Arrival in Uppsala

Saturday, January 15 (written four days later, pardon any anachronisms!) -

My arrival in Uppsala went as smoothly as I could have hoped!  I took the red-eye flight from Boston via Reykjavik, which in retrospect might not have been the best decision ever (as a future entry will tell).  But it did have its benefits.  Having an extra day in Boston was nice, although I'd already worn myself out after getting lost in Cambridge while wearing boots that weren't good for walking on Thursday, so I wasn't able to explore Boston as much as I might have otherwise.  As important, having two days instead of one before the first week of classes was critical.  Really, two days wasn't nearly enough.

Even before I arrived in Sweden, I realized my Icelandic was quite bad (i.e. nonexistant).  Icelandair was less dissimilar from American airlines than I expected, but it was an Icelandic first, English second airline, and there were many Icelandic passengers.  The Boston -> Reykjavik flight was at or near capacity, and the Reykjavik to Stockholm flight was 60-some percent full.  Both were on 757's, so good-sized, comfortable planes, with seatback entertainment.  As I expected, sleeping on the planes proved fruitless for me.  Unfortunately, as it would turn out.

Upon arriving at Stockholm's Arlanda airport, I found that my ability to read increased drastically without Icelandic all around, and with... not all that much Swedish.  Without too much difficulty, I was able to buy a train ticket, and on the platform I met five exchange students, all heading to Uppsala.  We were easy to identify by our ridiculous amounts of luggage.  The Swedish countryside was peaceful, with large amounts of snow, semi-sparse pine trees, and the occasional farm, often with cattle in a few fields.  Unfortunately I didn't think to take any pictures, but instead had good conversations with an American and a Dutch exchange student.  The ride was relatively short, and fortunately the instructions from my international buddy on navigating into the train station proper upon arrival proved entirely accurate.

Which brings me to the International Buddy Program.  It was absolutely essential to quickly settling into Uppsala.  There certainly were some poor international buddies, who never met their advisees or did much of anything else beyond exchange an e-mail in December.  But I was fortunate to have a very helpful buddy, who met me at the train station in Uppsala.  After meeting with her (as well as another of her advisees, a Vancouverite), we acquired declining-balance bus tickets (no unlimited month-long tickets until Monday, when classes start), and headed over to the housing office.  Conveniently, in the spring semester, the residents of the largest student residential area, Flogsta, can pick up their keys at the Uppsala housing office on Saturday - in the fall, they must be picked up during the week at Flogsta's office, although they can be picked up by the buddy for the exchange student.  I then moved into my residence, which is quite nice by Richmond standards.  I'll have to take pictures, but it has a very nice, large desk, a good bookshelf, shelving on the wall, a bed, a few more storage pieces, a couple chairs, a file cabinet/office storage piece under the desk, generous closet space, and a private bath.  I also share a kitchen and common area with 11 other residents of my corridor, of whom, usually, 10 are Swedish and 2 are exchange students.  The quality of the furniture is also much above what is found anywhere at Richmond, except Lakeview and Freeman.

Also neat about Flogsta was the inheritances.  When previous exchange students move out, they leave behind what's still in good condition, but won't fit in their luggage, in the closets.  So I inherited a couple rugs as well as  a large amount of bedding and a pillow, some of it in quite good condition and clean.  Not quite as good as what I could get at IKEA, but it turned out to be very useful since getting IKEA in on the first day simply wasn't happening after 30+ hours without sleep!

After moving in, we went down to the grocery store, ICA Vast (West).  It's not a Wall-Mart Supercenter, but it has a pretty good selection, is extremely close (walking distance), and has what are considered good prices in Sweden.  Stateside, it might be considered a bit pricey, but not as much grows this far north.

It got dark around 4:00, at which time I was at Hotel Uppsala where another of my buddy's advisees was moving in.  By this time it felt quite late at night thanks to not having slept forever.  This actually became a rather cool feeling.  We decided to go to fika despite our fatigue.  Fika is a Swedish event that involves coffee, some type of cakes or cookies, and socializing.  Sometimes it is at a coffeehouse, oftentimes at someone's house.  We went to the fika at Göteborgs Nation, one of the student nations here.  I have to admit I wasn't terribly impressed - I don't know if I simply don't like coffee, or if that particular coffee wasn't to my liking.  But I'll give it another try, at a different nation.  We left around 6:00, which felt like 2:30 in the morning.  Most of the rest of the evening was spent helping my Vancouverite friend move into her residence, also in Flogsta (a lot of students live in Flogsta), and then finally going to sleep around 9:00.  Overall it was a great first day, but very much a whirlwind of a day.  So far I've made two voyages east across the Atlantic, and those two days have the records for the longest amount of time I've been awake at once.  Maybe someday I'll figure out how to fly east across the Atlantic and get some sleep.