9/9/2007: A big update

Hej everyone. This update has been a long time coming, but I've been busy with getting settled in, trying to get work done for the bosses back at UW, and also the longer I wait, and the more that piles up, the less excited I get about posting pictures and writing stories. But, finally, I got some motivation to get it all started and here we are. One of the big reasons I decided to use this blogspot is because it would allow people to post responses. I still welcome big long emails, seriously, I miss everyone, but sometimes there isn't much to say, and saying a little something is better than nothing. So please, make a comment here or there. If it looks like it's not being used, I may just switch back to my webpage format (with some changes). So, without further adieu, let me begin. And I feel that the next photo is a good way to do so.

So my last update basically just said, "Hey, I'm here! The town is pretty, seeya later." But I guess I will try and give a bit more background. Lund is in southern Sweden. It is found in the province of Skåne. It is a little inland, and is about 15 minutes north of Malmö, the 3rd biggest city (with a population of around 300,000) and about an hour south of the city of Helsingborg, which is probably in the 125 to 150 thousand person population. When the university is in session with its approximately 40,000 students, the city has approximately 100,000 residents. So as you can see, if Malmö is the 3rd biggest city, there really aren't that many people living in Sweden (I think around 9 million).

Geographically, the country is deceptively big. If I were to go from where I am to the very northern tip of Sweden, the same distance in a southern direction would take me to Rome. Stockholm is about a 5 hour train ride north (and that's still considered south central Sweden), and I think Oslo, Norway is around 6 or so. Copenhagen is about an hour train ride south.

But anyways, the city of Lund is quite beautiful. There are numerous old buildings, which I suppose shows the merits of staying neutral during wartime (their last conflict was in 1812, a fact I am reminded of constantly whenever American politics comes up). The building below is of little significance, as far as I know, but it's on the edge of a little square right by the train station.

More history: Skåne was for a long time a part of Denmark (or Danmark as the Danish incorrectly spell it), and there is still a significant Danish influence. The dialect of Swedish spoken here, affectionately known as Skånska, is a little bit of a cross between Stockholm Swedish and Danish. I don't know if this is why I can't understand anything anybody says, but I hope so. Anyways, for this reason, a lot of people relate strongly to Denmark, and there are some who wish for Skåne to be independent from Sweden.

The city was founded in 990, and was the capital of Denmark from 1103 until 1416 when Copenhagen became the capital. The most prominant landmark is the church (or domkyrkan), which was built in 1103. It seems kind of silly to think that southern Sweden was once part of Denmark when it was separated for the rest of the country by water, but in those days a small body of water allowed for much free movement of people and ideas than did forests and mountains, something I never thought about until someone pointed it out.

Lund University was established in 1666, shortly after Sweden took control of the region. The creation of the university was largely a political move (in conjunction with forcing churches to give their sermons in Swedish) that ensured that Swedish would be the official language of the region.

It's funny, in my all but mandatory coffee breaks at work (seriously, they're always on break) for the first week I think everyone on my floor went on to point out that the region had been part of Denmark longer than it's been a part of Sweden. From the American perspective that seems like a weird argument when still, the area has been part of Sweden longer than our country has existed.

So there, maybe you learned something today. I sure didn't memorize this shit, I'm looking at Wikipedia right now.

So anyways, now the rest will be less preachy, and more like story time. On my first weekend in town, before I had moved into my apartment I went out looking for a few odds and ends and it led me to walk to this mall outside of town. I didn't get what I was looking for, but I was able to take these next two pictures:

This wasn't particularly exciting, but I just found it funny. This makes me chuckle still because I have seen several other Toyotas since then with the same sticker, suggesting that his or her Toyota isn't exclusively fantastic, rather all Toyotas are fantastic.

Sunday, August 19th, 2007:

So I came to find out rather early that things are hard to come by on the weekend. Saturday, stores may be open for 4 or 5 hours, if at all, and on Sunday nothing is open. So I basically had nothing to do Sunday, so I decided to head to Malmö. The city happened to be having a big free festival. I didn't get a set list, partly because I wasn't particularly concerned, and also Sweden implements the internet in a much less ... how do I say ... useful way. For example, lets say you want to find what's going to be on TV tonight, how about tvguide.com. Sure doesn't exist out here! Anyways, that's a sidetrack, but there were big names, and I am pretty sure not just in metal music.

I was excited to see the city, and honestly, the fact that it was filled with people was a little bit of a disappointment in some sense. But Austin I am sure will not be disappointed to see your state's flag flying high.

Yep, they may hate our president but they sure had no problem using the flag to sell really crappy "Tex-Mex" which more resembled the type of nachos you'd get at a movie theater. Othrewise the town seemed quite beautiful.

Malmö has a large bridge that recently connected it with Copenhagen, and apparantly they have begun trying to encourage more people to live there. One of these ways was through the construction of the building below, known as "Turning Torso". The architect was Santiago Calatrava. The building is the tallest in Sweden, standing at 55 stories, and the structure does a 90 degree rotation as you go up the building.

I then went on a long hike to get up to it.

The building, originally designed for condos and then changed to be apartments, has actually had a lot of trouble filling itself, but there were numerous small fancy condos all around there. Apparantly the city's nicest night club is right nearby. But the building was right along the coast, and there was a pretty waterfront. Here's me standing on the end of one of these odd dock things that suspended over the water.

The water actually felt quite a lot warmer than the Sound, which goes to show the effect of all that gulf stream shit I know very little about. The bridge you see is the Øresund bridge. The Ø (that mostly has a cross through it to look cool) makes the same sound as the Ö (I think), but it's a Danish letter. If the picture were bigger you could probably see Copenhagen in the distance.

Below is a cool green house thing that is part of one of the condo buildings. It was locked to the general public, which was unfortunate.

Tuesday, August 21st, 2007

Monday was the welcome day, which was an absolute clusterfuck of disorganization, which I suppose is the definition of a clusterfuck. It was a taste of things to come, as I feel like Lund makes basic things unnecessarily complicated. For example, I have 2 different 4 digit codes to get into my apartment depending on the time of day. I have another 4 digit code get into certain rooms in my engineering building, I have 2 different key cards, I was given 3 different keys for my apartment, and I only know what one of them does ... etc, etc. Anyways, I went to a registration meeting, and then went to meet my boss. I almost missed him, and almost missed a department meeting. Fortunately, blind luck had me run into him 5 minutes before said meeting, which actually took place at the top of the Turning Torso.

I was then subjected to an hour long presentation that made it abundantly clear that my Swedish has a long way to go. But the food was good, and the view was pretty awesome.

And when you're in a building where you're getting free food and booze in a fancy high rise in another country, what have you got to do? You've got to take a picture of the bathroom, and who cares if people see you and think you're crazy!

Saturday, August 26th, 2007

The friday before was a welcome party for international students. My roommate Ralf (I'll talk more about my living situation below when the photos come in) had signed up for a mentor group, where 3 Swedish mentors host a group of maybe 30 international students to get introduced into the swing of things and get to know Lund. The mentor group had a preparty, so Ralf and I went out there, had some pickled herring with snaps (aka schnapps, only not flavored the way we think of it) and some grocery store beer before going to the party. I should stop and explain booze in Sweden. For starters, it's eff'n expensive. So if you come visit, I will definitly request you hit the duty free at Copenhagen or wherever. Anyways, you can only buy alcoholic beverages that have less than 3.5% alcohol in the grocery stores. You can buy liquor and stronger beers at the System Bologet, which has more annoying hours than Washington liquor stores. Anyways, I met some good people. Two people from Oregon State, a couple of guys from England, and other people from all over. After we hung out and drank we went to the welcome party. Which was a huge dance party.

And anybody who knows me, knows I:

a) suck at dancing

and,

b) don't particularly care for it

However, fortunately for me, everybody in Europe apparantly sucks too. So at one point I went out to the dance floor with the group I had met, and it was seriously 10 German dudes and me in a circle doing the white man dance. And when you looked at them, and saw how they were seriously having fun, and not laughing at the ridiculous nature of themselves and everyone around them, it made me feel a lot more comfortable to join in on the awkward white man dance. Here's a sample of some of the moves I saw, and probably participated in:

Anyways, against all odds, it proved to be entertaining. Me, being the old man I am, lasted until about 12:30 whereas other people I talked to were out past 4. Crazy European kids with their too tight jeans, fro-hawks, and awesome clap-point-point-clap dance moves. I then went to bed and ....

Saturday, August 26th, 2007

... woke up hung over! Hurray! And much to my amusement, I had bought a ticket for an excursion on my welcome day out to random places I knew nothing about. Although said randomness sounded great (given the fact that I wasn't entirely sure what I had signed up for), I barely peeled myself out of bed. And what did I pay hard earned Swedish Kronor for? To sit on a bus for hours on end to go see some rocks! Huzzah!

But seriously, let me write a little about the first stop on our tour, don't worry you won't learn much.

"Ales stenar is one of Swedens best preserved stone monuments, built as a ship." Yes, there are multiple stone ships. What's that you say? You want me to keep writing, alright, if you asked for it. "Scientists believe it was erected 1000-1500 years ago. All in all, Ales stenar consists of 58 big stones placed in the formation of a ship. There are a lot of interpretations as to what the stone ship was used for. At the summer solstice, the sun sets at the North West tip of the ship and at the winter solstice it rises at the opposite side." Now, calm down, don't worry, I've got pictures below.

Oh yeah, and there were cows ... forgot about that.

Here's me craning my neck as I notice a rock I hadn't yet seen before.

Yep, that made me happy.

Anyways, it wasn't particularly exciting. But it was right next to this fishing village and so I had a really good lunch of smoked salmon, shrimp, and veggies med potatis (with potatos). After that we piled back into the bus and headed to the next stop, an old castle named Glimmingehus that was obsolete when it was built and after 30 years was turned into a grain silo. Awesome. No but seirously, even though it has no personal history, because it was changed to a silo as opposed to being updated and renovated as most castles would be to keep up with architectural styles in the Renaissance, etc, it was basically a perfect example of Medieval architecture. And we had a great tour guide that explained a lot of the subtle things that we wouldn't have got if we had just wandered through it without him.

After that, I got home and had 2 hours to rest and relax. Following that I went to a Crayfish party, which are a popular tradition in Sweden in the month of August. Before I go much further I have to explain something. Lund has about a dozen "Nations". What is a "Nation"? I'm still not entirely sure. But basically it's a social network similar to a fraternity, but you basically need to join one if you want to get into the Nations parties and pubs and clubs. There you can drink and eat a heck of a lot cheaper than at the local pubs and restaurants. So I bought a ticket for the crayfish party my first day, it cost about 200:-, which is a little under $30. It came with all you can eat, a beer, a half bottle of wine and a shot of snaps.

When we got there they made us pick a flag out of a cup and that told us where to sit. The picture below way my Denmark flag partner. You can see we're both (as was everyone) sporting our crayfish party hats. Below that are some shots of all the tiny crustaceans that were devoured by our group. Kathleen, you might want to skip by this part.

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

So after talking about how much fun the crayfish party was, and how I was told by Karin that if I didn't go to one she'd kick my ass at the next available opportunity, Ralf felt a little left out and wanted to host one at our place. Let me start by describing where I live. I live in an all international student dorm. It's centrally located, right next to the train station. So if I want to go to Copenhagen ($20 one way), Malmö ($5 one way), Helsingborg ($10 one way) etc for the day I can just walk out the door and pop on a train, no planning necessary. We each have our own room with a bathroom, 2 sinks, a microwave and a small fridge. We share a common area with a TV and a big kitchen. It's nice, a little expensive (about $2500 per semester). I live with, in the order I met them:

Ralf - Germany

Andy - Germany

Lukas - Greece

Ning - China

Yasir - Pakistan

Firdose - India

Hilde - Norway

Anyways, here's some pictures of the "main building" on campus ... whatever that means, but that's what everyone calls it.

Before the party started we saw that the sun was about to set so we went up on the roof deck for pictures and to watch.

From left to right, there's Ralf, Ning and Hilde. The girl on the far right is a friend of Ralf's and I can't recall her name.

So here's the spread, again, KK there are lots of dead animals ... albeit ugly animals in the next few pictures.

In the above picture, that's Lukas on the left, Firdose at the head of the table, then Ning and Ralf. Below is me with my carcasses. The bowls in front of me weren't from me, but added for effect.

Afterwards, as per the usual Swedish tradition, which dates back to the early 1200's, we played ping pong. Ok, not traditional, but there's a ping pong table (and a sauna) in our building. So at first we warmed up ...

Then we played a group game where one person would hit the ball, drop his paddle, and someone would jump in their place. Then a person would return it, drop the paddle, being picked up by yet another person. The idea is that if you missed the ball then you would be out. Last one standing wins.

Saturday, September 1st, 2007

I woke up and decided I'd go and explore Helsingborg. As I got ready to go I ran into Hilde, and I casually asked her and she decided to come too. So I packed a lunch, and off we went.

Right in downtown Helsingborg is a castle. The next few photos are of it.

The tower costs 20:- to get into. Since Hilde is from Europe, and everyone lives in a fucking castle there, she didn't seem that interested, so I decided it would be a good stop for when I have a visitor ... like perhaps Miss O'Neill sometime this winter.

And lastly this is a picture of some little graffiti art as we were strolling through some alley.

Sunday, September 2nd, 2007

Since alcohol is really expensive in Sweden, a lot of people buy alcohol in neighboring Denmark. Actually, the complicated equation is:

Norwegians go to Sweden to buy alcohol

Swedes go to Denmark

Danes go to Germany

Germans go to Poland

Poles make it in their bathtub.

But Lukas has a car, and so we decided to cruise over to Copenhagen to see the city, and maybe stock up. It was actually rather pointless, I think we each bought a bottle out of necessity, but otherwise we just walked around the city a bit. The following few pictures are from the bridge.

In the bottom right you can see me and Lukas in front of the City Hall. There were much prettier buildings, but I think it just struck us that we didn't really have any pictures with the roomies in it. Below that is me and Ralf in front of a fountain.

We then had lunch in Burger King, and I found this poster hanging up inside. Aww, it's like I never left.

We then walked around and stopped by a sculpture museum. We peaked in, neither of us felt like paying to get in anywhere if we were gonna feel rushed (don't fret, there will be pictures from the next time I went to Copenhagen), so we just looked for a few and left and meandered through the grounds. Then, Ralf, who you will recall is German, took this photo ... I only saw it after he gave me all the photos he took that day.

Crreeeepppy.

Saturday, September 8, 2007

Having just had a little taste of Copenhagen, I decided I would pop over again, this time solo. So after a few errands I jumped on a train and off I went. Here is a view of some of the buildings surrounding the Palace.

Here's a rare photo of me at the entrance to the palace.

Unfortunately, a lot of pretty buildings were being fixed up. So I don't really know how impressive this tower is. The grounds were also not really attractive, probably due to the construction.

You couldn't walk anywhere without seeing a dead guy on a horse, as you will see.

There were quite a few weird sculptures around.

A little fake history for you. Denmark's borders were significantly more expansive than they are in modern day. As I said before they once included the Skåne, as well as at some points Norway. At the height of their power, in 1652 the flamboyant Danish King Fredrik III changed the royal coat of arms to what you see below. Although historians dispute the exact magnitude of this error, they all agree that it largely contributed to the subsequent loss of Skåne to the Swedes, and the overall reduction in Danish influence in the world.

Now back to things that actually happened, below is the same sculpture museum (Ny-Carlsberg Glyptotek) that I stopped at in my previous excursion in Copenhagen.

The interior was gorgeous as you can see. There was a small group playing relaxing classical music that provided a perfect ambiance to the museum interior. The museum had pieces from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome as well as more modern pieces and from other famous artists that are too numerous to name (actually, I just can't remember ... but you'd recognize them if I told you ... be impressed damnit!)

I actually got there a half hour before close, so it was free, but I also had to scoot pretty fast, and as I came through I heard a loud group of women laughing. I come around the corner and I see these women staring at this statue's genitals and laughing. No, I am proud to say that they were not American, I couldn't recognize the language. And I am not joking when I say that I witnessed the women with the gray hair making a cupping motion. Anyways, here she's pointing the poor guy's junk. I mean, he's how God or the artist made him. Get off his nuts alright!?! Maybe we can take a closer look to see what they were giggling about ...

Ok yeah, that is kinda weird looking. Tee hee hee. But I'm in my mid 20's, and act much younger than that ... I can get away with giggling at a statue's phallus and shit like that.

But seriously, these women were in their 50's, and they were exclaiming at every broken or misshaped penis they saw. I mean who does that?

HOLY SHIT! What happened to this guy? Looks like some things don't withstand the test of time (Just ask Bob Dole).

So after navigating through a fair amount of the museum I ran across this gem. Apparantly Copenhagen does this weird animal art sculpture (pigs on parade etc) thing now too.

It's a little out of place for the museum. Anyways, here's a rather cool piece.

Oh, and wouldn't you know it ... fucking red eye. Ruins every picture.

This is more or less how I look in the morning.

This portrait is called "Aww dad! Do I really have to sit here for 2 weeks while this jackass paints me?!? This wig itches." By Michaelangelo.

The next painting depicts a nude man fashioning an arrow, showing that George Bush wasn't the first world leader to send troops into combat with inadequate body armor.

Then here's a token blurry picture of me.

And thus concludes the longest update ever. If you read all the way through this, I owe you 2 :-. Anyways, much love again as always. I hope everyone is doing well. I wasn't the best at responding to everyone's emails before, but a lot of them came when I was first getting settled in, and I didn't have internet for about a week. So if you try me again, I promise I'll be better.

Until next time,

~blake