Uppsala!

Yesterday we arrived at Uppsala, and I can't tell you how nice it is to get a change in scenery. Mora has its stunning points, but Uppsala is an historic town with beautiful architecture and more than a few thousand people. I'll intersperse pictures from our tour of the city center today while I blog.
We came to this place, Sunnersta Herrgård, yesterday around noon after yet another hectic train ride. 14 travelers, each has at least three bags, and somehow we all have to get on, store our luggage, and deboard trains within a reasonable amount of time. We managed to cram us, two extra people, and our baggage into three vans, which in itself in an accomplishment. This place we're staying at is a converted mansion right on the river, which looks remarkably like a plantation. Although it can be kind of creepy at night, we here it's rather beautiful in the summer. The area around here, which I got to explore a little yesterday, is south of the city itself, but is very quaintly Swedish. With walking and biking paths everywhere around here, I think that in the little free time I will have over the next few days, I will be able to see a lot of the surronding area.

Today we got to go to an Innebandie game, and cheered on our professor here, Daniel. He and his wife Julia ment us in Mora, and now are leading our science course while we're here in Uppsala and when we visit Jonköping. He usually doesn't play goalie, but he drew the short stick today when their goalie didn't show. I took about 10 minutes of video, but here's a clip of Daniel saving a goal, and a little bit of the action afterward. Sorry if the camera angle is a little choppy!



Afterwards, we took the bus down to the city center and Daniel and Julia took us on a little tour of the city. Uppsala itself is fairly easily navagateable; there is the Cathedral that you can see from basically anywhere, and then the river that runs straight through the city. The buildings are very European, in stark contrast to the little Swedish cottages that speckled the countryside all across Darlana.

Probably the most stunning building in Uppsala is the Domkyrka, the cathedral. Construction ofthe cathedral began in the mid-13th century, but wasn't completed until 1435. The most stunning feature of the inside is probably the massive ceiling, which I've tried to capture on camera. It's very ornate and detailed, with various depections of Saints and biblical scenes throught the entire Cathedral. there are two large organs (and one 'smaller' organ as well) and plenty of pews. Around the edge of the cathedral there are many smaller rooms, some of which house little chapels, others house remains, and some contain huge monuments to various famous people. The largest, in the back of the Cathedral, houses Gustav Vasa's remains, as well as some of his closest cohorts, in a stone tomb. Portraits from critical moments in his life were painted around it; one of them was his speech to the people at Mora, which I thought was pretty sweet to see having just come from that very sight myself. There were many people interred at the church as well, including many saints, but most notably, Carl Linneaus, the famous botanist who is also the same Carl Linneaus that the arboretum at Gustavus is named after. The same bust that resides in the Arb of Linneaus has a second copy at the botanical gardens here in Uppsala, which we will go see next Monday. The whole area is quite historical, with science building right across the street from the Uppsala university, as well as rune stones they keep digging up from under the Cathedral. We also saw Uppala University's Old Main, which looks quite Venician in style and overlooks the center of the city.

I also have a couple other pictures I should explain here. Firstly, as in Umeå, bikes seem to be the preferred method of commuting here. Around the train station there were literally acres of bikes in parking lots and streets. People do bike, even if the streets are a mix of ice and slush this time of year. Also, I was hiking around the river at dusk yesterday and found my new gym set.

We have rather spotty internet here, and on top of that, we have to pay for it, so I won't be online as much as I would otherwise be. It's a slow connection too, so although I want to upload more videos and pictures, the time is not quite available to do so. I think we're going to have a really fun week, and I'm so excited to be here.