I am back! After countless inquiries from friends and family I will now tell you a little about my life in Uppsala, Sweden where I lived as a Nordplus exchange student from September 2008 - January 2009.
Pictures: My study mate and friend Juliaan and I at an introduction party "Reccegask", Lunch break at a canoing trip, Early morning 9 am, friend and "granne" (not granny, but neighbour) Ida and I in togas at our corridor theme part, my sister Kirstine and I in a small, cosy cinema, y and finally 3 chinese girls playing in the snow (last one who is a guy is taking the picture), as someone observed...
Uppsala has 120.000 inhabitants - by far most of them are connected to Uppsala Universitet (http://www.uu.se/) either as students or teachers and researchers. The university is the oldest in Sweden and even beats Copenhagen University by two years. Actually Copenhagen applied for permission to build the university at the Pope before Uppsala did. Nobody knows why Uppsala had their permission first, but my guess is that the amount of money involved was bigger :-)
The center of the town is cosy. There is a small river, Fyrisåen, running through the center. Cobblestones, old, crooked buildings and loads of bridges connect both sides. When it is still warm, students are hanging out at the river side, studying, talking and relaxing. And from everywhere you can see one of the two symbols of the city, the big cathedral. The other one, the castle can only be seen from the southern part of the center.
This fall the city again introduced "Lights over Uppsala" where special selected buildings were lit with colours and patterns. Before the snow fell and it was getting very dark the lights were heartening. Here are some views of the university main building and the cathedral.
The area here is very, very flat and therefore very homy to this Danish girl. A hiking tour with Norrlands Nations Friluftliv (Student outdoor club), which surprisingly turned out to be only with me, my sister Kirstine and a german guy Lennart, whom I now count as a friend, took us through this beautiful, flat and forestry scenery at one of the many hiking routes of Upplandsleden. Here we spoke a good mixture of Danish, Swedish, English and German which was rather amusing.
If you think I look a bit strange on this picture, I agree. I was worried about my camera. The next picture that was taken - well, let's just say that my camera was not water proof and there was no picture after we recovered it with a 5 m long branch.
The best way to get to know people is to get involved. As I dont think I would survive half a year without singing in a choir, I joined the choir of Gästringe-Helsinke Nation - or in short: GH-kören. Here we sang a very mixed repetoire ranging from Carl Off over romantic folk music (Bellman), to drinking songs, christmas songs, rythmic and even Spider Pig from Simpsons, the movie. Mandatory to each rehersal on thursdays are of course "fika". This fantastic word which I cannot translate - I think it only exist in Sweden - covers everything from sitting down and having a coup of coffee, usually with any type of cake and/or homemade bread such as "smörgåsbord". Almost mand
atory are the aftermeetings: going to the pub of either GH or neighbour nation ÖG and have a few quality beers, talking and especially singing. This is probably where I learned the most Swedish during my stay. It is amazing how many party and drinking songs they have in Swedish. We Danes could really learn a thing or two in this perspective. I think I now more or less know GH-körens repetoire of the last 5 years.
High lights with the choir was, of course, the parties: "Älgbal", which was the half annually galla party. I must say WAUW to all the fancy dresses and the suits the guys where wearing. Fantastic experience for this princess wannabe. Needless to say that the guys were true gentlemen and gave me all the attention I deserved - maybe a bit too much. Most people know how to dance Foxtrot and you can now count me as one of those people. Since it was the moose (älg) that was the theme, we had 4 different types of "älgkött". Very tasty!
Here is also a picture of our two biologists: Martin and my German friend Susi.
A smaller, but not less important party was "Luccegasken" which basicly is a prechristmas party in the honour of Lucia. Guess who got to be the Lucia... I can only say that standing 1 meter from a crowd, singing in a concert is hard when candles are dripping on your face...
