European Exodus: Part I

As an American citizen who was denied a Schengen Visa to study in Sweden, I was forced to leave the country after 90 days.  Although my moral was low, and I felt like an illegal alien, I had mixed emotions when I set foot in Arlanda Airport on day 91 (!!!).  It was extremely sad to leave Stockholm; it was an opportunity that satisfied so many of my desires.  I have always wanted to live in a city, ditch my car and take public transit, live abroad, and among other things, experience and embrace new cultures...Sweden allowed me to do all of that.

On day 91 I did not join my luggage and board a plane to America, but instead was off to Istanbul, Turkey to embark on an epic 2-week journey across Europe before I headed home.  I spent the first night with a postdoc from my research group at school, and the latter three with old friends from school.  Istanbul is like no other place I have ever been; it is a recipe that includes 2 cups of history, 1 cup of religious relics, 2 tbsp buried treasure,  1 handful of delicious food and drink, 3 tsp bustling craziness and pure mind-fuck, a healthy serving of swindlers and pick-pockets, a whole lot of sheesha, and a few overly-selective clubs.  I went to Turkey alone, and fours days later I was sitting in Atatürk airport with 5 of my closest friends...there is no beating that.

After spending 4 hours at a hotel near Athens airport, we headed to the Greek island of Mykonos on just a few hours of sleep.  The small island could barely contain the five americans and their japanese counterpart...we rented 3 ATVs and drove around like absolute madmen for three straight days.  We set off in search of secluded beaches, swam in the crystal clear waters, ate some gyros and freshly caught fish (head and all!), washed it down with greek beer, dabbled with the night clubs, and then repeated.  

Chora, the main port city seated on the western side of the island, with its all white buildings with blue doors and roofs and iconic windmills became a photo shoot every night...what a beautiful place!  At the pace we were at, three days on Mykonos was just the right amount.  On the final day we took a 5 hour ferry to Piraeus (the main port of Athens) and managed to run into some *friends* we had met a few nights before. 

When we reached mainland Greece, each of us individually realized that no one had thought enough ahead to look up directions to the hostel...we were fresh meat for the ravenous cab drivers and pickpockets.  After discussing things over with two cabbies lurching over our shoulders we decided to hop in and take the most roundabout and angry cab ride to the hostel.  After spending 24 scorching hours in Athens visiting the ancient ruins and drinking numerous freddo cappuccinos, four of use took a flight over to Nice in the south of France to meet up with another pal from school.

  

Swedish Summer (Part II)

Sandhamn
A move to an unfamiliar city--or even an unfamiliar country as I did--requires you to be both creative and adventurous.  Investigating a city using websites and books for things to do/see is do-able when taking a small vacation or trip, but it is damn near impossible for an extended period of time.  Before I departed for Stockholm I attended a brief wiki history lesson where I learned about the archipelago, the jet stream that provides enjoyable weather despite its northernly location, and that the hipsters occupy an island called "Södermalm."

It was convenient for me to ask students who I worked and went to class with for restaurant recommendations and places to explore around Stockholm. Thanks to them, I quickly learned that: The usefulness of an answer is a function of the effort you put into forming the question.  Common sense can go a long way...If you are looking for a nice place for hiking or running then don't go ask someone who clearly hasn't gotten any sun in over 2 years and wears velcro sketchers, ask the guy who spends every weekend camping and brings his lunch to the office everyday of the week.  Are you looking for a new coffee shop to add to your list for the times when your office seems to be closing in on you?...then don't waste time asking a person who thinks an espresso is spelled with an 'x' and that the world really does run on Dunkin', ask someone who has coffee stains on their teeth, knows that tea doesn't belong in a bag, or even just a cute girl with dark-rim glasses who looks like she could pass for a barista.

A visit to Sandhamn, the eastern most island in the Stockholm Archipelago, was a recommendation I received early on in my stay, but I decided to save it for the end.  I was waiting for a beautiful weekend to make the 3 hour boat ride out to the outer archipelago, and it happened to be my very last weekend in Sweden!  I spent the day exploring the island with Jakub, an exchange student from Czech Republic,  and even got to watch the end of a yacht race.  It turned out to be a perfect day...I am very happy that I got to squeeze in the trip to Sandhamn before I had to leave Sweden!

Brunnsviken
Nothing beats a nice bike ride or run along the shores of Brunnsviken, the lake that separates Solna from Sweden.  A quick 5-10 minute jog from my place, as the nighttime fell upon Stockholm the views from this area were amazing...my last joyride through Stockholm was no different.  I am sure going to miss this place!

Swedish Summer (Part I)

6.5.2012
I celebrated my 25th birthday (quarter century!) earlier this summer.  Although I am not completely sure where I would have celebrated my 12.5 birthday (if I celebrated 1/2 birthdays), lets just say it was somewhere between Devils Tower in Wyoming and the world famous Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota.

It is always a bit strange, and sad, to celebrate birthdays or holidays away from your family and friends...but the internet (especially Skype!) makes it so much better.

6.6.12 Swedish National Day

Sveriges nationaldag (National Day of Sweden) occurs on the 6th of June every year, and is meant to celebrate the foundation of modern Sweden.  As an american visiting Stockholm, what this meant for me was that I didn't have to go to work and could head down to Kungsträdgården for a food festival.  Luckily we arrived just after a cooking competition had ended and they were divvying out their dishes to the hungry crowd...mhhhhmm beef and asparagus! 

In search of something we had never had before, Jakob and I stopped at the "X-treme Food Guerrilla Cooking" tent to try some Tjuraballa Tacos (bull balls tacos).  As it turns out, a bull's testiticle is HUGE, and a bull balls taco is essentially just one large cross section...hmm.

For some reason I was expecting a texture similar to pork, but of course it was nothing like that.  It was soft, a bit too thick, and really quite tasteless.  The pico de gallo saved the taco from being a complete bust...but in the end it was more about saying that I downed some bull's balls rather than thoroughly enjoying their taste.

Later that night I headed over to Lidingo to have a BBQ at my advisor's home.  After spending nearly three months alone in a tiny apartment, it was wonderful to enjoy a real family dinner.  The food was fantastic, the family is great, and of course the sunsets were amazing on the way back to my island!

6.7.2012
The week before I left Sweden, myself and 8 other members from the E2C group at KTH took part in the Blodomloppet 10K race in Stockholm.  The race was in Djurgården (which used to be the hunting grounds for the Swedish Royal Family), and considering that the sun was planned to set at 21:58 that night, a start time of 18:30 gave us plenty of time to finish the race.

Sometime during my second week in Stockholm I was told about Norra Djurgården (North Djurgården), a large wooded region directly behind KTH to the North.  The area is filled with a handful of small lakes and ponds, borders Brunnsviken (a larger lake) to the West, the Baltic Sea to the North and East, and has tons of trails made more hiking, biking, walking, running, and even horseback riding scattered amongst its hills.  Stockholm is sneakily far North at 59.33°N--compare that to NYC which is at a latitude of 40.71°N, Seattle at 47.60°N, and Anchorage at 61.19°N.  As a result of this, the summer months had long hours of sunlight, allowing me to go for runs in Norra Djurgården 4-5 days a week after I was done working.

I have always enjoyed sports and keeping active, but running has constantly been one thing that I never really enjoyed doing...it seemed so boring!  After training for and completing races such as the Mens Health Urbanathlon and The Tough Mudder as a way to stay active and get some fresh air during graduate school, I began to realize that I enjoyed running if I could make it fun.  This was a bit difficult (but doable) in Illinois; I would run on trails in the woods, hills in the park, and mix in intervals and even pull-ups on low-hanging tree branches into the runs.  I quickly found that in Sweden I didn't need to try to have fun while running...every run was enjoyable.  I never planned any run beforehand, I never ran the same track twice, and I always tried to find something beautiful.  I used these runs, commonly lasting between 0:45 and 1:30, as a way to scout out areas where I could later explore with my bike and camera.  I loved running in those woods, and I deeply miss them now!

The Blodomlopet 10km track was very typical to the running trails sprinkled throughout Stockholm.  Parts of it border the Baltic Sea, some were through rocky and muddy hills in the woods, some on old un-paved access roads, portions on sand-laden horse trails (which are extremely difficult to run on by the way), and other portions are even on paved roads.

I ended up running a 43:11 (you can find a video of me crossing the finish line here), and had an amazing time.  After everyone finished our team collected our two picnic baskets from ICA and went to town on bagels, muffins, and of course some assorted dairy products.

As we were heading back home after the race there were two large rainbows high up in the sky...one a mirror image above the other.  The amazing thing about these rainbows was that they were not caused by the reflection of light off water droplets, but instead by the reflection of light off ice crystals high up in the sky.  Sweden rocks!

My advice for anyone visiting Sweden:  NEVER go anywhere without a camera.  If you do, you will regret it; you will be astonished by the natural beauty.

USA

Back in the States...should have some time to update in a few days.

Four Day Frenzy

I had my first visitors in Sweden last week, and it was pretty spectacular. Albeit they were only here for some 100 hours or so, we had a hell of a time! Looking back on it, the trip seemed to revolve around three things:  eating & drinking, sight seeing, and shopping.  In that order.

The Highlight Reel:

Day 1
After dropping off the bags, we headed directly to EspressoSostaBar.  The place is straight from Italy, and serves amazing drinks.

With enough caffeine to momentarily overload the jet lag, we jumped on over to Östermalms Saluhall via Humlegården (park behind the Royal Library in central Stockholm).

Östermalms Saluhall is a swanky food hall, and the "...haven for lovers of good food." After oohing and awing for a bit, we picked up three open-face sandwiches (smoked salmon, fried herring, and roast beef) and a Västerbottensost pie (Swedish cheese pie). Everything was delicious, but we weren't completely sold once we did the currency conversion... 

The first day finished with some power naps and mediocre tapas at Mamas and Tapas.  Those two were champs!

Day 2
It may seem a bit tacky, but we thought it would be fun to see the world's largest IKEA...and it was!

Just inside the entrance we had our first fika of the trip. With a coffee and kannelbulle for something ridiculous like 5 Kr. each, things were looking good...

The store, however, is a complete mind f**ck once you are inside.  It is a circular building with ramps and escalators everywhere.  We obediently followed the arrows guiding us throughout the store, and had a chance to awe at the piles of cheap housewares.

Upon reaching the checkouts, we were severely disappointed to find out that the main cafeteria was back in the middle of the store. Entering for the second time, we disregarded the arrows and went straight for the food. On the menu, Köttbullar (Swedish meatballs)!

We made a pit stop at a grocery store on the way back to laugh at all of the strange products

Determined to see more, after returning to Stockholm City we wandered around Riddarholmen and took in the beautiful views of City Hall and Riddarfjärden (the bay of Lake Mälaren).

No trip of Stockholm is complete without visiting nearby Gamla Stan (Old Town).  While there, we made sure to see the guards at Stockholm Palace,

check out all of the fancy shops,

and hang around the narrowest street in Stockholm.

We then made our way over to the northern shore of Södermalm to enjoy the beautiful Scandanavian weather at Hermans vegetarian buffet.  The restaurant has loads of outdoor seating with fantastic views of the city; a perfect place to enjoy the 9:20pm sunset!  The food was super tasty, but we did see quite a bit of questionable buffet etiquette (caught a girl sniffing the serving spoon...TWICE)!

The walk back to the tunnelbana was a tad chilly, but those views can make anyone smile

Day 3

After a quick pit stop at System Bolaget for some essential Swedish picnic supplies (boxed wine), we headed off to Drottningholms Slott.  It stands for Queen's Palace, and is the current residence of the Swedish royal family.  To get there, we simply hopped on a steamboat that left from City Hall.

It was pretty overcast and cold when we first arrived, but it clouds began to open up as we sat down for our picnic.  One of us (I won't name names) made the mistake of feeding the ducks during lunch...

After touring the grounds the lighting was just right for a mid-afternoon photoshoot

and a little bit of fooling around before the palace closed for the day.

It was a perfect day trip...nice boat ride with great scenery, beautiful weather to enjoy the grounds, and of course a mid-day fika!

Following a small walking tour of hipster central (SoFo in Södermalm), we set out to find a nice place to have some dinner and drinks.  Our first choice was Urban Deli, but the combination of hunger, crankiness, and poor service caused us to leave after our first brewski.  We moved on to something a little more familiar, and went to an "American restaurant" in Sweden. The waitress tried wayyy to hard to sell the food (would make a fantastic car saleswoman), the burgers were decent, and the size of the mussels gave us all nightmares.  I would say that America's American food is much, much better!

Day 4

Just another Saturday in Stockholm with perfect weather.  After enjoying a leisurely breakfast, we headed over to Djurgården to visit the Vasa Musuem.  The Swedish warship Vasa sank on its maiden voyage in 1628 before it had even left the the harbors of Stockholm.  In 1961 (333 years after it sank), 90% of the ship was recovered and is now on display.  The lighting was very dark so we were unable to get many good pictures, but it is a pretty awesome museum; really one of a kind.

After enjoying some traditional Swedish street food (Tunnsbrödrulle) outside the museum, we took a breather and enjoyed the weather in a park along the water.

Since Sweden is apparently famous for their design, and this was their last day, we made sure to visit a few design stores too.  Not all of us were too interested in perusing their fine selection of fabrics and furniture, but we easily managed to enjoy our time together.

What a great trip.  So many memories and so many laughs.  You guys are the best!  Thank you so much for making the trip over.