My how time flies

I apologize if this sounds a little 'journal-y.' I wrote most of this in different locations yesterday, so I didn't realize how long it got. I promise, I won't mind if you just look at the pictures on this one. Here's a funny one, just to give perspective on how large and small cars can get here in Sweden:

How should one capture a week on a blog? There’s so much to say, so many details, so many people, places, new experiences, the occasional struggle… too overwhelming to try to enumerate in its entirety. Then again, that seems to be the theme of this trip, so I will do the best I can.

Right now, in this little café in Jönköping that overlooks a lake, I’m already asking myself where these last two weeks in Stockholm have gone. Just last Satuday I was looking around the Modern Art Museum, trying to find as many H&M’s as I could find, and taking in as many churches and buildings as I could. Sunday is pretty easy to remember- outside of getting of the boat to find lunch, I worked a lot on a presentation about Sweden’s military from the Cold War to the present. You’ll see that our ‘findings’ are quite bold; when I had this picture up at a fast food restaurant that evening, I apparently was turning heads of those in line and around me.

Monday I presented those findings to our group. They too found it pretty interesting, or at least that picture was. The afternoon was spent in Santa Clara Church in downtown Stockholm, where we met with Kolleg, the vicar there. His story was quite unique: he started as a pastor in a small town when he was 23, brought a lot of vibrancy to his congregation through different youth and other activities, and eventually worked his way to becoming a missionary in Tanzania. After preaching to packed churches and studying and writing about how to grow congregations, he came back and began preaching at Santa Clara. On his first Sunday in 1989, in this massive church, he turned to the congregation only to see three old women looking back at him, none younger than 80. Since then, he has been commended by the King for the social work he has done in the area, known for its high crime rate and prostitution. Today, he says that the church is filled on Sundays, and it thanks coffee for bringing everyone in from the cold (well, they are Swedes, what would you expect when you offer free coffee?). It’s odd to me that for a country that up until recently had a state church that worked so closely with the government, almost no one goes to church with any sort of regularity. Not just in Stockholm either, but even in traditionally religious regions of Sweden church attendance is at best 15% of the baptized population (which is almost everybody).

Tuesday we got to see two of the biggest attractions in Stockholm: Dramaten, and the Vasa Museum. In the morning we got a tour of Dramaten, the royal dramatic theater here in Sweden, founded by Gustav III in the late 1700s. The original purpose of the theater was to educate Swedes about the Swedish language through theater, and so everything that’s performed on that stage is translated into Swedish. Last week at the Swedish Academy, also founded by Gustav III, we learned that the opera house and the academy itself were supposed to take foreign work and perform it in Swedish, to educate and culture the people as well. Dramaten itself is huge; one main stage, a dance studio, a black box, highly ornamented all over in the ‘Gustavian’ or Empire style, and they even had a marble room with busts of important Swedish directors and actors and a giant portrait of (guess who?) Gustav III. Backstage was really interesting too; we got to see the costume shop, one of their two huge costume storage areas, walk the skyway (a little less wide and a lot farther up than in Minneapolis), and see what goes on under the stage as well. Of there over 10,000 costumes which they keep, there were a few really cool ones that we got to see. I think my favorite was the baby troll costume from Peter Gynt that Ingmar Bergman directed in the 1990s, but there was also a cool Queen Elizabeth dress that weighed a lot and a jacket that would appear soaking wet on stage but just looked covered in white and black paint up close. We also learned a little about wig making at Dramaten, which is done using real human hair and, at least in the front, stitching in one hair at a time.

We also got to see the Vasa Museum (the ship, not the guy like in Mora) on Tuesday. The ship is huge. Hugely huge. If you know anything about the history of the ship itself, you know that its size is probably the cause of its downfall: Gustavus II Adolph (the Gustavus we’re most familiar with) ordered this ship to have a second row of cannons and to enhance the officer’s quarters, and that made the ship super unstable. As the story goes, it sailed for about a kilometer before a gust of wind came and it sank right in the deepest part of Stockholm harbor. Although they didn’t salvage the ship, divers using these giant bell-shaped things as an underwater air reservoir were able to salvage over 50 of the bronze cannons, which is astounding if you consider they had basically no light and were using mid-17^th century diving equipment. After it was pulled up and preserved (1950s-70s) and after using various methods to make sure the wood doesn’t rot or fall apart, it looks like a giant work of art today. There are so many things to look at on the ship itself, so much symbolism (a typical Polish nobleman stuck behind bars, for instance), and so much detail that it’s hard to take it all in. On top of this, it was once painted, so it’s fun to see what artist’s conceptions look like as well. Tons of exhibits, thousands of artifacts, some re-created faces from skeletons they found when they brought up the ship, and a lot more- definitely worth going to the next time you’re in Stockholm.

Wednesday was another busy day. We met with the Swedish Institute in the morning, and I was really surprised by how well received we were. SI is responsible for a lot of things, but is primarily concerned with the teaching of Swedish as a language abroad. It had focused on different regions of the worth throughout time, like Eastern Europe after the Cold War, and Asian nations today, but was originally founded in 1945 because “Sweden had an image problem.” Sweden was worried that its ‘neutrality’ during WWII may be misconstrued due to the transport of Nazi troops from Norway to Denmark through Sweden and the other troops movements the Nazis did to get a better hold on Norway. The people at the institute were very interested in our trip, and have asked us to write it up for their publication, which is a great honor considering they look at programs all around the world for that. They also were very generous, and outside of coffee, tea, and coffee cake, they gave us SI bags and some really cool books to choose from. Since Roland has used some of them in his classes before, many of us just picked them up then and there. I had a much more interesting time than I thought we would.

After that, we met with Amy Leval, a Gustavus grad, working as a researcher at the Karolinska Institute. She gave us a presentation on healthcare and the HPV vaccine, focusing a lot on Sweden and how it has been received here. The HPV vaccine has become standard now in the list of vaccinations students receive at school, and some women are worried about it and its effects. We did a comparative study question that asked why instances of Type II diabetes might be less prevalent in Sweden than it is in the US, to which we were very active in accusing all the bad things the typical American does, and how great Sweden is at encouraging good lifestyles. Call us biased, but we discussed huge differences between the two cultures: universal health care, exercise habits, diets and the lack of super processed foods, natural cane sugars… the list can go on for a while. It made us feel like all the walking we’ve been doing for the last few months has been worth it.

The afternoon featured a visit to two Gustavus grads at Vattenfall, the largest energy company in Sweden, and now the 5^th largest energy company in Europe. Annika Ramsköld and Lena Hovland, both Gustauvs grads and also memebers of the upper administration in Vattenfall, led us to the top of the building, which had a great view of the big Library in Stockholm and its park, and we fikaed and went over a lot fo Vattenfalls's environmental vision for the future. It hopes to be carbon neutral by 2050, which is a huge deal for a power company that still operates plenty of coal plants. They also powerate hydro and nuclear power plants, and have small scale offshore windfarms, biomass plants, and are experimenting with wave power too. Since they're a state company, the dividens go back to the people of Sweden. Green and making money for the country? If only Excel could do the same.

Thursday is by far the easiest to describe. Studying. It was a beautiful day, but many of us spent it in the cabin, studing to Lennart's final test, which was from 4:30-7:00pm. Many of us thought it was really hard, but the best part about tests is that once they're done, they're done. And now it's done. No more worries!

Friday, yesterday for me now, was the day of traveling- or at least was supposed to be. I left af Chapman for Jönköping by bus early in the morning, and met with the people from the next youth hostel we'll be staying with after Easter. Johan, our contact person there, was really gracious to us and extended an offer to store our extra baggage over break. I think I'm the only one that took him up on it, but not only is my luggage safe there, it's in the room I'll be staying in. The sky was beautiful, the view is gorgeous, but I'm saving those pictures for another post.

After a bus ride to Göteborg, and almost getting on a bus to the wrong airport, I finally got the Göteborg City Airport. I also got there two hours earlier than the suggested two hours early, so I had a lot of free time to brood over the small details that weren't going quite to plan. Then, after I finally got my passport stamped and went through security and stood in line for an hour, it was announced that our flight was canceled due to weather. At this point, I had been awake for about 20 hours, and was at my wits end. After re-booking a flight today (I get a layover in Frankfurt) I made my way back to the bus station, and then to the Robinson hotel. Although it's more than I would have paid for my night in London by four-fold, it was nice to sleep in my own room and have breakfast taken care of. Plus, I found another copy of a really cheap poster my mom got me when I went to college before my freshman year framed and hanging in the hallway. Although I'm down to my last kronor, I hope I won't be delayed again on my journey to London. As Buddha says, it's not the destination, but the journey that's importaint. Wish me luck! Hopefully I will be updating my blog more than weekly so this doesn't happen again. Thanks for reading-