New Apartment!

I moved into my new apartment today! Everything is still a mess but I have a feeling it's going to be an amazing place. And it snowed for the first time today--that has to be some kind of good omen, right?

Tomorrow will be a day of unpacking, organizing, shopping for little apartment things (like the shower curtain we are in desperate need of). But for now I will get to sleep in my poorly made bed, surrounded by bags and boxes of things to unpack, exhausted from such a strenuous day.

The Holograms

Klara's brother is in a band that has been touring Europe for the last month and Thursday night they played at Lund's neighboring city, so Klara, me and a couple other friends all met up to go see them at this club called Debaser. Her brother had actually put us all on a list so we didn't have to pay the cover charge, which to me justified the cost of buying a drink at the bar. I paid 104 crowns for a drink! It was ridiculously expensive but super delicious. After they performed we hung out with the band and had a really good time.

One of their music videos.

The girls and the band.

Anton.

The Holograms.

Andreas.

Sushi Night

Last night a bunch of us got together to make sushi. Although I'm sure most Japanese people would have been ashamed of our preparation everything turned out pretty well. We were starving by the time everything was finally ready so dinner was filled with a content silence followed by a lively political discussion. It was a very "grad school" evening.

Fried salmon skin. Delicious.

A shot of the nearly three pounds of salmon.

Prep time.

I ended up having a super simplified version of what is called Chirashi (with salmon, sliced cucumber, soy sauce, and sushi rice) instead of a roll and was very satisfied. 

Darkness Falls

2:00pm

4:00pm

4:45pm

Bits of Stockholm

Beach park near Klara's house

Walking with Klara

Reflection pool at the cemetery

Greta Garbo's headstone

Mocha latte

Me on the ferry

Butterflies can't cry

"Normal" Stockholm Weekend

Today started off with Klara making Swedish pancakes for the both of us. Her mom, Monica, mentioned that she had made some lingonberry sauce. I asked "This morning?" and she replied "Oh, yeah, I was just out picking lingonberries and making jam." Her husband Anders continued, "Just a normal Swedish morning." They were both joking with me of course.


We then took the subway, which was actually above ground the whole time, to her cousin's birthday party. Her cousin is this pretty successful performance artist. Check out his website. The party was at his studio and was filled with all the crazy stuff he uses in his shows. We talked about art and the advantages and disadvantages of doing performance art versus photography. One of the coolest things I saw was this antique vampire hunting kit, but he had plenty of other crazy things.

It was pretty funny because Klara has been trying to help me have an authentic Swedish experience and here we were at a normal family gathering, but in one of the most unique and weirdest places I have ever been. I knew it was going to be a "different" kind of place when we walked up to the terrace and there was a wild boar pelt hanging over the railing, and from there things only got more strange and exotic. It was amazing.

Me and the polar bear head that guards the door, wearing a top hat and some kind of complicated spectacles.

We left the party and took the subway back to the city center. After a couple hours of subway riding and walking all over the city we made it back to Farsta and will continue the night recuperating by watching Swedish movies!