Stockholm

Hej hej,

So continuing on from the last post about Christmas break... When I got back to Sweden the semester was just ending.  After writing a paper, doing a presentation, finishing an assignment, and taking an exam the time I had left with some of the guys was almost over.  It wasn't long at all until Christoph and Andre had to head back to Germany.  It was sad to see them go, but it was nice to know what Mike and I would soon go to Germany to visit them.  And since they left, we have also learned that Christoph will be back here visiting at the end of next month, and then the next week, we'll be going to Riga, Latvia to meet up with Andre and the great friends of his who came up to visit once on their annual vacation trip to eastern Europe.

Around that time, the new kids for second semester were starting to arrive, so the students who hadn't yet taken their flights or trains home still had to give up their rooms here.  At that time, Chris came to live with me for about a week until he had to go home.  We both still had work to do, and he had a lot of good-byes to say and packing to do - my room was a train wreck for about a week with all my stuff plus everything from his place too - but it was really nice to have him there all the time so that we could make the most of the time before he had to leave.

That weekend, Mike and Lorena left for Stockholm on Saturday to meet up with one of Lorena's friends there, but I had an exam, and Chris a project, so we ended up heading up on Sunday and staying until Monday evening.  I'm sure Stockholm's not nearly as nice - as much more icy - than it during the summer, but this was going to be Chris' last chance to see it - as left that Wednesday - and it was actually really nice still.  But Jan-Olof said that it's really quite beautiful in the summer, so Mike and I are sure to head up there again when the weather's nice.  And I'm sure he's right, since Stockholm is build on a number of islands, so there's water everywhere.

Stockholm Central Station, the first thing we saw when we got there,
and where we killed the last our time there waiting for our train

The met Mike and Lorena at the Swedish Nobel Museum, but didn't stop to go in since we were on our way to lunch

After lunch we went to Fotographiska (Museum of Photography).  I think this was a unanimous choice for our favorite display.  Mike, Chris, and Lorena are the shadows in the middle, and the piece to their right is "Dancing in the Dark"

Afterwards Chris and I went out on our usual night exploring walk.  I spotted this great lookout point between two houses
on top of one of the hills.  As you can see the roads were pure ice and although we each slipped pretty badly
a number of times, it's a small miracle that neither of us fell the whole trip

The view from the lookout point, as you can see it's looking from one of Stockholm's islands to another

And as you can see, all the islands are connected by a number of bridges

Another nice night view, this time from ground level

Then we walked though the city looking at all the shops.  We really liked this shop full of little
metal sculptures for decorating up  all sorts of things, these ones here are for wine bottles

Of course there were lots of shops for traditional Swedish things like Dala Horses

I don't remember exactly what these building were, but they looked pretty cool

These stone lions were scattered all down the main street

As were these little Christmas trees in comically large pots

Then we headed back to our hostel, which you can see is not only huge, but beautifully decorated

Then we headed to our first real "attraction," the Stockholm Ice Bar.  Modeled after the Ice Bar from the Ice Hotel in Kiruna (northern Sweden), that's a hotel entirely made of ice (yes, that includes the beds).  The Ice Bar in Stockholm was inside a hotel, and we made reservations to save our spot - and a few bucks - but seeing how it was a Sunday night and this bar is simply a tourist attraction, when we got there we found that it was pretty empty.  Our first indication was that when we went to the front desk and told the guy our reservation time he said "Oh, you must be Chris." And sure enough when we got there, we had the whole place to ourselves.  Another group came in and started filling the place up about a half hour later, but we had the whole bar to ourselves for quite a while, and it was really cool.

They give you a free drink in a completely ice cup when you get there, Chris' had cinnamon in it and was just delicious

They have a bunch of ice sculptures for you to play around with

I really like this shot

Since we had the place to ourselves, we could fool around a bit

Since it has to be kept freezing cold so the place doesn't melt, they give you Ice Bar jackets to wear when you come in

We literally had the whole place to ourselves, even the bartender was just there to make us the drinks and then she left again

The walls and tables and everything were made of ice and all had cool designs lasered into them.
I still don't know how they made them, but they all looked really cool

After that we called it a night, and got up early the next morning to walk around and check out some more stuff.

I just thought this was funny, and quite ironic

We found a huge park with lots of walking paths that I bet would have been beautiful in summer

Most of the building seemed to have the same earthy colors and texture, it gave a nice touch to the city

I don't know what all the birds were doing there, but part of the Royal Palace is in the background

Our next attraction was the Royal Palace, which was made up of a number of buildings, including "The Royal Gift Shop"

I thought the guns the guards has were unnecessarily large, but whatever gets the job done

After that we went back to wandering the side streets

The side streets were the cozy European narrow streets surrounded by tall buildings.
And yes, I purposely chose the picture with Ben and Jerry's in it.

If I though those streets were narrow, the alleys off the side streets were like nothing

We didn't actually go into the National Museum, but we saw it from across the water

Our next scheduled stop was at a little ice rink in the middle of one of the parks.  We rented skates and spent a while on the ice

For not having skated in about 13 years, Chris was - besides giving Canada a bad name - a great skater,
 and despite some close calls, our not falling weekend even kept up though ice skating

Even after exploring the city for two straight days, we didn't even see this
entire shopping center until a few hours before we were leaving

I don't know why I like this picture so much, but the color of the sign just compliments
 the buildings so well - and it looks like it's trying to point out Chris

I don't know what this tower in the middle of the city was for, but it was pretty cool looking at night

That evening we took the train back to Vaxjo, and it was back to classes the next morning.  The day after that I had to duck out of class early and run back home to get to Chris and bring him to the bus stop before he left.  It was rough to watch him leave, and almost as hard to walk back home from the bus stop with Mike, but it didn't really hit me until a couple days later.  He's too far away to visit here, and he's still far from Vermont, but at least in the big picture he's pretty close, and a whole lot closer than the Germans will be after I leave Sweden.

New kids have shown up, not nearly as many as there were last semester, but some, and some of the old kids from other buildings have moved in to take some of the places left behind by people who've left, so there are some new faces.  We haven't had quite the same type of group as we did last semester, but I didn't expect anything like that to happen, and quite frankly I'm surprised I got as close to those guys last semester as I did.  I feel like the new kids have probably formed groups within themselves like we did last semester, but some of the older freemovers who've been here a few years say that as the weather gets nicer out, and people start spending more time outside it gets a lot easier to meet more people.  A couple guys, Germans naturally, Jan and Timo are really cool, but of course they aren't nearly as close as Mike and I.  I talk to Mike probably every day, and we hang out most days.  It's like I take all the time I spent with each one of the guys before and now spend that much time with just Mike.

A couple of weeks ago I was walking home from the gym and felt something go wrong in my knee.  I talked to my trainer back home and decided that I have ITBS - Iliotibial Band Syndrome - or part of an overuse condition associated with running, cycling, hiking, and weight lifting.  It's just a superficial thickening of the tissue running down the outside of the leg from the pelvis to the knee, so it's not serious but enough to keep me out of commission for a bit.  So lately I've been rehabbing it, and that's cutting my exercise by more than half by not allowing me to do virtually any lower body work and I've been having a little more free time on my hands.  I've been reading a lot more, I started in on the work for my online class, and even started learning some new stuff about evolutionary robotics in preparation for my thesis work next semester.  I've also been going for a lot more long walks now that I can't run for a little while.  I sometimes like to bring along my music and camera, and here are some shots from a walk Mike and I took the day after Chris left, and from another I took one morning when it was really nice out:

The path through the nature reserve behind the school, I think there are shots from this place in previous posts

I like how narrow the depth of field is on some settings even on the point and shoot, as demonstrated nicely on the rope here

I studied the mathematics of the formation of tree branches in one of my classes once, and have been fascinated with their patterns ever since.  I also like the interplay of the overlapping branches here

Mike waiting on the bridge for me to catch up as I stop every so often to try and take artsy shots like this

I really like the proportions of this shot, and the texture of the clouds allows for a lot
 of space to be dedicated to the sky without it looking empty or deferring the eye

The sharpness of this camera still amazes me, it allows even simple shots like this to be interesting

The fuzzy texture of the sky in these shots does a great job of contrasting the sharp edges of the lights

And it wouldn't be an album of mine if it didn't include a ground shot with short focus and the sun in the background

That's it for now, but I promise there's more to come later on, and the pace will definitely pick up later when it's nicer out, classes have started to wind down, and travel is starting to take over the time left by classes.

Hej da

Christmas in Vermont

Hej,

So I realize it's been almost 2 months since my last post, and it's probably time that I update this thing once again.  The last time I posted was early December, and a good amount of stuff has happened since then.  After retuning form Olso, it was only a couple of weeks until it was time to head home for Christmas.  The day before I left, the first member of our little group, Jackson, headed home for good.  He has class starting at the beginning of January and wanted to be home for Christmas, so he headed back to Canada about the time I headed back to the States.

The trip back to the States was just one complication after another.  For starters, my flight left first thing in the morning out of Copenhagen, and none of the trains from Vaxjo got there early enough in the morning, so I headed to Copenhagen on the last train out of Vaxjo the night before and spent the night in the airport. Before leaving that night, I had so many people to see and say goodbye to, and I had dinner with Mike, Chris, and Christoph and also sadly had to say goodbye to Jonna and Sari, not for good, but for quite some time, as they would be gone when I returned from Christmas and it wouldn't be until spring that Mike and I will go visit them in Finland.  So I ended up not having time to pack until I just about to leave, and I ran around like crazy throwing things in my bag and rushing out to the bus stop to get there in time to make my train that night.  The once on the train, as usual, I set my alarm to wake me up a little before the time we were scheduled to arrive in Copenhagen, but not before getting my ticket checked and asking the ticket collected (even though I heard her say the same thing to the guy behind me) that this train was going directly to Copenhagen with no need to change trains.  She assured me that it was.  So I went to sleep, and woke up in a pretty much empty, stopped train.  The only people in my cabin were myself and another exchange student from Vaxjo.  The conductor was saying something in Swedish that neither or us understood, but soon came out to tell us that the train was stopping and that we had to leave.  The train, as it usually does, switched controlling companies half way through the ride, and apparently the first lady I talked to was mistaken.  We were clearly not in Copenhagen, and it didn't take me long to figure out that were not far away, but that we had stopped just before leaving Sweden for Denmark.  I figured that we were only a few minutes from Copenhagen and worst come to worst, I could get a taxi to the airport.  But after running into the train station and talking to the first worker in sight, I learned that there was a train leaving for Copenhagen across the station in about 10 minutes, and booked it outside and through the snow to the other side of the station just in time to make the train.  There was no way that I had time to stop and make sure that my ticket still worked on this new train, but that was the least of my concerns.  Sure enough Copenhagen was just a couple of stations away, and I ended up getting there with no problem.  I ended up saying up all night upstairs in the airport watching movies and tv shows on my laptop since I didn't feel comfortable leaving my luggage out in the open if I were to sleep, but I figured it would be no problem to sleep for the entire flight once I got on the plane - and staying up would help me to adjust to the time difference anyways.

The next hiccup occurred with my flight from Copenhagen to my layover in Frankfurt.  There was a huge snowstorm in northern Europe that weekend, some of my friends weren't even able to leave Vaxjo and go home for Christmas at all, and as a result, the airport was backed up and our flight from Copenhagen to Frankfurt was held up for a few minutes on departure.  They assured us that the delays were happening all around, and that flights in Frankfurt would be delayed too, so making connecting flights shouldn't be a problem.  When I got to Frankfurt, late of course, and found the gate that I was supposed to depart from, there was nobody there, and at the gate beside it, I learned that the flight had already left.  Apparently, the international flight were given higher priority, and mine had not been delayed as long as my flight from Copenhagen had been.  The airline rescheduled me for the next flight to Chicago, my next layover, and comped me a hotel in downtown Frankfurt, as well as taxi fare to the hotel and back, and lunch, dinner, and breakfast in the morning.  I thought it wasn't a completely bad thing, I had three weeks in the States, and spending an extra 12 hours in Frankfurt would allow me to see some of the city and head out in the morning.  The biggest problem was that my luggage was checked all the way to the States, so all I had was my carry on luggage.  Though my backpack was mostly full of Christmas gifts, luckily I had packed an extra change of clothes in there for emergency situation like this.  So after splitting a taxi to the hotel with a very nice Finnish couple, I left my stuff there and went out exploring.  I only lasted for about 20 minutes, before I realized that I hadn't slept in a very long time and all I wanted to do was go back to the hotel and fall asleep, and that's just what I did.  The city really wasn't much to see anyways, but I think I walked around probably the nicest part the city had to offer, judging from looking around during my brief cab rides.

I don't know exactly was this was, but it looked pretty cool

I have no idea how this tree came to be so bent?

The path I walked down next to the river

I really liked the way the industrial center is framed in this one.

But the next day I got up early, had a huge breakfast and got to the airport and took off with no problems.  Of course, my luggage wasn't in Chicago when I got off the plane, but I had no problem making my flight to Vermont after a long layover in Chicago.  It turns out that the snowstorm in Vermont almost turned back my flight into Burlington, but I didn't know that, and had no problem getting home that night.

Just playing around with the camera to entertain me on the flight

This one came out kind of cool

I like this shot of the Chicago skyline just visible through the fog.

My luggage finally got delivered to the house a few days later, just in time to wrap the few gifts that I had left in my check-in for Christmas.  The next two and a half weeks went by just like that.  I spent so much time seeing friends I hadn't seen for so long, doing things like snowboarding or playing hockey that I didn't have the gear to do back in Sweden, just enjoying the beauty of Vermont, and, of course, spending lost of time with friends and family for the holidays.  I don't have any of the pictures I took, as I used the DSLR whenever I could, having used this little point and shot for the past 5 months, and unfortunately, it never occurred to me to upload the pictures from that camera before I left, but I do have a few holiday pictures that other people took on the camera I did bring back here.  In fact there are so many that I'm sure all of them wouldn't fit up here, so I'll just upload a picture or two of the people I have pictures of here.

Mom's usually operating the camera, but I did find a nice shot of her

A rare shot of Dad posing for a shot... since it took Mom about 5 tries to get a shot without shaking the camera

Crystal starting to open the stockings

And I was there too, as were Mame and Grandpa

And what would a Christmas montage be without at least one tree?

Another Christmas the next day at Mame and Grandpa's

With most of the busy, crowded shots from this day, I like this one for it's quiet peacefulness 

Of course I needed to include a shot of Mame wearing around the ceremonial
 Christmas ornament, along with the first great-granddaughter

And about 2 action packed weeks later, I returned back to Sweden to spend the last little bit of time with the friends who were about to leave.  The 3 weeks I was gone flew by like it was a couple of days, but it was still nice to get back and see the guys.  And after all the adventures of flying back to the states, the flight back to Sweden was strangle uneventful.

It turns out I have more pictures than I thought, and although I could probably squeeze them in here too, it might as well make a new post for my trip to Stockholm, so check for another post after this one.

Hej-hej