Food Update

For the last week, Cassie has been away. We have had to fend for ourselves food wise but that has led to a number of triumphs.

First was the international food dinner for all the exchange students. Everyone had to bring a plate from their country and at the last minute, Peter and I decided to bring Vegemite scrolls and lamingtons. Needless to say, the kitchen looked like a bomb had gone off by the end but we had delish bread and lamingtons that were quickly snapped up.

The kitchen (although it wasn't our kitchen so we weren't so worried)

The dinner!

The next night, we had a corridor dinner at Peter's flat. Charged with bringing a starter, Peter and I decided to make olive bread and dips from scratch. The roast capsicum dip was especially good!

Dips.

Finally, on Wednesday night we made Parmas! Starting with chicken breast we crumbed them ourselves. We even cut our own chips and made herb mayo a la grilld. Best meal ever.

Parmas for 5.

What a meal.

The only other thing to report is that with all the sun at the moment (its light from about 4am to about 11pm), people are going a bit crazy. This was demonstrated last weekend when Brenton made a piece of artwork by piling up all the broken bikes. The day also involved lots of dancing in the sun, a sign proclaiming Lewis is super gay, and knife throwing. It was all just a bit crazy.

Our back yard last saturday.

The Car (As yet unnamed)

So we bought a car. Some would say that with only 6 weeks to go that was a bit stupid, but we wanted one.

Here it is:




Its a 87 Merc 280E with a sunroof, spoiler and 3 alloy wheels!

With Peter's sweet negotiating skills with picked it up registered for a year for $1000. Split 5 ways we think its a bit of a bargain.

Decorating ideas welcome.

The Trip Home

I was meant to get a flight home from Copenhagen on Sunday night, arriving in Lulea three hours later. A small volcano saw to it that this was not to be. Stranded in Copenhagen with no idea how long the planes would not be running, Craig and I decided to take the scenic route home.

At 1pm on Monday we set off from Copenhagen railway station for Oslo.

Ready to set off.

We arrived in Olso that night, cooked a kilo of pasta and got some good rest.

With a day to kill in Oslo, we hit up the natural history museum (full of 6 year-old kids), the viking ship museum (They had three viking ships from the 800's) and the Fram museum (A arctic explorer ship from 1900 that went the furthest north a ship had ever gone, and then took the Norwegian explorers to the south pole to be the first people ever to reach it). I have decided that Norwegian explorers are both awesome and crazy, I have to learn more about them.

The Natural History Museum.

Viking Ships.

Onboard the Fram.

At 11pm, we were ready to get on our bus to Stockholm:

A night of no sleep meant that by Stockholm we were a bit tired, but we only had a couple of hours before we were getting on a train to Sunsvall.

Coffee!

Unusually for Scandinavia, the train was half an hour late which meant we missed our connecting bus to Lulea. Luckily, we were assured that there was a replacement bus waiting just outside the bus station. There wasn't, but after an hour we did get on a bus to Lulea. Unfortunately for us, the bus driver decided he couldn't go any further than Umea (about half way to Lulea) so we were stuck waiting for yet another bus there. By this point, Craig just wanted to be home:

He's from New York.

After 2 hours wait, we were on a bus again. 24 hours after leaving Oslo, we were home.

Lulea!

I'm never leaving again.

Copenhagen

Fresh in Stockholm from the love boat, I decided I didn't want to go home and shot down to Copenhagen for the weekend. For kicks, I took the train so that I could go over the bridge that connects Sweden and Denmark. There were even wind turbines in the sea!

When I arrived, it just so happened that it was the Queen's birthday. I met Dave, Chris and Craig, friends from Lulea who happened to be in town, and we grabbed our Danish flags and headed to her parade.

The closest I have ever been to royalty.

There were also gold balls in a fountain getting shot up on jets of water. We were told it was specially for the Queen's birthday, and that the balls were only there once a year.

You can see one of the balls starting to get shot up on the left- so cool.

The next day we went to Tivoli, the world's oldest amusement park which is located right in the centre of Copenhagen. Dave just wanted to ride the rollercoaster, which we did a heap of times as there was hardly anyone there. We also went on a ride which had all of HC Anderson's (they love him so much) fairytales, dodgem cars and a hundred-year-old rollercoaster. It was awesome.

Chris and Dave.

That night everyone wanted to sleep, so I went by myself to see a Danish band called Efterklang. They were awesome and I was really glad I made myself go.

Efterclang!

For the rest of my time in Copenhagen, I did a lot of walking and exploring the city. It is a really nice place and I am convinced that there are more bikes than people. The area of Christianshavn was especially nice and I climbed a church tower there which gave me a great view of the city.

Christianshavn

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The tower I climbed- you got to go outside and walk up the circular stairs all the way to the top.

I also found a glass art gallery hidden in an old supply store under a park with Craig and his friend Elen. It was really cool but a bit creepy, especially the section that was full of life size sculptures.

The art gallery.

We're on a Boat!

So a month ago, we bought tickets for a cruise called The Sea Battle. It was a huge cruise for thousands of exchange students.

Sunday night: All the exchange students from our university decided to catch the train down to Stockholm (14 hours). We didn't do that much on the train apart from have a dance party in our cabin and then we slept for as much of the trip as possible (half an hour for Peter).

Our cabin! We're on a train.

We arrived in Stockholm on Monday morning and we all checked out the city for a few hours before boarding the boat.

The Royal Guard + Lulea Exchange Students

At 3pm we headed down to the Port and saw our lovely boat sitting there waiting for us.

The Love Boat.

We're on a gangplank.

So on night 2 (there are no photos from night 1....) we competed in a music quiz and then Peter and Michael lit up the stage with some "Africa" karaoke. After this, Lulea students dominated the karaoke stage until 11pm when we had to finish.


"I bless the rains........."

There wasn't much happening after karaoke apart from the huge PAR-TAY on the dance floor. Peter also hit up the Black Jack tables and he lost a few hundred kronor (30 bucks). We went to bed at about 4:30am although Peter partyed on until 6:30am! What a party animal!

Us on the dance floor.

After the first night we disembarkated (what they kept on saying on the boat pa) off the boat in Tallinn,

Us in Tallinn

Us in Tallinn again

Michael was super excited to be in Tallinn (which was really nice), yeh!

Our night in Stockholm after the Love Boat, we ate 20 burgers between five of us (Peter was happy) then headed to Karaoke again where Michael and Cam sung 'Affirmation'. What a night!

Since a volcano exploded in Iceland (stupid Iceland) all flights were grounded and we had to take an epic 14 hour bus journey home. Note Michael ditched and is in Denmark at this point. He had a 30hour journey home. Go bus!

- Peter and Cassie

Skiing

On the weekend I caught the bus with a bunch of other exchange students to Svanstein, a ski resort on the Swedish- Finnish border. I feel the weekend is best summed up with these lift photos:

Brenton

Lewis

Christophe

Johan

Remy

Matt

Last but not least, Anne

Between riding the lifts, we did actually do some skiing. There was a good mix of jumps and ungroomed black slopes that made for 2 days of fun.

Finland in the background.

For our one night on the mountain, we did what all Swedish people do... Sauna. We got so into it in fact that we went straight from the sauna to the bar, and back to the sauna.

We even got to keep the glasses!

Finally, after only 2 hours, my $8 skiis went MIA (I snapped the bindings). They were last seen on the Swedish-Finnish border.

Goodbye my faithful friends.