9/24/2007: Yep, I'm still here.

Hej, another update for all of you out there. Before I begin, feel free to give me comments. I am terrible at being concise, and I tend to post more pictures than are actually interesting. I figure that because this is visual, and all the pictures are easy to skim past, but if you find yourself skipping everything all together because I don't shut the hell up, that's worth knowing.

It's been a fun couple of weeks, and it promises to be more fun around the corner. As I go to a lot of the small towns in the vicinity of Lund, each town has a little tourist bureau that distributes maps and other leaflets. I have started accumulating a handful of these maps and after they cease to serve a purpose, I throw them up on my wall. This serves a dual purpose, the first being that it covers the depressing white walls that I am not going to go and spend any money to cover up. The second is that when I am home it keeps me thinking of traveling and not spending too much time within the confines of my apartment.

For those who know facebook, in otherwords, everyone but my parents, you've probably seen the "Cities I've Visited" Application. I added it to my profile because it surprisingly even recognizes a lot of the small towns across Europe, and I figure it's a pretty decent way to keep track of places. When I went and added it, despite apparantly having been to 5 "cities", I was humbled into realizing I still have a lot to experience, as you can see below.

So, yeah, obviously I haven't seen anything yet. Hopefully this will change. I am signed up to go on a trip to Saint Petersburg in November, and I may be going to Oktoberfest in Munich in a week, assuming things go as planned.

9/14/2007: A Night Out at The Nations

In my last post I made mention of The Nations. I can't recall exactly how much I explained them, I mean, it was a long update, I'm not gonna read that shit. But I will try and give another quick overview. Nations are social networks that exist within the University. They typically have names that refer to a specific city or region. For example, Lunds Nation, Malmö Nation, Helsingkrona (which is named after the two towns of Helsingborg and Landskrona) and the list includes another 10 or 11. They all have houses around the city. Some people live there, but most who are a member of a particular nation don't. For example, I am a member of Helsingkrona. By joining it means you get card that gets you into any of the Nations parties (you still pay a cover) and eateries. They do this so they keep nonstudents out, so we can keep the savings just for students who paid the generic nation dues. This has the unfortunate downside of excluding guests, so if you came to visit we'd likely have to drink at the city pubs (beers cost about $9 for a 0.4L) or forge a letter of acceptance.

So all of these nations have pub nights, and club nights, and sit down coffee shop nights and they are the cheapest place to get lunch. A lot of the students have gone out to these quite a bit, but I got sick shortly after getting here (probably a distant relative of the Black Death) and so I didn't really go out as much as a lot of the other new students. So last weekend I decided it was about time to see what all these kids were talking about.

We had a little preparty here at my corridor. We had a handful of people over, and we played ping pong (yes we have a ping pong table here) and beer pong.

We played the group game of ping pong that I described in my last post. Below you see my roommate Hilde (Norway) making the pass off to Ralf (Germany)


Here you can see me walking off in defeat as I choke in the final four.


Ralf, being victorious looks from a high-five for whoever the camera person is.


As ambassadors from America, we then had to show them a little nugget of American culture, and it helps them understand how we drink such terrible beer (although Swedish beer isn't anything to brag about). The two guys here are proving to be quite the Beer Pong Juggernaut.


As you can see here, Gavin (from Alaska) is practically falling asleep because of the inadequacy of the competition.


But that's before the international team of Ning (China), some other guy (?) and Evan (Oregon State University ... but don't hold that against him) brought their A-game.


Evan rubs his nipples for good luck. And not just before playing beer pong. He does it during poker, studying for exams, football (you'll be rubbing for a while when the Huskies go to Corvalis), and the list goes on.


Ning kicks it into high gear.


And they win it for the people America, China and whever that other guy's from, simultaneously solving all of the worlds problems.


It was V-Ping Pong day.


After a clear victor was decided we decided to head off to Helsingkrona nation to celebrate. Here's Ning, Ralf and Evan.


Then the same group plus me.


And I start drinking ...


and drinking ... (the person on the left is Katja, from Finland. She's in Hilde's major, Asian studies)


At this point I was so drunk that even the cameras vision was blurry.


And finally, the transformation was complete!


Succumbing to popular demand
I also forgot to mention, what Courtney described as the best part. On my bike ride home that night I quickly found that no light + biking + drinking + unfamiliar bike that brakes when you peddle backwards (I nearly wipe out every day) + cobblestone streets = disaster. So I took a tumble, giving me a few battle scars on my hands, and my chin, however my Wolverine-esque healing factor has long since erased any evidence of said bike mishap. I am not entirely sure whether I should be comfortable with the fact that my girlfriend deems me hurting myself as "the best part" (see comments) ... but I'll leave that be.

So yeah. It was a fun night, an nearly disastrous bike ride, and a less than fun morning, but eh it was worth it.

9/16/2007: Hamlets Castle

So, Saturday morning the 15th I awoke, feeling less than spectacular. I had planned to go to Helsingør (or as Shakespear spelled it, Elsinor), to see Hamlets Castle, but ....

To go, or not to go, that is the question.

I chose sleep. However, by Sunday the 17th, I was feeling a bit more prepared, and so I took the train with my flatmate Ralf and a guy from both my Swedish class, as well as my Finite Element Method course named Charles. We left from Lund and headed north to Helsingborg, which I went to before (pictures were in the last post if you're interested). As you may or most likely don't recall, I chose not to pay the $3 to go to the little castle in Helsingborg, but Charles (who is from Quebec by the way) and Ralf and I decided to check it out this time. But before, the following picture is kind of interesting. I had said how that people in Skåne sometimes relate more to Denmark, and so here is some graffiti on a statue in downtown Helsingborg saying "Free Skåne".


Here's me outside at the outer walls before heading towards the tower.


The tower was quite a hike to get to the top of. In my first castle tour way back when (i.e. a month ago), I learned a fair amount about some of the subtleties of building castles. This of course is useful for an aspiring structural engineer. At any rate, almost all castles are designed such that stair wells rotate such that the presumably right handed attacker is at a disadvantage while scaling the stairs to the right handed defender backing up the stairs. Anyways, that's just a little tidbit.


At the top there was an incredible view of the town, and in the distance you can see Denmark.


Here is me, then Charles, then Ralf at the top of the tower.


After leaving the castle in Helsingborg we hit the ferry to Helsingør. The two towns are right across the water from each other. This is the closest point between Sweden and Denmark.


As I mentioned before, the eventual destination was Hamlets castle (Kronborg Castle). For what it's worth, the castle is a UNESCO site. The castle is 5 minutes from the town center, and is clearly visible from the ferry.


PS: The slanting of the water is not poor photography, it's just Denmark. Things are a little off here. At any rate, the castle exterior was quite beautiful as you can see. Throughout it's history it had been involved in numerous seiges, and I guess it at one point suffered severe fires that damaged the inside, although you couldn't tell at this point.






The next picture you can see the Danish flag flying proudly, while the cannons lie in wait for King Gustav of Sweden to try something.


This was taken shortly before this cannon fired on a barge carrying Saabs, Swedish Fish, and IKEA furniture, bound for America.


More of the castle. These appear to be servants quarters or something.


Entering the castle there is a large square. This is the clock tower as seen from the square.


The three of us.


Here's me pausing for a drink. Good to see I'm doing my part to erase that negative perception Europeans have about us.


The Danish military goes through some drills.




While all the other tourists were distracted by the 14 year old girls playing tubas outside, the three of us ran inside. It proved to be a good idea as the inside of the castle was relatively empty. Here the grand dining room. Apparantly the King wasn't a popular guy.


The ceiling was covered with beautiful paintings like this:


And this:


Yes, that was an old man eating an infant. This picture was taken in the nursery ... no it wasn't.


Here's a painting in one of the hallways. It depicts whoever unified Denmark (I could look it up, but lets not kid ourselves, nobody cares). So all the other lords in the region are kneeling before him with their crowns as an act of subservience. And he's raising his finger saying "I'M NUMBER 1! I'M NUMBER 1!"






I have been trying to find a suitable caption for this painting, but nothing does it justice. I'll allow you to suggest your own in the comments section below.


Way back whenever, a Swedish king commisioned an artist (or many artists) to create a tapestry for each Swedish king in the past. Not to be outdone, the Danish king did the same. In the end, the Swede's created only like 6, probably because if you take as many damn coffee breaks as they do they can't get anything done. The Danes however, got all 100+ done. However, all but 6 were destroyed by fire, proving that laziness always prevails. The following I thought was particularly interesting because the tapestry says that the king was killed by one of his own. What it fails to mention is that the King had a nasty habit of finding himself in bed with all the lords wives.


While we were there, we decided to check about the rent. Charle's is moving in. As you can see, he already had some of his IKEA furniture moved in.


Here's the inside of the church.




After having seen everything there was to see above ground, we headed to the catacombs. It was here where many of the slaves were kept who built and maintained the castle. Underneath is a statue of Ogier the Dane.




The story is that the statue will wake up the minute Denmark is in danger.

Hey, Ogier! Psst, wake up. Someone's at the door.


Ogier!?! Do I have to call you again? You're gonna be late for the invasion! ! !


Ogier!?! You fat bearded bastard, wake up! ! !


Following the end of World War II, Ogier the Dane was quoted as saying, "Sorry dude, I overslept. What'd I miss?"

Here are the three of us down in the dungeons.


As we headed out we got a little better weather.






Here's a statue in the surrounding town. Beautiful isn't it?


But I swear, up close they all resemble zombies:





9/26/2007: A random collection of photos and stories

So the other night I was planning on meeting up with Bjorn (from UW, now back at Lund) who was at a party with some of his friends. I really wanted to go because I live in an international student corridor, and I don't get a chance to talk to many Swedes. However, I also had plans to hang out with Evan (Oregan State University), and Derek (Jolly Ol' England) (both are from my mentor group) and drink beers before going out. In the end, Bjorn left his party early and met up with the 3 of us at a nation. The nation was having a rock night, so it was a nice change of pace from the usual club music.

At any rate, we were hanging out and people watching among the dancing crowd. I pointed to this couple and Evan and I discussed how Swede's are pretty blatant with their public displays of affection (they are). However, usually when you see a couple madly in love kissing, you don't typically see the womans hand in the mans face frantically pushing him away. Perhaps it was the few beers in my system that kept me from realizing how not cool this was, but when we ceased to be shocked by what was unfolding in front of us Evan and I headed over with the intention of doing the chivalrous thing. The girl managed to escape without our help, however we spent the remainder of the night watching this dumb drunk dude with his dumb drunk stare bounce from girl to girl trying to be noticed. At any rate, there aren't actually photos of the event, I just thought it was funny. As I write this, I realize it's one of those "you had to have been there" types of funny, and I suppose I could delete it, but, eh, I'll just distract you with pretty pictures:

The below picture is of Jesus flying to the cathedral ...


... and the resulting explosion of light.

There were no survivors.

This is a funny billboard I saw while walking around. How many do you see in the states with a guy giving everyone the finger? As I translate it, and Karin might correct me, this means "We maintain (perhaps take care of?) Sweden." Not quite sure what that means, but, that's all I can get from it.











Green means go.

As in go to bed, like what I must do. I hope everyone is doing well. Keep in touch, much love.

~blake