"ned bled, de schweden"

After my first days here in Lund it's time to give a short update about what I've been up to for the last couple of days. I arrived here on the morning of Wednesday, Aug 16th, after a gigantic 18 hour trip by CAR. The navigation system in Axels car projected an overall travel time of 13 hours but what it couldn't project where the two hold-ups at the Austrian-Czech and Czech-German border, which cost us 4 hours. After driving trough Germany, which is like always going straight ahead (driving a German motorway reveals a little bit of the German soul, I guess), we finally arrived in Sassnitz where we went on the ferry to Trelleborg. I was looking forward to getting some hours of sleep but due to the constant noise of the ships engine. We then arrived in Trelleborg at 6:30 and it took us another hour to get to Lund.

Fortunately our early arrival saved as a lot of cueing up at the registration desk. Anyways, what catched my attention was the efficency and warm welcome of the Swedish people at every step during the arrival & registration process.

The next day we went to our first Nation party at Lund, actually it was Lunds Nation (Nations are societys of students organising partys, dinners and other leisure activites, not really comparable to the Austrian "ÖH"). Really nice place, good music and much cheaper booze, compared to what you have to pay at a normal club.

The next two days I was "out of order" because I suffered from a sour throat. From now on the clock was ticking because I had to get fit by Saturday evening as the Welcome Party for all exchange students would take place at this date. Which meant for me grabbing another pullover and staying in bed, sweating like a pig, to recover.
Worked for me and therefore I found myself at the entrance of Karhuset, where the welcome party was, at precisely 22 p.m. I wasn't totally fit but after 2 (or were it 3?) screwdrivers the pain was like "washed away". Anywho, party was nice but nothing special, 200-300 people and the very same music you'd hear if you go to a ordinary austrian club.

Two things worth mentioning: Swedish don't smoke inside of clubs, restaurants etc and I have to say that it was kind of new to me but I enjoyed breathing in fresh air whilst dancing. The other thing worth mentioning was me getting to know a guy from Manchester (unfortunately my command of phonetic spelling is to poor to exactly reproduce his pronuciation of this word :-) After being told his name (which was something like Ranz "like Franz in German but without the F") I virtually didn't understand a single word this guy was talking to me, just nodded my head now and then an quickly was payed a beer by this guy. So sometimes you just have to make the right gestures. Clubs in Sweden normally close at 2 a.m., which isn't that bad because you get to sleep earlier and therefore can make more use of the next day.

Which I did by talking a walk through the city center of Lund and shooting some photos. Lund is a really beautiful and calm town, the architecture and the atmosphere is just great. Actually my decision to apply for Lund may turn out as one of the best I ever made in my life. If you want to, you can find all of these, if you follow the link that says My Photos of Sweden on the right side.

Enough for now, have to prepare my swedish course tomorrow and watch the season finale of Hells Kitchen!

Hej da!