Sweden: The Land of Lazy Kings and Boring Castles

Me & Josefine back in Junior year of high school

This weekend I traveled to Stockholm, Sweden. It was very different from every other weekend I have traveled. My friend Josefine was an exchange student at Hinsdale South my Junior year. This time I was the one visiting her and she got to show me her home! It was a nice and easy going weekend. All the people I met this weekend were so interesting and brilliant to me. They all had their own story and outtake on life, it really opened my eyes to some new things. It was really nice that everyone knew how to speak English (they start learning at the age 6).

look how mature we are now :)

Friday I went to classes with Josefine. The education is different in Sweden. They go to a mandatory school for 9 years and then high school and university are optional. All of the schooling in Sweden is free, very different than the states! Josefine is studying dance, so I went to her jazz and ballet classes. These were very interesting and fun to watch. I miss dancing myself, the art is just so beautiful and it amazes me. I always loved dancing and you can see the passion in all of the dancer's. After classes we met up with Josefine's boyfriend and he took me around Stockholm (aka babysat me =) ) while Josefine was at work. The city was so pretty in its own way. It was full of shades of orange and it was very authentic. There weren't skyscrapers built in the middle of it or anything. Robin and I went to a pub and hung around until Josefine got off of work. Friday night we went to Cornelia's apartment for sort of a "girls night in". We had wine and made dessert and just hung out.

Stockholm

Saturday Josefine had to go to a conference for work (she works at Curves) so I had even more babysitters, Cornelia, Olivia, and Sara. We walked around Stockholm and we saw the castle...where the title of the blog came from. It was funny because since they lived there, they didn't know much about the touristy sites so they guessed what the statues were and they weren't very impressed by their "boring" colored castle. Needless to say, the girls showed me a lot of the city and I had a fun day. They are very sweet girls. We had dinner with Josefine's family. Her sisters Julia and Jessica were so adorable, I just loved them! Saturday night we went out to the club with Sophia. We got there early and we had our own little VIP room. It was a really fun night! Swedish boys are SO cute! =)

Cornelia and I with the Swedish guard

Sunday morning before I left, Josefine had to go to her conference so her mom took me to the Vasa museum. The Vasa was, in the words of Wikipedia, "Swedish warship that was built from 1626 to 1628. The ship floundered and sank after sailing less than anautical mile (ca 2 km) into her maiden voyage on 10 August 1628." In  the 1950's the ship was found and recovered and now there is a museum for it in Stockholm. It was a very interesting museum and it was mind blowing that they found so much of boat and were able to put it back together.

My weekend in Sweden was a lot of fun. It was unfortunate the time I had with Josefine was limited, however I loved every minute we were together! We talked about so many things, it was interesting how even though we live in two different cultures and countries, we can still relate to each other in many ways. All of Josefine's family and friends were wonderful and interesting people. I would love to go back and visit again some day!


Next stop, Ireland! Home in 23 days!


-Cheerio