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...