Bike trip to Roxen Lake

Last sunday (yep, it's been almost a week… I know -_- ), a bunch of exchange students and I took our bicycles to visit the city Berg, and to see the Roxen lake. We were something like 30 people, despite the quite bad weather. Some will say "swedish weather"… I don't know :)

Berg is a small village at 15km in north of Linköping. Its beautiful church from the XIth century has been a appreciate stop on our way to the lake. We have been told about its history by a retired man from the village, who really likes this place. The visit was then very interesting. This church is surrounded by a typical swedish cemetery: full of greeness, with a lot of trees and bushes… definitely different from the french cemeteries!

Berg cemetery… How quiet!

 After the visit of the church (and the picnic), we went to the "touristic" part of Berg: it's marina. The marina is located on the Gota Canal, a few dozen meters above the level of the Roxen lake. The ships can reach the lake by a serie of six or seven locks. We had the chance to see the departure of a sailing fish to the Roxen lake… it took it some time to move from the marina to the lake!

Sailing ship on its way to Roxen lake

Lock overflow

Then we took a bath in the lake (well, ok, only two of us did it :), the water was kind of warm actually! Finally we biked back to Linköping, and of course we stopped at Ikea for a typical swedish fika. Där äter ni en kanelbulle med ett kaffe!  :')

Price per kilo / Prix au kilo

Today I went to the supermarket, and I noticed something which seems totally swedish: the price of every single item is given either for one item and for… 1kg of this item. And it's true for absolutely anything, including the toilet paper! And I've to say it's really useful to compare the different products!

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Aujourd'hui je suis allé au supermarché, et j'ai remarqué un détail typiquement suédois : le prix de chaque article est donné à la pièce et… au kilo ! Et c'est vrai pour absolument tous les articles, comme le papier toilettes ! Je dois avouer que c'est quand même hyper pratique pour comparer les différents produits !

Fika!

Today, first swedish lesson, and also first typically swedish concept: the Fika. It's the local name for a coffee break, in the swedish way. It is THE moment when the Swedes like to have a coffee, socialize, take a breathe, smoke a cigarette…

And they really do like it! They have a 30' Fika every 1hr to 1hr and a half. It's also usual in the corridors to have a Fika with all the corridormates on sunday afternoon…

And last but not least… 'Fica' means something somehow different for our italian friends; I let you google it :')

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Aujourd'hui, première leçon de suédois, et premier concept typiquement suédois : le Fika. C'est la pause café à la mode suédoise, LE moment où les Suédois aiment prendre un café, faire connaissance, fumer une clope…


Et ils aiment vraiment ça ! Un Fika d'une demi heure toute les soixante à quatre-vingt-dix minutes. Et il est également de coutume de se faire un Fika avec ses corridormates le dimanche aprem…


Ah oui… 'Fica' a une toute autre signification de l'autre côté des Alpes ; Je vous laisse le soin de le googler :')

Arrival in Sweden / Arrivée en Suède

First real message on this blog; First I warn you, I don't know yet if it will be updated very soon (and if i'll have the courage to write everything in french AND english… but i'll try :-)

It's now four days I arrived here in Linköping, at 200km from Stockholm (or 20 Swedish miles, if you prefer ;-)
I'll stay there between 6 months and one year, depending if I find an internship here.

From St Etienne (Fr) to Linköping (Se)

Travelling through half of Europe with few money is not that easy. I had to take 4 trains and 2 planes, in a 26 hrs journey with a night at Düsseldorf airport, to get there.

As usual, don't forget to buy your plane tickets as soon as possible, for cheaper prices. I bought it one month ago, and the prices were already quite high… Also take in account the extraprice for luggages on lowcost companies. In my case, it was cheaper to fly with Lufthansa rather than Ryannair!

To avoid some hostel expenses, the SleepingInAirports website is full of tips to sleep on every airport of the world =)

One night at Düsseldorf airport

The corridor

A corridor is the swedish version of the student room. Basically, 8 students share a corridor with 8 rooms, a living room with sofas, TV, games, and a well equiped kitchen: 2 oven, 3 big fridges, 2 big freezers… very luxurious!

For the moment, the corridors are pretty empty, since people are globally still on holidays. But it seems my corridor has a very nice ambiance! This year is gonna be awesome :-D

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Premier vrai message sur ce blog ; Déjà je tiens à prévenir, je ne sais pas si je vais le mettre à jour souvent… mais je vais au moins essayer :-)


Ca fait maintenant quatre jours que je suis arrivé ici à Linköping, à 200km de Stockholm. Je vais y passer de 6 mois à un an, suivant si je trouve un stage ici.

De St Etienne à Linköping

Traverser la moitié de l'Europe sans se ruiner n'est pas une chose des plus aisées. Il m'aura fallu en tout et pour tout 4 trains et 2 avions, et 26h de voyage (dont une nuit à l'aéroport de Düsseldorf) pour arriver à destination.


Comme d'hab, ne pas oublier de prendre ses billets d'avion le plus tôt possible pour payer moins cher. Là déjà en les prenant un mois avant, c'était limite… Et ne pas oublier de tenir compte du surcout supplémentaire des bagages en soute sur les compagnies low cost. Dans mon cas, il était plus avantageux de voler sur Lufthansa que sur Ryannair, par exemple !


Et si l'on veut éviter de se payer un hôtel, le site SleepingInAirports est plein de conseils pour dormir confortablement dans les aéroports du monde entier =)

Le corridor

Le corridor, c'est la version suédoise des chambres universitaires. En gros, 8 étudiants se partagent un bout de couloir avec 8 chambres, un coin salon avec sofas, télé, fléchettes, et une cuisine équipée bien équipée : 2 fours, 8 plaques de cuisson, 3 grands frigos, 2 grands congels… grand luxe !


Pour le moment les corridors sont assez vides, puisque les gens sont encore en vacances pour la plupart… mais il semble que mon corridor soit des plus conviviaux ! L'année s'annonce bien :-D