What is the hell is The Big Apple?? Just some New shit! You have to see the original of course! So yesterday I killed two birds with one stone and got the chance to see the old city of York and also catch up with a friend again and get some nice company for the day.The city is not more than a 40 min train ride south from Durham and shares many features. They both have really big old cathedrals (although the one in Durham is free of charge to enter, and the one in York is not) and other old buildings and streets. Basically just a very nice and charming city to walk around in with lots of small original shops and stone walls etc. And again the weather was much better than expected, just started to rain in the afternoon when it was time for a Frappuccino.
Of course I took the time to do some shopping when I was in a new town. I don't have that many real souvenirs from England so I decided to shop a pair of Union Jack boxers, which I actually thought of buying when I was in Cambridge two years ago, so now I have the UK up my arse! I had also looked at a pair of jeans, but only just week ago, at H&M from their new guest designer line. They are blue (like almost sky blue) with some extra things on them, and after being finally convinced to take them I decided to buy them as well, and £20 for a pair of designer jeans is nothing less than a real bargain! As this "Word of the day" is No X it gets a bit x-rated:
Stud: Nit
(Note: 'Stud' refers to the metal things around the waist on the jeans, and not the guy that drops the jeans, even though he can be referred to as one as well but with a different meaning.)
The past weekend I had the opportunity to spend lots of time with my parents who were on visit here. So I met up with them in Edinburgh were we spent one night and half a day walking mostly in the old town and looking at lots of tartan design. Then we took the train down to Durham were I had booked the balcony flat in college for them and had dinner there before going out to have a drink in town. Had a great time with lots of sightseeing, walking, coffee breaks, very good food, and of course great company. Wonderful weekend!
Haven't been much study time lately, just looked through some books. Haven't really done much at all. But Friday night I got my ass out of the sofa and met up with Tom and Jake to go out and grab some pints. Drank two, one Örebro Bitter and one Newcastle Brown Ale, paid £10. Not exactly college prices. The two pubs we went to were both really busy, and saw some old familiar faces, but after we had sit down for a while we decided to head back to Tom's. The night wasn't really anything special, but doesn't have to be when you're seeing your mates again after a bit more than two months, still cool. Last night I just stayed home and relaxed with a film. Saw Woody Allen's latest one, "Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona". Really great acting from everyone in it, and it made you wanna go to Barcelona to see all the cool architecture, art and stuff in the city (and find some good looking American tourists too), but I don't think the film itself was anything special, worth seeing though. So now it's time to get busy, and as I did during the last term break I'm gonna pack my bag and head over to Uppsala. Leave you with a great song from Primal Scream's latest album:
Haven't done much this week, gets a bit boring. Sleeps till almost noon, read quite a lot (although not the academic literature that I should), and take walks with my four-legged friend Lenny. Today I woke up pretty early by the sun shining through my curtains, had a long big breakfast, and then went out for a long walk with Lenny (so happy it wasn't his time to go), and who can complain then?! The sun was shining from a clear blue sky, the snow went away as quick as it came, and with great music in my ears things couldn't feel better and I probably could have walked around for a lot more than the 75 min I did. The plans for the nearest future is to get started with the revision for the exams in May, take a trip to Uppsala, and maybe get away on some spontaneous adventure. Just keep my fingers and toes crossed that the fantastic spring weather will stay now.
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.
Tonight has been the last night for this term here. For some of the Erasmus-students it's the last night for there time here. So we went out to eat a big group of us, which was very nice. This time when we I leave Durham and all the friends here for a bit more than a month it doesn't feel as weird as last time when you just kind of had really got to know everyone. Now you know more or less everyone is coming back after Easter. It also doesn't really feel like it's maybe the last time I've seen some friends here, or for a long long time, so haven't really thought about that I'm going back to Sweden soon. Well, first it's London, baby!
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.
Today I handled in my second essay in less than a week, and it feels even better to be over with than the first one! It's not the best essay I wrote in my life, but it fulfills its purpose at least, can't really be bothered about it anymore. The essay I wrote is about how natural environments can influence human physical and mental health and wellbeing. For example what is called 'therapeutic landscapes', which I had a seminar about in where we discussed our own therapeutic landscapes, places were we feel relaxed and well. I said that mine was probably the family summer house, which is on a small island south of Stockholm. When I was a tiny kid I was a bit afraid of it cause it was very dark and scary at night, since there's no electricity, and a lot of the interior is as old as the house, which is 120 years old. Then as a young teen I got very bored and restless as there were no TV to watch. But the last couple of years when I've been able to go there myself with friends for a weekend or so I have appreciated it much much more; the big quiet old house, the relaxing calm, the amazingly beautiful natural environment, the evening dips in the strait (which I think creates a need for "Word of the day"-special, since I didn't even know this word myself), and sitting on the balcony with a beer in good company and see the sun sets. Pure quality of life!
One of my New Year's resolution is to be more effective with my studies, another one is (hopefully it will be a result of the effectiveness) to see a bit more of England. So today after lunch I went with Bibo, Valentina and Felix on an afternoon journey to Darlington, which is just about 15 min south on the train from here. I had never really heard about the city, and thought it would be even smaller than Durham and didn't know what there was to see or do there, but apparently the city has almost a population of 100 000 so it's not that small. It's mostly famous for being one of the stops on the first passanger train journey on the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825, although we didn't go to the Railway Museum. The city looks very English with long lanes of brick houses, not much to see, and they have almost exactly the same stores as in Durham. However, in Durham we only have Poundland (where everything costs £1), but in Darlington they have Poundworld, and of course 'world' is better than 'land'. I found two paintings of Jimi Hendrix and Johnny Cash, and a mug with Elvis Presley on it, so now I have a bit more stuff up on my wall and a better mug to drink tea in. Even though it was a short trip, it was cool to see something new and other than Durham, and to get a bit of fresh air and have fun with friends.
Yesterday was probably one of the longest day I've experienced in a long time! Went out of bed (or sofa to be precise) at my sister's place in Stockholm just after 6am after having slept around five hours. Jumped into clothes and had a quick breakfast, packed the last bits and said goodbye before I took the bus to the central station, from where I took a shuttle bus to the airport. That 2 hour recommendation is just mainly bullshit. I was there just a bit more than an hour before take off and had even the time to bunker up with some licorice sweets, knäckebröd and pepparkakor.The flight from Stockholm to London went really smoothly, and I slept for most of the travel time. The tiny shaking from the turbulence didn't bother me that much, instead I tried to let it rock me to sleep. Everything kept on that way at Heathrow as I only had my hand luggage to carry around and plenty of time to find the gate, until I went through customs. Quite often when I go through the metal detector I have forgot a small coin or something or just have some tiny piece of metal on my shirt and have to be searched, but this time I went through without a sound. So I move forward to take my bag and other belongings, and I see the man at the monitor calling for another man to get over there and have a look but I didn't take more notice than that. Then I see that other man taking my backpack and asking "whose this?" and I say it's mine. Even though I know I don't have anything in there that you can't have I'm shaking while I bit for bit open up my backpack and watch him empty it and search through with some tool. I can say I got really surprised at first when I pulls upp a fork from there and puts it away, but then I realized I had forgot it in there when I borrowed it from Tobias' kitchen in Uppsala. I then calmed down a bit, but as he went on I told him that it was my school bag and that it must had been there for almost two weeks and now was probably all mouldy so they could keep it. He actually laughed a bit and offered to put everything back again but I said thanks and that I was fine to do it myself. Just wonder how they didn't find it in Stockholm. The flight to Newcastle went really fast, in less than an hour, and was mostly up and down. The last 5-10 minutes before landing were really shaky and I just grabbed on hard to the seat, breathed slowly and heavily, and just wanted to be on the ground. I fucking hate turbulence when I'm on a plane! I then took the metro train to the central station, and a bus from there to Durham as there was some kind of problem with the trains. I arrived at college at 4pm, local time, very tired but also glad to be back and see everyone. Put all my stuff into my room, took a nice shower, then went to dinner, and fixed some stuff in my room before I hit the bar a bit after 8pm. It was a quite weird but really great experience to see everyone again, felt a bit like I had never been gone. I left the bar right after 10pm to hit the bed, but just as I was about to get undressed about an hour later the fire alarm went of (again), so had to go and wait outside the main entrance for a couple minutes. Fell asleep immediately as soon as I lied down under the duvet, and slept like a log for nine hours.When I woke up this morning and pulled the curtain it was all grey and rainy outside, and it really felt like I was back to reality, home in Durham, UK.
Igår var det då dags att äntligen ta sig en bit utanför Durham igen, vilket inte skett på ett tag. Resan arrangerades av the International Student Association, och målet var inte vilket som helst, utan den skottska huvudstaden Edinburgh! Biljetterna till resan hade sålts slut i tre omgångar, så till slut var det 5 bussar som åkte iväg. Eftersom det bara var över dagen och tar nästan tre timmar att åka dit med buss så fick jag gå upp 05:45 för att vara vid kårhuset 06:30 och avresa en halvtimme senare. Resan gick rätt smidigt genom Northumberland och upp till Skottland för att till slut nå Edinburgh tidig förmiddag.Väl framme så var det ganska fritt fram att göra vad man ville. Den här helgen var det tysk julmarknad i centrum med massa olika stånd och karusseller. Började dock med att besöka slottet, som ligger liksom andra delar av staden uppe på avkylda vulkantoppar vilket gör att man får en riktigt bra utsikt över staden därifrån. Själva slottet var nästan mer som en mindre liten by med stora borggårdar och vägar längs muren med kanoner ut från slottet. Man kunde även gå ner i de tidigare fängelsehålorna och se hur de behandlade tillfångatagna jenkare och fransoser.
Efter det så gick vi för att inta lunch, vilket alltid är svårt i en större grupp så det blev till slut någon pizza/pasta/hamburger-kedja med amerikanskt tema istället för något typiskt skottskt (fast vet fan om jag hade velat pröva haggis). Jag hade dock en riktigt god chili con carne så rätt nöjd ändå, och det fanns gott om säckpipe-musik, kiltar och utklädda William Wallace-kopior så det räckte. Där efter så delade vi upp oss för att gå runt lite i staden i mindre grupperingar för att göra det enklare. Jag och Philipp hoppades på att hitta massa schyssta små klädbutiker då jag hade hört att det skulle finnas en hel del. Vi måste isånnafall gått i helt fel delar av staden, för allt vi hittade var stora kedjor som H&M och Topshop, som hade större utbud än i Durham men inte riktigt något speciellt ändå, eller väldigt exklusiva och flådiga butiker. Lite lätt besvikna men ändå vid gott humör efter en promenad genom staden mötte vi upp med det tidigare gänget igen vid marknadsplatsen. Nu hade mörkret lagt sig och staden såg rätt annorlunda ut men väldigt mysig med massa upplysta byggnader och gator.Det såldes mest olika maträtter och mössor och vantar, så efter att ha glidit runt lite och kollat så bar det av till dryckesdelen för att inta lite varmt tyskt glühwein i kylan. Är ungefär som glögg, men dom har fått för sig att en apelsinklyfta i koppen ska vara god. En bra avslutning på en trevlig dag! Lyckades till slut också precis innan avresan skulle ske att hitta en halsduk i skottska klanfärger, så shoppingen var inte helt värdelös ändå.
Of course I took the time to do some shopping when I was in a new town. I don't have that many real souvenirs from England so I decided to shop a pair of Union Jack boxers, which I actually thought of buying when I was in Cambridge two years ago, so now I have the UK up my arse! I had also looked at a pair of jeans, but only just week ago, at H&M from their new guest designer line. They are blue (like almost sky blue) with some extra things on them, and after being finally convinced to take them I decided to buy them as well, and £20 for a pair of designer jeans is nothing less than a real bargain! As this "Word of the day" is No X it gets a bit x-rated:
