In other news, one of the Swedish banks will actually give me money! They are civilized over here!

edit: I’ve made some changes to the site. Most noteably, I’ve added Amir’s site to the links sidebar on the right. Oh, yeah, I added a links sidebar on the right. Anyways, Amir’s site has a bunch of pictures from Lund that I’m too broke to take right now. Give ‘er a read.

Greeting: Hej! Hur är laget?

Response: Under kontroll.

Best.  Language.  Ever.

I spent a wonderful evening drinking coffee among french, polish, and spanish company. The brother of my french neighbour has spent the last two years touring Mexico and Germany. He now speaks 4 languages fluently, and he can vaguely communicate in at least one more. I think I’m going to like it here.

The part of this morning that I was awake for was spent in my first Swedish language class. Sweden and English share a lot of roots. For example, ombudsman and smorgasbord are both more or less swedish words. I won’t be fluent by the end of the orientation process, but I’m already able to communicate more than I could with grunting and pointing angrily.

As could be expected, everyone I’ve met so far is extremely friendly and is trying to figure out how to have the best time possible during their time abroad. The camera still isn’t looking too good, but once I get something up and running the photos will be spammed.

More tomorrow once I’m more settled in.

A little something for you all to think about before my next post: I’m living in an abandoned mental asylum. Lund screens their exchange students well.

Danish people just generally seem to have things the right way around. Drivers are reasonably sane (if you don’t count parking on the sidewalk), traffic lights are obeyed nearly universally (even by pedestrians), and they have entire streets that are pedestrian only-zones. Bikes are way more popular over here than back home. I came to this conclusion after seeing a pregnant woman pass a car on her bicycle. There’s even a great deal set up for tourists.  You can get a reasonably crappy bike at a scattering of bike stands around the city for a deposit of 20kr, which is about $3 or $4 CAD.  When you’ve exhausted your cycling hunger, you can return the bike to a bike stand to get 20kr of your deposit back. For those of you who haven’t been following, that results in a free crappy bike. Anywhere.  Anytime.

I think I’m in heaven.

edit: My camera didn’t exactly survive the trip over. What do you recommend as a reasonably good, reasonably cheap digital camera?

 My flight arrived at around 8am local time, which is 6 hours ahead of you EST folk.  In the span of about 4 hours, I went from feeling excited to out of place to adventurous to panicked to stranded to saved to cheated to explorative to gratified to exhausted to passed out.

 Here’s a friendly tip, folks: if you ever want to watch a Danish storekeep’s eyes glaze over, just ask them if they take “interac”.  I felt as if I had switched over to some kind of arcane tongue for a few minutes without noticing.  I suppose I’ll need to set up a Swedish bank account sooner than I thought.

 I’m going to be wandering around Copenhagen for another day before heading off to Lund.  Does anyone have any suggestions for good Danish sightseeing opportunities on the cheap?

Today: washington.  tomorrow: denmark, 6 hours ahead.  16th: sweden.

I don’t have a single cent of the local currency, I don’t know anything about the country I’ll be spending two days in less than 24 hours from now, I’ve exercised dual citizenship, I’ve war-driven, and I’ve ridden on what’s best described as a cross between a hummer, a giant bug from starship troopers, a bus, and a lobby. So far this trip is looking pretty cool.