In January 2011 Marita arrived in Uppsala, Sweden, for a semester of exchange. She enjoyed it. She enjoyed it a lot. She enjoyed it so much she's here for a year now. This is what she gets up to.
Never Gonna Give You Up(psala)
I just realised I haven’t written one of these in nearly 2 months. I guess it’s time for another shitty pun be-titled update. Brace yourselves. Ok where I left off last time I’d been living a pretty hectic life. Gasquing, Arctic Circling, Stockholming, I was vaguely busy. First weekend of March I finally left Sweden. Caity and I jumped on a plane for a lazy one hour flight to Copenhagen to find out what the world looked like not covered in snow. Because it had been a disgustingly early flight (7.30am) we were checked in at our hotel and wandering the streets of the city before 10am. Crazy. Straight away it was obvious we were no longer in Sweden; most men over the age of 25 walking around seemed to have a cheeky stubby in their hand, the temperature was ABOVE zero and the people overall just seemed less attractive (I’m sorry, but Sweden is ridiculous when it comes to the proportion of population that is unfairly attractive). We moseyed up through the main shopping precinct, laughing at signs (there seems to be a lot more funny words in Danish despite being stupidly similar to Swedish, eg. bog, kunst) and checked out Nyhaven (the super pretty/touristy bit on the water), then wandered up to see the Little Mermaid statue, via some castles and churches n shit. Then onto the Statens Museum for Kunst (haaaaa), which was pretty cool. I dunno, there’s photos of all this stuff. We were just stoked to be out in the sun in above-zero temperatures, not surrounded by snow, and loving the fact that Copenhagen is fullllll of beautiful parks. Defs going back now that it’s getting warm. We made it back to the hotel and slept like a bitch for a few hours, owing to the 4.45am wake up and the unexpected mini party Jonas and his brothers brought to my room late the night before. Back out and about that night we found a cafe that made me an aahhhhhmazing sandwich and then a bar that was doing relatively cheap cocktails (I think I sampled all. Their mojito was killer). The next day my left shoe decided to fall apart so we spent ages trying to get shoes for my man feet (red vans. winner) [Here I’ll add a warning: never buy “superglue” from shitty shops next to shitty lidls because undoubtedly it’ll be ultra shitty and scary men in mcdonalds will laugh at you whilst you attack the tube trying to get the already solidified glue out of the tube]. Ahhh what then? Oh more sightseeing, checked out Christiania (St Andrews times a million. Awesome), still no sign of Princess Mary, so more cocktails and a maccas run. And I got sick. Booooo. Jumped on the train to Malmö next day, checked into our hostel, I was feeling increasingly like death warmed up. Walked around town, recognising places from Emma (high school friend)’s photos from when she was on exchange there. More of the same the next day. I dunno. I was pretty keen to get home, what with feeling like shit n all. Good weekend though. Aaaaaaaaand that was the last time I left Uppsala before April 18. But I did shit in between. Sorta. I did a whole subject (Genocide and Mass Violence in the Modern World. Interesting but pretty intense given it was all in a month. I mean, I had to go to class more than once a week). I’m looking through my diary at the moment to try and work out what I’ve been up to. “Whiskey thingy”, “Tea Party”, “Pres @ Lloyd’s”, “St Patty’s”, “Gasque After Party @ Kalmar”, “Washing”. That was one week. I wish I could just spew the memories out of my brain and onto the screen because I’ve been having quite a dandy time. Honourable mentions: Beer Olympics (Team Straaaayyaaa!), Jonas’s birthday, and the four days before I went Baltic-side. I’d go into more detail, but I know you’re reading this Mum and I don’t want you to get on the first plane to Sweden and drag me kicking and screaming back to the Antipodes. You only live once, yeah? Anyhoo, last week I did the whole travel thing a bit better. Baltic fun times. Monday I was supposed to meet Caity, Kiri (Aus) and Mo (NZ) at the station at 7am or something godawful and I’d already been at a lazy picnic Sunday arvo (yeah spring finally decided to rock up) and imbibed more than I’d intended so Lloyd (Aus. Danger.) and I decided the easiest way for me to make it on time would be to pull an all nighter in the streets of Uppsala (an evening in which we struggled to comprehend our current amazing realities). We made it to Riga (Latvia), checked into our awesome, orange hostel, Friendly Frank’s, and got us some free awesome beer. We wandered the streets of Riga, trying to find some awesome market or something. Not even Caity’s mad map reading skillz could help us that afternoon. I don’t remember too much from the first day. I’d been awake for over 30 hours and was s.t.rugglin’. After some Latvian fare for dins I crashed hard. The girls went to some bar, but found Riga to be rather quiet on a Monday evening. Tuesday we went to an amazing and CHEAP bakery for brekky and went shopping. In the arvo we met up with our tour group which was to be led for the first couple of days by Matt, an Aussie guy who was literally on his first day of the job. Actually half the group was Australian with a couple of Kiwis, two French, two Canadian and an Austrian. A super bubbly tour guide came along to do a walking tour of Riga, which is a super pretty city that was the first Eastern Bloc city to get maccas. Awesome. I went into the most soundproof church ever (right next to a carnival with crazy strong bass, couldn’t hear any of it inside the church). That evening we chilled out in the hostel bar drinking super cheap beers and played a few rounds of hillbilly (greatest/easiest drinking game). Wednesday morning we were on a bus to Tallinn (Estonia) for four hours. Before we left Riga I was keen to get rid of all my Lats so I bought as much food as possible at the bus terminal. Mistake, as I found out later in the day. The bus trip was sweet because we saw a shiteload of those creepy Soviet buildings as well as the super pretty scenery. Tallinn seemed a bit rougher than Riga, but Matt showed us around the Old Town (medieval sorta thing. but genuine. mindblowing how old some of this shit is) and after a bit I was like “ohhhhhh i can see why you’d live here”. Just a really cool city from what I saw. Huge, amazing, cheap pancakes for lunch, back to hostel and DRAMA i started feeling like death. Stabbing pains in stomach… munted my guts out. NEVER BUYING DODGY PIZZA FROM OLD LADIES AT BUS TERMINALS WHO THINK I AM RUSSIAN EVER AGAIN. I was contemplating not going out that night, but rallied and headed to the bar with the rest of the group. DANGER. Bar. Empty stomach. I press on regardless. The bar was super awesome, it specialised in shots (super, super cheap shots) and it happened to be where Matt worked soooo to describe the drinks as free-flowing would be the understatement of the year. I think we decided to try and pull an all-nighter in order to make the early ferry in the morning. Anyway so then it’s the next day and I’m lying in a park in Helsinki feeling… ahhh, average. Got sunburnt. Winner. New tour guide, Christof, gave us a bunch of super important official bits and pieces. Jumped on a massive cruise ship that afternoon, woke up the next morning IN GODDAMN RUSSIA. Seriously. I still can’t believe I went to Russia. Ahhh so awesome. Off the ship, into a minibus, cruising the streets of St. Petersburg. We were definitely not in Kansas anymore. I think I’m just gonna have to upload the photos because it’s difficult to describe those three days. No one does grandiose like the Russians (I say from such an informed, well-travelled perspective). CASTLES EVERYWHERE. AND HUGE SQUARES. AND STATUES. I’m surprised I didn’t injure my neck trying to look at everything while on the bus. The city is goddamn huge. Our guide, Tatiana, was craaaazy knowledgeable about the city. But more importantly, she showed us the bakery which we returned to each day of our stay. Drooling now. Anyway, I went to the ballet. In Russia. I swear, it’s the classiest thing I’ve ever done or will ever do. Russian men all have similar haircuts. Terrible, terrible haircuts. And hardly anyone speaks English. And good luck interpreting anyyyyything that’s written. And you’ll need even more luck with your cash. You only get given large denominations but no one’ll touch them with a 10 foot pole. Irritating. Second day the sun came out and it was such an awesome transformation, especially in a city where there is GOLD EVERYWHERE. We went to a castle that to describe as opulent would be like describing Warren Buffet as wealthy. At some point I bought an awesome hat. And some sweet Soviet anti-vice propaganda posters. Final day there we kicked around the Hermitage museum, which has so much stuff apparently it’d take 11 years to see it all. We had a few hours. It was mindblowing. Argh. The paintings alone. Argh. Just crazy. I mean I was in a room full of goddamn Picasso paintings. And another ROOM full of Matisse’s paintings. And then a room covered in gold. Like, really? REALLY? Sunday night we jumped on the boat and cruised back to Helsinki, but by that point we were all ready to go straight home. However we had the day in Helsinki, which turned out to be really pretty (I’d missed it the first time round, *cough*), but everything was closed due to being Easter Monday. Still, we went to a really nice cafe, then had icecream and lay on the grass. Beautiful, lazy day. Another night on a boat, bought my booze duty free for Valborg and then cruised into Stockholm yesterday morning to discover that over the week the trees did the green thing and Sweden is now stupidly prettty. Ahhhh so this is why Spring is a big deal. So yep, that was my Easter trip. Solid. I arrived home to find a kitchen full of dirty dishes and no food. Well apart from an amusingly mouldy cucumber and some frozen bread. Winner. I’m failing a bit at the whole adult thing lately. It doesn’t help that Spring is now seriously here and it doesn’t get dark til really late and its shorts weather so the temptation to be lazy and get your vitamin D on is overwhelming. I can’t remember the last time I went to class. Hmmm. Eh ah well. This weekend is gonna be crazy. It’s Valborg (wikipedia that shit). It’s basically this massssssive party to welcome spring or something, I can’t remember. But it’s gonna be, well, yeah, yep. Like I’ve said, I love Uppsala, I love the exchange student life. I love it so much I’ve extended my stay for another semester. Yep. Ohhh and Dad I got another piercing today. Just a cartilage one. I can imagine you squirming right now. Ohhh, ohhhh and I’m going to Croatia in two weeks. Well this has been dense.
