Usch (yikes)

I made it alive... sort of.

Apparently Condor is a totally legitimate airline. The safety videos featured Marilyn Monroe, Lance Armstrong, Charlie Chaplin, and the Queen of England, complete with queenly wave, but no English subtitles.  In the Frankfurt airport, the first restaurant I come across was... you will never guess. Hooters. There was a grocery store nearby, so I bought some Teekanne (yay) and paid 3 euros to check my email, and get Stina's (my buddy) phone number.
The 2-hour flight to Arlanda also had no English translations, except for something incomprehensible involving ladies and yentelmon, and turbulence.

I step off the plane and what do I smell? IKEA cinnamon rolls. I almost burst out laughing. Also, 4 in 5 young adult women are wearing white converse shoes. And everyone wears leather jackets and/or cardigans.

I found the train station pretty quickly, and I was the only one in it. Then I was the only one in the cabin. Between Knivsta and Uppsala, the train stopped... for 45 minutes. There were a few announcements, but nobody to translate them for me... anyway I got there eventually. Turns out there are no payphones in Uppsala Centralstation, so I had to ask someone (at 11pm) to borrow their cellphone. Stina turned up with my key, and we took the bus to Rackarbergsgatan. I never would have found it without her, the bus stop was 3 blocks away from the bus station. She helped me bring my bags up the 4 flights of stairs and figure out how to open the 3 sets of doors to get into my room. By the time I unrolled my blanket on the mattress it was midnight and I had been awake for 33 hours... so, logically, I barely slept...

This morning I managed to remember there is a tiny ICA grocery store in the same block as my apartment building. Apparently it's one of the most expensive ICA's in Uppsala. The chain doesn't have standard pricing, so you have to go out of town (to the ICA Maxi) to get the cheap food.

I have discovered that Swedes like to hide the regular water where it is impossible to find. After I realized we had no cups, I had to explore for water. If you want pear, grapefruit, passionfruit, vitamin, or sparkling water, no problem. I had to go to a Pressbyran and pay about $4 for a bottle of Evian to get plain bottled water!! Also I managed to pay $5 for a loaf of bread.

Then I went on a hunt (enabled by my GPS) for Nordea bank. It turns out only one branch can set up an account, obviously it's the one on the other side of town. On my walk over there I found The Phone House and got a SIM card, which is supposed to get me free internet but my phone can't seem to figure that out. It also thinks that it's 7:12am... which it isn't. Here it's 10:10pm and in Vancouver it's 1:10pm... I may have to buy a Swedish phone after all. At least it can make phone calls.

I headed out to SLU for my free orientation lunch, and waited in line for half an hour to get my internet password (which is why I finally have internet!!) The campus is AMAZING. It's like a little farm village with lakes and trees and little paths, but then you have a giant brand new glass building, then a red barn, then a 17th century style building. Most of campus seems to be under construction... all universities seem to be.

I managed to get back to centralstation, and realizing I still had no sheets, pillows, or towels, I waited an hour at two wrong stops for the bus to IKEA. I paid 5kr ($0.78) for coffee and a cinnamon bun (NOM) and sat on a couch! They have couches in the restaurant! Swedish coffee is served in a small cup, not as small as an espresso cup, but just the right size, 'lagom'. And the cinnamon roll was toasty and HOT, and it wasn't even under lights. Everything else in the store seemed to be somewhere around the same price as home, maybe a little bit more. Most things that are $1 at home are 9kr here (**). They sell EVERYTHING at IKEA. Fire extinguishers. Bathrobes. Sunscreen. Soap. First aid kits. Backpacks. I got a bed set and some kitchen basics, and lugged it back home on the bus. According to everybody, "Nobody takes the bus in Uppsala." That is not true, I do. How else am I going to get three giant bags home? Not on a crappy old road bike that everybody takes everywhere. Apparently, if you leave your bike unlocked downtown, people will push it into the river. Later they are dragged up, cleaned, and put up for sale in the bike shops...

I get back home and start unpacking, and I move the mattress pad onto the bed only to discover BUGS. I call the Dombron (rental company) "emergency line" but of course nobody answers. After several phone calls to buddies, the mattress pad is out in the hallway and I took a $30 cab back to IKEA (it was closing in 15 minutes) and bought a $55 mattress pad that I can sleep on tonight... I discovered our vacuum doesn't work, and after several frustrating minutes, found that even the broom couldn't stay on the handle. Shopping is needed.

Rackarberget (the apartment complex) is old. No elevators, ooold heaters, funny old doorknobs, and some chipping paint. It seems to be a thing here that when you move out, you leave behind whatever you don't want or are too lazy to throw out. I found a duvet, pillow, candles, bug spray, a photo-CD, and a pile of maps and textbooks in my room... I guess I'll keep them for a week or so, see if he comes back for them? But I am definitely going to use his bus card.
My room seems to be the biggest of the 5, but the one with the crappiest furniture. I have a window that overlooks the green 'party area' in the centre of the complex. People are singing out there right now. Hmm.
The shower is typically swedish, a tiny tiled room with a showerhead and a towel warmer. The bathroom is smaller than your average public toilet stall, and the kitchen just barely fits a table and chairs. The table is covered in gigantic potted plants, me and Rebecka (room mate) have no idea where they came from... nobody else has moved in (or returned from summer holidays) yet.

It's not as easy as I expected to get along with mostly English. Bus drivers can't understand me, and I can't read any instructions on anything, which is more frustrating than expected.

Important words learned today:
nästa - next (go up to the counter now!! it's your turn!!)
vänta - wait (as in DO NOT pull out your card and accidentally cancel the transaction again, silly person)
tvål - soap (not two... that is två)
mellan - between/medium... my milk is called Mellanmjölk... medium milk?
Rabiez - seems to be a clothing store.


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