Dark dark Gothenburg + Liseberg

 This is the somewhat depressing side of Gothenburg now. It is getting so dark so early and by 5pm it feels almost like it is 10pm so it feels as if your day is almost over already. It still isn't getting too cold though, staying around 5 to 8 degrees. So basically all the trees are bare with no leaves, it's cold and there has been no snow to compensate for it :-( To the left is the dark and drizzly view from my room at only 4pm.

Views like this (image to the right) during class are now a thing of the past unfortunately.

Class is fairly boring at the moment. Opinions in a Mediatized Society is almost like English Literature where you take news articles and analyse the bias, what is emphasised, what is included, what is excluded, etc. Up until now I have actually had very little (well, actually none) coursework to do and even now the workload is so light and it seems like such an effort to do something so small when you have been inactive. I find you are usually at your most efficient when flooded with work and still somehow manage to fit more into your day. Even though my days are filled with almost nothing to do I still seem to be busy...? Either way, I'm seriously pondering if a finger painting will be enough to pass the unit? Come on it is Erasmus after all! :-D

Overlooking Anvenyn on the awesome Götaplatsen.

All the Christmas lights are up in the city now. Maybe I should say Julafton lights? The whole city is lit up on a small scale but it just adds a nice bit of warmth and light to a city that is so dark at the moment. Liseberg (the theme park) is all light up and should be going there on Saturday for a Christmas festival. 

The days are likely to be even shorter when we go up to Lapland which is much further up north in Sweden which is going to absolutely awesome. I really cannot wait! It's gonna be a big blog post, let's put it that way ;-) Just to let you know how far this Lapland region is, I've marked Kiruna (which is a small mining town in the Lapland province) on a Google Map image to the right. I just managed to fit Gothenburg into the image which you'll see on the very bottom left of the image. I think Sweden could be as tall as Australia is wide which is pretty astonishing.

Little fun fact about Kiruna that I learned in Swedish classes is that they are mining so close to the town and are about to dig underneath it, because they fear of the town collapsing they are actually going to move (yes, physically move) the whole town brick by brick a kilometer over to the...well some direction! So I would figure they are making a few kronor up there to justify doing that!

However, I still have to go to Turkey on Monday first! A warmer country! Yes! Yeah okay, they are heading into Winter too but compared to Sweden, it will be nice to head outdoors with only a long sleeved shirt or maybe just a light jacket.

At the moment, my days are filled with going to the gym, going for a walk around the scenic parts of Gothenburg with a coffee in hand, clocking up some YouTube hours and that is pretty much it. Not too much to update on. Yet.

Update 24th November 2012 - Liseberg

So tonight after over three and a half months I finally venture to Sweden's most popular tourist attraction which also happens to be situated only two trams stops away from my place. Liseberg, the big theme park of Sweden. Tonight we went to see the Christmas lights and I have to say straight away it was definitely worth going. The place is lit up so beautifully, there is a few small waterfalls, the trees are all wrapped up with lights, typical Swedish Christmas food and drink and even a little Lappland area that is meant to look like a mini Sami settlement.

As usual, the pictures cannot do the place justice. It feels very typically Swedish (apart from the English Christmas carols) yet it is a bit frustrating just how many people you have to squeeze through just to move anywhere which makes walking in an average sized group more difficult than it needs to be.

The lighting wasn't just limited to tacky tinsel but even small waterfalls, the ferris wheel and the reindeer island were illuminated nicely in blue. There was a few different areas with different themes, one of them was the North Pole where you could go into Santa's workshop. It had this big machine that you could write what you want for Christmas and feed it into the machine...okay it's not really for adults but we didn't know that at the time! :-P

In short, it is a nice place to spend the evening. I can't really go on about it much more to be honest so I'll just dump a few pictures on here. Take it easy, everyone!