Ok, so the first two weeks of school have passed by, and now the assignment due dates are coming up, so I figured I better take some pictures of my 'hood while I can. Basically, I just walked around town in a circle, so all of the things in these pictures are about five minutes away from my house or less if I walked straight to them.
So the pictures and the captions will speak for themselves. (Although the light was kind of crap today...or at least that is what I will blame my lack of picture taking talent on this time around.) The rest of the written entry shall consist of things that I have noticed about Lund/Sweden/Lund University/my ingrained "American-ness clashing with the way things are done over here - that I find either quaint, annoying, or super cool by turns.
*the heat of ovens is in celsius. 200 degrees celsius is REALLY hot, like 400 or 450 F. Didn't know that.
*I also now know that there are 100 ml in 1 dl. Although I still have no idea what 1 dl looks like in real life.
*You're not supposed to make eye contact with people you pass by on the street. If you do happen to make eye contact, for god's sakes DON'T smile at them whatever you do. I recently read somewhere that in Sweden, if a passerby smiles at you, Swedes generally tend to think the smiler is either: a)drunk b) crazy or c) an American.
*Lund University does not have 1 big library, or even several big libraries...it has no less than 30 scattered all over town, and the book you're searching for could be anywhere.
*At my library, the school of economics and management library, you can use their computers to search for stuff, but there are no printers. If you want to print something, one must walk over to another building, and go down to the basement computer room to print.
*But first you have to go to a print shop that is only open from 10 to 2 pm Mondays thru Thursdays and fill up your print quota.
*But before you can fill up your print quota, you have to go to the information desk and fill out a green form and then bring it to the print shop.
*I tried to order my school books online. Amazon does not deliver to Sweden. Swedish online bookshops are in Swedish. There are very very few online Swedish translation websites and they all suck. Therefore, putting in a book order through a Swedish site is considerably tougher than doing so in English.
*Practically all stores in Sweden close at 2 or 3 on Saturdays, and even less are open at all on Sundays. (which is why there's hardly any people on the streets in the picutres I took...it was like 5pm on a Saturday)
*NEVER buy beer or wine at a grocery store. The alcohol percentages are like 3% for beer and 7% for wine.
*Instead, you must go to Systembolaget, the state run liquor store (and the only liquor store allowed to operate in Sweden). But, Systembolaget does not really carry any good beer at all. Budweiser is 25 kronas per bottle, but I morally will not allow myself to drink that. Sierra Nevada (which is the best flavor they carry imo) is like 35-45 per bottle and I cannot morally allow myself to pay that. They do have Boddington's, but cripes, that's like an arm and a leg, so that's out too. But...they do carry Bombay Saphire (yay!) and I will not disclose how much I paid for the bottle, but I will mention that I am on a rationing schedule.
*Systembolaget closes early on Fridays, way earlier on Saturdays, and is not open at all on Sundays.
*All their rolling papers are the super small kind, and when you ask for 1.25 or 1.5, they have no idea what you're talking about.
*All classes at the University start at a quarter past, but the computer system that the school is on cannot understand that, and so according to the online schedule, all classes start on the hour. Therefore, all new students become extremely concerned about why they are the only ones in the classroom the first day of school, and cluster around in small groups discussing this phenomenon for about fifteen minutes or so until the rest of the group, including the teacher, shows up.
*The explanation for this fifteen minute delay is because back in the day (like the 16, 17, and 1800's) when portable time keeping devices like pocket watches, cell phones and so on were either really expensive or not yet invented, the Cathedral bells were what everyone in town used as a watch. There was consensus that when the bells rang, everyone had fifteen minutes to get to class. So, today Lund Uni. keeps that tradtion - inspite of the fact that modern computer systems cannot deal with scheduling things at a quarter past, and new students are often confused - in fact, even if the teacher comes in before 15 after, they will refuse to start class until exactly a quarter past because otherwise "it wouldn't be fair to the students".
*However, classes at Lund are not at all guaranteed to start at the same day, time, or place that they did they week before. In fact, as all new students come to find out, the times and location of classes are very likely to change through out the term, and it is up to the student to remain vigilant in discovering the updated information. For instance, I (along with half my class) had no idea that the second lecture had been changed from 3pm to 8am, because we didn't check the schedule information before hand. Silly us, we wrote it down instead and expected it to stay the same. Silly, silly us. Now I know - at Lund, not only are you challenged in class, you are challenged to find the damn class. That's ok though, because really, it makes things more interesting doesn't it?
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