First Weekend In Sweden

Friday:

Friday starts with a session involving registering on the school's network and getting a library card for the world famous SSE School Library. A productive morning, but certainly nothing that is mindblowingly exciting. This is all we have to do for the day before we meet up with our groups for the quintet of preparties before going out to, as Gustav puts it, "one of the poshiest clubs in Stockholm," Collage. Considering that the night scene in Stockholm is pretty posh overall, I feel that this is definitely saying something.

My night starts at my group leader, Sebastian's apartment. Our group has convened for dinner, and we have chosen to make homemade pizzas. The toppings that are laid out for us are marinara sauce, ham, cheese, and bananas. Ok, not traditional, but certainly worth a shot. Once we have made our banana pizzas, I start to mingle and spread the American brand name. One of the SSE students that is there is named Karl, and he is very enamored with the USA. Specifically, he loves Texas and anybody resembling a cowboy. When I tell him that I am from Georgia, he immediately goes crazy that I am from the same state as Cohutta. For those of you that aren't as nerdy as myself, Cohutta is a character from the Real World: Sydney. He was from the Blue Ridge Mountains area of GA, and he has one of the most absurd southern accents that has ever been spoken. Karl proceed many times throughout the night to scream in the most amazing swedish/southern/cowboy/redneck accent "I'm from Bloooo Ridge Giooorrgia" It is pretty awesome. He also tells me that I will fit in quite nicely on the Booze Cruise as it is for "Swedish Rednecks." Overall though, he is very disappointed with my lack of a thick accent.

After wandering through our preparties, we finally get to Collage. It is pretty much exactly as I had expected. Line outside, very pretty girls that are either mute or dont like to talk to me, and very expensive drinks. We have a good time as a group dancing and soaking in the Stockholm party scene. I only buy one drink while I am there, as my whiskey and ginger ale costs me 150 SEK (about $22). If you ever go to a Stockholm club, stick to beer.....it is about 1/3rd the cost.

The club starts to wind down at 3am, so Joe, Corne, Dana, and myself hop in a cab to head home. Corne and Dana are fellow exchange students who are also living at Lappis with us. They both attend Rotterdam University in the Netherlands. My night ends at about 4 am as we finally get home and wind down. I have survived my first "clubbing" night in Stockholm. I enjoyed myself quite a bit, and I think I managed to not stick out too badly. People, guys especially, don't get especially dressed up, which is nice for me. Everybody more or less just wears jeans and a nice button down shirt. That was a pleasant surprise as I don't have a whole lot more than that.

Saturday morning doesn't exactly come very early. Joe and I both manage to sleep until quite late in the morning. As a result, we don't experience alot of daylight on Saturday. If you want daylight in Sweden, you must wake up pretty early in the morning. We don't really have anything on the schedule today until we meet up at Oskar's place at 7. We do remember, just in time, that if we are going to bring anything to Oskar's place, we must get to the System Bolaget (govt stores) by 3pm when they close. Once we get there, we realize that 2:45 on Saturday is a VERY popular time to be in these stores. After we buy our supplies for the evening, we grab a kebab on the way home and head back to Lappis.

We get to Oskar's place at 7. He lives in the "Old Town" which is a really nice part of town. He lives in an apartment that is about 100 meters from where the princess will be getting married this summer. The lady that used own the apartment building died about 50 years ago, and in her will she declared that the apartments will always be used for student housing. It is a really nice place, and he lives with 5 other students. We go up on the roof, because there is an amazing view of the city. Pictures to be posted. Anna also met us at Oskar's to head out with us later on to meet Gustav. She is very excited to meet Oskar as he is very famous in Chapel Hill, and she has heard quite a bit about him.

We then head out to meet up with Gustav at a more casual bar than the aforementioned Collage. This is more of a Highlands/Franklin Street type bar. The beers are actually pretty reasonably priced here, which is a nice relief. Gustav introduces us to his friend who is a ship driver. He apparently spends his time driving cargo ships around, making a lot of money, and spending none of it. He decides on this night, his money is best spent on many shots for himself. He apparently gets enough alcohol in him that he makes it all the way home without realizing that he has forgotten his jacket. Now I can see losing/forgetting a lot of things in this city, but a jacket is not one of them. I couldn't walk 3 seconds outside without realizing I am missing even one of the two jackets I always have on. This is especially unfortunate since his keys were in his jacket pocket.

It was certainly great to see Gustav and Oskar. Luckily, we are in bed at a slightly more reasonable hour this evening. An awesome first couple weekend nights out in the capital of Scandinavia. A nice relaxing couple days ahead before we start classes on Tuesday.

Drew