All settled in now, I am now the happy resident of a fully furnished room, one of 12 in my corridor, but only half of us have arrived yet. Swedish people seem quite friendly when you meet them at a party or a pub, but for some reason they don’t find it necessary to talk to you just because you’re flatmates… However, a girl that came in Sweden 10 years ago moved in last night, and she made up for all the dry ‘oh, hello’-s. We talked for hours and she gave me strawberries with melted chocolate on top ^^

Flogsta’s quite big, it seems like half of Uppsala’s here. Almost every evening there’s a party going somewhere, whcih usually ends up on the roof so that we can all fit (for some reason the doors to the roofs have been locked, but in a couple of buildings students have pried open their way to freedom 😉 ). And at 10 o’clock every evening comes the famous Flogsta scream: everyone shouts as hard as they can for about a minute. Traditions build the community.

Every group of the EILC course has cultural tours on different days, and you get one tour-less weekend. On our one me and a friend of mine cycled our way to Stockholm and couch surfed there, which was pretty nice. It took us 6 hours to do the 80 k, but we had a couple of breaks and I fell asleep on the grass at one point, so we definitely took our time.

It had been nice and sunny for 10 days, all the time we had been here, so unfortunately it hadn’t occured to us to bring jackets or raincoats… Quite unfortunate indeed. On our way back it started pouring hard and we decided to shorten the trip to just Upplands-Väsby, where we could get on one of the few trains that allows bikes. 30 k in the rain was not terribly bad, but the train felt so nice and cosy, I didn’t feel sorry for my 140 kroner at all.

Besides, I get plenty of chances to cycle every day: the store that’s close to Flogsta, ICA, is pretty expensive (2-3 times more than Tesco’s: 2 pounds for the cheapest loaf of bread!). So expensive that I’ve decided to buy all my groceries from Lidl and Willy’s, which are 5 k away. It would have been nice if I had a basket on my bike, but oh well, I guess making more trips is not a problem, as I pass through this really nice forest around Flogsta. I love it now, but I don’t know how I’ll feel about it in the winter. Time will show.

I also went to IKEA: I loved it. If you stop by you need to get IKEA lunch: meatballs with jam, brown sauce and potatoes for 2 pounds. Don’t miss it.

Some people have been swapping their culture trips so that they can get one more weekend free. Some have gone to an eco-village in Gotland, some are planning on a trip to Helsinki. I’ve decided to stick with my group so that I can get at least a couple of late mornings; and it seems I needed them: woke up at 1 pm today. It’s my lazy day: I’m crawling up in my bed with movies and I’m planning on having a go with an Astrid Lindgren book with a dictionay later on.

Uppsala, 14 August 2011