Sunday, January 25, 2015

Week One - Discovering Växjö

Hello friends! 

To finish off my first week in Sweden, I've decided to share my experiences in Sweden with you all. I hope that you find these upcoming posts either informative or entertaining - or both! 


To start this journey Jonathon and I took several long plane rides. We finally landed in Copenhagen, Denmark, where we took a two and a half hour train ride (which also included a 10 minute halt on a bridge due to technical difficulties :O )to the small-ish town of Växjö: population about 80,000. So here we are, hauling our huge, 50 lb. suitcases and carry-on items in the "quiet zone" of the train. The announcements were all in Swedish, so we had no idea where to get off of the train until we thought we had finally heard our university's town name. We go to grab all of our bags and get off of the train and one of the large suitcases begins to roll down the aisle. Several automatic doors open for it and it keeps rolling! Finally, a good Samaritan helped us catch our runaway suitcase and we stepped into Växjö, Sweden. 









The weather here is always overcast. The sun rises at 8:30 am and sets just 4:00 pm. It also has snowed almost every day so far. The town is very cute, though. There is a downtown area, and there are several lakes. There is even a castle near campus! Almost everyone bikes here, which brings me to our next adventure: we got bikes! We bike anywhere from 6-12 miles a day on the snowy paths; it's absolutely gorgeous!


One of the most challenging/interesting events us foreigners have encountered has been buying groceries. The people here speak very good English, though all of their labels are in Swedish! Jonathon and I made the mistake of buying filmjölk instead of mjölk (milk). I went to pour it on my Cheerios the next morning and it PLOPPED onto my cereal. Not milk. Apparently it's "sour processed milk".


My newest favorite tradition is fika, which is a Swedish way of saying let's stop what we're doing and get coffee and a pastry together. The kannebule (like a cinnamon roll) is so yummy!





So! I hope you've enjoyed my storytelling and updates on Sweden. It has been great so far. :) If you would like to stay in contact with me the best way is probably through Facebook or Whatsapp. I plan on updating this blog about once a week.


God natt! (Good night)