Gotland, the Viking land

This past weekend about 25 kids from the program all went to Gotland, and island in the baltic sea that was origionally an independant viking state, but since 1361 has been under Swedish, German and Danish rule. Its now owned by Sweden.
It was gorgeous there; we were (obviously, its an island) right by the water, the architecture was amazing and the weather was SO NICE.

 

Friday we had a walking tour of Visby, the largest city, where we were staying.

A beautiful old church with only half a roof

By the water near the hotel

Gorgeous vine-covered building

Friday night we went to a club on the island called "Karma" and for a long time the 10 or so of us from the program that went were the only ones there, but we had fun dancing. 

Lili and I climbing a big rock (I'm at the bottom)

Saturday we took a bus tour of the entire island where we saw some viking burials, and some really cool big rocks by the sea that you could climb on (see pictures).

My friends Dru and Zoe

After our tour we had a "viking feast." When we got there they made us put on these burlap shirt/dress/sack things with different colored collars that divided us into 4 teams. Then we did viking crafts like make chains out of copper wire and yarn out of sheep's wool. Then we played viking sports like archery, axe throwing, and tug of war.
Finally we had the feast, which we ate on wooden blocks instead of plates with only our hands. They had vegetables with oil and spices and a giant lamb on a stick that had cooked over the fire (I didnt eat the lamb, but the vegetables were good!) After we ate we had our final competition. One member from each team went up (2 teams at a time) and sat on a log 3 feet in the air with mattresses under it and hit the other person with a burlap sack/ pillow until someone fell off. Of course, I wanted to play for my team. I won the first round, but lost the second. Regardless, it was fun.

Ginny and I fighting to the death

our viking dinner

The next day we had some free time to walk around so a couple of us went to these botanical gardens near the hotel. It was very pretty. Then we went to an ice cream shop with 100 different flavors! Soooo good. I had one scoop of "lion" which was caramel and chocolate and one scoop of Daim, which is my favorite candy here (its like Heath bars).

All in all it was a fantastic trip! Next on the table? Leaving on Friday for Paris/Nantes/Amsterdam!!

My friend Grace smelling a flower in the garden

In the garden

Election

This post has nothing to do with what I've been up to, but its an important thing happening in Sweden...

This past Sunday was the general election in Sweden (they have one every 4 years). The right-wing coalition (The Alliance- made up of the Moderate Party, the Centre Party, the Liberal People's Party, and the Christian Democrats ), which was in power last term and led by Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, technically won, in that they recieved the most senate seats (173 out of 349), although they did not get a majority.
The liberal colaition (The Red-Greens- made up of the Social Democrats, the Left Party and the Green party) got 156 seats in the senate.

The other twenty seats went to the ultra-conservative Sweden Democrats, who strongly oppose immigration and gay rights issues, such as adoption rights for homosexual couples. The party also has Nazi roots and their policies are still overtly racist. This is the first time the Swedish Democrats have made it into the parliament, and all the Swedish people I have talked to find their presence pretty frightening.

The upside is, now the Alliance is attempting to cooperate with the Green Party in order to gain a majority. As of now, the Green Party is opposed to collaboration, because of the Moderate Party's lack of attention to the environment. My globalization professor was saying, however, that if the Moderates offer to implement serious environmental policy in return for allegiance, maybe they will change their mind....

One thing that is interesting, that I was talking to my host family about, is that socially, all parties (except the Sweden Democrats) are liberal. Gay marriage is legal here, most parties are in favor of equal rights for homosexual couples (adoption is a hot issue right now), and they are all pro-choice. Most of the debate comes down to issues of taxes and social services.

It is cool to be here at an important political time. Seeing the ways Swedish politics contrast with American politics is really interesting.

Helsinki

This past weekend my friends Kat, Dru, Charlotte, Natalie and I went to Helsinki, Finland. We flew there, got in around 8pm and checked into our first Hostel, which was in the Olympic Stadium (not on the field, just in the building).
After that we (with the help of a young couple we met at the tram stop) figured out how to get downtown via tram and stopped at a bar called "Bar Llamas", because it seemed to be very popular. So there we were, 5 American girls from Stockholm drinking tequilla-beer in a Mexican-themed bar in Helsinki. A fitting first night in a city that is about as strange as the previous sentence.

The next day we walked around a little, went to a market by the water (where we spent a lot of time trying on fur coats, hats, earmuffs, etc), saw the "Buddy Bears" art exhibit in the Senate Square, and eventually made our way to a public sauna (saunas were invented in Finland and still very popular), where we paid 7 euro and went upstairs to the women's floor for a sauna and cold shower (some of the saunas have pools that you swim in after, but this one just had a shower room).

Then we went to the island Sumolina (a 20 min. ferry ride from Helsinki), which is known for the Suomenlinna Sea Fortress, where we were staying in a hostel for the night. We had some pizza at a bar/restaurant on the island then bought beer and candy at the store and hung out in our room (which had 6 beds, but no one was staying in the last one, so we had it to ourselves), because it was raining and the island was pretty quiet at night.

The next morning we explored the fortress, which was beautiful and by far the best part of Helsinki. Then we went back to the mainland and shopped (I bought a really nice wool coat with an epic hood), had a long lunch, browsed the design district (mostly the Marimekko store), and had a long fika before getting on the 45 minute plane ride back to Stockholm. By Sunday night it was good to be Stock-home.

All in all, Helsinki was very strange, but cool. It was apparent in the design of the city that Finland has been under both Russian and Swedish control over the past few hundred years. It was much more industrial-looking than Sweden. It was raining the whole weekend, on and off, but it seemed appropriate for the city. I'm glad I got a chance to go somewhere that is different than most of western Europe (not to say that I'm not excited for my upcoming trips to Paris, Nantes, Amsterdam, Rome and Copenhagen though...)

Our hostel in the stadium

A statue/garden in the center of the city

The Buddy Bears outside the Parliament Building

Our hostel in Suominlinna

Me, Charlotte, Dru and Kat sitting on a hill at the top of the fortress

Uppsala

Yesterday we went to this culture festival in Uppsala, which is a smaller city an hour north of Stockholm. We took the train there, which was fun. When we got there we ate lunch at a restaurant that my friend Kat's guidebook to scandinavia recommended, called Eko. It was part restaurant part art gallery and they just so happened to be having an art opening Saturday (we think)! Regardless of what the event was, they gave us free champaign with our gourmet veggie burgers. Sweet. Then we walked around the city and saw various performances (music, street, dance, etc). We saw a pink castle and a beautiful park and Linnaeus' garden (the swedish scientist who developed binomial nomenclature), which was very pretty. The fesitval we were at was called Kulturnatten (culture night), but we were too tired to stay for the night, so we left around 9pm.

Linnaeus' Garden

Uppsala from the hill

part of the pink castle

a street in Uppsala- very nice architecture

In other news, today the host family and I went lingonberry picking in the forstest (cliché Swedish, i know) with another family they are friends with. In Sweden they have this law that as long as you can't see anyone's house or property, all land is public and you can hike/pick berries/ camp wherever you want, which is really cool. We collected SO many berries that we had to clean when we got home.

Also, I went to Gym & Sim (gym & swim in english), where Cajsa has a membership and signed up so I can work out/swim there. Its a very nice gym. The man who signed me up only charged me 970 SEK for 3 months (about $140), which is about 500 SEK less than what it was supposed to cost. Im hoping no one notices...

Absolut Icebar

Last night some of my friends and I went to the Absolut Icebar, which is a bar made entirely of ice in the Nordic Hotel in downtown Stockholm. You make a reservation for 45 minutes and when you get there they give you a cloak and a drink in a glass made of ice. It was kind of silly, not like a real bar you'd hang out in, but a fun experience. 

In other news... I just booked a flight to Helsinki with a few friends for next weekend! 

My friends Hanna and Ginny at the bar

Me and my friend Kat in our cloaks

The bar (ALL ICE) and the decorations on the ice behind it

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Björnåsa

This weekend we went to Björnåsa, the Marcelius' (my host family's) summer home in the northern part of the archipelago. We parked the car on the mainland and took a boat over to the island the house is on (just a 5 minute boat ride). It is beautiful out there! And in typical swedish style, the first thing we did when we got their was fika (coffee/pastry break) on their deck overlooking the water.

After fika Cajsa taught me how to make swedish äppelpaj,  (I'm going to let you guess what that one means), with apples from their tree. Then we hunted for chanterelles (kantareller) to cook for dinner (turns out I am a good forager! I found like 10 mushrooms at least). After that we went on a walk through the woods to the other side of the island, where we skipped rocks ("throw sandwiches" in Swedish?) and I taught Theodore and Oliver how to whistle with grass. They loved that.

After dinner we played "Fotboll" on the grass by the water just as the sun was setting. Mats (the dad) and I lost to Theodore and Oliver.

This morning we picked more apples and plums from their trees so Cajsa could make apple sauce and plum marmalade. Then I attempted to waterski in the Baltic Sea, but my muscles did not agree with the 57 degree F water, so it did not work out well. Cajsa was able to wakeboard though! Then we played another game of Fotball and went home.

Once we were home I helped Cajsa make the apple sauce and marmalade, which was surprisingly easy. Then she and I went on a 5k run through the forests by their house. There are marked jogging paths with 5 different distances (each one has different colored arrows showing you the way).

We got home to a fully prepared meal of lobster, crab, shrimp, bread with cheese, and of course, plums.

All in all it was a fabulously quaint and swedish weekend.

Archipelago

 

 

On Wednesday our program took a boat to the Stockholm Archipelago (lots of small islands in the Baltic Sea). We stopped on the island of Sandhamn for lunch and had time to walk around a little. It was spectacularly quaint. We found a beautiful church on the top of a hill (see picture above) and an adorable self-serve cafe/bakery (see picture above- "sandhamns bageriet") where they had jars of cookies, a basket of pastries and coffee/tea all next to a jar for money and a sign that said they were only open on the weekends, but that you could help yourself to anything and just leave the suggested price in the jar. Swedes are much more honest, and consequently trustworthy, than the average American...

We ate delicious salmon for lunch (on the program's tab!)  at the hotel on the island, which was gorgeous (big red house in picture above). Then we walked around a little and ended up back at the bageriet for a fika (coffee/pastry break- very popular in swedish culture), before getting on the boat to go back to Stockholm. 

Later that night we went to the University's "pub night", which we thought would be lame, but actually had a 40 minute line to get in and was packed! Mostly international students, but it was fun. We all danced and had a great time. 

After the pub I took the bus home to Brottby (about 40 minutes outside the city), where I am living. That did not go as planned, due to an ill-timed nap on the bus and a 2am call to my host dad for a ride home from the bus stop in the middle of nowhere that I got off at. But we laugh about it now.

Today we are going to my family's "summer home," also in the archipelago. There was talk of waterskiing, but it is about 54 degrees right now, so I'm not sure I'll be up for that...