Gothenburg, Sweden

24 (Sat) - 25 (Sun) Mar 2012

Lodging: STF Vandrarhem Stigbergsliden

---

Day 1

Göteborg C (Gothenburg Central Station)

3 is not quite a good number in terms of travelling together - you usually find a 4 bed dorm instead of 3, and we paid more for transport each person because (a duo ticket and an adult ticket)/3 is greater than 2 duo tickets.
Ok anyway, by some randomness, 3 of us spent that weekend in Gothenburg, the 2nd largest city in Sweden.

Good thing about taking train - no luggage weight and size limits, but we brought only backpacks because it's just a one night trip.

We reached Gothenburg train station at 12:20pm. It's cold because it's still Sweden and it's further north. But thank God since Gothenburg is still within Sweden, I could use the 3G to navigate. It's practically an unplanned trip and I was asked to navigate the route so before that I roughly listed down some attractions of Gothenburg which are reasonably reachable from the city center and then route using my iPhone by picking destinations.

Nordstan

Nordstan, one of the largest shopping centres in Scandinavia is merely a minute walk away from the station.

Well at least you won't see this kind of multi-storey shopping centre in Lund.

We did nothing particularly there but Min Khai bought a backpack for the upcoming mega break trip.

Gothenburg Cathedral / Gustavi Cathedral

We had our lunch down the streets at Kungsgatan 19 Restaurang & Pizzeria.

Kycklingrulle

Freehand Cycling

After 2 months of continuous cycling (especially for me who had classes everyday), I finally can cycle without hands!!

Sometimes whenever the road is spacious enough I'll always try to release my hands for a while then grab back the handlebars, eventually I thought I was actually gaining some feeling towards the correct posture and technique of freehand cycling.

And today I managed to do it when I was cycling alone to Yiting's house at Stralsundsvägen, Östra Torn for dinner. I thought my bicycle's gonna topple but it stayed straight for very long, as long as I wanted it to.
I was pretty surprised then, as I'm totally not an expert in cycling, although regularly I cycle to school.

However I have to get my bicycle to a certain speed to keep it gyroscopic, else it will topple or self-steered because of gravitational force, and of course I still can't steer without hand. Let's see if I can do it before my exchange ends. Hehe...

Not to show off, and I know a lot of people can do this, but I just wanna share my happiness for attaining one negligible skill in my life. やった！^^

I dropped my camera...

That evening I was cycling to Pizzeria Primo Ciao Ciao for dinner with Min Khai, Syjia, Yiting and Weiling. Instead of the bag I usually bring, I brought my black slinging bag and didn't zip the compartment where my camera was put into (like I usually do in NUS - never zipped my bag).

When I took my bag out from the my bike's basket, my camera just dropped with lens facing down (the bag was placed vertically in the basket).

And resulted in...

When I looked at the cracks, my heart cracked, but luckily it's the lens filter that's cracked, not the lens thankfully, and surprisingly images can still be taken normally with the cracked lens filter attached.

Then I checked around the camera body and found some scratches, which really made my night doomed, as I found the permanent imperfection as shown above. My GF3's gorgeous metallic red body.... sobz...

Thank God, for protecting my camera from malfunctioning and teaching me a lesson of not being careless anymore in such thing.

And then I remembered a quote from 貧窮貴公子（山田太郎ものがたり） that can be a consolation:
「世界上再完美的東西，都會有它毀壞的一天。」


PS: Get your camera a lens filter if you haven't had one.

Kiruna, Sweden

03 (Fri) - 06 (Mon) Feb 2011
Lodging: Hotell City

The utmost purpose of this trip is, to watch the northern lights or more commonly called "Aurora Borealis". Were we lucky enough?

---

Day 1

Huge Winnie the Pooh at
Copenhagen Airport Terminal 3

Kiruna is the northernmost city of Sweden in the province of Lapland and as we're staying in Lund, the funny thing happened - we took train from Lund, Sweden to Copenhagen, Denmark and fly to Kiruna, which is in Sweden.

There was a transit at Stockholm Arlanda Airport, Kiruna airport is a very tiny one, so not many places to fly from for it.

As we arrived to Kiruna airport, there's a digital indicator outside displaying the temperature (-21°C), and the cold temperature was of course expected - one needs some trainings to survive this temperature. Well, this is just the beginning, -44°C comes as you continue reading.

From the airport we took a catered bus at SEK50 to the tourist centre, not actually to get any tourist information but to travel to where we're gonna stay that night.

There's a Thai cuisine nearby the tourist centre at Vänortsgatan 8. It seems like Thai cuisine is somewhat popular in Europe. SEK65 for a meal and most of us ordered mixed dishes with rice.

Not only its relatively affordable, they have free self service salads, crackers, cookies, coffee and tea. Why didn't we just enter and have it the cheapskate way? LOL~~

Our lodging for the first night was Hotell City at SEK200 per night with extra charge of SEK50 for bed linen. We're lucky to have a room with exactly 10 beds, own toilet and entertainment room. That's the fun part of travelling in a slightly bigger group.

After unloading our luggages, we went out to have a freezing stroll.

Lund University: CNY Celebration

One saddening fact to be realized during exchange - barely a fortnight after arriving here for exchange it's the Chinese New Year Eve, on 22 Jan 2012 (Sun), which is going to be celebrated out of hometown.
Another not so saddening fact is, no holidays for Chinese New Year in Sweden, or in almost all European countries.

Also, as you can see, what a "White CNY".

And so, all the NUS exchange students in Lund are ethnically Chinese, 11 of 14 of the NUS exchange students plus 1 NTU exchange students, had a 'reunion' dinner at Gareth and Wei Ling's house in Stralsundsvägen, Östra Torn.

Preparation






Reunion Dinner

After the dinner, we moved to Yiting and Sy Jia's house for some forfeit and drinking games before the hour hand touching 12, to 守歲, maybe?

Skål!!! (Cheers!!!)

And at 12am in Lund, some SMU exchange students and Östra Torn residents dropped by to wish us a Happy Lunar New Year.

And so this is my first and hopefully last CNY celebrated overseas.

恭祝各界：
龍馬精神　生意興龍　龍飛鳳舞　龍騰虎躍

For more photos, please check out my photo album Lund University: CNY Celebration on Facebook.