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Overview We mainly came to Uppsala to meet some friends (by proxy) for Midsummer's Eve. It was a great party, and everyone has been wonderful. We've even had some nice sunny weather which has been just dandy!
The first half of our time here we spent with Jen, and she's been really good to us. She's shown us around and explained the history of the town. She also organised a night at Buddy's bar to introduce us to everyone. Thanks Jen, you rock!
17/6/09 We reluctantly left Jonas' place just before midday, having packed our lives into our packs yet again. It was 2 buses and 2 train rides to get to Uppsala, but the directions Jonas gave us were quite easy to follow, and the journey didn't take long. Jen met us at the Uppsala train station and after a quick introduction we caught the bus back to her place.
She was nice enough to have a map ready for us and a list of survival instructions. We dumped our bags, then went out for the rest of the day. Jen showed us around a bit, then we decided to drop in to Buddy's Irish Pub for
a pint on our way through. Of course one thing led to another and we ended up there quite a while. All the staff there are fast talking Irish lads and are an absolute crack up. Buddy, who had just dropped in to tend to some business, ended up staying for a long chat with us. He also had a great sense of humour and made us feel very welcome (even though he kept making fun of our accents). Onya mate!
18/6/09 We decided to take some downtime on Thursday to get settled in, upload all the photos and start the blog, so not much to say. That night we were meeting some friends of Jen and Max's at Buddy's who were really nice. Great night!
19/6/09 This was Midsummer's Eve, which is a holiday similar to Christmas in Sweden, so lots of food, drink and tradition. Jen had invited her friend Caitlin over, who was working at the university. We went to Gamla Uppsala, where Jen went all tour-guide on us (in a good way!), and showed us the ancient viking burial mounds and took us to a traditional Midsummer festival thingy. There were some historical displays,
games for the kids and dancing around the May pole, which was all good clean fun. We then walked back to town along the Eriksleden (path of St Erik), which is a pilgrimage trail (actually meant to be from the cathedral in town to the church in Gamla Uppsala, so we did it backwards).
We quickly prepared dinner, as we were to have a few guests over for a barbeque (most of them we'd met the previous night, but there were a couple of newies as well). We had lots of laughs, ate too much, drank too much and had a good time with great company. Our best Midsummer's Eve ever!
21/6/09 As we had done very little on Saturday (hence the lack of an entry), we decided to cruise into town to check out some of the historic buildings and have a general meander.
We walked from Jen's place to the cathedral near the town centre, which was magnificent, I recommend looking at the photos on Alex's profile! The cathedral was built in the late 1300s after 100 years of construction, and has had many facelifts since (particularly after it was damaged in the fire of
1702). It's sheer size and ambitious architecture is humbling, but when you look at it up close you'll find that every surface is covered in intricately detailed artwork - the classic stained glass windows, sculptures, paintings, even the floor has scriptures etched into it. The cathedral is a major tourist attraction (there's a gift shop which sells some weird stuff like jesus soft toys and tins of breath mints entitled "Save your breath"), but it's still used today as a place of worship.
We also visited the castle, which wasn't so interesting. It's quite large and pink, and built on a dominating position over the city, and offers a great view, but that's about it. I was curious as to why there are cannons are aimed at the cathedral though...
We then walked back to to Jens and packed up, as we were to move to John's place (our new Couch Surfing host). When I first met John, I assumed he was an Australian living in Sweden, which is not the case. His English is very fluent, and he has a lot of Australian friends, which has influenced his accent.
He lives in a student housing complex
in Flogsta, which is built to house around 2000 students (just a fraction of the student population in Uppsala), although most of them have left for their midsummer holidays. There are a number of buildings, each with 7 floors. Each floor contains 22 mini apartments (basically a bedroom and a bathroom), which share 2 kitchens. You can only imagine how hectic life would be with all the students there (that's a lot of students!)
He quickly made us feel at home and we had a few drinks. Then from out of nowhere, John's friend Charlie announced that it was ten o'clock. He then leaned out the window and started yelling! We thought that was odd, but soon there was a chorus of distant roars, and John joined in too. This is a tradition that is performed at ten every night. The Flogsta Roar!
John was so accomodating that he happily slept on the couch while Karen and I shared his bed.
22/6/09 As John, a student at the university, was on holidays, he and his friend Charlie were able to hang out with us quite a bit. On this Monday we decided to go for a walk
through the nearby reserve and find a good spot to have a barbeque. It was a lovely walk, as the Swedish countryside is very lush and green, with well beaten paths through the thick forests, but we couldn't find a safe spot to have a bbq, so we opted for a fire pit in a small park amongst the student buildings. We had some nice vego food, drank some beers and enjoyed the sunshine.
That night we had another bbq on the roof of John's building, and he introduced us to some more of his friends - Linnea, Freda, Simon the Belgian and Christian. They taught us how to play a Swedish game that involved two teams and sticks. Alex opted to join the girls' team with Karen, Linnea and Freda. We kicked the boys' asses, thanks to our awesome name (Team Lightning - see photos).
We then proceeded to go back down to John's floor where we taught Linnea how to play poker.... we had an instant fan! We played texas hold'em til the early hours of the morning. Was very enjoyable!
23/6/09 Following our late night, we didn't get up until the early afternoon (I
love being on vacation!), and we decided to have yet another bbq on the roof for dinner. It was brilliantly organised by John, who took the trouble to bring up a table, webber, a rug to sit on and his hookah (used for smoking sticky apple flavoured tobacco). Our famous marinated cheesy mushrooms were out in full force.
John's friend Chris was late after missing 2 trains (how does that work?), and Charlie joined us as well. Chris is a young Australian working in Stockholm as a removalist. He was a nice guy - very funny and Aussie as.
After we packed all that up we returned to John's floor to play poker. Chris talked us into playing for money, which worked out well as Karen cleaned up as per usual!
24/6/09 On Wednesday we hired some bikes from a local who was running the hire business from his shed. We went on a trial run, but we didn't get far, as Karen was feeling precious and was unsure of the road rules (lots of people ride bikes, which are considered vehicles, the traffic is of course on the right hand side, and helmets don't seem to
exist here). We just road around the backstreets of Flogsta a bit until Karen started to crack up.
That night we had arranged to catch up with Jen and co at Buddy's. We were feeling a little tired and worse for wear, but had a nice evening anyway, and were serenaded by a bunch of lads playing guitar and singing from the rooftop across the street (they were actually really good, and were taking requests!)
25/6/09 Things almost became complicated on Thursday, as John was leaving for the Peace and Love Festival in Borlänge (Yes, those characters are possible on John's Swedish keyboard), and another couch surfer, Liam, was arriving. John was extremely accomodating and trusting (a great quote of John's - "Everything's doable"), and allowed us to look after his place while he was gone.
Unfortunately Liam never got to meet John, who was gone before Liam arrived, so we looked after him instead. We were kind of surfing and hosting at the same time. Liam is a cheeky young Canadian dude, who's an archeology student, and was quite interested in Sweden's viking history.
We went for a nice long bike ride down to 'the'
lake, which was very refreshing, despite 'the accident' (see photo). It took a while to find the 'beach', and by the time we got there it was getting a little late and was too cold for swimming. We managed to find Freda and her friends, and hung out for a while before riding back to Flogsta.
26/6/09 Liam was keen to get stuck into the beers pretty early on Friday, so we make the long treck to the nearest System Bolaget (this is the name of the government store, which is the only place full strength alcohol is sold. There are something like 4 outlets in Uppsala, and they close at 3pm on Saturday, and aren't open at all on Sunday. This is Sweden's approach to controlling alcohol use, which apparently came into effect centuries ago when so much of the country's resources were going into alcohol production that there was a famine!). We chose a selection of foreign beers (see photos), and by the time we got home it was time for dinner, followed closely by the beers.
27/6/09 Saturday night we were due back in Stockholm for a party Martin, Josefine and Egil were throwing for us. So we said our goodbyes, packed up and left. We probably won't get to meet Charlie or Liam again, but it we really enjoyed their company - thanks guys!
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Leonore
non-member comment
Thankyou
Hi Karen and Alex, Good to get news of you and to hear that you are having a great time. Lots of love