Helsingborg & This Past Week

Today Cassandra, Ming, & I went to Helsingborg and had an awesome time! We took the train from Lund around 10:30AM and arrived in Helsingborg around 11:10 or so and began walking around the town. We first checked out this cool castle-like building within the city and walked up to the top of it where we had a nice view of Helsingborg, the Baltic Sea, and Helsingor, Denmark. After we went to a bakery nearby and had some fresh baked desserts...my first "meal" of the day!

We then took the bus to the former summer home of the current Swedish Royal Family. First we toured the home, which was very ordinary compared to the palace in Stockholm. We then took a path down through some trees, along a creek, and to the edge of the sea. This little walk down had some of the best photo opps yet, but there were many more to come! Around 3PM we grabbed a quick lunch at the cafe on the premises and then went to check out the rose garden, where we spent around 2 hours! Here we found some of the best landscaping thus far...all kinds of plants, flowers, roses, dahlias, etc. You name it...and, a cat that we played with for a bit! After we took about 100 pictures amongst the scenery on the three of our cameras we took the bus back to town, visited the city hall building, grabbed dinner at a Korean restaurant, and then took the train back to Lund. Definitely a fun, fun day...pictures to come.

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This past week since the football game on the 5th has been pretty low key...with a few exceptions. Oh, and its gone incredibly fast! In fact, the first half of this month has just flown by. I've somewhat forgotten what I did this past week, but remember a few things.

At one point Ghazal, Alex, and I took a walk around the whole part of Lund we hadn't seen yet. We went under the bridge near the train station, over to Vildanden (a far away housing complex), and around the train station and back to Sparta. Quite a walk and the first time we had seen that side of Lund since arriving! On the way back, a few Middle Eastern guys pulled over, rolled down their window, and started screaming at us in Swedish...Luckily, I didn't know what they were saying so I felt a bit innocent. Turns out, as Alex later told us, they were telling him to "nicely" take of his shirt which merely showed an Israeli Red Star...no controversial remarks or anything. He said they added some name calling, too. That was a bit scary.

Wednesday afternoon I went over to visit Luise & Ming in Delphi...then went to Willy's (a local grocery store I've been hearing good things about) for the first time! Afterwards, Cassandra and I hit up Krischansta Nation and had dinner with Nora, Anita, Tim, & Alex. Thursday we all met up with Jess and a few others and went to Sydskanska Nation for dinner, a live band, and more music. Pretty fun night, good food, and met some cool Danish girls.

Friday was the crazy one...we had planned for a big party in Parentsen but started off in my corridor once I found out we were having a party the same night. A couple glasses of wine & a cocktail later we headed over to Parentsen. It was quite a raging party! Lots of people, great music, and many new friends. Downside of the night came when we found out some drunk idiot had thrown a glass bottle at Vishnu's face. He had to get a couple of stitches but he's all good now. We all had quite a night, so we just crashed at his place. We woke up the next morning and hit up the flea market outside of his building...cool stuff but you'd mostly only buy the type of things they had if you were living here. Before going back to Sparta we all went to Kalmar Nation and had their brunch which was great for 40 crowns!

Sunday was pretty low key too...met Cassandra and her corridor mate's mentor group for brunch at Hallands Nation....definitely love this place! Low key day after that...came back, took a nap, and then went to the gym later with Melanie. Thought about going to Helsingborg Sunday too but held off, which was a good thing since it began to rain later. At night Ghazal and I visited Jasmine's place in Vildanden to make dinner...had these vegetarian patties that we're pretty darn good and a first for me. Also discussed the travel plans Ghazal's been lookin' into for Poland, Prague, Budapest, Barcelona, and Morocco...so excited! Ohh, then we watched this movie called Prime w/ Meryl Streep...its the one where her son turns out to be dating her patient...after her patient has told her all this stuff about their dating...yeahh, pretty funny. That's it for now...

Birthday Party & Helsingkrona Nation Last Night

Hej! Its been a lazy day so far after a pretty fun night yesterday. A few friends came over and we made dinner, drank wine, and watched this cool show about the insides of the Obama White House. After, we hit up Alise's birthday party in Sparta and then a few of us went to Helsingkrona Nation. I hadn't been there before...the music was kindaaa lame. Then hung out at Vishnu's place in Parentesen and met his roommates. Speaking of roommates...met some more of mine yesterday...I thought I had met most of them but guess not. I think I met as many yesterday as I have up until now! I think its because a few of them just moved in and a few that I met in the beginning have now left...its a weird arrangement here. Monday we have our first corridor meeting so that should help clear up whose livin here and whose not!