So two weekends ago, Leah went out of her way (by roughly 4000 miles) to come visit me in Karlskrona for a few days. She was on the plane for nearly as long as she was here, but it was definitely worth it. While here, the two of us walked almost non-stop for four days, getting the most out of our short trip together. Needless to say it was quite the adventure, here's just a few of the stories...

Day 1:

Today Leah arrived by train in Karlskrona around noon. After a long journey, we went back to my apartment to unload her luggage and get some food. As we were walking into my bedroom (no more than 30 minutes has gone by since arriving in Karlskrona) Leah managed to trip through my doorway. It's good to see that things haven't changed much since I left :)

After getting things settled in the apartment, we walked down to the town square where we went to a tiny kebab shop and both got falafelrulle (a wrap with falafel, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and a hidden pepper that you always have to be on the lookout for).

After lunch, Leah surprisingly felt up for walking around a bit and seeing the town so we went outside to see the one half of Karlsrkona. We explored a few places of the town that I have yet to see which was a lot of fun. We also explored (and identified) many of the plants in Karlskrona - most deffinitely something I haven't done yet.

After walking around a bit and taking a bunch of pictures, we came back to the apartment where we had homemade pizza with the rest of the gang. That night a few folks came over for karaoke but the trip from State College was beginning to catch up with Leah so we went to bed soon after.

Day 2:

The next morning, Leah and I jumped on a train to Kalmar, a town 1 hour north of Karlskrona along the coast. I had been planning on taking Leah there because they have an old Viking castle and a neat church, two things that Leah had mentioned she'd like to see while here.

Well, much to my surprise, the trip went slightly different than I expected. We arrived first at the castle and started by walking around the outside and then eventually, making our way to the inner courtyard. As we walked around, we noticed that it was surprisingly empty. Well I soon realized that unlike every other shop in Sweden, the castle is only open on weekends and closed throughout the rest of the week. So...site-seeing stop number one was a no-go.

That's alright, we made up for it by taking some really cool pictures of us outside the castle (because we had the whole place essentially to ourselves).
Next, we went to the nearby modern art museum, with much higher hopes after getting locked out of the castle. We went inside, bought our tickets, and proceeded to the first floor of exhibits. What we found was a room full of paintings and videos that, well, simply put, made no sense. Perhaps that was because all of the descriptions were in Swedish, but I still claim that none of the art made any sense. When a man jumping up and down naked on a TV mooning the camera is considered art, I simply shake my head.

But that's alright, because there were still two more floors ahead of us and we could only assume that it would get better from here.

On the next floor, there was a single door, which we went on through. It turns out that all there was was a library and office space for a few people. Most deffinitiely not a place where visitors were supposed to be walking around - so we quickly got out and proceeded to the final floor.

On the upper floor was supposed to be an exhibit about polar bears and seals...

When we opened the door, only one wall was covered in art and it looked like a random collection of children's paintings which sadly, did not include either a polar bear or a seal. Hanging from the middle of the room was a sheet which on it was projected a seal being stuffed by someone, being played on a loop.

Needless to say, it was the poorest museum I have ever been to, which is a shame because we were both big fans of modern art up until that point. (But we're still holding out hope for other places...)

After the museum, we walked to the center of the town where we passed by some neat old streets and shops and even a glassblower.  Eventually, we found the church which we were quite excited to see. As the day would have it however, the door was locked for lunch so we took the forced break to grab some food at a nearby cafe (in which they were playing Star Trek - strange) An hour later, we walked outside and went inside the church, excited that we were finally about to see something.

But, as luck would have it, upon walking through the doors, we were greeted by the largest sheet of white plastic I have ever seen hanging directly in front of us. Confused, we walked up towards a section which had a clear window inserted and looked through to the other side - only to find that the entire inside of the church was being renovated and was nothing but dust and construction equipment.
At this point, we were beginning to feel slightly defeated so we headed back to the train station. We managed to arrive just in time and barely made it onto the train heading back to Karlskrona.

Slightly relieved that we were now heading back to 'home,' we found some seats and took a little rest. Amidst our rest, our train decided to take its good old time to get to where it was going, and by the time we had to get off halfway to switch trains, we were running 30 minutes behind schedule. That being said, we had missed our connecting train and were now stuck in a random town that no one has ever heard of, Emmaboda. So we talked to the train lady working there and she said we could grab a bus home but it wouldn't be another hour before it arrived.

By this point we had given up and were completely ammused with how the day was going and decided to hang out at the nearest (perhaps the only) cafe in town. Turns out the cafe had a thing for the 70s and it felt like we had stepped back in time to some disco place, but the food was great so we didn't mind.
A few hours later and we found ourselves finally back in Karlskrona, relieved after the craziness of the morning.

To make sure that we were somewhat productive for the day, we decided to head to my school to show Leah where all the studying happens (sort of). To get us there, I was planning on renting a tandem bike for the two of us, but as the day had shown, our luck wasn't going to get us the bike. So instead, we decided to do it like all the Swedish teenagers do - one person riding while the other sits on the carrying rack behind and holds their feet out to the side.

Who would have thought such a task would be so difficult. But let's just say that Leah's lack of grace when it comes to walking (ie tripping all the time) also carries over to her ability to sit behind me on a bike. We made it all of 50 feet before giving up and deciding to walk the bike to school, and somehow, in those 50 feet, Matt happened to ride by on his bike to witness the whole ordeal. I guess that's one task we're going to have to work on more for the future.

After getting to school, I realized that there really wasn't much to show - BTH is about the size of PSU's football stadium, well maybe slightly bigger, but you get the idea. So, I got the idea to show Leah our bike coop room in the basement. As we were heading to the basement door, I went to open it at the same time as a series of indivudals dressed in all black with road signs hanging around their neck emerged from the same basement door. Both of us jumped back as the group filed out of the basement followed by a man carrying a video camera and halloween axe. Oh the things you come across in Sweden... Turns out the bike room was locked but that incident alone was worth heading to the basement.

Satisfied that we had actually seen something for the day, we walked back to the apartment.

That night, we went out to dinner with Ali and Matt where we happened to run into our head professor of the program. Everything was fine until we realized that we were sitting under a bunch of pictures of naked girls at our table, slightly awkward, but oh well. The food was great and Ali and Leah even decided to try out their Swedish moves on the dance floor (granted it was just the two of them and their moves were more like a sprint around the dance floor while Matt and I continued walking by).

(stay tuned for more about Day 3 and 4...)