Anecdotes: 2017: ¡Dos! ¡Sverige!

I guess it's time for the meat of the part two of this three part three part thing!

For the first part of Sweden, I guess I am mostly studying. Sure I went out with people from time to time, for drinks and what not, but mostly I go out because of uni.

Figure 21.1: Why is it all Asians? :hmmm:

Luckily, during my stay, I was able to attend lots of the days, such as Easter's or Midsummers, and also, my birthday! For Easter's, the giantess even treated me to a movie she does not care about. It's a movie about cars fighting a submarine or something like that. There's also something about a baby and Jason Statham.

One of my more consistent going-out activities during my stay would be watching Juventus games with some Italians. I guess that year, we got till the finals, that's why we get to have this thing going on for so long.

Figure 21.2: Watching a game

Somewhere during my stay, the Giantess went to Estonia for a week long teacher's thing. I don't know what is it called and I'm too lazy to elaborate. It's not really a vacation as it's a university thing.
That week is also the same week as Valborg. I've been constantly hyped up about Valborg, a day in which you go to a park, and eat and drink. Her friends invited me out to the park, and boy oh boy, Swedes do love their sunshine and beer. We just sat around and talked. At times like this, I don't know, if I should have went with some of the other exchange students or not. For one, it's super nice that they invited me out and stuff, but I was the only one who does not speak Swedish. Feels kind of bad that I kind of had to make the entire group (there's like 6+ people) speak English. But for what it's worth, I had fun. After 5 months of living with someone, it feels super strange when they're suddenly not there anymore. I simply just walk around the apartment and do stuff.

Most of the activities are done after the semester is done (because there's more time duh). One of the activity I really liked was going to the nearby airplane museum (or war museum? It feels more appropriate). One of the coolest thing I find about the airplane museum is that they have these time rooms thing, where you enter these part of the museum and they redecorated the place to look like an average home of that time period. Especially after WWII, pretty much all of the West are in the Cold War, and obviously Sweden is stuck in it too. Sweden is situated pretty close to the Soviet Union, so there's always that threat. Not only that, Sweden was (and still I believe) not part of NATO, because of some reasons that I can't remember, so reading whatever English pamphlet they had was super interesting. Also, I suck at airplane simulation games.

A month after that, we did this journey thing where we went to Jonköping, Gothenburg, and the hometown of the Giantess, somewhere between Växjö and Ljungby. Apparently, Jonköping has some amazing ice cream but we didn't get any from the famous stall because the line was extremely long, so we just walk around the place and stuff. It was also really hard to find parking. We went to Gothenburg after that. I'm amazed I didn't take any pictures in the Universeum, I absolutely love that place with all the animals and stuff. The tropical part of it is so humid that it reminds me of home and showers. We also went to Liseberg in which I dumped so much money into this candy gambling thing and I won nothing, but she did! We also rode this spinny card ride thing that my parents will definitely not ride. The spinny ride thing was apparently her favourite ride in the park. I didn't bring contact lenses and I was afraid of my glasses dropping off, so we didn't go to the roller coaster ride unfortunately. BUT, I DID FIND AN ARCADE! I can't believe they have a DDR machine! My pockets were basically jingling with coins and stuff!

Figure 21.3: Night lights @ Liseberg

We also visited the Botanical Garden. I also like gardens. They're nice and soothing (but don't forget to bring a bottle of water!).

After that, we then head down south to her hometown. Over there, we had one of the more peaceful trips. It was also very sunny, so most of the chocolate we (or more accurately, she) got from the candy gambling thing in was in a semi-melted kind of state. It was peaceful, I met some of her extended family and helped fixed a chair. We also went geocaching but had to turn back because of fear of rain. Also, I am afraid of snakes. We went to this lake place where lots of locals were swimming and I almost immediately noped out when I saw a water snake. Unfortunately, I saw the water snake when I was on a platform that is a distance away from land, so I got kinda panicky. Somewhere in the middle, we went to this museum thing and now this song is stuck in my head forever.

We went back to Linköping and spent most of our time there. We had some day trips, and as my trips is getting close to the end, I sold my bike, and we went to Stockholm for a few days and bid each other farewell. Kind of sad, there may or may not be tears, and then I flew and she had to rush back for work. And thus, my Swedish journey ends. There may be some stuff happening in between but I don't wanna bore ya.

Picture time!