Sunday, June 20, 2010

We're in...Delaware.

I don't mean to sound obnoxious, but I am debating whether to go to Amsterdam or Helsinki next weekend. I have to go somewhere because A) it's a three-day weekend B) it's my b-day and C) Sweden, Lund in particular, pretty much shuts down for Midsummer. Ah, the excuses, they are a-plenty.

I would either do 3 days in Amsterdam or 2 days in Helsinki. The latter is more expensive, both flight and hotel-wise, but on the other hand, when the eff would I ever go to Finland otherwise? I don't really have a pressing desire, like I HAVE to see Finland, but I certainly want to! I feel like seeing as much of Scandinavia while I'm here would be more practical. Amsterdam is more easily accessible and it's more likely I would make a point to go there later. ("Hey, baby, let's go to...Helsinki." Probably not. Not to knock the place, I'm sure it's gorgeous.) In either case, I'm traveling by myself and Amsterdam seems more like a place to go with others.

I'm doin' the math and it really may just boil down to money. If I do Helsinki, that also means I can go with everyone to Copenhagen the night before to watch the game...

When I was deciding, I looked at the map of Scandinavia.



I did shit just a little bit to realize that yes, St. Petersburg is just right there. I did look up a flight just for fun, and it was way too expensive. Not that I was seriously considering it!

(Btw, if you wanna know where I am, I am at the bottom of Sweden, where it says "Malmo." Lund is right next to Malmo.)

More pictures! Food and drinks mostly.



All beer should have this much confidence.



Yup, awesome.



They have a zero tolerance law in regards to drinking and driving. You can't even have had one drink. (The director also tried to tell us there was zero tolerance regarding controlled substances, but the Swedish students told us later that's really not true...not that I plan on testing anything.)

As I mentioned in the last post, S and I went out to Herkules for dinner. We can't eat out constantly, it's really pricey...but this place wasn't all that much expensive than other places and holy hell was it good. If you click on Meny, and scroll down to Varmrätter, S had the tuna and I had the rooster. (And if you click on Festlokal, that's their downstairs, where we went back after 11pm--we sat in the corner just under the pics. It was fine until around 1am when it turned into, as the Swedish girls put it, "a meat market.") Anyhoo, my rooster is the first pic.



They were both really, really good. Damn.



Today is low-key. Just my water bottle and homework mostly.



And one of the American girls clued me into the Nutella and pretzels in the grocery store, so that's my evening treat, hopefully with a little Netfux.



The pretzels are good and each one is twice the length of the ones at home. Weird.



Micro Pop is the shit. The yellow box is just the right amount of buttery--apparently the blue box is super salty, so I chose well.



My little fridge, full of frozen food, wine, milk and fruit.



So Swedish wine. It is gross. Actually it's drinkable--I mean, nothing will ever be Japanese wine, which might actually be grape juice with urine in it. No, this is just sweet and lame. Swedish beer, good. Swedish wine, bad. Noted.



And see that milk container? I am quite proud that I found not only the proper type of milk (read: NOT THE SOUR KIND, wow, that's big here), but also the skim kind. You sit there at the grocery store and stare at about eight different kinds of milk. Daunting.

Bed time!

3 comments:

alex said...

Glad you're having fun! It looks like a great time.

Travel-wise... me, I'd almost do Copenhagen twice (you mention you already have plans to go there?). Or Norway. :3 (Dude, go to HAMBURG!! No, do not go to Hamburg, cuz I'd have to shit with envy. XD --But it is closer than St Petersburg...)

I love the pretzels. It's like they mated with Pocky.

Anonymous said...

Mated with Pocky XD

I love the beer. I love it all.

Want.

Ellen Aim said...

You nailed it Alex, ttly pretzel pocky. I will do Copenhagen, but I can't STAY there...that'd be like getting a place to stay in Lewisville. It's a 40 min train ride from us...and it's hella 'spensive. Noooooooo shopping there for me! But I WILL go, oh yes. Oslo is currently the most expensive city in the world. So hmm. So I was thinking Helsinki...but yeah, pocketbook could really only do amsterdam!

I am so fucking poor, it's sad. Oh well, just hoping the world will end in 2012 and my debt won't matter!!