three times in about two weeks!)

Sarah FINALLY uploaded photos from our day trip to Calais, so I’ll make a post of them/update the old post when I return home. Maybe those backlogged videos about London too. But only when I’m home. Because I am gone. Woo!

Here’s the plan:

Dec. 16-19 Stockholm, Sweden

Dec. 19-21 Tallinn, Estonia

Dec. 21-24 Helsinki, Finland

Dec. 24-28 Manchester, England (with the Harmsworths!)

And so, as it is indeed 7:30pm on the 16th, let us get to what I’ve done (and learned) thus far (about 14 hours into my adventure…)

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Examens.

Les examensssssssssss.

It's funny, because even with all those "s"s I wrote, the French wouldn't pronounce it anyway, harharharhar.

But really.

Exams. Exams this week.


Intensive French, Persian, and Arabic tomorrow.
Translation and an oral exam/interview for my conversation course on Tuesday.
History of the English language on Wednesday.


And then, mes chers amis, it's off to Stockholm, Tallinn, Helsinki, and Manchester until around the 28th(???). More about that later. And by later, I mean "after my exams" and "after I've packed" and "after I've booked places to stay in Tallinn and Helsinki".


And a post about all the hilarious things I've been doing will surely come before I leave as well. I hope.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

In Bruges. 4/12/10.

What a fitting title.
We were in Bruges, Belgium for the day on Saturday, and I must admit, it was certainly an experience...

Could not for the life of me get to sleep the night before, and woke up a bit later than anticipated, left my passport** in my drawer with all my important documents, realized this before we got to the metro but decided not to go back** in order to arrive on time at Gare Lille-Flandres, where we acted like super tourists and took a group photo before departure...


Hopped onto the train, all was well. Our fine regional train started chugging along, but had not made it more than 5 minutes before an emergency alarm sounded and we came to a stop on the tracks. It was a bit scary, and Georgie was not pleased at all. After sitting around for 10 minutes sans un mot from anyone with authority, we finally began moving again. Several more minutes passed, and the alarm went off again. Turns out some crazy and possibly drunk man on the train desperately wanted to get off, so he kept pulling the alarm to get the conductor's attention? Bizarre. Otherwise, a fairly pleasant journey, until we were told we'd have to make a connection in Kortrijk in order to continue on to Bruges. Fine, fine, we all exited at Kortrijk upon arrival at the station, went down below the rails and were stepping onto the escalator to come back up to the top at our new platform and........ the escalator malfunctions. Turns into stairs. Completely stops moving. Well, not completely, seeing as it MOVED BACKWARDS. And considering I was on the very first step that comes out of the floor (Yeah, you know what I mean, I'd like you to try to explain it...), it RETRACTED. Disappeared! Went back and disappeared into the floor again. So what did I do? I fell. There was a collective scream from everyone. Laura touched a man's butt. Christine stepped on me. We were all in hysterics (a combination of laughter and tears and panic, but mainly laughter) for several minutes afterwards. My knee is fairly bruised, but at least my tights didn't rip. (I was a bit underdressed for the snowy weather, but I had been out of clean socks, so I've been wearing my wool socks over tights in my rain boots for the past few days...) In any case, I'd sworn off escalators for the rest of the trip.

(Aforementioned hysterics.)


Next train was bumpy, but we spent our time conversing and all was well, and we arrived in Bruges without more problems. We wandered into the town and lunched in a little place with big, yummy portions of spaghetti (which was a bit silly, considering I eat a fair bit of pasta on a weekly basis anyway..) Jovial times.

(She looks so good in Iowa garbbb!)

From there, we entered the city and explored the Christmas Market located right in the main square and a bit of the town.


Headed off to the CHOCOLATE MUSEUM, which was kind of frustrating and too packed, but I bought the most absolutely delicious chocolate creation I have ever tasted:
chocolate over speculoos cream.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

(Chocolate demonstration!)

(Speculoos flavor! Let's see what's inside!)
(SPECULOOS CREAM? SHOCK. SURPRISE. HEAVEN.)
Went to the French Fry Museum (more interesting to me, but small and quick and without a free sample :(.)

(HAPPY AS A POTATO.)(Hope this doesn't bring any bad memories back, Jeremiah..)

From there, we mainly meandered some more. Found the most perfect little shop to buy specialty teas and teapots and kettles and it was just lovely! Bought some Belgian chocolates (all already have been consumed...). Wanted to buy more Belgian chocolates.

We decided to have a beer and chat until we had to get back to the station for our train, so we did so, just as the weather took a turn for the nasty. Upon arrival at the Bruges train station, we learned that our scheduled train wasn't even running, so we'd have to wait an extra hour and go through Kortrijk again. Not good news, especially as Jeremiah wasn't feeling so great. But we made it through, enjoyed our day together in the snow in quaint Bruges, and were home by 11pm.


(Please note Georgie and one-legged me in the background...)(No idea what the point of us posing was...)

(An almost successful photo...)
**Passport/not returning to get it and bring it with me:
There's this thing in Europe called the "Schengen Agreement". It covers a large part of Western Europe and allows for free travel between other Schengen States (read: sans passport). Thus, despite having traveled across the border between France and Belgium, the Schengen Agreement renders them effectively "borderless" and passport/ID checks are really rare. Luckily for me, really.

Friday, December 3, 2010

La neige, mais encore malade.





We've gotten a bit of snow here, and apparently French people don't believe in clearing the sidewalks. It seems that there are random bits of sidewalk that ARE cleared, and I can't for the life of me find a pattern to it. Whatever. I haven't taken any photos really, so I'll just steal some from my friends:




(Thanks, Rosalind!)
I mean, I guess there's more than that now, but I'm too lazy to take some. Maybe eventually.

We have a Christmas market, too! I barely took any photos of it though, so more apologies for
the lack of excitement in this post. The market itself is super awesome. 80 little wooden stall things selling food, drinks, christmas ornaments, hats, scarves, glasswork, blahblahblah. Neat. NEAT, I said.







I've been sick this week and it's awful. I'm terrible at being sick, just whiny and complainy and lazy and sleepy and cranky and everything unpleasant in the world. Well, almost everything.

Luckily, I'm loads better today, and it's a wonderful thing because...

Demain: Bruges. :D

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Thanksgiving, Shmanksgiving

Bonjour à tous et à toutes.

It’s Saturday, the evening of November 27th. I was sitting around in my room, eating spoonfuls of soup out of my pot like the classy person I am and decided I should try and update my happy little blog.

My school week has passed quite eventfully; I skipped my intensive French course, my teacher for my extra practice English stuff for Persian, Arabic was terrible, I received a 15/20 on my History of the French language course and have no more work to turn in for the rest of the semester, we were able to discuss some clothing vocabulary in translation, and I skipped my History of English class.

… I tried to leave my spoon in the pot, and it slid into the soup. Awesome. Good to know that prim and proper France has done nothing to help my eating skills/table manners, BUT I DIGRESS.

Katie, Laura, and Georgie were kind enough to host about 20 people for a Thanksgiving dinner at their place. We had turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, corn casserole, green bean casserole, stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, rolls, peas and carrots, a tomato-y salad thing, cider, and even deliciouuuuus homemade pumpkin and apple pies.


Mmm. What did I contribute?

Paper plates, cups, and napkins of course!


(Georgie, overcome with happiness upon my arrival.)

:)))

(Preparation/waiting mode.)(There's always a photo with Christine at every event..)
(Making myself the highlight of a few quality photos...)


(Gathered 'round, enjoying company and food.)

In all, I think everyone enjoyed the evening, and Stephanie, our German friend, was absolutely beside herself with happiness and a newfound love for America/Thanksgiving. I came back home and skyped everyone at my house for Thanksgiving. It was good to (kind of, very blurrily) a bunch of relatives and to hear about things at home and tell them about the goings-on of my life.

Oh, and it snowed on my walk home from Thanksgiving Dinner.

Last night, I joined Rosalind, Magda, and Christiane for a little trip out to Les Trois Brasseurs. It was a very pleasant evening, and Christiane and I walked through the big set up of Lille’s Christmas Market on the way home. There are pictures, but I’ve plans to return tomorrow, during the day, and so will make an update with photos of that at a later date.

Today, Rosalind and I ventured to this fabulous café called “Café Livre”. Rosalind believes the lady who works the bar is the owner, and you can rent books or buy books from the café as well. The two of us did some homework but not as much as we were planning, especially when Georgie walked in with her mother! So we stopped to chat with them, her lovely mother treated us to some little cake and pie slices, and then we ended up leaving without having accomplished all we would have hoped. I’ve been trying to study since being back in my room, just ate dinner, and am already looking forward to a hot chocolate study break with Rosalind..

Tomorrow will hold more studying, possibly at another café so I can get out of my room and not succumb to distractions and a trip to the Christmas Market (mainly because I think I’ll be doing a short presentation about it for my intensive French class on Monday…)

And here, a photo to show you why I need to leave my room in order to accomplish things:

So content to just sit here and do nothing productive. ^_^