Photos of Scandinavia

Hi All! I've changed the template of the blog a bit but hopefully you can figure it out (it's best to choose "Magazine" view from the grey tool bar at the top. click the title for the full post and the photos to enlarge them!). Here are some photos of my trip. I'll try to narrate a bit!This is the view from the top of the fort/castle in Helsingborg towards the Sound. We got the "around the sound" tickets which allow you to make 2 ferry trips/train trips and transit for 48 hours doing the loop around the sound between Denmark and Sweden so this is just North of Lund, where I was staying.
These are the Suburbs in Sweden, they actually look really nice! They are New Urbanist suburbs though which don't have the same principles as we are used to, they limit yard space, garages/parking and are connected by pedestrian and bike paths very well!
Suzanne (crazy wearing shorts in the fall!)
Sitting in the grass in Copenhagen, first time I've been able to do this in a while!
This is the Copenhagen skyline from the bridge crossing the river. I'm not sure how I feel about that city, it's very grey, very drab, they pave over everything and chop down all the trees to save money on maintenance and watering. So the sky is grey, the buildings are grey and I think I would be quite depressed if I lived there. Also they have this rediculous idea that bathrooms need not be bigger than your toilet stall in the shopping mall. Sometimes smaller (no exageration) and in this space is the toilet, sink and you close the door and it is also the shower. Good god! Crazy people, you'd think they could give up a tiny bit of space from the bedrooms for a normal bathroom!

Anyhow, it was a great trip. I was a bit sad to return because going home is one thing to everyone you know and love but this time I was just.... going. It's a new concept for me to get used to.

Alright, love everyone muchly!

Things to write home about...

Yesterday night Suzanne and I were invited to dinner at some people's house where they made us a home cooked Swedish meal! You'll never guess what it was!.... Meatballs! Hahah, and potatoes, with gravy and lingon berry sauce. It was amazing. Really really delicious and they were very nice people. I learned a few things about Sweden while I was there though, and I will now share those with you!

Did you know...

When you have chickens you are required to give the chickens a 1 week vacation every year where they can go to the farm and roam around... yes, chicken vacations!

Sour dough bread is made by keeping a piece of the last loaf to put into each new loaf and this pattern recycles so that the bread can eventually be like 100 years old! So, with such old dough, what happens when you go on vacation? You take your dough to a dough hotel where someone will feed your dough for you! HAAAAAhahhahah

Also, if you own a pet it is illegal to keep it inside more than 4 hours at a time. Makes you think twice about the responsibility doesn't it?

That's it for now! I'm headed back to BCN tomorrow evening and hopefully the sun holds up here for my last day :) <3

Holy F, Sweden is Cold!

Hello from the North Pole... maybe actually! Haha, I made it to Sweden yesterday night and stepped off the train to an unexpected feeling... one I have not felt in some time! And yet, I'm told that this is "nice". Hmmm... I seem to have climatized a bit more than I though because I think it has been around 12 degrees but I really feel as though it was close to 0, and maybe it may snow. Also my nose is always running, I can't believe I considered living here!!! No really, all joking and whining aside, Lund is a really beautiful and charming little town. And Suzanne is here, being a great friend, taking me to fantastic architecture lectures (today by Turenscape Architecture) and then there was a nice open house type thing in the Architecture Faculty. Quite inspiring and suddenly I feel like working on my thesis again. I've also managed to read almost 3 books this week, so that's good, bout time!

Anyhow, I'm realizing how lucky I am to be in a European country where their economy is failing! The basic necessities are SO much cheaper! A mini bottle of contact solution here costs about 7 canadian dollars (good lord!) I guess it makes up for the free tuition I could've had here. The buildings are so modern and sleek, there are tons of really large parks and nice old trees and there's not really anything that I've seen ( so far) larger than 4 stories. It's a nice nice change for a couple days :)

Photos to come in a day or two, hopefully it will be rain free!

Pasta

So for almost as long as I have lived in this house, each morning when I walk past one of the bars/cafes around the corner, there is a sign outside that says Cafe & Pasta 1.95. I always thought that this was strange for a few reasons. 1, why is it so cheap? 2, who eats pasta in the morning? I also always wondered what KIND of pasta it would be... yeah I meet eat it one day, after all breakfast goes until like 1pm. Anyways I have since, very recently learned, that Pasta is the word for pastry basically - donuts, crossants etc all of that falls under pasta. What makes it confusing, is that pasta is also called pasta. How's that for confusing!

This weekend is not going to be anything too crazy, I'm going to try and get some work done, maybe hit up the beach if there's some time and Nima has promised/threatened that we are going to the gym for a minimum 2 hr workout. It's okay, I'd rather not be home because my way of not going mental has basically been to lock myself inside my tiny room and avoid all human contact. Sometimes it works. Yesterday I saw the Steven Spielberg movie Super 8, it was predictable but pretty good. That guy really likes bicycles though - every movie!

Yesterday afternoon I found 3 hours to bike ride over to Bogatell Beach (my favorite in the city) and spend some time reading there. It was a nice change because the water was like it was in Greece - super clear, clean and a really really calm day on the water so you can just float around. It's just too bad that you can't really go too far or anything becaues if you leave your stuff on the beach there is an excellent chance that it could get up an walk away! I think now that it's so much better maybe I'll try to get there a bit more often before the really nice weather leaves, I noticed yesterday that at 5pm the shadows were getting really long and as I was bike riding home the sun was directly in my eyes. That time of year I guess.

Alright, time for some Canadian coffee to get this day moving! If someone would like to read a few of these books for me? I'd let you!

xox

Sweden, Greece, Fall, Canadian Coffee

Well, it's been quite the week. A bit of a bad luck streak came though but things seem to be getting a bit better now (thank god). I had to cancel my trip to Greece at the beginning of next month as my friend there has a family illness and basically it's just not an apporpriate time to go for a visit. So that is put on hold! I'm still going to Sweden to visit Suzanne though, and I really cannot wait. It's been a long time since we've seen one another and I've always wondered what Sweden was like! I have this vision of it being so great, people less stressed, a different planet really. From the people I've met there, I have quite a utopian view of it all but time will tell! So I leave on the 21, just for one week :) Also, I got a really great delivery of Canadian coffee (AND coffee cream!) so that has been keeping me quite happy this last week. It's a much better way to get up in the morning knowing that you don't have to ingest pure tar ;)

Fall is definitely here, the leaves turning, yesterday was the first day that I didn't feel too hot, I felt just right walking around outside in shorts and I've noticed that the sun is changing angles, becoming lower in the sky and setting a lot earlier in the evening. I don't generally see it rise in the morning so I can't comment on that! It's good, it feels like the city is going back to some kind of normal routine, I'm more motivated to work and study and have been doing a lot of reading. Some of the reading so so scientific and technical though that after only 10 pages my mind feels completely swamped with all this knowledge it doesn't know what do with, or if in the end it will even be relevant to my thesis!

I've been thinking about the Jessica/Evan wedding and all the great fun that it's going to be! Now, I'm going to get back to work so I can save up for this little excursion. But seriously.... let's set a date guys ;)

I miss you all, thinking about home especially right now and all the people I haven't talked to lately. Also I heard about the distracted driving law and I would just like to say quite confidently that I can drink coffee while driving quite successfully -isn't this one a bit over the top? They have basically just put drive-thru's out of business as well, so I imagine this poriton of the law will not last long!

Okokok, enough rambling. Tomorrow I would like to get to the beach (it's been a few weeks) I'll try to take photos of something new for you along the way.

Hugs for everyonexox

Some Sad News

Sorry it's been a while. I've been having a bit of a tough time the last few weeks. I think most people knew that Auntie Bunny was pretty sick for a while now and yesterday her battle with cancer ended. I'm going to miss her, and will always have great memories of the time we spent on Whidby Island with her as kids and the times when she came to visit us. Maybe Grandma needed some company up there and now we know they aren't alone <3

I'll write again in a couple days and try to respond to all the nice emails :)

B

Day 7: No hot water.

I have a WHOLE new respect for the families in the olden days when they had to heat a bunch of hot water on the stove and pour it into the big wash basin to have a bath. Showering has become about a 1.5 hour process at a minimum these days. Let's just say I'm not thrilled to be paying rent at the moment. Thank god it's summer though!

Life is back to some level of normalcy around here (finally!). No more house guests, no more excuses and it's back to work for this girl. Had a short "meeting" with the thesis advisor this morning. Basically I need to get my ass in gear. Also it's Labour Day in Canada so thank god I don't have to do TOO much work today, but I did try to get a bit ahead for the shit storm that I'm sure will be tomorrow!

This weekend! Well, it was an interesting one. I had a great Catalan dinner at La Rita (near Passeig de Gracia) and was too full to eat most of the next day, but decided to go to the beach and then walk around the Park at the Forum/Diagonal Mar area where they actually have grass that you can go on! It was a beautiful day despite the forecasts of rain all weekend so I took full advantage of it! Then I came home and proceeded to go to sleep at some rediculous hour for spain (maybe 9?). The beaches are clearing out, Las Ramblas is now crossable and it's definitely noticable that the people are going home and the tourists are dwindling :)

That's all today! Happy Belated BDay Auntie P <3

Un abrazo para todos

September!!!

Welcome to another new month everyone, I can't really believe it! Summer is technically coming to and end but 34 degree weather makes it feel otherwise. The trees are starting to lose leaves though and the tourists are starting to go home!

So I haven't written in a long time! Sorry! My friend was here and things were just really nuts. Here are some photos of the last while! One really special part has been that we haven't had any hot water in the house for 5 days. Today Nima took me to his gym with a free invitation so that i could have a hot shower and man was that nice! The girl asked me after if I liked it and if I wanted to join etc tc haha and I just had to kind of think of a reason why it wasn't for me! Oh boy! Hopefully it will get fixed this week and I'm vowing to lock myself in the apartment so that I get lots and lots of work done so that is also good for the fairly useless repairmen who need to come. So far we have had 2 and neither of them could fix it. It wasnt their area.... it's Spain.

Congrats to Heather & Chris on the new little guy! Can't wait for some more photos and it's a great name :)

More tomorrow when my internet chooses to work again!

<3