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Hey Everyone,

Due to the huge size of the Rome blog post and the fact that the tons of pictures at 12.1 mega-pixels that I like to post just eat through the storage limit on these free blogs, I've run out of room for this blog and will have to continue on with part 2 of this blog with a new username.  To check out part 2, go to nickcheneypart2.blogspot.com.  The first post on the rest of the Rome trip is already up, so check it out.  Keep on reading and enjoy.

Nick

Gothenburg

Hello Hello,

Ok, so it's time for nice long entry.  So far all the trips have been just since day or weekend trips, but here is my first full week trip.  We started Tuesday morning, coincidentally also right after I had finished an exam, this time for Swedish, the night before, and we didn't get back until Sunday night.  This trip included Mike, Chris, Andre, Christoph, Jackson, Simon, Clinton (also California), and myself.  I was pretty much constantly taking pictures the whole time, so here is a small sampling of the pictures I have.

We started out by taking the train to Gothenburg, Sweden's second largest city after Stockholm.  Since the sunset is around 3:30 now, even leaving Vaxjo in the morning doesn't leave much time for sightseeing in the daylight after taking the train, but after walking around the train station to find maps and the tram station to get a tram pass, we headed to the hostel to check in and drop off our stuff, then got some food and spend the rest of the day wondering around the city getting a feel for things.  We spent much of our time walking up and down the main street, although we did venture around and found Liseberg, which is apparently the largest amusement park in northern Europe and has a roller coaster that was named the best wooden roller coaster in the world.  The amusement park was closed, but they had up their Christmas lights, and they were beautiful to look in at as we walked by.  There were tons of Christmas lights up around the main street and the stops too.  I guess the middle of November isn't to soon to be thinking about Christmas.

Central Station shortly after arriving

A skyscraper nicknamed the Lipstick Building

Gothenburg had tram tracks everywhere, the way we found our way back to the hostel
 before we figured out the city was just to follow the tracks. The tram here is the most
extensive tram system in Scandinavia reaching all the way to the outskirts of the city

Gothenburg's main street

The Christmas lights were up early

... and up everywhere

Some of them were pretty big and impressive too 

Entrance to the amusement park

No attractions open, but plenty of lights up

The water looked really nice with the colored lights

The front of the amusement park

The next morning Christoph, Simon, Clinton and I wandered around the residential area of Gothenburg trying to find the Slotsskogen, a huge park on the west side of Gothenburg.  I was surprised at how nice the park was and that there were animals and attractions there instead of just paths and fields.  I was impressed with the number and variety of animals, considering that it was a free public park.  The petting zoo was closed, but we saw seals, goats, sheep, horses, ducks, swans, deer, moose, and even penguins.  The others met up with us there, but didn't look around as much as we did.

The city of Gothenburg

During our walk, all the houses are exactly the same!

Found some awesome graffiti faces on rocks

The coolest part was that most of them could only been seen or made sense at the right angle

I guess taking down the old street sign was just too much work

At the park, the water is already starting to freeze over

But the ducks found some open water (unlike the seagulls who just stood on the ice)

It wasn't actually that dark out, but I really like the lighting and shadow in this one

I still have no idea what this sign is trying to say?

A beautiful place to sit and enjoy a view of the city from the top of the park

There were also these stones from the viewpoints that showed some of the major attractions in sight

Another lookout point

The park was a nice relaxing walk, but it was freezing

The view from the top of the hill in the park

A nice place to watch the sunset over the city

Just a great place to hang out

This one was a nice old, rustic feel to it

The goats were really not camera shy at all

And the moose was like a statue

I was very surprised to see the penguins there too

So after the park, and going back into town to eat and put on as much clothing as we possibly could, we headed to the main attraction of the Gothenburg portion of the trip, a soccer match between the Swedish and German national teams.  Seeing how about half of us were German, we did sit in the Swedish fan section, but right at the edge next to the German section.  It was cool just to be at the game and watch the German national team play with some big names like Schweinsteiger in action.  But the game was just a friendly, and a cold one at that, both teams spent most of the time getting their younger players some action and the game carried out to a very uneventful 0-0 tie.  

They really love their Christmas lights, I'm just glad I'm not the one who had to put these up

The front of the stadium

When we got there the stadium was looking pretty empty for warm ups

Christoph, Mike, Jackson, and Andre (left to right)

Clinton, Simon, and Chris

When we got off the train, they were selling cheap Sweden jerseys
in the station, so we all got matching jerseys (even the Germans)

The line up and anthems

Germany was pretty dominant, and we were right near their offensive goal all first half

The stadium filled in as the game started, but it was far from packed

The day we knew we just had the morning for sightseeing, so after checking out of the hostel, we took the tram to the edge of town and hopped on a ferry (also part of the public transportation system to see the Gothenburg Archipelago, a group of islands just off the coast of Gothenburg that is completely car free and home to about 5000 permanent residents and another 6000 who live there just in the summer.  It was a good idea, and would probably be an amazing trip at another time, but we were rushed for time, we were carrying around our backpacks full of our stuff from checking out of the hostel, the islands seemed to be all but deserted, and being on the water did not do much to help the cold.  We only had time to visit the first island that the ferry stopped at, and I'm sure that the larger islands further from the mainland would have been much livelier, but the island did have a nice view from the top of a little hill.  

The view of some of the smaller islands from the ferry

A bit of the town, it looks like most of the houses were on the other side of the island that we were on

A nice view from the top

Back to the coast to catch the ferry back to the mainland

One entrance to Nordstan, Europe's most visited shopping complex with over 35 million visitors a year

After getting back from the islands, we made our way to the city library to print out our tickets for the attractions in Rome (the website was down the day before we left Vaxjo, so we couldn't print out the tickets then).  It was a hassle to deal with signing up for a library card and to keep refilling it with money for the printing, but it was well worth the countless hours we saved standing in lines in Rome.

Then we headed off to Rome.  For the sake of ease of viewing, I think I'll go ahead a put the Rome pictures in their own entry.

Hello Hello

Copenhagen

Hej,

So now that all the travels that were planned at the beginning of the semester are taking place, and the mad rush to go see places before people leave after first semester kicks in, it looks like my once a month updates will no longer suffice.  With all the pictures and events that take place with a week of traveling, I think it's best to move towards creating a new entry for each trip I take.  So let's start at the beginning of November with my trip to Copenhagen.  The VIS (Vaxjo International Students) group was planning a trip to Copenhagen in mid-November, and despite it only lasting one day (including travel), I was planning on going.  But after a long week of works for projects and exams from the end of my Swedish Sports and Culture and Object-Oriented Software Construction classes, Mike asked me if I wanted to take a trip to Copenhagen, and with the trip scheduled to leave right after my final exam Monday morning, I thought it would be a perfect way to blow off some steam and see more of Copenhagen, as we were staying for a few days.  So Chris, Mike, Lorena (from Germany), and I headed to Copenhagen after Chris and I got out of our programming exam that morning, where we met up with one of Lorena's friends, Jaro (Germany).

By the time we got to Copenhagen, after a short bus ride and a few hours on a train, it wasn't even 6pm, according to the picture below, but it had long been dark out.  So after checking into our hostel and grabbing a bit to eat, we just wandered the streets of Copenhagen.  Seeing a city for the first time after dark, although not great for picture taking, is actually really nice.  When all the shops are closed, the streets are pretty much deserted, but things are still reasonably lit from the street lamps and signs.  It's a lot different experience than you get walking through the city during the day.  Mostly we just tried to get an idea of the layout of the city and walked along the main streets.  Copenhagen claims to have the worlds longest pedestrian street (Strøget), which is over a kilometer long.

Central train station, note the fancy clock and the fact that it's already pitch black out when we arrived.

One of the streets we wandered by, note the trademark random color buildings

Chris playing with a touch screen interactive billboard.  One of the coolest things we saw that night.

Every single one of the stores we passed had very strange manikins, heres just one example.

The next morning I woke up before everyone else, as usual, and decided to take a little walk around while the others got ready.  Our hostel wasn't in the prettiest neighborhood ever, but I thought it was kind of cool just to walk around and check things out in the daylight.  One thing about Copenhagen is that they're huge into biking.  There are bikes everywhere, and even city bikes that you can put a 20 kroner coin into and ride it as much as you want, and you get your money back as soon as you are done riding.

The church behind our hostel

Some of the graffiti on the building near our hotel 

More cool graffiti

Of all the bikes we saw, I think this one was my favorite

Our first stop that morning was a place called Christiania.  Christiania is a self-proclaimed autonomous neighborhood with about 850 residents, covering 85 acers.  It was an old abandoned military barrack where just homeless people were living before people from the surrounding area broke in a started using the facilities, eventually to start their own government and community.  Christiania is a place like you will see nowhere else on earth.  It is this tiny neighborhood that's completely self governed, separate from Copenhagen, Denmark, and the European Union in the middle of this major city.  You are not allowed to take pictures inside of Christiania, but I can only describe it as what seems like a fictional, even post-apocalyptic atmosphere.  There are run down buildings and graffiti everywhere, but in a cool, sort of intensional sort of way that all fits together.  There are odd people all over the place and fires in barrels all down the street.  It's almost something that you have to experience in person to understand.  Then, in the middle of all this is a beautiful lake with a walking path along the outside of it that seems almost as out of place in Christiania as Christiania does in Copenhagen.

The entry at the edge of Christiania.  Pictures are not allowed beyond this point, but
the opposite side of the sign as you walk out says "You are now entering the EU"

Church with a huge spiral tower just outside of Christiania

The majority of the afternoon and the next morning were spent just wondering around the city.  We saw many sights, often not knowing what they were, and really got a good feel of the city.  I was surprised at how small Copenhagen actually is and how quickly we figured out where most things were (despite Chris and I heading off in the entirely wrong direction and adding a good half hour to our final walk back to the hostel, luckily there was still plenty of time to make it to the train station before leaving.  Much of the time we spent wondering around was split up in groups.  Jaro and Paul (an Australian guy we met in the hostel) had been in Copenhagen a little longer than the others and headed to the far end of the city to see some new stuff, Mike and Lorena were more interested in the shops and such, and Chris and I just walked around aimlessly trying to see as much of the city as we could.  Copenhagen's most famous attraction, the Little Mermaid statue was on loan to China for the World Fair when we were there, so we weren't able to see it, but there was still enough sights to keep up busy for a couple days.

The Copenhagen city center with all the government buildings

No idea what this building was either, but it looked kind of cool

One of the many statues in the many little squares around the pedestrian part of town

One of the tons of street vendors selling Danish Hot Dogs. I think there were two or three in this little square alone.

Another cool looking building that seemed important

Another little square with fountains, bikes, and probably a hot dog stand

Statues everywhere...

The main square.  The long pedestrian street starts between those two buildings where the red sign is hanging.

A little shot of the hostel common room and Mike, I think this was waiting for everyone to pack up so we could check out.

The stereotypical tall, brightly colored building and narrow streets 

There seemed to be a lot of construction going on when we were there too

Seeing some of the places from the first night, now in the daylight... completely different

There was also lots of water and very cool canals running through the city

And extremely fat pidgeons

Chris and I stumbled upon some street performers and this guy was playing the coolest
looking homemade base ever.  They actually sounded pretty good too.

Chris and I did venture into a couple shops too.  Hugo Boss was a memorable one because they had
some absolutely beautiful suits and the security guard followed us around literally the entire
 time we were in the store (you can still see him in the doorway in the picture as we left)

Chris next to a life size statue of the tallest man in the world at the Guinness World Records 

I just liked the colors in this shot.  The little camera takes surprisingly good night pictures.

Another shot from when Chris and I went wondering the city at night

Another shot of the canals, those flat boats were for tour boats and you could always see them going around.

I guess thats it from Copenhagen.  It wasn't an extremely big city, and we didn't really purposely visit any sights, but it was still nice to go.  What was even funnier was how nice it was to come back home to Vaxjo after.  All the students I've talked to who go traveling say that coming back here really feels like coming home.  It's weird to think the holidays are coming up so soon and that so many friends around here will be leaving to head back to their home countries soon after when the semester ends in mid-January.  Luckily most of them are close enough to either visit from Vaxjo second semester or visit from Vermont after we all go back.

I will try to have another post for my Rome and Gothenburg trip done by the time everyone comes over to the house for Thanksgiving tomorrow so that people can check out the pictures when they are there.  It's strange not to be home for Thanksgiving, and it's even stranger to not even have Thanksgiving at all.  We are already in the Christmas swing over here.  I've been getting Christmas catalogs in the mail, the shops are putting out Christmas food.  There are Christmas activities and markets going on in town.  I even went to the first Christmas party of the year on Monday, but just because that was the last day of my Swedish class and they had a party to celebrate after handing back the exams.  Although there is one more holiday left, Lucia Day, which is part of the Christmas holiday season on December 13th before celebrating Christmas day (actually in Europe they celebrate holidays on the eve of the day, so the celebration and opening of gifts will take place on Christmas Eve).  It even feel like Christmas outside, with a good inch of snow on the ground right now (and at least snow flurries forecasted for 7 days of the 10 day forecast).

In the time it's taken me to write this post, another one of my friends asked me to go to Olso with him this weekend, so after talking to everyone back home on Thursday night, it looks like I'll be heading off to Norway first thing Friday morning.  So I guess I'll have a fourth new city to write about before the month is over.  But check back for another installment in the next 24 hours (probably tonight, since I have 5 hours of class tomorrow morning - although it's not as bad as it sounds, I don't know if I've said this already or not, but they have a thing here called academic quarter where the first 15 minutes of every hour of class is free time to take a break and the last 45 minutes is for the lecture, it takes a little more time to get the material in, but it's actually really nice that you don't have to get up the middle of class since you have time every hour to go to the bathroom or grab a bite to eat, and with breaks to get up and walk around, it's a whole lot easier to sit through a 3 hour lecture and pay attention without zoning out).

Farvel