Yesterday I finally had my last exam! Had 5 in 9 days, quite hectic...! But now it is all over, and I'm free from everything that has to do with studies, and very conveniently the sun decided to sun the whole day! At first it felt very weird to have really nothing you had to do, but I went out in the sun and read a good book and worked on my tan. In the afternoon me and Felix walked down to town to just walk around, buy some small stuff, and have ice cream in the sun. Loads of people were sitting along the river and had picnics and just relaxing, and in town there were people all over and an outdoor market on the market place. After we got back to college I went down to the gym, where I spent quite some time this month, so I could get away from the books and clear my head. Also, I think I can count the beer and drinks I had this month on my fingers, so haven't been in this good shape since I did my military service. Feels like a bit of shame to "ruin" it all now when you can have a drink whenever you want, but there's still plenty of time to keep up the good condition, and I don't really have problem with gaining weight, I somehow stay slim like Iggy Pop almost no matter how much I eat and so. Tonight I hope to top this amazing start of the summer with a good party night at Revolver tonight and rock out! Tomorrow will probably look the same, at least the sun is supposed to shine!
A great way to start off the day is to listen to some nice, happy music to get you in a good mood. This morning I found two new (one is almost two months but new to me, while the other is banging new!) songs that with their latin Copacabana feeling get me in the dance-all-night-at-the-beach-in-the-summer-vibe. As soon as the exams are over I will not get out of my shorts, top, and flip-flops, and just relax in the sun. Both songs are the first video from each artist's new album. Jack Peñate's second album "Everything Is New" comes out June 22, and Mos Def's fourth album "The Ecstacic" comes out June 9. Perfect time for the summer! For those who wants to dance a bit longer there's the Extended Mix of "Tonight's Today" on Spotify.
Last night I did my second shift in the bar in four days, but luckily it was a lot more relaxed than the Friday one. However, it was still quite a lot of people in there since it was the North East Tyne-Tees derby between Newcastle and Middlesbrough, but I had some time to watch the game. It was a very intense and important game for bothe teams, but Newcastle won finally with 3-1 and moved up over the regulation line, yey! And my own Örebro also won their home game too! One thing I have experienced working behind the bar in the college bar is all the weird, disgusting drinks people sometimes order, which I never ever heard about before. First we have the Snakebite, which is half a lager and half a cider (and usually topped up with blackcurrant cordial), and is quite alright. Then you have Shandy, lager and lemonade, which I never tried but it doesn't sounds good. But last night I got to mix the nastiest drink I ever heard someone ask for seriously. A guy asked me to pour up half a pint of lager, put a shot of Amaretto in it, and then top it up with coke!! Mate??!! And also, girls, if you order like three doubles of Malibu, then mix it with diet coke instead of regular won't matter! Furthermore, don't get me started on the flavour of crisps! Salt and Vinegar?! Melted Cheese and Bacon??! Steak and Ale???!! Makes me wanna puke! Well, it's still a great and cool job to be behind the bar, and I get to talk to a lot of people and try out something new.
Been two busy weeks since I came back here to Durham again. Brought my boys, Joel and Aron, over with me for the first week. We left a sunny Stockholm and arrived to a rainy Durham. But the sun finally showed up after two days of rain (think I never actually experienced heavy rain two days in a row here before that), and no matter the weather we had some great days and even better nights together!After that it's been all about revision, just repeating everything I've studied (and not studied) this year, so just imagine there's loads to do. But as always you find tons of stuff that you think is more important to do, so think it's about time to start up this beautiful blog again for real, and see where it might going!
This Saturday I had a reunion with my former senior level school class, since it was 10 years ago we finished school. I've got good contact with around half a dozen of my former class mates, but still quite a couple I haven't seen in some years, and also fun to see everyone since most people live other where now. I met up with Joel, Johan, Isak and Aron to start off the night a bit at Joel's place. As always, very cool to see the guys again and be all together. Then we headed off to the place where we were going to have dinner with the rest of the people that had signed up for the reunion. It was really enjoyable from the start and there were lots of things to talk about without feeling like it was forced. After the dinner and desert we went down to the ground floor where there was a nightclub for everyone (not just us at the reunion), and some more old class mates joined in. All in all I think we were around 15 of us, and I think everyone had a really great time!
Now I'm back home from home (hard to say where I feel most at home right now, kind of got three homes at the moment, which is mostly a good thing) in Örebro after a few days visit to Uppsala. Since my brother, who now lives there, needed to get some things I could take mom's car, and drove the 175 km over there Sunday evening. After some difficulties to find where he lives (not as far outside the city centre as I thought) I arrived and then got a ride to Tobias where I would spend the night. I left my bags in his room and then me, him and David went downtown to GH's pub for a couple pints since Cathy, who I know from Durham, would be over from Stockholm and keep her working friend company behind the bar. The place was empty except two other people, who left not long after we arrived, and none of us really expected anything else than a few beers, a nice chat, and then home. However, since the girls had nothing to do other than serving us beers they joined in and we got to try out the large selection of beers in the pub, like 8-10 % Belgian Trappist beers. Soon it was after midnight and closing time, but then we got the offer to head along to an afterparty, which we did. It was a group of people from the student nation who enjoyed some cold beers and a hot sauna, so we quite quickly joined in since I really like to sit in a steamy sauna. Me and Toby headed back to his place at 2am. Who could ever know a Sunday could be so much fun!Even though I woke up a quite much later than I had planned Monday morning I still got some work done at uni. Maybe not as much as I would need, but still better than nothing and compared to what I've done before in Örebro. After a couple hours there I met up with my sister and her boyfriend coming from Stockholm to have dinner at my brother's place with his girlfriend. It was very nice to meet all together and cook and eat together, especially since I had to rush away the night before. Also went for a walk around the neighbourhood, which ended up as a funny photoshot.
Tuesday morning I went downtown to have a bit of look in the shops in Uppsala. Had some friendly company and fashion advices (although we don't share likes that often) from my tenant Karoline. Found a cheap, just ordinary but still cool, white piqué shirt with a blue lines on the collar and on the end of the sleeves at H&M, and a pair of black classic sunglasses from Cheap Monday that together with my outfit for the day, black tshirt and black jeans, made me look a bit like Glasvegas-singer James Allan. Studied a bit in the afternoon, before I got ready to head over to Daniel's place for a party, where I found out I apparently and surprisingly, and much appreciated, was the guest of honour since I made a bit of homecoming, before going out to more than packed Snerikes for the night.Left the city late afternoon yesterday. It was gread to be back, and had a couple of great days in good company of old (and new) friends. Kind of look forward to be back in Uppsala for autumn, but now I look forward to head back to Durham again.
I'm back! Haven't written anything in a week now, so time for an update. Came back to Sweden late Thursday night. The flight went really well, hardly any turbulence, so I read about Ewan McGregor's adventures, tried to relax, and even managed to sleep a bit. As there were unforseen troubles with picking me up, and there aren't many connections from the small airport, I decided to take a bus to my sister in Stockholm instead of waiting 1,5 hour to get to Örebro. Left from a cold but clear city at noon the day after with a train. Fell asleep, and became shockingly surprised to look out and see cm of snow and more still falling. Not what I expected or wanted. It's great being home though with everything about it. Still a bit weird though, don't really know what to do, think it will take a day or two to really settle down. Can't talk about any jet-lag, but the one hour time difference made me stay up an extra hour late last night since I forgot to change the time zone on my laptop, so lost an hour there. The snow is said to go way ina few days, but can't say I made a change for the better going from a sunny 14°C Durham to an almost as good London to this. Talking about London. I came there in the afternoon on Saturday and was met by Nicklas, with whom I was gonna stay at the upcoming days. He lives (temporarily) in a burough called Clapton, which looked like most other smaller areas outside the city central. As Nicklas was working during the days I spent the mornings either sleeping, reading or watching Scrubs, and then went downtown in the afternoon walking around by myself looking in shops, and then catched up with him for a bit of after work or so at some pub. Would of course had been better to have someone to spend the days with, but I kind of like to just walking around and try to feel like a Londoner, although I mostly walked around in the central tourist areas like Oxford Street and down to Covent Garden. The evenings and nights were cool though, and I met quite a lot new nice people. Also surprisingly bumped in to Marie from college outside British Museum the last full day so had well appreciated company, after have been alone all day, walking around there looking at statues of (the cool looking) Ganesha and Buddha among other things from South-East Asia. The last night I went out eating with Nicklas and some of his co-workers at Nando's, and after a beer at a pub next to it we went on to the pub where his friends worked for some fun partying although the place was closed. Have yet bought a new camera so got no pictures from London, although I saw some cool stuff I would had wanted to photoed. Hope to get one as soon as possible. Tonight I will meet up with friends and watch Sweden probably get there asses kicked by Portugal. Will be much fun, no matter the result.
While being here in England, a bit on and off, for about nine months I want of course to do and see as much as possible. So far I've done a lot and crazy much fun, no talk about it, but I haven't travelled so much as I maybe wanted, although there is plenty of time for it after the exam. But in the last two weeks I've been much better at taking the opportunities to see other cities than Durham, and as they it's said; better late than never. First I got to see a little of lovely Leeds the Saturday before the last one. Just a bit more than an hour away on the train it is one of the biggest cities in England, and more colourful than grey Newcastle. Had a great day in good company with Italian food and American ice cream, and looked in a lot of shops in really old elegant gallerias with really fashionable clothes but that were of course expensive, but still found some good looking clothes that more fitted my wallet. Then this last Saturday I did something that is most of the times quite unlike me, and were very spontaneous. At the beginning of the that week Bibo asked around if anyone wanted to go to Manchester the upcoming weekend, and there were some interest but as often nothing really happened in the end. But after waking up from the Informal Ball Bibo rushed into my room saying "Let's go to Manchester, there's a train leaving in one and a half hour and the price is still the same!" So after first thinking in my normal way that it was not time enough and stuff, I thought why not and packed a small backpack, ate quick and took of towards the train station to Madchester where Enrica and Valentina already where on their way to. As I said, it was very spontaneous, so we hadn't booked a room but thought that would be no problem to find. But as we went to the tourist information we were told there was almost not a single bed left in the whole city due to Man Utd playing Liverpool, a boxing fight, and the Irish festival. So in the end we ended up sneaking in and sleeping on the floor in the girls' double room at a hostel in the Northern Quarter. The Northern Quarter is the area of Manchester where you can find a lot of cool small independent vintage stores, book and record shops, and small cafés, bars and clubs. I really liked to hang around there. The rest of the city centre is really nice as well, not as industrial as I thought, with parks and just a urban atmosphere. Even though we were only there 24 hours we saw a lot of the city. We partied a bit in the gay village, then in the entertainment centre, and then in a quite cool basement club near the hostel, passed through Chinatown the day after, went into an art museum where they had a small Da Vinci exhibition among other things, and saw the Irish parade, on our way to the canal side. I really liked the city, and will definitely go back in june after the exams and spend some more time looking in all the great shops, and then head further west to Liverpool. The only bad thing about the weekend was that I dropped my camera quite early during the night so have to buy a new one, but I still managed to take some photos and get the others too. Next stop: London, from Saturday to Thursday, and then back to good ol' Sweden.
I've made the longest break in this blog's history, for no real reason, so now I will do a full update of the weekend in two separate posts. The past Friday it was the Informal Ball, which is more or less like a normal formal (rhyme not intended) but bigger and better. So after my afternoon lecture I hooked up with Bibo, Phil, Felix and the captain of his water polo team at New Inn for an afterwork beer. After that we went back to college for some pizza (since we hadn't tickets for the dinner, only for the entertainment after) and drinks, and I drank my bingo prize. As always there was a theme for the formal, and for this it was "we're going on a gap year". Mind the singular form of the last word. Taking three gap years like me don't exist here. I dressed up as a surfer, since I spent almost half of one of my years off in Australia. The entertainment was really well planned with a live band and other fun stuff you could try, and you could also get a fake tattoo (which is, even though I want one, probably the closest I get to have one). It was a really fun night, that lasted until I passed out with my top and surf-shorts on in my bed really tired.
As I told in my last blog post, I went to Ikea to buy some food to make a dinner for some of the friends here, to give something back since I have got to try so much nice food from them and also just to have a good time all together. So on Friday night we all went to one of the kitchens in the brand new buildings where Felix is lucky to live. As there was quite many things to do at the same time I was immidiately asked, mostly by the girls, if I needed some help, which I did. In the end they had taken over all of the cooking, and even though I tried to contribute with something they didn't let me, and I've learned here not to go against an Italian woman in the kitchen. So I arranged the plates and the small aperitifs that consisted of schnapps cheese, pickled cucumber and reindeer salami on a piece of crisp bread, and the main dish of Swedish meatballs and potato in cream sauce with lingonberry jam. I must say it was a big success, and all of the food was gone when we left to go out clubbing.
Felix also took on the deadly challenge of eating a knäckebröd in less than ten seconds. Something a Dutch man has never ever done before! How it went you can see in the video below:
Yesterday I handled in my last summative essay for this year in the Social and Cultural Geography module. It was about 'race' and racism, which I have found very interesting. Sometimes you struggle with an essay to fill out the words you need, but this time I really had to limit myself as five pages is not that much. There were lots of things I could have expanded and written more about, but in the end I'm really satisfied about it, and that's what counts the most for me! So after that I gave myself a bit of reward and took the train to the Newcastle Metro Center to visit Little Sweden, Ikea!
It was the first time I visited an Ikea store abroad, and I must say it was a really weird experience in a way! I have heard, and seen big posters in Bukarest, that all the furnitures and stuff have the same Swedish names as at home, but once I started to walk around looking at everything I got a bit overwhelmed with all of a sudden all the Swedish around me! Kind of an linguistic overdose! Then when I checked the book shelfs I found that all of the books also were in Swedish (even Nick Hornby!), so shocking!!
I was there by myself, as it wasn't gonna be for a long time, so had really no one to share this crazy experience with. I felt like I was sneaking around and knew this secret that no one else knew. Almost wanted to jump up to people and yell like "I know what all the words mean!! You want me to tell you?! Or maybe read one of the books in the shelfs! I can read it, I'm Swedish!!". Of course I didn't, would had been a bit inappropriate, so I had to curb my enthusiasm a bit. My main purpose with this trip was to visit the Swedish food store they have there, and I had hoped they had frozen reindeer or elk meat, but they only had small sausages so I bought a lot of meatballs instead. So tonight I'm gonna serve Swedish meatballs with potatoes in cream sauce with pickled cucumber and lingonberry jam, with a bit of reindeer sausage and knäckebröd with snaps cheese and of course ginger cookies!!
