September 15-22

This is going to be a regurgitation of what I just wrote and just accidentally erased by hitting the back key on my web browser. Argh! Two entire pages of writing down the drain. Here goes...

I arrived in Sweden after an entire sleepless night of travel beginning at 1:40 AM at the Oxford bus station. The bus took an uncomfortable nearly four hours of tossing and turning in the upright seats to arrive at Stansted airport to catch my EasyJet flight to Copenhagen. Stansted airport, despite the commute, is a much more accessible and friendly place than Heathrow. The average traveler was about 10 years younger and 25% better looking than the average Heathrow-er, due to the presence of budget airlines such as EasyJet and Ryanair flying out of Stansted and to the fact that most of these people were Europeans. Not that Europeans are actually better looking than Americans. It's just that most of them actually brush their hair, slip into tight jeans, wear trendy clothes, and somehow look about 20 pounds lighter than the average American. At sunrise I did some yoga at the airport, despite the strangest looks from fellow passengers (I may have scared some off, but hey, at least I got an entire row of seats in the lounge just for me). The flight to Copenhagen was lovely. I didn't have much discussion with my stoic seatmate, who I eventually found out was a furniture representative returning from ten months in Ireland, but I did enjoy swooping in to landing over a series of windmills firmly anchored in the flat flat water and islands surrounded by rubber skirts to hold something in (or us out?). I don't know how travel is so exhausting, since its just waiting for arrivals and departures, but anyways, I spent the next four hours waiting for Brenda and Jen to arrive from Geneva with their giant backpacks and other traveler rickrack. I luckily discovered something called a 'quiet room' which is a long row of Scandinavian design recliners (no overstuffing and fake leather here!) where I spent that time attempting to snooze. We departed for Lund when they finally came, and got there after a nice hour on the train.

Brenda's friends Andreas and Maria picked us up from the station in their blond loveliness. Maria is a pretty Swede with twin braids, a great smile, and tall wrestling shoes. I find it hard to believe that she was the other 'beefcake' at camp with Brenda, but maybe she shed a lot of weight after becoming a vegetarian in France under the influence of a French lad. Andreas' defining feature is his height. He's tall. Two meters. That's like 6 foot 5 inches. That, along with his sideburns and Elvis obsession, makes him a character indeed. No wonder Brenda likes him so much.

Monday night was spent just relaxing and getting to know eachother. Andreas lives in a nice three bedroom apartment just a ten minute walk from the center of town in a place that translates most appropriately as 'convent gardens'. Our acommodations were the living room couches, which none of us minded at all, since they were big and comfy and sported a nearby internet connection (behind the couch) and a TV playing Sex and the City (in front of the couch). We met his roommates Martin, a 24 year old first year business school student who spent the last few years in London, and Johann, a train conductor in his mid twenties who is the actual owner of the apartment. I think they found us three crazy American girls endearing, even though we threatened to eat them out of house and home with our enormous appetites. But we did redeem ourselves by cooking, cleaning, and supplementing their apartment with a bit of estrogen.

On Tuesday, we explored Lund itself. The main square has a fresh produce market daily until early afternoon, a state liquor store (I dont think that any other retail place can sell drinks that are over 4 percent alcohol), fantabulous ice cream, and a great international foods market. The university nearby has fountains, flowers, and impressive buildings that are accessible even to nosy tourists like us. People sped by on their one speed bicycles in a myriad of colors. We went to a church built in the 1100s and rebuilt in the 1800s. Inside is a medieval astronomical clock that an endearing old man that reminds me of my maternal grandpa told us about. Below is a crypt full of graves and beautifully carved columns. Legend has it that one of the priests tricked a giant into building the church, only to refuse payment when the giant finished his handiwork. Angry, the giant tried to destroy the buildings foundations. To represent this, one of the columns in the crypt has a carving of a giant embracing it with the intention of uprooting the thing. For dinner, Jen and I cooked up a fabulous Italian feast for 7 people. We made a great appetizer of bread baked with garlic and a soft Swedish cheese, sliced red and yellow tomatoes, green salad with a honey balsamic dressing, pasta with wild mushrooms, soft cheese, caramelized onions, garlic, and tomatoes, mussels with a tomato cream sauce, and a great apple crisp with muesli as part of the topping (and ice cream, of course, that we bought for only 9 kroners and wondered why it was so cheap).