Did I mention I have an exam on Tuesday?
Sometimes when I have free time, or an exam that I should be studying for (which, honestly, is how I spend a lot of my time), I look at the stat counter on this page to see who's been visiting and why.
I'm constantly surprised at the search terms that send people here, including such gems as, "chlamydia", "puffy eye," and "ellie pratt." Now I'll admit two things here: I'm not sure if those commas need to be inside or outside the quotation marks, so I did one of each for good measure; the "ellie pratt" search term is mostly me googling myself. I'd also just remind you that the chlamydia I had was not the STD, but a chest infection from a different strain. There's quite a big difference.
Today I saw that someone had been reading archives from around the time I started blogging, which in itself isn't unusual, but I decided to have a read over them myself and I realised that I gotten progressively more boring over the years. Maybe it's because shlepping around in a lab coat for a few hours everyday has finally eroded my fragile psyche, who knows? Anyway I'd like to dedicate this post to those of you who've kept reading (God knows that's not many, hi Mum), and apologise for the humdrum.
Aside from that revelation, I felt that I should share this story with you, take whatever message from it you like...
Monday was an unusual day because I went to class, which is more remarkable than it might seem, and I saw someone get hit by a car. Well it was more of a red van really, and it was my friend Ingrid who got hit. I screamed, it was my only real option. Luckily she didn't come off the bike, but the impact broke off the cover of the headlight on the van, so I think he hit her reasonably hard. The weirdest thing about the whole thing was the driver's reaction. He was so calm, it was almost like hitting cyclists was some kind of daily occurrence. He also allegedly didn't speak English, which seemed an extremely dubious claim, and so we had to conduct the whole encounter in mangled Swedish. Not once did he apologise or ask if she was ok, he just poked her bike around a bit, yammered about Ekeby Bruk, pointed toward Ekeby Bruk, declined to say why he kept saying Ekeby Bruk, and then jumped back in the van and drove away. Strange times. Ingrid's ok, but was understandably a little shaken up.
As if he couldn't speak English. Bastard.
I'm constantly surprised at the search terms that send people here, including such gems as, "chlamydia", "puffy eye," and "ellie pratt." Now I'll admit two things here: I'm not sure if those commas need to be inside or outside the quotation marks, so I did one of each for good measure; the "ellie pratt" search term is mostly me googling myself. I'd also just remind you that the chlamydia I had was not the STD, but a chest infection from a different strain. There's quite a big difference.
Today I saw that someone had been reading archives from around the time I started blogging, which in itself isn't unusual, but I decided to have a read over them myself and I realised that I gotten progressively more boring over the years. Maybe it's because shlepping around in a lab coat for a few hours everyday has finally eroded my fragile psyche, who knows? Anyway I'd like to dedicate this post to those of you who've kept reading (God knows that's not many, hi Mum), and apologise for the humdrum.
Aside from that revelation, I felt that I should share this story with you, take whatever message from it you like...
Monday was an unusual day because I went to class, which is more remarkable than it might seem, and I saw someone get hit by a car. Well it was more of a red van really, and it was my friend Ingrid who got hit. I screamed, it was my only real option. Luckily she didn't come off the bike, but the impact broke off the cover of the headlight on the van, so I think he hit her reasonably hard. The weirdest thing about the whole thing was the driver's reaction. He was so calm, it was almost like hitting cyclists was some kind of daily occurrence. He also allegedly didn't speak English, which seemed an extremely dubious claim, and so we had to conduct the whole encounter in mangled Swedish. Not once did he apologise or ask if she was ok, he just poked her bike around a bit, yammered about Ekeby Bruk, pointed toward Ekeby Bruk, declined to say why he kept saying Ekeby Bruk, and then jumped back in the van and drove away. Strange times. Ingrid's ok, but was understandably a little shaken up.
As if he couldn't speak English. Bastard.
Sometimes you just have those moments, you know, where you realise you're drunk on bad wine, playing in a ball pit, and there's old Swedish people pointing and laughing at you through the big window you didn't really register was there, and you think to yourself, "life's really not too bad."
I love this country:
I mean, you actually could not even make that up. Somewhere in Britain, the writers of a Village-Policeman-on-Bicycle type-show are kicking themselves. Absolutely kicking themselves.
Policeman fined for savoury tart bribe.
I mean, you actually could not even make that up. Somewhere in Britain, the writers of a Village-Policeman-on-Bicycle type-show are kicking themselves. Absolutely kicking themselves.
With all the travelling lately, I feel like I should make Uppsala feel loved too. This is the main square, Stora Torget, on a beautiful autumn day. Well, it was yesterday when I was getting a burger at Max with Lauren, who was still drunk/extremely hungover from the ferry back from Estonia. But still, it was a nice day, and then I rode up a very big hill to go to BMC for my last micro genetics lab ever. Which turned out to be a waste of time. Anyway..
Going to Estonia seemed to me like it was one of those cool things that I'd never to fit in around class and find money for and get around to doing. And then we found out that there was a deal on over the weekend where you could get return tickets for 129 crowns (22 AUD). So I got around to going.
When we got on the boat in Stockholm on Saturday afternoon, there was a slight problem with one Australian girl being 19 because these boats have an age limit of 21. Mainly because most of the people who catch them are old, but I guess there's a legal thing too (that's why we were surprised it was being enforced). The check-in lady said she couldn't come on the ferry without a guardian, and that guardian had to be over 30, which clearly none of us were. So she walked up to a random Swedish lady in the terminal, who also happened to be a police officer, and got her to agree to being her guardian. And they say people aren't kind to strangers in Sweden, ha.
Lauren and I stocked up in the duty free, then drank some bad wine. We should have expected it to bad since it was packaged in something fairly similar to a long-life juice box, and I must say I had my suspicions before we bought it, but there's nothing quite like confirmation. You know, the Swedes invented the tetrapac? Anyway.. Somehow we ended up in the ball pit in the children's playground for a while. Those things are just as much fun as I remember, although the balls didn't seem to be as deep. Next time I go to IKEA I will get in to the ball pit. I will.
At some point in the night I ended up in the karaoke bar, where Matt, Chelsey and I sang Bohemian Rhapsody. Badly I think. And I'd forgotten just how many instrumentals it has, and that's always awkward in karaoke. Especially when the audience isn't really with you. In retrospect, the reason the Estonians weren't really in on the song was probably not because it was bad (though like I say, I'm pretty sure it was), but because it was in english. Every other karaoke song that night came in the form of an Estonian pop song. I'd never really associated the slavic languages with pop. I still don't.
Tallinn is really very lovely. Kind of creepy in an ex-Soviet way. But still very lovely. Creepy as in, even in the touristy Old Town where we spent the day, when we ventured away from the main streets we found a hovel, complete with blankets and magazines, in a broken part of the town wall. And also because it was Sunday, the streets were kind of deserted, so wandering around some of the old buildings was just, well, creepy. Even though the majority of these old buildings were run down though, covered in grafiti, or with broken windows and rusting barbed wire around the doors, most of them had satellite dishes. I guess it's just a thing about how we perceive our surroundings.
The old and the new. The spire (I cut the top off) is part of the gothic Town Hall, actually the oldest town hall in Europe. I think it dates from the 1300s.
The old but beautiful.
The beautiful: Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. Built by 1900 and seen by many as a symbol (negative) of the Russian occupation, but restored and maintained anyway.
The old: the Town Walls. We paid 7 Estonian krooni, less than one dollar, to climb up inside the walls and towers. The first foundations were laid in the 1300s when the city was part of the Hanseatic leauge. Cindy got startled by a pigeon.
Speaking of perception, we stopped to get a snack at a convenience store, and there was a bread stand with little danishes in it. Thought I, ooooh, a Danish, I'll get this one that looks like the label says apricot. Mmmmn, I was thinking as I bit in to it, expecting apricot jam. How surprised was I when it had a sausage inside it! I couldn't eat it. I was prepared for jam, not sausage, and there was just no going back.
When we got on the boat in Stockholm on Saturday afternoon, there was a slight problem with one Australian girl being 19 because these boats have an age limit of 21. Mainly because most of the people who catch them are old, but I guess there's a legal thing too (that's why we were surprised it was being enforced). The check-in lady said she couldn't come on the ferry without a guardian, and that guardian had to be over 30, which clearly none of us were. So she walked up to a random Swedish lady in the terminal, who also happened to be a police officer, and got her to agree to being her guardian. And they say people aren't kind to strangers in Sweden, ha.
Lauren and I stocked up in the duty free, then drank some bad wine. We should have expected it to bad since it was packaged in something fairly similar to a long-life juice box, and I must say I had my suspicions before we bought it, but there's nothing quite like confirmation. You know, the Swedes invented the tetrapac? Anyway.. Somehow we ended up in the ball pit in the children's playground for a while. Those things are just as much fun as I remember, although the balls didn't seem to be as deep. Next time I go to IKEA I will get in to the ball pit. I will.
At some point in the night I ended up in the karaoke bar, where Matt, Chelsey and I sang Bohemian Rhapsody. Badly I think. And I'd forgotten just how many instrumentals it has, and that's always awkward in karaoke. Especially when the audience isn't really with you. In retrospect, the reason the Estonians weren't really in on the song was probably not because it was bad (though like I say, I'm pretty sure it was), but because it was in english. Every other karaoke song that night came in the form of an Estonian pop song. I'd never really associated the slavic languages with pop. I still don't.
Tallinn is really very lovely. Kind of creepy in an ex-Soviet way. But still very lovely. Creepy as in, even in the touristy Old Town where we spent the day, when we ventured away from the main streets we found a hovel, complete with blankets and magazines, in a broken part of the town wall. And also because it was Sunday, the streets were kind of deserted, so wandering around some of the old buildings was just, well, creepy. Even though the majority of these old buildings were run down though, covered in grafiti, or with broken windows and rusting barbed wire around the doors, most of them had satellite dishes. I guess it's just a thing about how we perceive our surroundings.
The old and the new. The spire (I cut the top off) is part of the gothic Town Hall, actually the oldest town hall in Europe. I think it dates from the 1300s.
The old but beautiful.
The beautiful: Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. Built by 1900 and seen by many as a symbol (negative) of the Russian occupation, but restored and maintained anyway.
The old: the Town Walls. We paid 7 Estonian krooni, less than one dollar, to climb up inside the walls and towers. The first foundations were laid in the 1300s when the city was part of the Hanseatic leauge. Cindy got startled by a pigeon.
Speaking of perception, we stopped to get a snack at a convenience store, and there was a bread stand with little danishes in it. Thought I, ooooh, a Danish, I'll get this one that looks like the label says apricot. Mmmmn, I was thinking as I bit in to it, expecting apricot jam. How surprised was I when it had a sausage inside it! I couldn't eat it. I was prepared for jam, not sausage, and there was just no going back.
A few more weird looks today as I wandered in the forest, but all worth it in the end I'd say.
I love autumn, but I just wasn't really prepared for its distinct chill to be arriving now. I spent one week in America, 2 days of it in New York City, the rest in Ithaca (upstate), and another week holed up in my room alternating between studying for a big exam and sleeping at odd hours as I was slowly overcome by jetlag. Somehow in that time, without me noticing, summer has most definitely slipped away. Oh well, it might be getting colder, but it sure is pretty!
What can I say? America was great because it wasn't really what I expected. I realised that the reason I thought Meredith and Kristen 'weren't like other Americans' was actually not because they were different, but because my perception of America in general was wrong. How's that for deep eh? Aside from my bag deciding to take an extended stay in Amsterdam Schipol airport, and mooch at a FedEx sorting facility at Kennedy (I still can't quite get over the fact that FedEx do not deliver on Sunday OR Monday!) for four days, it was a good week. It was so nice to see Kristen, and Meredith and Julie drove down from Rochester for a night too; it was like being in Sweden again during last semester. And I got a photo of Rupert from the Hello Deli; you can't beat that!
I managed to eat my way through the week, starting at Kristen's beloved Magnolia Bakery in Greenwich Village, then Greek, Japanese, bagels, pizza, pizza again, and an ill-fated trip to some wineries that ended much later that night in Kristen and I drinking our way through almost 4 bottles of very tasty wine...ahem. And some raspberry cocktails.
Like always, the photos are on my Flickr page, but here's few to get you started.
We stopped by the University Orchards to get apples, but really, what's a university without its name spelled out in pumpkins?
The shores of Lake Cayuga.
Sooo, this is what the student union of an Ivy League school looks like. There's even ivy!
What can I say? America was great because it wasn't really what I expected. I realised that the reason I thought Meredith and Kristen 'weren't like other Americans' was actually not because they were different, but because my perception of America in general was wrong. How's that for deep eh? Aside from my bag deciding to take an extended stay in Amsterdam Schipol airport, and mooch at a FedEx sorting facility at Kennedy (I still can't quite get over the fact that FedEx do not deliver on Sunday OR Monday!) for four days, it was a good week. It was so nice to see Kristen, and Meredith and Julie drove down from Rochester for a night too; it was like being in Sweden again during last semester. And I got a photo of Rupert from the Hello Deli; you can't beat that!
I managed to eat my way through the week, starting at Kristen's beloved Magnolia Bakery in Greenwich Village, then Greek, Japanese, bagels, pizza, pizza again, and an ill-fated trip to some wineries that ended much later that night in Kristen and I drinking our way through almost 4 bottles of very tasty wine...ahem. And some raspberry cocktails.
Like always, the photos are on my Flickr page, but here's few to get you started.
We stopped by the University Orchards to get apples, but really, what's a university without its name spelled out in pumpkins?
The shores of Lake Cayuga.
Sooo, this is what the student union of an Ivy League school looks like. There's even ivy!
