Afro Headquarters

Monday, May 18 saw the departure of Mr. Niels Vandeputte. The uni islanders walked down to the central station and waved good bye as our dear friend headed towards København Airport to catch a plane back to Belgium. Instead of making the traditional cardboard cut out of a person, we took a hollowed out watermelon, carved a face, gave it some hair, and then taped the name “Niels Vandeputte” to it’s forehead (reminiscent of the times we have played “who am i” here at uni island). The head of Niels is looking more like the “Lord of the Flies” and now resides outside the apartment on the balcony, watching over uni island and warding off evil spirits.

Tuesday, May 19 was an incredibly awesome day. My Interaction Design class and I had rented two vans for the day, and we drove over the Øresund bridge into Denmark and then all the way to LegoLand!! At Lego headquarters we were given a short lecture on the history of Lego, the word Lego comes from the Danish phrase “Leg Godt” which translates to “play well.” We were then given an assignment, everyone was handed a box of Lego for building either a racing car or truck, we had to build our vehicles as fast as possible and then be ready to race. I built my car, in no time at all, i gave the pull-back motor a couple tests and even built a small jump in the conference room we were in and then i was ready for the race. we all lined our cars up in the hallway outside the conference room and pulled them back to wind up the motor. The Lego employee counted down and the vehicles were off, mine was on a slight angle and got clipped in the left rear wheel by another car, which caused my car to turn hard left and then t-bone a truck, although i lost the race, my car suffered minimal damage in the 3 vehicle pile up, the same cannot be said for the truck, that lay in ruins after the race. After lunch a person from one of the Lego Design Teams showed a presentation on the Lego Design Process and how employee’s can easily move from one design team to the next, how ideas are developed and what methods are used. Then we went for a tour of the production plant and saw all the Lego being counted, sorted, faces painted on, bodies put together, pieces packaged and placed into boxes and placed on crates ready for shipping to all parts of the world. At the end of the tour we were shown a scrap box of pieces that are found during clean up, we were able to make our own customized Lego characters with the assorted pieces, I made a cyborg in a white tuxedo with green pants and a medieval war helmet. We went back to the conference room to get our bags and we said thank you for the tour, and as a final gift from lego we were given each a set of Lego from the Ferrari Racing line and a copy of Lego Magazine. After Lego Headquarters we walked over to LegoLand where we had arranged for entrance to the park (Lego isn’t the owner of LegoLand parks), we had about an hour to walk around before we had to drive back to Malmö. I only got see the Lego miniatures of famous landmarks, mostly scandinavian landmarks,but there was a working replica of Kennedy Space Centre with a small smoke and light show to simulate a rocket launch. Then it was back to the vans and back home to Malmö, we arrived at 9 in the evening (12 noon PST) and I called home to wish Trevor a happy birthday but there was no answer.

Tuesday, May 26 started out as a nice beautiful sunny day: Oli, Krysta, Marine and I went down to the beach to go swimming in the Baltic Sea. We had to maneuver around alot of seaweed to get out far enough that the water was deep enough to actually swim in. The water wasn’t too cold, and with the sun shinning we all dunked our heads and swam about the seaweed forest of the Baltic Sea. As we got out of the water, and dried off via towel and mother natures hair dryer, the wind, the clouds began to grow darker and we could tell a storm was coming. Back at uni island not too much was happening as everyone was, and still is, busy with final projects and final exams. As the evening crept over uni island so did the storm clouds, until the wind was blowing with such ferocity, and the rain was falling and I could look out my window and see lightning flashing across the sky once every 30 seconds. The storm only lasted about an hour, and now today it is sunny again with only a few clouds in the sky.

On april 18, Thomas, Niels, Arianne, Oliver and I all piled into Oli’s car and headed out on another whirlwind adventure! With a map of the skåne region to guide us, we headed east towards a lake where we hoped to enjoy the springtime sun on a sandy beach with our picnic lunch. After driving around a labyrinth of side roads, and scattered communities, and stopping several times for directions (even one time the guy couldn’t speak english but could speak german, from what he told us, the only word i understood was “autobahn”) we discovered the lake was privately owned and that there were no beaches open to the public. Undeterred, and knowing there was a point of interest near the north end of the lake, we drove north to the point of interest. We discovered that somewhere between the road and the lake were the remains of a castle. We thought that maybe there would be a way to get to the lake from here, and we tried one last time to get to the lake to no avail. during our adventure we passed to areas that could be considered an area where castle might have stood but no real remains from a castle. We decided to picnic at one the areas we considered to be the site of the remains. The way the earth was built up in a way that suggested the castle stood here, and we found a few stones that were too well shaped to be natural. We had our picnic here atop the ruins, and relaxed in the sun for a bit before walking back to the car. We looked at the map and noticed another lake nearby. It wasn’t too late in the afternoon so we decided to check it out. Again after driving through the labyrinth of side roads we arrived at our destination. Only to once again find out that the lake was unreachable. We stood on the road and stared at the lake that was so close but so far. On the drive back home, we were still about 20 minutes outside of Malmö but there in the distance like a beacon guiding us home was the turning torso.

Two days later, Thomas, Niels and I found ourselves in the capital city of Denmark. We went for our own walking tour of the city, and even checked out the ripley’s believe or not museum. We tried to get into the architectural museum but it was closed. We then walked from the downtown area to a less crowded island within the city. We walked along the water past many boat moorings, and some very interesting street signs that depict a car driving off the road and into the water below. We came upon a wartime museum that looked interesting, but as we approached the door we realized that the museum was closed. It was early in the evening and we decided to slowly make our way back to the central station. I had to empty bottles of squash with that I couldn’t return at the swedish recycling machines, because the bottles were purchased in Denmark. So we found a store where I could return them and bought two more bottles to take back to Sweden. At the central station, Thomas and Niels couldn’t find a ticket machine, as we had 7 minutes before the next train left for Malmö, the two of them got in the queue at the transit office, as time ticked away they bought their tickets and the three of us ran to the platform to catch the train, only to find out that we have to wait 5 more minutes as the train had been delayed. We finally made it back to Malmö, and as we walk out of the station a beautiful swedish girl passes by and Thomas comments “I love this country.”

On Friday May 8th at 4:30 in the morning, I’m watching the canucks game and just as chicago scores to send it into overtime, Niels tells me that we have to leave now to catch the train to Stockholm. Niels, Natalia, Oliver, Verena, Arianne, Pets, Pavol, and I arrived in the capital city at about 9:30, it was a short 4 hour train ride from Malmö to Stockholm. We carried our bags to the hostel and checked in, we didn’t have private rooms so we stored our bags in a locked room in the hostel. We headed out walking around the old part of city known as Gamla Stan. We walked towards the tourist office, but got sidetracked by some free food. Spanish tourism workers were handing out free food to promote tourism in Spain. At the office we spent about half an hour debating on what to do for the next three days, we decided on “Stockholm Cards” for saturday and we would walk or ride bikes the other two days. We got back to the hostel early in the evening, and most of us were still pretty tired from only a few hours of sleep the night before and on the train. We set up our beds and all took a quick nap. We woke up and went out for supper and then to a bar, where we watched Team Canada hand Tre Kronor and 3 - 1 loss in the IIHF World Championships. Saturday we were up and off to explore the city with our “Stockholm Cards” (free transit and entrance to Stockholm museums). We watched the changing of the guard at the royal palace, before entering the royal museum. The palace was very extravagant, with huge rooms, portraits, and amazing chandeliers. After the palace we headed down to one of the harbours to catch a boat over to an island within the city. On the island we entered the Vasa Museum, where the Vasa, that sank almost 400 years ago on its maiden voyage, is preserved and on display. The ship is huge and the way that it was salvaged from the bottom of the Stockholm harbour is really incredible. After the Vasa we headed towards Skansen, an open air museum/zoo. It was later in the afternoon and all the old buildings were closed for the day, but we could still walk around the buildings and see the different wildlife living there. We walked back to the harbour where the boat dropped us off only to discover that it wasn’t running anymore at this time in the evening, a few locals directed us towards the bus stop back on the main road where we could catch a bus back to the central station. By this time we were all getting hungry and we set out to find us some eats. We found this really cool italian joint, you would think it would be really upscale and expensive, but the prices were really reasonable, and they had gummy bears for you after you paid, very sweet set up there. Then it was back to the hostel to relax after walking all day and eventually to bed. Sunday we carried our bags back to the central station and managed to fit all our stuff we didn’t need into one locker, that took some superb skills. We then walked through Östermalm for the rest of day. We checked out two market places, I found one stand that was selling strickly vinyl but had to resist the urge to look through all the vinyl to see if they had anything good, after looking through two stacks of nothing I moved on. While taking a short cut through a mall on our way back to the central station, I picked up a nice pair of aviators for only 150 SEK (approx 22 CAD). We had our traditional sunday dinner at a cool little restaurant in Gamla Stan, and then headed back to the central station to wait for our train at 11 in the evening. It was a 7 hour trip back home to Malmö but we finally climbed the stairs up to our flats at uni island at 6:30 monday morning and went straight to bed.