Lund/Copenhagen Adventure

So I'm going to just write a quick bit about our weekend trip to Lund/Copenhagen before I write about my trip to Paris that I just got back from yesterday. :)

Last Friday, we left early in the morning to catch a flight from Arlanda Airport in Stockholm to an airport in Malmo, Sweden (southern Sweden). We met up with Sophie (from Australia) who is Chris's girlfriend that we all came to know and love when she spent a few weeks in Uppsala before moving to Lund - a University in Southern Sweden. For the weekend, the 10 of us from Uppsala basically took over her room and corridor, where we all slept on couches and floors and survived sharing one bathroom. It was quite an experience, but the free accommodation is definitely worth it.

On Friday when we arrived, we walked around Lund a bit - the town is very old and very cute - where we were bombarded by groups of people doing some type of scavenger hunt, who got points by having a group of foreigners sing for them. Hannah and I participated twice - the first round we sang "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" (a great rendition if I do say so myself), and the second round it was about 8 of us singing "Livin' on a Prayer" which has become more-or-less an anthem for my Swedish adventure thus far. It was quite comical. That night we had hamburgers french fries for dinner, followed by a few drinks and a few hours of singing while some of the boys passed around a guitar.

We spent the day on Saturday in Copenhagen, which is about a 1/2 train ride from Lund. Copenhagen is an absolutely beautiful, lively, harbor city in Denmark which I would definitely love to spend more time in. Hannah and I walked around for much of the day through the shopping district, then we met up with the group to take a harbor/canal cruise. It was nice to see the sights of Copenhagen from the water (the Little Mermaid Statue, the Opera House, the Palace, etc.) though I have to admit that I didn't do my research about the sights of Copenhagen, which I will have to do before I return. After the cruise we took a walk over to "Christiania,"
which is more or less a hippie village ("alternative society") in Copenhagen. (The Wikipedia definition is as follows: Christiania, a partially self-governing neighborhood in the city of Copenhagen, Denmark, which has established semi-legal status as an independent community, was founded in 1971, when a group of hippie squatters took over an area of abandoned military barracks. The proliferation of marijuana in the frontal region of the community, known as Pusher Street, has given rise over the past decade to legal conflict. In response to recent crackdowns and raids by the Danish police, supporters of Christiania have adopted the slogan "Bevar Christiania!" (Save Christiania!).) It was quite interesting just to see how people live there, though I by no means spent enough time to get a real impression of how life is. After that, we went back into Copenhagen for dinner, then on to an Irish Pub (the Dubliner) to watch the quarter finals of the Rugby World Cup - New Zealand vs. France - since we had a number of rugby fans with us. I'd never watched rugby before, but it is definitely a new favorite of mine - it reminds me of a mix between football (tackling, masculine, etc.) mixed with something like lacrosse for it's speed and constant intensity. After that, we went home to bed so we could catch our early train back the next morning.

Sunday morning, we caught a train at 7:00 am back to Uppsala, where we arrived around 2ish. Overall it was a great weekend, with great friends, visiting amazing new places. All of the traveling is definitely making me want to go to as many places as possible while I'm here. (And when I get back I'm sure that I'm going to want to continue my traveling experiences - there's no stopping me now.)