I wonder what the thought process was for the people who founded Malmo University back in 1998. I wonder if thought to themselves “maybe in 11 years after 947 exchange students the chosen one will arrive and study here at our university.” Maybe it didn’t happen exactly that way, but after 11 years and 947 exchange students Malmö Högskola has welcomed one very interesting individual inside the doors of the school of arts and communication.
Ok I’ll start with monday January 12, 2009. It was like any other morning, i awoke to the delightful sound of Alex Cotoranu’s cell phone alarm. I had packed the night before, so i calmly woke up and ate some breakfast and watched as alex packed his things. We both said goodbye to Christian who had provided us room and board for the weekend and headed off to Vanløse station to catch the metro to the airport. At Copenhagen airport I said farewell to Mr. Cotoranu and made my way down the ramp to the train station. One back pack on my back another being carried in my arms, I waited for that train that would take me on down to the city Malmo, but that train did not come. Two trains passed through the station, both empty, i boarded the first one and then was politely asked in english to exit the train, oh yeah things were looking up indeed. A train arrived and I waited to see if other people would board it, when people started entering the train I followed suit and away I went. Upon my arrival in Sweden (or Sverige as I prefer to call it) I already knew where the university was, so I b-lined it from the station to K3 (school of arts and communication). Once inside I asked around for the Interaction Design Masters program and instead got directed towards the program office. Well luckily there was this nice lady there who spoke better english than the other people I had talked to and she told me my teacher was Jörn Messeter, she then went looking for him and I followed, we met another student looking for Jörn’s class. Then Jörn walked through the door and all was right with the world. The class started at 9:30 and I walked into that room both back packs in hand and had my first experience as a Masters student. At the end of the lecture we broke up into teams and we were given the brief for our first project that would be due friday january 23. At lunch I went looking for the international students, I went to the student center and they told me to go the green glass building. I went to green glass building (later found out it is called Orkanen) and all the international people are eating lunch so I walk into the room and this lady asks if I’m Gordon Brown, I said “yes.” Before I can say anything else she starts saying “oh Mr. Prime Minister, Hey everybody this is my Prime Minister!” Fast times at Malmo University! After the lunch was over I had my first Swedish lesson, it ended up being more of a history lesson, but it was still pretty cool learning the history and the language at the same time. After class I made my way back to Malmo Central where I met Martin Karlsson (and yes it is spelt with a ‘K’). We got on the Pågatåg train to Åkarp. It was a bit of a walk to his house from the train station but now I know the route like the back of my hand. I met the rest of the Karlssons: Anders (the father), Monica (the mother), and Matilda (Martin’s younger sister). They are a pretty cool family, Martin is planning on going to Canada soon so I said he has to go visit Auntie Karen and Uncle Birk and that he could stay in my old room. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday went by quickly as I had Swedish class in the morning and there would be an International Student activity in the afternoon (just a lecture about different things). I tell you about Interact though, it is a program similar to Orientation at SFU and my Interact person is named Åsa, she is super cool, helped me find accommodations. We were searching for places on some of the local websites and everything was 3500 sek or more per month, there was one for 3000 sek but you had to be female to rent the place. We looked at the student accommodations and found one for 2900 sek per month and Åsa called the number and asked if there was a room left and there was so I’m moving in on february 1st. Then I asked Åsa where I could get a cell phone (the university gives Swedish SIM cards to all the international students) and she asked if I had a SIM card, I said “yes” so she said well you can borrow one of my old phones then. I met up with her the next day and she handed me a Sony Ericsson (Ericsson is a Swedish company). What an awesome person, she has definitely set the tone for my time here in Sverige. One more quick story, on Wednesday I went to Skånetrafiken Centrum, I took a number and waited in the queue, when my number was called I walked up the counter and the man behind it said “hej,” i replied “hej, talar du engelska?” he answered “yes” and I purchased a 30 day transit pass for riding the train from Malmö to Åkarp. Friday I didn’t go to my Swedish lecture, instead I joined the rest of the Masters students for a crash course in Arduino programming (the course for Arduino had be going since wednesday that week but I had already done everything that was being taught friday’s lecture on Arduino was all new to me though so that’s why I was there and not in my Swedish class). It was a full day from 9:00 to 16:00 after that my fellow Masters students and I went to a place called St. Gertrud. We walk into a central courtyard and “More than a Feeling” by Boston is playing on the speakers, I immediately took out my air guitar and followed along for a few bars before we entered the restaurant side of the building, there were no seats so we went back into the courtyard and into the pub side of the building, we found a spot by the bar and sat down. Now this was the fun part, I bought a sprite, and the lady bartender didn’t believe my hair was real, well I bet her a free sprite that my hair was real, well needless to say I didn’t pay for a single drink the rest of the night. We hung out there for a while before going our separate ways. Saturday the International students went on a day trip to Lund (the next big city closest to Malmö). It is a really old city and walking around the old buildings I felt as if I was in another century. We got a tour of Kulturen (the Lund Museum). There were houses there from almost every century for the past 700 to 800 years. Really amazing to see these old buildings and learn about Swedish history and culture. After Lund, I went back to Åkarp, and then that night headed into Malmö station to meet up with Thomas (my new Austrian friend). He was with 3 other International students from Germany, we were on our way to a party at Rönnen student accommodations (all the cool international students were going to be there). We missed the number 3 bus but we found out from a helpful stranger that the number 7 would get us to within walking distance of Rönnen. So we finally arrived at the student accommodations at Rönnen……..or did we? We get into the building and go to the 6th floor (we new the party was on the sixth floor), once on the sixth floor we have no idea which way is which, there are 4 doors going in 4 directions and you have to have a key or be let in, we look at the names on the screen by each door and do not recognize any of them. Then we see some one coming down the hallway towards us, we ask them if this is the student accommodations and where the party is, and well it is not, we are in the wrong building. The lady gives us directions to a second building also by the name of Rönnen and we make our way to our new destination. Once we get to the door you need a key or to be let in from someone inside the building, we check the names on the board and nothing, and we do not have anyone’s phone number who lives at Rönnen. So here we are, 1 Austrian, 3 Germans, and a Canadian, just walking around aimlessly, but at the same time enjoying each others company, talking and laughing. So we finally meet some other people on their way to the party and we finally get inside the building and head to the 6th floor. We get up there and the main ‘party’ is happening in the kitchen/common room area, but my traveling partners and I are hanging out in Dominika’s room (a Polish girl who is in my Swedish lecture). There are about 10-15 of us hanging out and it’s ok, there is some music playing off a laptop but it’s not very loud. We head down the kitchen/common room area and it is kind of hard to tell there is party happening, there is loud annoying repetitive sounds coming from speakers in the corner and there are a few groups of people hanging out trying to talk over the noise coming from the speakers. The five of us look at each other and unanimously proclaim that it was more fun looking for the party than it is being at the party. Only hung around there for just over two hours and started on my way back to the train station with two of the Germans. We didn’t know the bus schedule so we decided to walk back, it was a great walk through the city at night and i learned that in europe it is called “zebra stripes” instead of “crosswalk.” The two Germans (I would call them by name but I only know one of their names and I’m not a 100% sure how to spell it, phonetically it is “air-ee-anna”) live in University Island (where I will be living after February 1st) so we parted ways at Malmö Central and I went to catch my train….or did I? When I had arrived home from Lund I checked the Skånetrafiken website and there was supposed to be a train at 0:50, but when I got to the station that night the schedule said 2:00 was the next train. I immediately left the station and ran after “air-ee-anna” and her friend and asked if I could go back to University Island with them for bit before I had to come back and catch the train at 2:00. Just 4 short days after finding out I’d be living at University Island, I was walking towards it and I got to check out the accommodations inside. Each apartment is divided up into 4 rooms with shared kitchen and washroom, pretty cool. I had a cup of tea at “air-ee-anna’s” and the three us chatted some more before I left to catch the train back to Åkarp. Sunday I recovered from an action packed first week and made a couple of important phone calls.
Ok now Monday January 19th. This Monday I awoke to the slightly less delightful sound of my cell phones alarm. I had a big day ahead of me, Arduino class from 9:00 to 16:00 (there is a one hour lunch break) and then the new time for my Swedish lecture was 16:30 to 19:00. 10 hours of classes with only 1hour and 30minutes break, oh yeah!! (I’m going to stop writing “oh yeah” and replace it with my new favourite saying “visst ja”) Tuesday is the last class of the Arduino crash course, VISST JA!!! And Tuesday is also Thomas’ birhtday, han är sjugo fem år (no no no. No translation for you! Come back 1 year!). He knew we were having a party, but we did manage to surprise him with a cake that had one candle in the shape of a two and another in the shape of a 5 and birthday present. We all signed the card in our own languages it was super cool, makes me wish my birthday was sometime before June 8th (in Sverige there is something called your “name day,” my name day is April 23, maybe I’ll celebrate that). I would have liked to stayed later at the party but Wednesday my team and I were headed to the library to do our research that we were to present on friday. And of course on Wednesday it is sunny, it was probably the second or third time I’d seen the sun since leaving Vancouver, but Wednesday there wasn’t a cloud in the sky it was an awesome to day to be out and about and I was inside the library taking pictures and observing the daily happenings inside the library. The library has nothing to do with our project for Place Specific Computing, it is just an assignment to get us thinking about place, how you define place and the people in that space define it. Thursday it decided to rain, but that was fine by me cause my team and I were on day two of observing the library, this time we interviewed people about the library, what they liked about it, what they didn’t. I had a fun time interviewing a retired lady, she spoke english, but not very well, of the 10 or so questions I asked her, I was able to get answers for 6 or 7 of them. Then that evening we went back to K3 and worked on our presentation for Friday. We divided up the slides and headed home, I finished around 1:00 went to bed and woke up at 7:00 to go to school for 8:30, class wasn’t until 9:00 but we had to put our slides together and do a quick run through. We nailed the presentation, went so smoothly, Jörn was impressed by all the groups, we all went further than expexted in our research to define the place we had observed for the past two days (the other three places groups looked at were: the train station, a local pub, and one of the central squares). After that we celebrated by going to the Art Gallery. It was a pretty cool exhibit, avante-garde technology based awesomeness. And as it was friday afternoon, after the Art Gallery we went to St. Gertruds again for supper, no free drinks this time though. After supper I had to go to Rönnen to pick up Thursday’s homework from my Swedish lecture (I was working on my presentation and couldn’t make it to class). Dominika has the homework for me and I go up to her room and we’re hanging out and then a few people show up and then a couple more, so there are 7 of us and we are talking about where we are from and laughing at differences in the languages we speak, turns out one of the guys his name is Nils, is going to be my roommate at University Island, visst ja! There is Nils who is Finnish, Cedric who is French, Natalia and Dominika who are polish, Tegan who is Australian, Alex who is from…i don’t know actually, and myself, sitting back laughing and drinking (well i wasn’t drinking). The next thing I know is it is 23:00. Some of them were going to go out clubbing so I took my leave and caught the bus back to the train station, I got home and went to bed and slept for 12 hours, *yawn* visst ja *yawn.* Saturday was another recovery day, played a little guitar hero, had a video call with James and Trevor in Prince George, and of course took it easy (the Eagles would be so proud). Then today was Monica’s nephew’s 11th birthday. We took this sweet drive through the Skåne country side (Skåne: the southern region of Sverige, phonetically: “skone-a”) to get to the birthday party. It reminds me of the Cariboo-Chilcotin, lots of farms, rolling hills, had it not been for the complete absence of shoulders on the sides of the road I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between the to areas. We’re at the house, everyone is speaking Svenska, and I’m standing there nodding and smiling, hahaha. I asked the birthday boy “vad heter du?” and he looked at me weird, then Monica said “vad heter du” and then he told me his name was Richard. I guess I didn’t say it with the proper Skåne accent. The food was delicious, I filled myself up, and quickly realized what a mistake that was when I saw the cheese cake that Richard’s mom had baked for dessert. BEST cheese cake I have ever tasted, wow!! We sang happy birthday to Richard in Svenska, my Swedish teacher hasn’t taught us the Swedish birhtday song yet so I just followed along en français. After the birthday we drove back Åkarp, and I’ve spent the last hour and a half writing this epic blog post. I’ll put some pictures up soon from the last two weeks. Until then good night everybody!
