Berlin & Paris!

So my girlfriend arrived on the 15th October for two weeks here in Sweden. Naturally, her coming all the way from Australia it would be a shame to only stay in Sweden, so it's time to hit the continent!

I still had (and have) work to do at this point so three days worth of travel was all we could really fit in unless I was prepared to work non stop on a red bull only diet with the last few days of my assignments due. Anyway we start by flying to Berlin to our hostel at night, sleep there and go back to Tegel Airport early in the morning to start our day trip in Paris.

You hear a lot about Paris. Some people build it up to sound like the most magical city in the world while others say its not as good as those people say it is. In my opinion, it was a pretty damn impressive city. There is a lot of huge and imposing buildings close together and the sheer size of the city itself is massive. Of course, there are the main attractions that we had to see: The Eiffel tower, the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe. 

While the city was no doubt amazing there are a few things that I didn't like. For a start there are parts of the city that can be a bit smelly, you will guaranteed be intercepted by some form of beggar every 15 minutes around the tourist traps, they ask you if you speak English first and even if you say no they will still try to pester you. You almost have to shout at them to get them to leave you alone. The pollution levels are evident, too. For a start you often get the smell of exhaust fumes from cars and then you can see it in the greenery in the city. Some of the leaves and plants look like they have almost corroded from it and look seriously unhealthy.

Anyhow, later that evening it was back to Berlin to our hostel for another night in the city...where we don't actually see the city. Next day though we did more or less the same thing, rush to see as much as we could. It's a bit exhausting but fun at the same time, however Berlin is no where near as a beautiful city as Paris is. You can tell there is a lot to do and reasonably cheap if you lived there - but as a tourist attraction, it's not really the best.

There was a lot of cool architecture in the city and the main strip of shops near Zoologischer Garten train station was pretty impressive. Almost American styled with the giant Europa Centre. Apparently it was one of the first American styled shopping malls in Europe in a city? A bit hard to believe though since it is pretty modern looking. Inside there was a cool little chemistry looking feature that gave the exact time!

It was a fairly decent effort seeing two major/capital cities in the space of three days. It is really good seeing all these different cities because you begin to realise that there really is a compromise for everything in terms of size, tourist attractions and levels of development. I think we were both glad to get back to Gothenburg. As fun as traveling is, it can get pretty exhausting and quickly too! The hard life, huh?

Speaking of Gothenburg, since I've had so much work to do my girlfriend and I have just been spending the days having short trips into the centre and showing her the University. It is still, even after two and a half months, an amazing city to chill out and relax in. I'm really glad I chose to come to Gothenburg.

It's Sunday now, and I have a short paper for Mass Media due tomorrow and a larger course paper due for Swedish Politics on Wednesday. After this week I will be starting up with Opinions in a Mediatized Society, hopefully I will know what it's like for everyone else to only have one subject at a time for a change! I will also have to take my girlfriend back to Landvetter airport to wave goodbye on Monday and not see her again until I am back in Australia late January :-(

Until next time!

Copenhagen Road Trip!

It's time for another road trip, this time to Copenhagen! So I found it was cheaper to hire a car and split the costs between the 5 of us going than taking an overnight bus or a train. Only 1100SEK to rent this nice big Volvo XC70 from Friday to Monday! You could never hire a car that cheap back home. 

It also a bit of fun driving here in Scandinavia again. People drive quite fast over here but because the roads are so smooth it doesn't feel like you are flying along at 140km/h. Okay so it's hardly Autobahn speeds but it's enough to get you in a bit of trouble back on Perth freeways.

This time I was traveling with a car full of Australians. It was actually quite nice to be able to speak English quickly and with a bit of slang words here and there which you get forced out of when abroad, since no one will be able to understand you. Although I have to say that isn't a bad thing at all, it's good to get out of those habits for when you have to enter a professional environment, it's less of a struggle.

The highlight of the road trip without any doubt was the Øresund bridge which connects Sweden (Malmö) and Denmark (Copenhagen) over nearly 8kms over the Swedish coast, onto an artificial Danish island where you enter a tunnel to come out the Danish mainland.
The first time we drove over it the weather was extremely bad so you couldn't see Denmark or Sweden on the bridge so it felt as if you were floating over the ocean and driving into nothing. Really spooky but just amazing. It's expensive to cost at around 370SEK (around AU$50) but it was worth it.

(This picture is off the internet. We couldn't get a good photo of the bridge itself.)

Once in Copenhagen we checked into the Danhostel which was cheap, clean and had a great view of the City! On the way back from ditching the car in a free parking area, we stumbled upon this new part of Copenhagen which is super modern and just a fantastic place to be. Even in the older part of Copenhagen there was a few modern buildings mixed in with the old grand buildings from the Danish glory days.

I guess one thing Copenhagen is well known for is being the most bicycle friendly city in the world and from my experience, it's true. There is a really great network of bike paths that are wide, safe and disconnected from the main roads mostly. They are considered a viable mode of transport and you will witness rush hour with bikes just like you would with cars at peak times. Even at midnight, there are plenty of cyclists filling the cycle lanes.

However the city is absolutely littered with bicycles. It has a certain charm I guess but I feel it looks a bit tacky at times.

Another great service offered by the Danish capital is free bicycle hire. You slot a 20DKK coin in like a Supermarket trolley and get it back when you lock the bike up again.
In theory, fantastic. In practice, David and I had to go to about 8 different locations to actually find a second bike for him to ride after I managed to score one straight away. In fact when we first found a bike rack of these 'freebies' there were three bikes, mine (which worked fine) another which wouldn't unlock for David, then he managed to get the other one unlocked but the pedals wouldn't move the bike! Funny now but at the time it was frustrating going from rack to rack to find others vandalized  locked up with someones bike lock or completely empty whilst I was walking the bike along.

One of the major attractions in is to see the Little Mermaid statue. It has a level of significance since the author of the popular children's story was from Copenhagen. Honestly, it's a bit lame...but then walk along the coast a little bit further and one of the best statues I've ever seen. Pictures just don't do this thing justice but it was massive and extremely powerful to look at.

Architecture was amazing in Copenhagen, it didn't take long walking through the city before you find something to turn your head. You really get the feel that this was once a powerful empire that conquered and ruled most of Scandinavia. In fact, I understand the Danes actually burned Gothenburg down to a crisp at least twice during their fight to become independent of Danish rule again.

(Floating house in the middle of Copenhagen)

Finally, Christiania. What is it? It's this little area in Copenhagen that is self Governed. Which basically means you can go in there and smoke weed and space out. Getting a picture outside of the gate is one of those must-do touristy things but they do not allow you to take pictures inside. I think we spent about 5 minutes in total in this place before we got the idea. I don't really know what I was expecting but yeah, it's a complete dump filled with hippies and clothing stands for you to look homeless and blend in.

Overall Copenhagen is an awesome place to go to for the weekend and living in Gothenburg we are really lucky to have it so close. This will more than likely be the last of the road trips now since I've hit up both neighbouring countries on the West Coast of Sweden.

Now, I am absolutely flooded with course work. Monday (yesterday) I had to be up to drop the car off at Hertz, get to class by 8am, work on a presentation to present at 2pm. Then off to the Swedish exam at 6pm which I think went pretty well, hopefully I managed to get into that top group for the next group of lessons. Then once I was home, I had to work on another presentation on Swedish Civil Society that I presented this morning. Understandably, I got back home at midday and slept until 6pm.

The work still doesn't stop since I have a paper in Mass Media in Sweden due next week as well as a take home exam which will come online for Swedish Politics tomorrow afternoon.

...I guess the holiday had to stop and the study begin at some point. Schedules are not supposed to jam like this normally, I just got unlucky with the way I selected my courses. Although it won't be too bad after these next 4 weeks since I will have a lot of gaps in my schedule so lots and lots of time will be on my hands then.

What I'm basically saying is that I probably won't be doing much substantial blogger for a little while. Though I know some people have found my blog searching for 'Helmutsrogatan' or 'Study Abroad Gothenburg' so I may do a little entry about the student accommodation, what's around it and accessibility to the City.

Until then! Hej då!

Oh and one last thing. When we were getting some food and drinks for the road trip back to Sweden, the guys managed to find a beer with 10.5% alcohol! I thought Sweden was crazy with the 7% beers. No wonder why Danes are such rowdy people! :-P