After a week packed with orientation and furniture shopping, we had a nice and quiet sunday. A lot of shops are open on sunday, to our surprise. And the opening hours are not bad either. Most supermarkets are open all days from 9am to 9pm (some even until 10pm). After all the sundaydebates in the Netherlands, it is nice to see some sensible shopping hours for the working mass. We didn't count on it, so we had nothing on our schedule. We walked around the Frescati Campus, well at least a part of it, it is quite large and used the opening hours to buy some ice cream.

Today is Tessas first day "back" at work and I had a relaxed day sorting stuff and planning the next few days. Tessa worked behind the desk and I lounged in the living room. The nice weather and casual atmosphere is causing many smiles, fun and games. For lunch we walked in the forest next to the apartment grounds. It is part of a larger park and has very nice hiking paths. It even has a running track with lanterns so you can run in the dark. Mind you, this track runs straight through the woods.

We met our first neighbour when we left, Anna, who warned us the park was very beautiful. She was right. As with all conversations in the last week, it started in Swedish. Our "Hej" is convincing enough and people always continue in very fast Swedish :P We've been living here for a week now, it really flew by :-)

Yesterday I registered for my masters programme and today was an orientation day for international students. There were some talks by the default set of people explaining how stuff works at Stockholm University. Nothing really spectacular, but it helps with the orientation. The SU has one large Student Union and several interest groups. My department looks like an exception to the rule with its own union. It's a bit confusing and I will ask the people in Kista (pronunciation: tjiiistaaah) about it tuesday when we have our departments information day.

I'm beginning to understand the privilege of living together with my girlfriend here when I speak to other international students. In the talks today was a slide about adjusting to different cultures and it mentioned an U-curve from expectation down to frustration and solitude to accepting and longing back. A fellow student from Belgium confirmed it, this was his fifth week and altough he had a language course, he had experienced the low point as well, because everybody he knows well are still in Belgium. Another girl was here for four days and said she had problems fitting in, and this was a pretty girl who can talk for hours I suspect. It just gets to you. When I come home (yes, it's home already), I can cuddle up to Tessa. I felt almost guilty "confessing" I lived in a two-person apartment with my girlfriend.

Anyway, the university campus is kinda cool. I'm used to a park-like campus like the one in Enschede, but the Frescati campus (the main SU campus) is at least equally beautiful and has some nice quirks. There are a couple of villas on the campus belonging to (as far as I can see it now) faculty groups, which are basically student associations. The name villa is not just a name, it looks like a villa, a wooden villa, each with its own colour. They have pubnights, events, etc. I like the fact that they are faculty groups.

As for my own little villa, we're still at the beginning. We have a couch (without cover :o), a bed, a desk and something to stand up to reach the ceiling. That's it really. The apartment already has enormous amounts of cupboard space. The curtains are a challenge, but we will sort it out in the next week. We'll probably buy some more furniture and inventory. Everyday we notice some other thing we took for granted. For example: we bought canned sifted tomatos for making dinner, but forgot we don't have a can opener. And the list goes on ;-)

I mentioned earlier to people that I would start on the 24th, but that turns out to be false. My first course is actually a week later, because the two courses I follow start in the second week of the semester. My first exams are at the end of october. So I have some time left to actually see the city I live in and not just the underground tunnels :P

Until next time! I'll try to make some pictures.

I moved to Solna today. The journey was enjoyable, although the nerves got to me just before the plane took off. They went away quite swiftly and despite the fact the Dutch copilot told us it was raining, the sun shone when we touched down in Västerås. Part one of the trip was complete. We traveled to the station by taxi and bought tickets.

Because the plane landed fifteen minutes before schedule, we managed to get the 8:58 train to Stockholm. The SJ has nice trains with light wooden panels and we practised pronunciation in the train at every station, checking with the automated speaker of the train. 50 minutes later, we arrived at Stockholm Central.

We'll probably be using the public transit a lot this week, so at T-centralen we bought a week ticket and went to Bergshamra. After we collected our keys, we checked out the apartment. Because of the internet we already knew the surrounding, we'd already seen the front, but never the interior. In short: it is nice, the apartment was clean and the rooms were bigger than we expected. But, first things first: get a mattress, because we have no furniture and we'd like to sleep somewhere.

So, where do you go? The IKEA of course O:). Kungens Kurva is the largest IKEA in the world and they do not kid about the size. We were there for about three hours and we have seen about... nothing. Well we've glanced allmost everywhere, not to stroll around, but to get to the parts we needed :P

The Swedish girl at the counter was very kind and explained how to collect the mattress we wanted and that it was indeed on a roll, so we could move it. She laughed out loud when she heared we intended to move it by Tunnelbana and we clearly made her day with our adventure. The mattress weighs in in about 26kgs and was moved by myself. I will sleep sound tonight, even without curtains.

We are now relaxing on our "bed" having enjoyed a hot shower and some sandwiches with juice. Tomorrow a new day with another trip to the IKEA and other shops to stock our cute little appartment.