Temporarily Greek

I've spent the last week in Athens, Greece, and it's been wonderful.

First of all, my class schedule is erratic and irregular. It's bizarre. It turned out that I had a full week available for travel if I ditched one class--and seeing as the one class was a Corporate Finance lecture, I had no reservations booking my flight to Athens.

One of my closest friends is studying with College Year in Athens, an American study abroad program in, uh, Athens, so lodging was never an issue. In theory, he's not allowed to host overnight guests; I've actually been staying at the Student and Traveller's Inn in (haha) the Plaka if anyone's curious. It's a great place, though it's remarkably similar to my friend's apartment.

My flight was at 9:45 out of Stockholm, so naturally I left my apartment shortly after midnight in order to catch the right buses to make it on time. The longest leg of the trip turned out to be from Jonkoping to Stockholm--from 1:45 to 7:30--and that's all AM times. But yeah, it was three hours to Zurich, Germany, and after an astonishingly short 20 minute layover, two more hours into ATH. From there I grabbed a taxi into town.

I must have lucked into one of Athens' nicest cab drivers--my friend had warned me repeatedly of the local drivers' penchant for ripping off tourists. Mine, however, quoted a (quite reasonable) flat fee, then offered to take me into town via the scenic coastal route. Along the way, he offered the kind of advice only a longtime resident could give, including gems such as, "Oh, I'd say definitely 80% of the street food is safe to eat. The other 20% is, yeah, don't eat that," and "I wouldn't go into the strip clubs if I were you, you'll pay the girls and nothing will happen."

Upon my arrival, I found my Swedish phone only worked sporadically, apparently deciding to connect calls and send texts on a whim. However, the resultant communication mishaps let me explore the surrounding area in great detail during my quest to locate the CYA student center. Tl;dr: I got a little lost.

The Temple of Poseidon at sunset. Yeah.

The next day was devoted to exploring Athens on foot during the daylight hours. My friend's apartment is located approximately 20 meters from the gigantic Panathinaiko Stadium, which is built entirely out of white marble and seats about 45,000 people. Oh, and it hosted the first modern Olympic games in 1896. It's what we walked past to get to anywhere.

Over the past week, I've walked the ruins of the Parthenon, the Temple of Zeus, the Temple of Poseidon. Wandering around the Plaka and Monastiraki, I'd be strolling down the street and catch a glimpse of the Acropolis out of the corner of my eye.

Athens is a strange city. There are incredible ruins scattered everywhere--it's hard not to run across one even when walking to a grocery store. Yet the city as a whole is filled with pedestrian apartment blocks in tan, the ground floors covered in graffiti, the streets potholed and uneven. It's difficult to appreciate that the Athens area has been continuously settled for seven millenia.

To wit: A great trip. I could talk about the weather (20 C warmer than Jonkoping), or the food (Two delicious gyros for 3.80E! Three pizzas for 16E!) or a whole host of other things, but it's largely unnecessary. I am, however, grateful I had the whole week--it was infinitely less stressful when I knew I could come back the next day.

I highly recommend a visit.

Cheers,
Daniel

Copenhagen!

Haha, so much for that update schedule, hey?

Anyway: I spent the weekend in Copenhagen, and it was great.

We left Friday morning around 10:00 after picking up our rental cars, ready for the 330km trip south. Sadly, the cars didn't have a place to plug in an iPod, so we resigned ourselves to 3 hours of nonstop Swedish radio. There was far more Pink and far less ABBA than I had anticipated.

1:00 saw us arriving in Helsingborg, which is a nice little coastal Swedish town. We drove onto a ferry (I'd never done that before. We just drove on! Crazy!), and twenty minutes later we were in the remarkably different Danish town of Helsingor. I'd hazard the two towns have far more in common than not--starting with the first seven letters of their names.

Anyway. Copenhagen (or Kobenhavn, in Danish) was another ~50km south, so after a little panicked gesturing we continued on our way. Danish radio is crap. Utter crap. At one point, we heard the words "Nonstop music" through the stream of Danish babble. This bold statement was immediately followed by several commercials and what seemed to be the DJ's life story. Incidentally, hearing English surface in a flow of Danish is both amusing and strangely heartening.

Our first glimpse of Copenhagen!

The idea was to head to our hostel and check in, then get food. However, we were amusingly (and retrospectively, idiotically) mapless, deciding instead to count on one friend's repeated assurances of "It's a big, white building!" and "I know what it looks like in my head." I'm honestly stunned we got there: we made two random turns, and then someone said, "Isn't that it?" To which the reply was, surprisingly, "Yeah! Now turn around!"

Sorry about the dialog. It was necessary to truly immerse you in the scene, though.

Anyway. One check in process later, and the 10 of us are on the main streets of Copenhagen, excited, talkative, but mostly starving. The tourist office referred us to a buffet, and so--30 minutes after arriving in the 3rd country I'd ever visited--I found myself walking into a Turkish buffet. It was delicious.

Corporate-free Stroget.

After our 4:00 lunch, we wandered down Stroget, the world's longest pedestrian mall. If you can see, that's a Burger King on the right. A little farther down is a McDonalds. The pristine, capitalist-free environment was novel, as were the cobblestones and hanging street lights (one of those things was not novel, or true.). 

Over the next two days, we spent a great deal of time traipsing up and down this street, past shawarma shops and crepe stalls, by fashion stores and LEGO outlets, and, for some strange reason, two Irish pubs. 

Friday night, we went wandering about in search of somewhere to sit and have a quiet, subdued discussion. We found a nightclub called Kant that seemed to suit our purposes--though that was after a trip to The Moose, which was definitely a local bar, and The Francis Pony. Now, I'm not a big party person, and I'm definitely not a barhopper (seeing as it's still illegal for me in the States...). Maybe that'd explain why I felt like walking into The Francis Pony was like entering Copenhagen's seedy underbelly. We nodded to the bouncer, took a few steps down into a dark, smoky room with lots of lasers. The first person I saw was a very angry girl in studded black pants. 

Luckily we escaped the Pony alive, and danced the night away in Kant instead. Incidentally, it's pronounced with a short 'a', so it rhymes with 'haunt.' Several people were more than slightly bewildered when they thought I said we were headed to dance in Copenhagen's vagina. 

That was tasteless. I'm sorry. 

Uh, yeah. The next day was devoted to exploring the city. I spent the morning with monstrously tall Australian, then met up with most of the group for lunch at an awesome Danish chain called Chili-Mili's, which makes massive and delicious sandwiches. After lunch, I headed out by myself to explore--but that's a story for another post. 

There wasn't a whole lot more. More partying on Saturday night. A late night shawarma, lots of inebriated friends, and not enough sleep later, we were checking out of our hostel. We took a leisurely brunch at a great French cafe called Croissant 'En, where I had a great quiche and even better orange juice. As a side note, I had no idea orange juice had discernible levels of quality--but after watching the girl squeeze the oranges directly into a glass, I'm a convert. 

We left the city at around 2:00, and were back in Jonkoping by 6:00. And now I'm packing for Greece. I'll be there for a week starting Tuesday. :)

Cheers!

Daniel

Not Dead

Promise.

Sorry about the lack of updates. Things have been simultaneously hectic and stagnant here--when stuff is happening, then everything is happening. Otherwise, I'm basically sitting in my room, using Rosetta Stone or procrastinating on a blog update.

Corporate Finance turns out to be an introductory level repeat of Financial Accounting, which I took quite a while ago. It's certainly a different environment though--where I took Financial Accounting with 17 other students in a small classroom, Corporate Finance is taught in a huge lecture hall, and I have over 250 classmates. It's nice to experience something different than CC; there aren't any consequences if I don't complete assignments for the next class period.

All told, I have class three days a week, for perhaps 8 hours in total. Unfortunately it doesn't look like I'll be making it into Swedish 1--I'd been waitlisted when I asked to join two weeks ago, and I think I'm too far behind now. Regardless, I've been following along with some friends, studying the same things they study. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy learning a language.

Mind you, Swedish is fiendishly difficult to speak. Reading and writing are perfectly manageable, but all consonants disappear as soon as someone opens their mouth. It's just an incomprehensible stream of the nine different Swedish vowels. Yeah, nine. I suppose that's a nice 80% improvement on English.

Tragically, I've yet to eat real Swedish food. Raslatt has a natural deficit of enthusiastic cooks, and despite much searching, I am unable to find a Swedish restaurant. I've been relying heavily on bread and cream cheese, with frozen pizzas and Swedish meatballs (also frozen) making frequent appearances. On the bright side, I've become good friends with a (monstrously tall) Australian who's an absurdly good chef (an evolved cook. Obviously). I'm slowly adopting his more discerning tastes, but it's a gradual process--that's why tonight's dinner is a frozen pizza, bread with cream cheese and lox, and grapes. I'm hoping life will be more baked salmon with avocado and less ramen noodles with crackers.

The Raslatt student association just opened a new restaurant (okay, that's a generous description. Eatery?) in Sockertoppen. While the food isn't quite gourmet, it's significantly cheaper than most places in Jonkoping--did I mention that a Big Mac is almost $10.00? Groceries aren't expensive, but food prices are mindblowing.

Anyway, life is good. Last night, I entered a riddle/logic question/general knowledge tournament style thing with two friends, and we walked away with 300Kr, or about $50.00 to split between the three of us. It was a good start to the week.

Cheers,
Daniel

P.S. I'll try to update more regularly. Once or twice a week? Yeah? We'll see.