Author: Gian Reinardy

Crazy to think that I have already been in Sweden a whole week. The time has really flown by and I am sure it will continue to move fast and before I know it I will be back in the states.

The week was filled with many ups and a few downs. One of the best ups is simply the town itself. This morning I went for a quick walk to the grocery store. As it was Sunday Kvantum (the main grocery store) was the only thing that was open, so the town was essentially empty. I used this to my advantage and really took everything in on my walk. The quaint coffee shop, Komin, the ice rink in the town square, the beautiful gold detailing on the church, the hundred year old cobble stone streets, it is enough to truly take ones breathe away.

Another one of my favorite parts of the week has been all of the walking. At first I was a bit hesitant because as Americans we are used to driving just about everywhere. I have found that all of the walking is great and is something I really would like to continue once I am home. Walking really clears your mind, not to mention all of the health and environmental benefits that come from it. You also feel a sense of accomplishment when you walk somewhere to get something. I do not quite know how to describe, it is something you must go out and try for yourself!

The relaxed and simple way of living I at first found hard. Waking up to complete quietness, leaving the Tv off during the day, never really knowing the exact time of day, were all things very foreign to me. However, as the days go on I have started to enjoy it more. Here I am not constantly bombarded with advertisements, load noises, and people glued to their cell phones. I began reading a lot more, going on long walks everyday, and overall just spending more time focusing on me.

While visiting a new country, perhaps one of the most exciting things that people look forward to is trying out all of the new local cuisine. My first day here I had a very traditional Swedish salad that included cucumbers, a type of potato salad, and some little shrimp all on a bed of greens. The shrimp were amazing I must say, they had so much more flavor then those in the US. Besides the salad I have also had some great sweets at Grandmas house – a frozen lemon custard, savory cinnamon rolls with raisins in them, and Semla which is like a bun filled with cream and sticky cinnamon. Tonight we are having a type of potato sliders that are filled with meat among other things, should be good!

While my first week in Sweden has been overall great there have been a few downsides. One of the biggest one being the jetlag I encountered. I am a girl that loves her sleep, so not being able to get my usual 10 hours was a challenge for me and functioning in a brand new country on merely a 2 hours of a sleep a day is not something I would recommend. However, as time went on it has gotten better. In the scheme of things it is a very minor set back and one that is easily overcome with a little time.

In general it is always just a little hard study abroad the first few weeks I am sure. Living with a family you have never met is quite the experience. Getting to know each other and falling into a completely different routine can be a challenge. Finding out when it is okay to shower, do laundry, watch Tv, where cups are, are just a few examples. My host family has been wonderful though and the transition has not been too hard for me which I am very grateful for.

Constantly being surrounded by another language that you do not know can be hard. 90% of the time I feel like I am in my own little world because I just have no idea what people are saying. Surprisingly though it is pretty easy to tune out, and although I have only been here a few days I am already started to pick up on a lot of key words and phrases. Sweden is also very nice because almost everyone speaks at least a little English, so I am still able to communicate with most on a basic level at least. This makes going out on my own into town a lot easier.

Overall, I am very happy with how the first week has gone and excited to see what the next weeks will bring! For now I am off to have some lunch and then possibly go to the sauna later.

-Hannah

Today I am feeling good. I slept a little better last night, and day 2 of school went great. I started off with gym in the morning. The gym is not in the school though like here in America, but, rather, about a 20 minute walk from where I live. The mornings are rather depressing, it is pitch black outside which I am used to from America, the quietness is what really gets to me. I am used to morning news in the background, Dakota going crazy and chatting it up with mom and dad. I really miss listening to the Today show. I tried to find it online, but I cannot watch it because it is prohibited when outside the USA. Oh well, I will get used to it I am sure.

The other classes that I had today were Leadership and English. In Leadership we talked about Female vs Male Leadership, it was really quite interesting. It also was nice because the teacher spoke near perfect English so I was able to understand what the heck was going on. After that I went to a quick lunch with my classmates. Today we went to a café that had all sorts of foods. Ordering is still a problem for me; however, today was a small victory because I was able to pick out the words “ost” and “skinka” which mean cheese and ham. I ate quickly and then went home to relax for a while because we had a whole 2 and a half hours between classes. I relaxed on the couch by the window, my new favorite hangout spot, while Bea worked on her blog. It is nice she only works part time so she is home a lot. Right now I am watching Americas Next Top Model in Enlgish! Ah highlight of my day right here! It has Swedish subtitles though which I read and try to pick up on words. I an tell I am getting a little better, it is just a slow process at first.

Alright, now after boring you all with my day I will get to the point of this post – the differences between Americans and Swedes. After being here only a few days I have already noticed a few key ones. For example, here people do not use dryers, they hang dry everything. There are entire rooms dedicated to hanging clothes to dry actually. Also, the washers are very different, they take over 2 hours to complete a wash! Here it is all about Eco-Friendliness. The lights are kept off almost at all times, and when they are on they are very dim. Most of the lights are on timers as well so if anyone forgot to turn them off, they will turn off automatically.

Recycling is also a crazy part of Sweden life. They recycle EVERYTHING! There is even a compost so I have to put all of my banana peels, apple cores, tea bags, etc into a bin that will later be turned into compost. There are also giant recycling bins around town, not just garbage bags.

Let’s see, oh yes the heating! (Mom you would love this one) Unlike in America where our heat comes from vents, in Sweden they heat the houses from the floors. So your feet are always toasty warm.

The cars here are also a lot different, some of the brands I do not even recognize. They are way smaller and compact and drive at super slow speeds as to be safe. The best part is that they ALWAYS stop for pedestrians.

We are suppose to get snow this weekend. While I am not a fan of snow, I do hope it snows this weekend because then we can do fun things like cross country ski (which is free here)! Although here in Varberg they do not use salt at all. The reasons being that it is damaging to the cement, waste of money, makes the snow ugly, and most importantly it hurts the dogs feet when they walk. I told Bea about how we would just put booties on Dakota and she was appalled. Here they care much more about the dogs, probably because they walk them so much.

I promise to do a blog post soon about the Biblioteka which means library and is the Swedish word of the day. They are spectacular here. Although I do wish they had a little bigger English section.

Ta Ta for now,

-Hannah

It is very old fashion looking with cobble stone streets and low buildings. The feeling is very quaint and the stores are filled with anything from restaurants to book stores to clothing. You can see Olivia my host sister/tour guide for the day photo bombing in the bottom right corner.

Today I learned a very important lesson – I should not have 4 cups of coffee a day; hence me writing a blog post at 2am.

Today started off with a great walk along the sea with Bea, Olivia, Mei-Mei, and of course Lucy (the dog). There is a concrete path that goes all along the ocean here and rain or shine it is always covered with Swedes going on their daily walks. Just outside my house is a giant fortress too, complete with a moat and everything! I will be sure to take some great pictures that first day it is not raining and post them on here.

After the walk we had a family breakfast and it was here I started to notice the first way that Sweden differs from America – they pour their yogurt from a cardboard box kind of like pouring milk. It still tastes good though! Once breakfast was finished Mats and Bea left to go workout and he kids and I played a fun board game. Then around 11 we took a break for some fika.

Fika is a very common thing in Sweden and it translates roughly to having coffee and a sweet basically. It was then I downed my second cup of coffee and had a delicious home made cinnamon roll. Although not like the ones in America that are covered in sugar, these are more savory and bun like.

Next came the futbol tournament. Now attempting to work a concession stand in a Language you do not know, selling completely foreign foods, and using a currency that I am not familiar with was basically sending me on a suicide mission. The line was full almost the whole time and people spoke so fast it seemed like absolute gibberish. At first I will admit it was not pretty, but after time and with Olivias help translating I managed to improve and get at least a few orders right, okay maybe just one but still I learned a lot. Swedish word of the day is Krov och Bröd which means hot dog.

At 4 it was off to grandmas house for some more fika. We had cake and more cinnamon roll things which were fabulous, but right now I am really regretting those 2 cups of coffee. Oh well, lesson learned. The whole family was very tired at this point so we headed home had some pizza and called it a night.

It is strange living in a brand new country with people you have only just meet I will admit that, moreover I am very happy I had the courage to do this. I understand that some days will be hard and adjusting to this new life will take some time, but I am up for the challenge and in the long run this will be a great adventure I will never forget.

Now I finally am feeling a little sleep and hopefully I can get a few hours of sleep. Tomorrow I am going to run some errands and have lunch at grandmas with the girls. Then on Wednesdays I have my first day of school.

Fingers crossed that both Varberg and Wisconsin have better weather tomorrow!

-Hannah

I have never been a fan of traveling – long waits, crappy airplane food, and worst of all ear popping. However, my travel to Varberg thankfully contained none of this! Security was a breeze, with no wait at all in O’Hare. Once through security I went and sat at my gate to wait for the plane. While sitting I was surrounded by tons of Ethnicities speaking languages I had never even heard of before. That was the first time I had that happen to me, being in America we are so used to speaking only English so not being able to understand what the people around me were saying was quite strange for me. Things got even weirder once on the plane and over the intercom the pilot spoke in Swedish, Norwegian , and even Danish. I find it very interesting that while each Scandinavian country has its own unique language that they are all able to understand each other.

While on the plane I sat next to a nice mom who was from Norway. I had a fun time practicing my very minimal Swedish on her. Once air born, we were treated with a very nice meal made that consisted of a salad, roll, warm roast beef with mash-potatoes, and finally a lemon cheesecake for dessert (Dad you would of loved it, especially the roast beef 🙂 ). After wolfing that down, I was exhausted. Unfortunately, the row over from me sat a plane riders worst nightmare, a sobbing baby.  Sleeping would have been impossible, if it were not for my awesome aunt and uncle who armed me with noise canceling headphones and an eye mask. Thanks again Uncle Ben and Aunt Colleen! I managed to get a few hour sleep, and was pleasantly awoken at 630 to some yogurt and granola for breakfast. The last hour was a breeze and before I knew it I was landing in Copenhagen.

I had a rather long lay over in Copenhagen, but I did not mind because in the airport were not only stores such as Burberry, Marc Jacobs, and Gucci, but also about 100 different food options that ranged from seafood, to salads, to Vietnamese rice noodles. It was also very fun going into all of the little food kiosk things and looking at the different types of candy they have there. Needless to say I did not have a hard time occupying myself.

Getting food was a little difficult because while this may surprise some, but I am not very fluent in Danish, so I had no clue what a lot of the food was. After taking a few laps around the different choices, I decided to play it safe and go with a little café that served sandwiches and salads. I got a type of tuna salad, which would have been very good, if not that the dressing tasted just like horseradish – not my favorite thing. Bright side was that it came with a roll that was very good. Before I knew it my time in Copenhagen was up and I boarded my last flight to Gothenburg.

We landed, I got my bags, and then I was off to meet my host family! I saw them immediately upon exiting and was greeted smiles, hugs, and some awesome signs made from my host sisters. Once a few pictures were snapped, we darted out through the rain to the car, which was surprise surprise a Volvo!

We had  nice ride to the house, I had fun looking out the window and seeing all the different types of stores they have here in Sweden. Although it was very dark so I cannot wait to see them in person today! Once we got to the house, I quick ran took a shower than came down for a lovely candle light dinner. For the first course we had a salad with a type of egg salad, cucumbers, and shrimp. After polishing that off, we enjoyed some tomato soup and garlic bread. Once done with dinner, everyone rushed in to the living room to watch the exciting end of the Sweden vs Finland Ice Hockey finals. They were still tied after the third quarter, I really wanted to see who won, but I was exhausted and decided that it was time for bed. The second my head hit the pillow I fell fast asleep. I was wiped out after all of the traveling and excitement.

This morning unfortunately I did not sleep in as I hoped I would; in fact, in true Hannah fashion I woke up at the crack of dawn (around 4 am). That was figuratively speaking of course because in Sweden the sun doesn’t rise till about 9 right now. Anyway I tried to go back to sleep in vain and once I realized it was impossible I got up and began cleaning up and organizing my room a bit. Then I proceeded to watch some Netflix, before deciding to do a blog post. It is almost 7 now so hopefully some of my host family will start to wake up soon!

Not quite sure what we are going to do today, I know form 1-4 we are going to volunteer at a soccer tournament then maybe go for a walk in a near by park if weather permitting.

Ill be sure to post more soon, sending my love to everyone back in the states!

-Hannah

Want to learn more about studying abroad in Sweden!?

Just when I thought the holidays season were finally coming to an end, I remembered that I had one last late Christmas party left to attend, The Patzer Family Christmas. I had just finished a long day at work and by the time I arrived at my Aunt an Uncles house I was ready to pig out, relax, and watch the Packers beat the Bears! Upon entering the house I was greeted with a giant Swedish Flag hanging behind a table that was covered in little Christmas dolls, straight from Sweden themselves. I walked to the kitchen to find a smorgasbord of herring, smoked salmon, Swedish crackers, and cheese. My amazing Aunt Colleen had been working on this dinner for weeks and was intent on getting every detail right. She researched blogs, emailed friends from Sweden, and went to multiple grocery stores to get truly authentic Swedish  food. The entire night turned out amazing. I had so much fun trying all of the food and getting to experience it all with my family before I leave.

After the fabulous dinner, I went to my friend Madi’s house to celebrate her birthday. All in all in was a great day. Tonight I am going out yet again and having a girls night with some of my good friends from school.

As my days in America are coming to an end I feel like I have been saying so many Good-byes. While yes I am sad and will miss all of my friends and family dearly, I am getting so exciting to go and start my new Swedish life. Only 5 days left!

I wish I could write more, but there is still so much to do!

-Hannah

Dinner table – Flag making credit goes to Uncle Dave and Nate

Cute little Swedish figures

Ham, Purple Cabbage, Potatoes, Green beans, Lingonberries, and Swedish Meatballs! My mouth is watering just looking at it.

Me holding a little doll that says “God Jul”

Back: Mom, Dad, Nate, Uncle Dave
Front: Belle, Me, Grandma Patzer, Emily, Aunt Colleen

…and of course the classic “funny picture” per Naties request.