On Friday studied I Swedish.

So I've been studying Swedish for the last three weeks. First off, they have three extra letters: å, ä, and ö. This leads to more vowel sounds. So far, I've been unable to really distinguish between all of the vowel sounds. (Each vowel can be said as a short of long vowel.)

There are a number of strange rules (at least to me) regarding word order and gender. First, there are n-gender and t-gender nouns. And there doesn't appear to be any rhyme or reason as to which nouns are which gender. There is one rule to remember gender: living things are n-gender, expect for a child, that's t-gender ('ett barn'.)

If you say 'an adventure' or 'a constellation,' you say it the same as you would in English: 'ett äventyr' and 'en stjärnbild.' But if you say 'the adventure' or 'the constellation' it changes to 'adventure the' ('äventyret') and 'constellation the' ('stjärnbilden'.) This creates great words like 'universitetet' ('the university'.)

Another interesting rule is about word order. The verb is always second (except sometimes it comes first in a question.) Where I would say 'On Friday I studied Swedish,' in Swedish you say 'On Friday studied I Swedish.' ('I fredag studerade jag svenska.') To me this always sounds a bit like a question.

And there is a short introduction to some of the weird rules of Swedish.

A Tour of My Accommodation - The Kitchen

And now the kitchen! (And entry.) My kitchen came with a microwave, stove top (or hob as some students would argue), a small bar fridge (with an even smaller freezer), two sinks, a drawer, and a few cupboards. I was very confused the first time I used the stove as you need to turn on the timer before the stove will turn on. This is helpful for not burning your food because once the timer turns off so does the stove.



The dish drying rack which is in the cupboard above the sink. It's a good idea, except that it means you have one less cupboard to store things.



And the most interesting item left by the last person. A dinosaur!!!! It's up in the corner by my door.



And that is the last of the tour of my accommodation. Overall, it is very nice and has a lot of space for one person.

A Tour of My Accommodation - The Bedroom

Now my bedroom... It is directly connected to the kitchen and the entrance. On the right of the first picture you can see a bit of the door that leads to the hallway. As well, there's my desk where I spend a lot of my time.



My dining table. The cupboard on the left is where I put all my clothing and a few other things.



My bed and window. The bed isn't too bad.



The view out my window. I have yet to figure out what the yellow building is. It has basketball hoops in the back and a convenient clock that I can see really well from my room.



There were several things left in my room from the last person. This included a New Testament in my desk drawer.



And it's in English and Swedish!



And that is my bedroom. It's actually quite spacious. And it was quite clean to begin with. Some people in other buildings (mainly Flogsta where most students live) commented that their rooms, especially the kitchens, were disgusting. Next up, the kitchen.

A Tour of My Accommodation - My Bathroom

I'm going to give you a tour of my accommodation in three parts. First off, the bathroom.

Instead of having the shower separated it is all just one big room. There is a curtain to separate the shower area but the floor still always get wet.



 



The most exciting part of the bathroom - a heated towel rack! This could come in handy come winter.



Just a quick one today. My bedroom and kitchen soon to come.

A Tour of Stockholm

I spent Sunday touring Stockholm. We started out by going to a museum where the Swedish warship Vasa is on display. The ship sank on its maiden voyage (1628) after sailing only 2 km. Vasa was salvaged and reconstructed 333 years after its sinking. According to our tour guide, recent investigations into why it sunk show that Vasa was so top-heavy that the ship only needed to tip 6 degrees off the vertical to capsize.

We did a brief bus tour around part of Stockholm and then a walking tour of the Old Town. Stockholm is broken up by a lake and parts of Stockholm, including the Old Town, are on the many islands in the lake.

In the Old Town many of the house corners have canons embedded in the ground so that wagons making the tight corners didn't take out the corner of the house.

In the new part of Stockholm there is a mall that was built under the road. In this square was an interesting piece of art of a girl climbing into a building window.

After touring the main part of Stockholm we went to a view point. You could see a lot of the lake and watched a big cruise ship turn around. Before there was dynamite and roads were blasted into the cliff people either walked up steep staircases or took an elevator. One of these elevators still stands however, they stopped using it several years ago.

In Sweden most old houses are red with white corners and trim. At one point it was even the law to paint your house with this special red paint made with copper. This was because the paint helped to preserve the wood and t thehe government was worried about the peasants cutting down all the trees. Before this paint was used the peasants had to rebuilt their houses every few years. The white paint was a later addition so that people could find their house in the dark.

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Let me know know you prefer the pictures in one gallery or spread throughout the post. Right now I'm in Oslo, Norway so soon you will also get to hear about that.

A Brief Tour of Uppsala

As part of my Swedish lessons there are some tours that we go on. The first was a tour of Uppsala. We went to the library, the cathedral, the main university building, and a museum (there are 14 museums which are all free for students of the university.)

The main university library. We went in (no pictures allowed) and saw some very old books including the first book found written in Swedish. Some books were given to the library as gifts, some bought, and many stolen by the Swedish army.



I apologize for the bad pictures as no flash was allowed. In the museum we saw the most impressive gift that was created purely for one person's amusement. It supposedly has 300 pieces inside the cabinet. Some of them were on display along with the cabinet.

The items ranged from small toys to a table and piano.



Other interesting items included an exhibit on Anders Celsius who taught astronomy at Uppsala University.



One of the prototype thermometers made by Anders Celsius.



Our last stop was the cathedral.



One privilege of all Uppsala University students is that if we die in Sweden they will chime all of the bells in the cathedral for us. Inside the cathedral there are two organs and many graves in the floor. You cannot walk around without stepping on someone.



Another post will show more of Uppsala. Tomorrow I'm off to tour Stockholm.

Hej då.

Meet Guldlock

Here is my bike. She's called Guldlock (as in Goldilocks).



Classes officially started on Wednesday. There are six (or sex in Swedish) sections with about 20 (tjugo) students in each. A post on learning Swedish will come in the next while.

Besides classes, I've been to IKEA (for the first time) and it sounds like it's the same here as it is in Canada. I've also had fika (tea or coffee with cake) with some exchange students.



I went on a tour of Uppsala with my class (tomorrow's post) earlier this week and yesterday my Swedish buddy (found through the school) invited me out dancing so I got to learn some lindy-hop.

Other than that, I've just been settling in and working on my Swedish (svenska.)

Hej då. (Bye.)