Week 12 - 18th June -> 24th June

Atchy in his element.

 This week's posts deviates from the usual "life in Lithuania", as I'm currently writing from Gothenburg, Sweden. I decided to catch some cheap flights while I could to visit a friend from school, Atchy, while he's on Erasmus in Gothenburg. He's been there for the past year and I meant to visit him while I was living in Finland (obviously, it's just right next door!), but I never got round to it. However, now I managed to find a way, as his Erasmus comes to an end, and I decided to visit Sweden over midsummer.

But let's just back up a little to the beginning of the week. The end of my internship is also drawing near, and this week marked the end of my teaching, with just one resource project remaining. I wasn't expecting my final classes to be emotional, but my lovely students made it so with surprise gifts. (If you're not a fan of cheesy sentiments, look away now...or proceed to the next section of this blog post.) I was humbled by their kind words and fond farewells. One of them made a little speech about me and explained their gift - a baltic stone with a foot, marking the footprint I've left on their hearts. They also gave me a homework to translate the message on it that was in Lithuanian. It was as follows:

Gifts from one of my classes.

Tegul Jūsų pėdos gyvenimo kelyje visada būna ryškios, prasmingos ir ilgam...

Let your feet on the road of life be always vivid, meaningful and lasting ...
Such unexpected sentiments, and the very positive feedback I received has come as an emotional relief that my work has somehow paid off, and I will leave with a real enlightening experience to look back on.

After calculating and evaluating the collective feedback from the final presentations and sending individual evaluation e-mails, I prepared to leave for Sweden. The journey to Gothenburg was a long one. It started with the bus from Klaipeda to Riga, departing at 06:50 and lasting 4½ hours. Then, I was due to catch a Ryanair flight from Riga to Stockholm Skavsta, but it was delayed. It has been a while since I have taken a flight with Ryanair, and I had forgotten what a flight with minimal leg room, no allocated seats, the constant bombardment of ridiculous advertisements and human zoo chaos was like. Nonetheless, it only lasted 50 minutes and the view on the amazingly clear day made it rather enjoyable.

Unfortunately, the flight delay had a knock-on effect, and I was forced to rush to catch the next two journeys by bus and by train. I managed to get the first bus out of Skavsta airport to Stockholm city centre (it takes 80-90 minutes - Ryanair of course fly to somewhere they call "Stockholm" but really mean it's miles away). Luckily, I had factored this in when I booked all my tickets, but what I didn't count on was the length of delays, and the traffic jam we got stuck in. The roadworks combined with a minor car crash causing major tailbacks on the motorway = pandemonium! I was constantly checking the time, beginning to panic slightly when it was only 20 minutes until my train and we were still in the bus caught in traffic... I really couldn't afford to miss this train - it was the most expensive part of the journey! 

Public transport in Goteburg.

When the bus finally arrived in the city centre, I had to frantically find the train station - I had been in Stockholm a couple of times before but had never been to the train station and had only the memory of google maps to guide me. Usually, I'm quite shy about asking strangers in the street something, but I had no choice - so I took the plunge and asked a couple of people for the way. They helped immensely. Only for them, I ran for the train and made it just in the nick of time, with literally only 2 minutes to spare! Five hours later, I arrived in Gothenburg at 10pm. It turned out, running for transport would become a common theme throughout this trip!

Nelly Furtado performing on the MTV World Stage.

Coincidently, the evening I arrived in Gothenburg, the free MTV World Stage concert was playing, featuring Loreen, BoB and Nelly Furtado. I arrived just as BoB was performing, and we went straightaway to Götaplatsen. We watched Nelly Furtado's performance (I still can't believe this was for free) as she played some of the classics like Maneater, Fly like a bird and Promiscuous. The music was great and she even had the "International World Champion of the World Hula-hoop champion" on stage with her, who was very impressive! Poor Nelly though didn't have the best communication skills with the audience, with "world champion of the world" summing it up. 

The midsummer pole traditionally danced around.

My first impression of the city of Gothenburg was an unconventional one, because of all the activity happening for the MTV concert. The contrast in the city in the few days I've spent here has been rather drastic. My first experience portrayed it as being very crowded, full of young people and multicultural. But, as midsummer approached, the city emptied, as the tradition is for Swedish people to retreat to the countryside for the holiday. There were some dancing pole celebrations out on one of the archipelago islands, but unfortunately we made it there too late, and it was rather short anyway. It seems I have brought a batch of bad weather with me, so midsummer eve was a washout, and the rain has returned with no sign of easing.

Mummy and baby elk.

We did get one relatively good afternoon weather-wise and took advantage of it by going to the park, although the park is more like a kind of free zoo. We saw penguins, elks, geese, deer, cows and seals, to name a few. That night we headed out with a whole group of other Northern Irish, plus a Polish guy and French girl, to celebrate one Northern Irish guy's birthday. On the bus into the city, it felt like I was just in a bus in Belfast, not Sweden! It's been a while since I've been around so many of my fellow natives, and the banter was aplenty.

Bacon & maple syrup pancakes.

In a way it has been kind of refreshing to explore a city that's so deserted of people. Despite the dodgy weather, I have enjoyed walking around the city, taking lots of forms of public transport (trams, buses, ferries), exploring some of the archipelago, dandering around the parks & botanic gardens, and appreciating some local food. I have also been introduced to some other interesting food that Atchy & Nigel prepared: bacon and maple syrup with homemade pancakes. A strange salty-sweet combination that somehow works. It was actually surprisingly tasty!
 

My success in Frisbee Golf!

Another new first-time experience came in the form of frisbee golf (also known as Disc Golf). Yes, this is in fact a world-recognised sport, with competitive championships; the champion titles held mostly by Americans, with only one break when a Swede won, the prize-money pegged at 35,000 dollars in 2011. At first, I thought the whole idea was a joke, and it's nothing like golf. But then I played it and researched a bit about it, and they even have different frisbee types such as a driver and a putter. We played on an 18 "hole" course (the "holes" are actually metal baskets), but just had one frisbee between us, so it was more of a team effort (like in golf, they set the par for each hole, and you count how many throws it takes until you make it into the basket). It suited me, because my competitive edge brings out a bit of a nasty side in me, and I prefer to play just for fun. Even in mini golf, I don't like to know the score, I just need to know that I'm winning. ;)

I still have some time left in Sweden before I return to Lithuania for my final days there. The end is fast approaching and in my final blog entry next week, I'll update on the rest of my time in Gothenburg and reflect on my second Erasmus experience as a whole.