Leaving Lund.

I left Lund on June 9th 2014 after possibly the best 6 months of my life. I absolutely fell in love with Sweden and Scandinavia in general. The city of Lund was historic and beautiful, I loved every minute of cycling around, meeting friends for fika and travelling. I met some of the most interesting, kind, thoughtful, inspirational and wonderful people during my time there and I miss them all every single day. My plan at the moment is to apply for Masters programmes in Sweden so I may be back there in the not too distant future but I thought I would just share some of the photos taken by the ridiculously talented Paul Carleton, they are of my brilliant friends and my last day in Lund. 

Celebrating Swedish National Day with meatballs and lingonberry jam. Starting from the left we have Antonia, Amy, Michael, me and Paul.

The awesome dinner party Esbe and Paul threw for us all. Starting with me and working left we have Amy, Lucy, Michael, Maxime, Antonia, (someone I don't recognise), Matt, Barney, Marie, Dennis, (two more people I don't know), Flavia, (another mystery guest) and Esbe!  

Amy, Esbe and me on my balcony on my final day in Lund, just before I headed off to the airport. How beautiful are they!?

Thank you to everyone I met for making my time in Sweden so magical. I hope I will meet you all again some day soon!

Copenhagen with Dad.

Not long after I got back from home my Dad came to visit me in Lund. The nearest airport is Copenhagen (about a 40 minute train ride away), so I met him at the airport and we headed in to the city to make the most of the day. I made the mistake of not making a plan of action before leaving so we wandered aimlessly for most of the day looking at the stunning architecture and admiring the canals. We didn't do everything I would have liked so I will definitely be heading back to Denmark soon to see what else the city has to offer.

Unfortunately Tivoli Gardens was closed until the summer period, I have heard it is a must see in Copenhagen so it is definitely on the list of places to visit when I go back. The old gateway to the Gardens was pretty impressive though. 

The cafes all had delicious looking open sandwiches and smorgasbords in all the windows. I had eaten an overpriced hotdog at the airport when I was waiting for dad to arrive so I didn't get to try one, dammit. We did stop for coffee at a little cafe in the harbour later and dad tried a trio of herring, so we didn't miss out on the food completely. 

Copenhagen was a really quirky place (like most of Scandinavia) and they had these table football stands just on the side of the street. 

For a capital city, I was struck by how quiet Copenhagen was. You could wander easily through the streets without having to fight through commuters and tourists. Like in Lund, a lot of people seem to commute by bike, it was a refreshing change from all the traffic and noise of UK cities. 

My favourite area (and the top tourist trap) was the colourful harbour of Nyhavn, the 17th century waterfront and entertainment district of Copenhagen. It is lined with brightly painted townhouses, cafes and bars. It also serves as a heritage harbour and houses many wooden ships. 

From Nyhavn we hopped on a boat tour and wound our way through the canals until we reached another of Copenhagen's famous landmarks…

The little mermaid!! 

Based on the story by Hans Christian Andersen, the small statue has become a city icon and a major tourist attraction since 1913. For all the hype that surrounds it the statue itself if quite small and unassuming. It is always surrounded by hordes of tourists so you need to be quick with your camera to get a person free snap. It also backs on to a rather industrial area of the city, not quite as photogenic as they make it seem in the guide books!

We finished off by wandering past the towering town hall. It was a lovely day in Copenhagen but there is definitely a lot more I wan to go back and explore. 

I'm Back!!

Hello!!

I have returned! I am sorry for being a terrible blogger and not writing a new post since February, I went home and then everything spiralled into a busy mess and blogging got a bit forgotten about, but I am back now and I have some exciting things coming up so I will be making an extra effort to keep the blog updated. Anyway, I thought I would share with you some photos from the time I have been away and update you on what's been going on… 

My lovely friends Lucy and Shaun got married - I was a bridesmaid 

and it was an altogether wonderful day! 

I also got to meet my gorgeous new godson, Freddie, for the first time. He is a little chunk but I love him to bits already.

I spent some quality time at home with family and friends, we went to Chester and walked the walls and also took a trip up Moel Famau.

And obviously I got lots of cuddles from my favourite little tabby cat, Sherlock.

It was just a really lovely time to catch up with my friends and family and recharge my batteries before I headed back to Sweden for exams and essays. I didn't think there would be any point in blogging at home as this blog is supposed to focus on Sweden, but I felt I should give some explanation for my absence! 

Undercover Cupid

I have never really celebrated Valentines Day but being away on Feb 14th still made me miss home, so Esbe decided to throw a Valentines Day dinner for all us lonely hearts. We had planned to go out for dinner but everywhere in town was already full up with loved-up couples so we DIY'd it and had an evening of pizza and chocolate fondue! Esbe and Amy had done an amazing job of decorating the flat so it was suitably romantic…

Everything was delicious and it was a brilliant night just hanging out with new friends from all over the world (well Oz, NZ and Germany but still, more multi-cultural than a usual Valentines Day).

We also decided to do an 'Undercover Cupid', basically Secret Santa for Valentines Day so everyone would leave with a little gift to make up for the fact that their other loved ones couldn't be here. Michael got me as his Valentine (I know it's meant to be secret but he forgot and wrote his name on the tag), he got me a lovely gift bag of goodies - biscuits, sweets and pickles - everything I could possibly want for Valentines day ;) 

Killing time with Amy...

This week I only had one lecture, so I had a lot of spare time on my hands and not much to do. On Thursday me and my friend Amy decided to check out what free things there were to see in Lund. 

We had wanted to visit the Historical Museum but it is closed until March (helpfully they neglect to mention this on their website!) So we had a quick Google and ended up at the Livet Museum (Life Museum). It is only a small little place which opened in 2012 and its has small exhibits on medical technology, the human body and scientific advances. It is not the kind of place I would usually think to visit, and everything was in Swedish with no English translations so I didn't really understand most of it, but it was still an interesting visit and kept us out of the cold for a bit if nothing else.

Again, I only had my iPhone with me so sorry for the picture quality. 

No idea what this is or how it is medically relevant but hey ho.

I love all the old chemical jars, they remind me of my grandparents house (my Grancher is a chemist and so they have old chemical jars on their shelves).

After a quick look around the life museum we headed towards All Saints Church, an imposing red brick Catholic church near the main University Library. 

Being a Catholic church it is very ornate inside, a total contrast to the simple stone interior of the Cathedral. 

I particularly like the old patterned floor tiles.

So yeah, that was our day really. We didn't do anything very exciting but it was nice to see some quirky little parts of Lund that you wouldn't really come across. Everyone I have met so far on exchange has been so lovely and it is really nice to be around people who are interested in going out and DOING things and exploring, even if that means spending the day looking at an exhibition of prosthetic limbs!