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.
The Steve times
Firstly, here’s the photos.
On May 29 my brother-from-another-mother, Steve, touched down in the land of the beautiful socialists, jumped on a bus and made his way out to Uppsala, brimming with anticipation of spending a month with yours truly (I assume. He may have been brimming with dread, antipathy or hunger. Either way, he was brimming). What he wasn’t anticipating was me standing there with my left foot in a cast, wobbling on crutches, rather sheepish. For those in the dark, long story short, the night before I fell over in a forest and fractured a bone in my foot. Whoops. Anyway, the plan was to get out and explore northern Europe for a couple of weeks, but before that we had a week to kill in Uppsala (and some assignments to finish…), so we nabbed a nations gästkort (guest card) for Steve, I reactivated my credit card (another stupid story) and went crazy, Uppsala style. Over the week we pub crawled, wizard pole’d and farewelled many exchangers who were heading home or leaving to travel. I missed saying goodbye properly to heaps of people, which I feel bad about. So if you see this, uhhh, bye?
Sunrise after Wizard Pole Wednesday at Flogsta.
Saturday we hit the road. We caught a train to Stockholm, then another to Oslo for 6 or 7 hours, melting in the uncharacteristic Swedish heat. That’s probably the worst thing about public transport in the summer here: no air conditioning. I mean, totally understandable, but whenever it gets hot, goddamn it sucks. Anyway, we rock up in Oslo with no accommodation booked, assuming we’ll be able to get a bed pretty easily, but instead find every hostel is booked out. Joy. I’m in favour of an all nighter, what with the gratuitous amounts of daylight and the super early train we have to catch, but instead pay waaay too much for a single in a hotel. Ah well, at least we can shower. We wander up the main shopping street, loving the balmy weather and hit McDonald’s for dinner. I’ve stopped caring about how much people judge me for loving Maccas. Embrace it. Up at sparrow’s the next morning, Steve reveals he’s booked only half of the trip to Bergen. Okaay. We get the train to Myrdal, passing ski resorts, a glacier and other amazing scenery en route, then buy tickets for the scenic Flåm railway. It’s seriously worth it. We see snow, waterfalls, stupidly quaint valleys… and loads of old people. We spend about 10 mins in Flåm, enough time to nab coke from the supermarket, then train back up the mountain. Another train into fjord country, complete with some quality dilf-watching, brings us to Bergen.
Oh hey there, picturesque town.
Bergen. Hmmm. OK, I both loved and hated it. Basically, love because it’s amazingly gorgeous, hate because of the rain. This is a city in which rain fell every day between 29 October 2006 and 21 January 2007, 85 consecutive days (wikipedia goodness). Our “youth” hostel was halfway up a hill/mountain that was kinda out of town and full of old French people. Pretty buggered and unwilling to go all the way back into town we chilled out and watched the sun set over the fjord (at about midnight. Scandinavia, you’re a bit of a dick). Stunning. Next day Bergen showed its true colours. It was pissing down rain and at the supermarket we got a feeling for how bloody expensive Norway is. We met some Aussies from Caulfield (a magician and a girl with as much personality as a clump of used chewy) and tagged along with them to see some stave church. It was pretty, but was I saturated, my cast was disintegrating and, hey, I’m a moody cow at the best of times. Poor Steve. Anyhoodles, our final day in Bergen was a bit better (maybe ‘cause we knew we were leaving), as we checked out the city properly and it stopped raining. At the fish market we saw whale meat. It does not look appetising. Bryggen was nice. McDonald’s was expensive. Next thing we were on a plane to Copenhagen. I’d never been happy to leave a country before I went to Norway. Don’t get me wrong, from what I saw it’s an incredibly beautiful country and I’d go back and see more. But I’d be old. And have money. And my foot would not be in a cast.
We get to Copenhagen and revel in the cheap prices. Well, comparatively cheap. We jump on the Metro out to Nørrebro, a pretty cool area that reminds me of Brunswick. The hostel plays cool music, the chick behind the desk looks like my cousin, Loz, and we eat Chinese food whilst shooting the shit with Canadians. Our time in Copenhagen is pretty lazy; I’d already been there in March so I wasn’t overly fussed about sight seeing. The sun is out so we picnic in the Rosenborg Castle Gardens, watching kids play rounders and flip each other the bird. Hilarious. We even get sunburnt. We wander along Strøget, the longest pedestrian shopping street in Europe, up to Nyhavn, go to another park, then get AMAZING (for northern Europe) Thai takeaway. (I think that was all one day. I forget a little). The next morning sees the brace thing that allowed me to walk on my foot snap in half, completely out of the blue. I spend the day walking on a little stump of plastic, which is irritating as fuck, so once again Steve found himself hanging around with a bitch. Sorry, Steve. We saw some Danish design museum, Kastellet and, from afar, the Little shit statue that’s not worth it, uh, sorry, Mermaid. Back at the hostel I give up and cut my cast off a few days early… then promptly run to the shower to shave my left leg. We go to a vego restaurant with an American guy and an Israeli guy we met at the hostel, then meet up with Steve’s friend, Johannes, who lives around the corner. His apartment is like a student corridor (but seriously cool) and we play drinking games with other exchange students until some stupid hour. Actually, this reminds me of how awesome it was being out of Sweden: We didn’t meet Jo until about 9pm and we had nothing to drink. In Uppsala you can’t just decide to have a few drinks at home without pre-planning a trip to System, and you sure as hell can’t randomly decide to have a few drinks at 9pm on a Thursday night (or after 3 on a Saturday or AT ALL on a Sunday). However, as we weren’t in Sweden, we just walked to the supermarket. If it had been closed, we would have just gone to 7-11. I was thrilled. Needless to say I felt like arse the next day, but we had to check out, go back to the Thai place and see Christiania before catching our flight to Iceland.
Kids playing in the park. The girl in the pink dress was such a bitch. This was before they all started flipping the bird. Not at all creepy that I was taking photos of children.
Iceland was the part of the trip I was most excited about, apart from the music festival. Any country that can give the world this AND this has to be pretty interesting. Our plane on the trip over is ollllld, smells like piss and the guy who sits behind Steve is an arsehole, but all this is forgotten as we land on what seems to be another planet. On the bus into Reykjavik we’re kinda awestruck by the landscape, which is all lava (well, basalt, I guess) and no trees. Our hostel is quite central and has a wall covered in quotes from The Big Lebowski. Everyone we meet there seems to be staying for a lot longer than us (2.5 days, essentially) and seeing a lot more than just Reykjavik. We explore the town a bit with some American guy (who turns out to be something of a douchebag) and half heartedly make plans to go out later. Around 11 Steve and I watch the sun trying to set from the waterfront. At midnight I’m still able to read a book without switching a light on. I hit the hay, and I assume Steve does too, until I find him nursing a hangover the next morning. “Just going to get a cup of tea” my arse. We spend the next day exploring more, seeing the cathedral and eating really good Thai noodle soup. There are some really cool shops and I’m a bit bummed that I’m restricted by my luggage. I buy a yoyo anyway. Owing to the perpetual daylight, we’re able to do the Golden Circle tour that evening, albeit a truncated version, so we jump on a bus and go see some sights. Actually, while waiting for the bus outside the hostel, a car with little flags on the front and the number plate “1” pulls up. An oldish guy gets out, says “hello” to us and goes inside. That was the Icelandic president. Anyway, the landscape never ceases to be incredible and our bus driver is strangely funny (“Yessss Iceland has horses and they are small, but don’t call them ponies! They are big horses with small legs!”). We see Þingvellir national park, Gullfoss waterfall and Haukadalur, a geothermally active area that has a geyser called “Geyser”, which is where that word comes from. Hmm, I learnt something. It’s all pretty damn interesting, but you’re better off looking at my photos because I can’t be arsed describing it all. I’ll put a link somewhere up the top to the album on facebook. Cool. So yeah. Back at the hostel Steve and I are absolutely buggered, and although I’ve heard the nightlife in Reykjavik is supposed to be pretty awesome, we can’t face the thought of a night out. Our final day is pretty lazy and indulgent. The Blue Lagoon is on the way to the airport, so after lunch we catch a bus out there and get our mud onnnn. Basically it’s the output water from a geothermal power plant, but because it’s supposedly full of minerals and good for your skin, so they tell you to rub mud on yourself and lie in the water. It all seemed like a huge wank to me, but the water is bright blue, so at least that was really cool. It turns out I’m really bad at those relaxation places. I get really tense and sit around judging people. Lady, you’re like a 65 year old leathery, over-tanned smoker. No amount of mud is going to make you young or attractive. After paddling around in the water for 4 or 5 hours it’s finally time for us to go kill more time at the airport. The selection of food is shit. I buy perfume and a new pair of Sennheiser earphones (argh so good). The next thing, that’s it, we’re in the air. We’ve done Iceland. That was cool.
Blue Lagoon. Check out the bluey goodness.
So anyway, that was my first two weeks with Steve.
