No Rest for the Weekend!

Monday 11 September 2006

Yesterday we had half a day off – my goodness. Better late than never! Sunday morning – I had a meeting at 7am (heck, I know) with a few people who wanted to talk about co-authoring a book. Then I got back to the camp and hung around a bit (did a bit of Persian study!) just in time to take the bus to Sigtuna. I basically napped all the way there on the bus. After about an hour, we arrived in this strange little town, had a couple of lectures and a cultural introduction to Sigtuna (the oldest existing city in Sweden). We then had lunch, and were unleashed into the town for a few hours. OK there’s no two ways about it – this town is creepy. It was like the set of the Stepford Wives – totally perfect. Perfect houses, perfect children with perfect teeth, perfect pets, perfect gardens. Totally creepy. You feel like something’s going to go horribly wrong at any moment. Anyway, I managed to find a (perfect!) chocolate ice cream and sit down in the sun with my new Scottish friend Jaq (she says ‘aye’ instead of ‘yes’, ‘wee’ instead of ‘little’, ‘fillum’ instead of ‘film’ and ‘gerrul’ instead of ‘girl’ and ‘laddie’ instead of ‘guy’! Oh, and people who are attractive aren’t ‘attractive’, they’re ‘fit’!). We sat there for a while, being pursued vigorously by wasps, and then meandered along to a little bookshop, where I managed to find a copy of Milan Kundera’s ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’ in FRENCH! Needless to say, I bought it. Yippee.

Then we went and sat by the lake for a while, snoozing, listening to music, enjoying the sunshine (see blue sky in picture above!!), before getting on the boat to cruise back to Uppsala. The cruise was so lovely – this big old boat, kind of quaint and creaky, and we ate delicious food and sat outside on the deck sipping a drink in the late afternoon sun. Then we got home and I went to BED!

On Saturday night (sorry – going chronologically backwards) there was ‘Cultural Night of Uppsala’. This meant that this sleepy, empty, quiet little hamlet came alive with rock bands, punky youths, lots of beer, dancers in funny olde costumes, stalls on the street along the canal and all sorts of other stuff. I seriously don’t know where all these people came from. I have seen hardly ANYONE in this town for the past week, but suddenly it was absolutely buzzing! I just went out to the Norlands Nation (‘Nations’ are almost like student unions, but for drinking! It’s like, your spiritual, alcoholic home. Quite funny) for a quiet beer before returning home to go to bed.

Already I’m getting sad, wide-eyed comments from my Irish colleagues who are a bit disappointed by the (small) amount I drink. They are all saying to me “where’ve ye been, little one? I thart Australians could hold their liquor. But ye’ve hardly been on the piss AT ALL.” Haha. I seem to be a massive disappointment. ☺

Anyway I better go. I think tomorrow we will be gallivanting around the Swedish countryside delivering imaginary emergency assistance to imaginary refugees in an imaginary humanitarian crisis. Bring it on!

See you soon!

JT x