After a looong night bus ride, we finally made it to Stockholm, Sweden! No deportation (yet)! I think I got about 3 hours of sleep, total, which is a new record! We arrived at the train station and hung out at a cafe until the shops opened and we could message Eva and Zita, who got here the day before, so that we could meet up. Once it became a more reasonable hour, we ventured to our hostel to store our luggage and then back to the train station to meet up with the others. We decided to walk around Stockholm, which is made up of a series of islands. We started by looking in some of the shops on the main shopping street downtown and then made our way to the older island (Gamla Stan) which has the Royal Palace, Parliament Building, and some really cute little shops. We stopped at a cafe for a quick bite to eat, and then continued onto the next island, SoFo, which is the more alternative and hipster-like part of the city. It used to be the ghetto, but they changed it so much that it is now the most expensive and desirable place to live for young people in Stockholm. We shopped for a little bit there and then made our way back to the hostel to check in and take a quick nap.
After everyone had rested for a little bit, the others wanted to go back to SoFo to grab a drink, and even though I wasn't feeling that well, I decided to join. We found a cute pub and stayed there for a couple of hours. I was feeling kind of sick, so I just had tea. After that we split into two groups, one went on to keep partying, and I went with the group back to the hostel because I was really felling sick at that point. (In retrospect, eating the free cottage cheese they were handing out and being in denial about probably being lactose intolerant probably wasn't the smartest decision...)
I headed back with Eva and Zita, but we are staying in different hostels, so I had to make the last part of the trip, through the city, at night, by myself. It was pretty freaky, but I made it there alive! :D
September 28
I definitely liked the Bergen hostel better than this one. This one isn't the cleanest and it is very big and busy. We are also staying in a 14 person mixed gender room and I am pretty sure the dude in the bunk next to mine vomited in his bed during the night because he sounded so sick. :P Bleh... Ewwww.
AAAAnyways, I woke up, got ready, checked out of the hostel, and then met up with Marlene to go on a free walking tour of downtown Stockholm. Our tour guide was pretty funny and we learned a lot about the history and some modern information about the city and some of it's famous people. We got to see where the Princess met her husband, who was her gym trainer, and where the term "Stockholm Syndrome" was coined during a bank robbery with the hostages. We also saw the H&M world headquarters and where there are 7 H&M's in a 500 square meter radius. Not even joking...
After the tour, Marlene and I split up and I got to explore Stockholm on my own, which was a lot of fun! It was my last day here and sometimes it is nice to just do the things that you want to do/are interested in, at your own pace, without having to worry about other people that are with you. The buildings here are beautiful and remind me of Italy (Not that I've been there,... yet :) ) I looked around on the shopping street and then went over to the Older island to look closer at the Royal Palace and Parliament Building. I even saw a protest going on in front of the palace!
It is so weird to see shops and other buildings open here on Sundays after being in Oslo for so long. I think it will be a huge culture shock to go home, back to America, and have everything open, some even 24/7! I had about 20 Swedish kroner left from the money I took out, not worth exchanging back, and so I looked in the souvenir shops to see what I could buy. I ended up finding the Dala horse museum in one of the shops, which was cool and bought a little figurine and some postcards.
After wandering around for a bit, I ran into Eva and Zita and hung out with them until we met up with the others and headed to a cafe for some hot chocolate and a traditional Norwegian cinnamon roll with salt on the top (in Sweden?). It was really good! We hung out there for a while and since we still had some time to kill before our bus left, Eva, Zita, and I walked around the Old Town to see all of the buildings, water, and lights at night. Stockholm is very pretty and it was nice to get a final view of the city before we left.
After a while, we wandered back to the bus terminal and got on our night bus to start the loooong ride home.
I don't think that Stockholm was my favorite trip by a long shot. I wasn't that interested in going in the first place, but in the end I am glad I went. I am extremely grateful to even have the opportunity for traveling and being here, I just think the lack of sleep kind of affected the trip in a negative way.
September 29
We got back into Oslo around 6 a.m. and finally made it back to our dorms around 7. I crashed right away and slept until about noon. I was supposed to have a seminar for my Psych class where we presented our paper outlines (which I haven't started... oops) but I looked at the schedule in the morning and apparently it got pushed back, which means NO CLASS TODAY! So I went back to sleep. :) I could have stayed longer in Stockholm then, but it is nice having a day to recover after a trip like that.
I napped, watched Netflix, Skyped my mom, and just relaxed all day. It was nice to get the chance to catch up on sleep and kind of chill before jumping back into school and classes tomorrow! And it will be nice to have a weekend without traveling or having anything planned before I go and meet up with Jess in Paris! :D
September 30
After my genetics lecture in the morning, I went grocery shopping in Grønland to stock up for the week. I was planning on going to the gym, but my head was throbbing with a horrible headache, so I just went home. But I was still very productive! I did laundry, unpacked, cleaned, blogged (3 DIFFERENT TIMES BECAUSE WEEBLY KEPT DELETING THIS AFTER I FINISHED IT EACH TIME >:( ), and did other chore-like things that had been building up.
I experimented for dinner! I successfully made rice (Thanks Frieda for your instructions!) and then it went downhill form there... First of all, the pictures on the cans are very deceiving. What I thought were peas, were actually green beans, and what I thought was baby corn, was actually a mixture of wok vegetables. Then I couldn't find a can opener, but I did discover that you can open cans by stabbing them a bunch of times with scissors and then prying the metal open with whatever you can find that is strong enough! Then I mixed all that with a spicy sauce and = dinner? In was... edible.... sort of. I think I will just stick to peanut butter... Hmm peanut butter and rice?! No? I should make a cookbook!
In the afternoon I was talking with my best friend, Michelle (Hi!) on Facebook and she broke my heart! We usually send random pictures/emoticons back and forth and she sent me this one:
Other than that, it has been a productive day and I am just getting ready to finally jump back into classes and start getting ready for finals because they will be here before I know it! :$