Welcome to Sweden!

Hej hej! We escaped from the rainy and grey Warsaw to Stockholm on last Saturday. It wasn’t an ESN organized trip, it was some of us own trip, only 9 Erasmus students went to the Swedish capital. From the plane we admired the beautiful Swedish landscape which is quite different from the average Hungarian-polish landscape. It is full of with forests and bigger or smaller lakes. After landing we went to city centre by bus, it lasted 1,5 hour, so we had enough time to fall in love with this amazing/awesome/cool (usually we used these three words together to express our admiration) country.

First, we checked into our hostel and then we went for a walk in the cold city. Though we were cold, we enjoyed the dark streets and the feeling that we were in Stockholm. The city is situated in some islands but it is easy to reach everything on foot in the centre. We saw a lot of homeless and drunk people during our night trip. However, I liked the great and colourful houses. For me Stockholm is really friendly. The red houses with white corners are traditional Swedish houses. Firstly only the rich people had red-coloured houses, but when this colour was available for everyone, a lot of people started to paint their buildings red. 

On Sunday we had a nice weather with sunshine and we felt ourselves lucky of this amazing weather. But after the sunset it was very cold. We started our day with a free walking tour. It was really interesting, I learned a lot of new things about Stockholm. Not only historical things, but about the modern city as well. For example, Christina was a Swedish queen but she had to leave her kingdom because she became a catholic believer. Her country was a protestant country, so she went to Rome where everybody was happy of her baptism. Today’s royal family also has famous stories. The crown princess felt in love with her husband in a gym. Unfortunately they had to wait a lot to get married, because the man wasn’t a prince, he was only a trainer. The young couple convinced the king, but the trainer had to go to a ‘prince school’. Actually the king didn’t marry to a princess, her wife was an immigrant, but he wasn’t permissive with his daughter. Finally the couple got married and everyone loves them in the kingdom. We also learned that H&M came from Sweden and Greta Garbo was born in this country too. We saw the place where one of the Swedish president was shot and we heard some interesting stories about the Nobel Prize. After our trip, some of us went to eat and try the traditional Swedish cuisine. I ate Pttypanna which means little meat and potato and onion pieces with an egg on the top. Swedish meatballs and foods from fish are also well-known Swedish foods.

After lunch we visited the Royal Castle. We saw some old rooms of the kings and queens. The most interesting fact ,that I’ve heard there, was about the guest visiting room. It was used for meeting with the guests, but the royal family still use this room for special events. For a wedding party for instance. A huge party was there, but there were so many people in the big room. Before the party the room was tested whether this first floor situated room would be strong enough to hold a lot of people. So the guardians were invited to the room and they jumped and tested the room. It must have been funny, shame that I wasn’t there. But I took part in a second walking tour and now we knew a lot of interesting facts about the old town. Then we drunk hot chocolate and we went back to our refugee camp. To be exact, to our hostel. This place was full of with men and they seemed like workers and immigrants than tourists.  Later I found out, Sweden has a lot of immigrants and they try to find a job. So, the kitchen and the corridors were always crowded and I had an audience when I was playing chess with an Albanian guy. I was really bad in this game, but at least I found out that he lives in Greece, works as a waiter and now he wants to help her mother to find a job. One morning we saw when a woman accused a man of stealing her phone. And then she ran after the man to the street in slippers. Our most annoying story in the hostel was when one of our roommate (an older man) snored at night. He was very-very loud. I’ve never heard such noise.

We went to the Skansen next day. We spent the whole day in this huge park where you can learn about Swedish culture, traditions and some traditional Scandinavian animals can be seen. For example bears, elks, reindeers etc. We enjoyed this day and we saw a film shooting as well. It was the shooting of Welcome to Sweden and that scene, which we saw, will belong to the second season of the series. I will try to find the scene and maybe we will be in the background.

After the Skansen some of us visited the Vasa Museum. The Vasa was a ship but it was sank during its first trip in 1628. Fortunately it didn’t break into pieces, so in 1960’s the ship were threw up from the sea and now visitors can see this huge ship. I really liked this museum because this ship is one of the oldest ships that can be seen all over the world. Besides admiring the Vasa we learned how the life was in a ship in the 17^th century and we saw many other interesting things from that era. In the evening we cooked in the kitchen but it wasn’t easy with a strange fireplace and first we burnt the spaghetti. Finally we had a huge amount of spaghetti, and it was delicious.

On the next day we went back to Warsaw. This trip to Stockholm was amazing with my nice and fantastic Erasmus friends. Thank you for the unforgettable memories!

Our team

Pyttipanna

Saint George in the old town

Vasa ship

In the Skansen