Currently I am in Sweden! I decided to pay a visit to my friend and roommate who is from Lund. She is a great girl, and showed me around her area of Sweden. I took a plane from Paris to Gothenburg, which was a bad idea, since Malmo is only thirty minutes away from Lund and has more flights. I took a train ride to Malmo, which was expensive to buy in the station, and took quite a while. I realized after the train ride that there is no seating arrangement for second class, so I unknowingly sat in a spot that was not in a compartment, thinking I did not have a seat. When I arrived in Lund, I was surprised to see it was a very cute little university town. The ancient church from the 11th century sits just a few minutes from the train station. It was under construction when I visited, but it was still very nice to look at and photograph! Julia took me to her family home where we had a delicious spaghetti meal very casually. Then we went on a bike ride to a pier that sits on the sea overlooking the view of Malmo and the bridge to Copenhagen. There were saunas and a nice restaurant/bar.
The next day we caught a ride with her parents to Helsingborg. There we saw the Kärnan fortress, and walked down nice decorative steps to the city center. I tried to get out some money, but realized a five dollar surcharge is added to every transaction with an American card. Then we decided to catch the ferry over to Denmark. The ticket was about 30 dollars for the ferry and all public transport in and around Copenhagen and Lund for two days. Very nice! When we landed in Denmark we were right next to Hamlet's castle and in a cute little town called Helsingör. We had a danish and a cider, then caught a train down to Copenhagen. That took about forty minutes, but it was along the sea, so it was beautiful. In Copenhagen we walked past Tivoli to get to the main shopping street Stroget. It was a nice town with lots of vintage shops and cute coffee shops. The people living there were very eclectic and I noticed there was an amazing English bookstore right near the main street and Tivoli. I will be heading back there tomororw, so I will have more to report by the end of my journeys :).
When we took the train back to Lund we got off and headed to Julia's favorite bar and restaurant in her town, which is called Basilica. We order food for about 128 SEK, which is about 20 dollars for a salad. If you want to drink, get ready for expensive. About 10 dollars for a pint. It was a nice place though, and I got to meet some of Julia's friends. We then took the 137 bus back to her house, which left from the central station.
The next day I headed out for Stockholm, more on that adventure later :)