En månad i Sverige

Today marks exactly one month since I arrived on Swedish soil. In that month I have been in four countries, gained a new home and Swedish fam, broken a world record, learned preliminary Svenska (Swedish), fasted until Swedish sunset hours for Ramadan, met so many diverse and interesting people from all over the world, tried foods I've never heard of and been consistently and mostly pleasantly surprised by Swedish culture. It doesn't feel like a month at all. A month sounds so short; it seems like that clear, summer day when Marc and Ulla drove me to their home in Stockholm was years ago.

In my first weeks I explored Lund, the very nearby (one or two stops by train) and bigger city Malmö, and the somewhat farther (still less than an hour by train) Köpenhamn (Copenhagen), capital of Denmark.

Sparta, my studentrum (dormitory)

Sunday Sparta Dinners

The Great Beyond: The countryside is just a bike ride away, and everyone bikes in Lund.

Even lowering your camera a few feet to the forest floor changes what you see dramatically. A new world reveals itself.

Climbed cherry tree. Could not climb high enough to pick cherries.

Perhaps a little too excited at the prospect of "nature", my inner thief pushed her way out and convinced me to steal some turnips from a nearby farm. I was also a negative influence on Kristina, tsk tsk. They are in fact rutabagas (Swedish turnips) and tasted delicious.

Good evening...tonight's menu is the House Wienerschnitzel (Viennese breaded veal), Mashed Potatoes and Turnips in Cream, and Beet Spinach salad...usually it's just grilled cheese or noodles.

By the first weekend after school had started, it was decided to go visit Denmark. Köpenhamn is about a 30-40 minute train ride away, but in that short ride you've crossed a sea and entered a different landscape, culture and language.

The crown jewels in Rosenborg Slot

We climbed this tower

Kristiania...what American tourist visit to Denmark is complete without it?

There, little liberal Californian me bought...you guessed it...earrings! (Although I look tired enough to be high)

We finished the night with a) dinner b) a supposed music producer named "Kindergarden" who came up to us and filmed us all shouting his name into the night and c) fireworks over Tivoli garden.

Funny how traveling and living abroad incidentally bonds you with people more tightly in a day than if you had tried over the course of months. This is a point that living in International House in UCSD last year (where half the students are Americans and the other half exchange students) hinted at, but now as I live and travel myself, I experience for myself and not vicariously. It has proved true in many moments and countries.

Next entry, more Swedish cities, concerts, world records, Köpenhamn part 2, Swedish language classes, Berlin, and the best part of every single place: the people (and sometimes, the lack thereof).

Photography

Filtered through a massive forest of neurons

The light twists itself through a prophetic black box

And mingles beneath the moonless night

Kissing the acetate and the fallen trees

From the mind's eye forms a picture of things past

Or perhaps instead, things to come

Stockholm Syndrome

San Diego to Chicago. Chicago to Stockholm. Chicago's airport:

I flew into Stockholm at 7:45 AM on the last day of July. Corinne's parents, Marc and Ulla, picked me up and took me to their beautiful, picturesque home five minutes from the Baltic Sea. Perhaps it was luck or perhaps I had just brought a bit of California with me, but the weather there for the next five days was sunny and clear, and I couldn't have hoped for anything better.

Their beautiful house

The Plattens already had an American family staying with them, old family friends, so that worked out perfectly since the need for sightseeing was already there. The next five days was a whirlwind of seeing Stockholm from one hundred angles.

Day 1. My first impression of the Platten home as a natural paradise is cemented when Ulla offers me a fruit salad topped with fresh currants from their garden. Mmmmm!

We visit the Vasa Museum, home to a nearly fully preserved 400 year old ship that sunk in the waters of Stockholm. Films, models, scale ships and tons of meticulously preserved artifacts from the wreck gave an insight as to the Vasa's glory.

We walked around Stockholm a bit.

My first dinner in Sweden was (delicious) tacos. And for dessert, a performance by Becca, who has a God-given talent for singing (just don't tell her so...)

Day 2. The Plattens live a six minute walk away from the Baltic Sea. Amazing. We took a boat around the archipelago and witnessed the beauty of the canal and enviously commented on all the waterfront summer homes the Swedes have around it.

We got off at Sandhamn island, where we went on a short guided tour.

Thanks, Marc, for the photos!

Day 3. We went swimming more than once in Troll Sjön, or Dive-from-Rocks Lake. This is the land of 100,000 lakes, and this natural beauty exemplified that moniker. I swam all the way across and then walked around the surrounding woods, where I caught tiny frogs that hopped around the damper parts of the forest floor. This place seemed straight out of the oldest fairy tales, where dark and wonderful things await in the most untouched realms of nature.

Becca and her friends.

The Platten's dog, Abby, is a Spanish Water Hound, and took great pleasure in swimming in the lake, obstacles notwithstanding.

Day 4. Corinne finally arrives! She should have arrived home earlier but airlines are a....

Becca took me shopping and I scored some excellent sales downtown, including Cheap Monday jeans! Once home, apple pie was baked and showed off.

The next day I said my (temporary) goodbyes to Becca, Ulla and Abby, and Marc and Corinne took me to the train station. I don't know if I can properly express how grateful I am to have been embraced by this wonderful family, who truly made me feel like a part of theirs. I can't imagine a better first impression of Sweden, and if my time in Lund is anything like this I know I have an amazing five months ahead of me.