Paul Georges . Alterego Construction

Today was our second and last day spent in Stockholm. We weren’t incredibly inspired to do another tour of the city’s sights due to the grim weather, so we decided to stick to museums. We visited the Vasa Museum, home of the Swedish Vasa ship constructed in honour of king Gustavus Adolphus. This huge battleship sunk on it’s first outing on the water, only to be recovered from the bottom of the Baltic Sea in 1956. The salvaging of the ship took over 30 years to complete. The permenant museum of the Vasa was opened in 1990. Very interesting stuff!

After the tour of the Vasa, we had a bite to eat and headed off to Linköping with Chewbie. Before I forget to mention it, I must share with all of you that the Swedes are obsessed with hot-dogs and candy. There are hotdogs for sale on like every street in Stockholm and in virtually every grocery store and corner store. They happen to be even more obsessed with candy! The sweetest (no pun intended) part is that they sell their candy really cheap (it’s probably the only cheap thing here in Sweden). Who ever knew that Swedish Fish and Swedish Berries really had a connection with the country; I know that it seems obvious but now I have concrete proof of the relationship.

The trip from Stockholm to Linköping ended up being a bit longer than expected due to a few wrong turns. We ended up going north instead of south so we kind of spent an hour and a half driving full speed in the wrong direction. We reached Linköping before dark though. Huge thanks to Chewbie; t’es vraiment trop sympa mec! By the way, the maximum speed limit that one can encounter here in Sweden is of 110 km/h. That’s 10 km/h more than in Québec. However, if you get caught speeding in Sweden you go to jail for 6 months which seems a bit odd to us Québécois… Sweden just happens to be a VERY strict country.

I’m currently writing this post from my dorm room in Rydsvägen, Linköping University’s residence. The place is a village to itself. All the essential services such as a grocery store and a pharmacy can be found at Ryds Centrum in the center of the pseudo student town. Everyone here gets around on bike which is pretty sweet. My room is located in what is called a corridor here at Ryd. Basically, there are 6 corridors per building. Every corridor has 8 rooms. Statistically speaking, 6 out of those 8 rooms are usually attributed to Swedish students; the 2 others usually house foreign students like me (I’m special). The rooms are large and well equipped. We all have our own private bathrooms but we share a kitchen and a living room which is perfect! I’ll take some pictures soon.

Things to do tomorrow:

• Buy a bike
• Do my first grocery shopping run (that’s gonna be a blast; new brands, new foods, new everything)
• Get my room set up (I might do that tonight though)
• See Linköping administration to add the introductory Swedish class to my course selection
• Pay off my credit card and fix up my financial situation (Swedish bank account or bank transfers?)
• Contact Université Laval to inform them of the number of credits I will be taking

For those of you that don’t already know, the Swedish language kind of sounds like is a mix of French (by Chewbie’s request lol!) German. Locals here obviously all speak Swedish but the vast majority speak English as well. However, there happen to be a select few that can not speak a word of the latter. For the bilingual Québécois reading this post, let me tell you that it’s the wierdest feeling not being able to communicate with another human being. I’ve always been able to communicate efficiently with people ever since I’m a lad but now I feel completely powerless when I’m spoken to in Swedish… the best I can answer is “Sorry, I only speak English” and pray that they the next words that come out of the person’s mouth sounds faintly familiar. I’m really motivated to learn Swedish, I can’t go on not being able to understand what people are trying to tell me and not being able to express myself correctly.

I need to hit the hay, I’m exhausted and I need to be rested up for tomorrow. Cheers!