Hearts and Stripes

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When you will read this post, I will be enjoying the sun on the island Malta!

To be honest with you, this trip wasn’t part of my travel plans at all. A couple of friends of mine were going, and after looking at the cheap price (yay Ryanair!) I thought: why the hell not? You only live once and the moment to go on spontaneous-and-not-really-necessary-trips is probably during your studies abroad, hah!

I’ll be seeing you in a week! With a huuuge update of course!
Janice

We spent our last day just walking around, enjoying the city atmosphere and the Swedish sun. We were so lucky with the weather those three days! Right after we got back in Karlstad, no sun was to be seen.

We sat in parks, near the water, on docks, it was just the best chillaxing day ever.

My travel companions! Now I begin to realize that within a month this fantastic experience will be over and I’ll probably see most of the fantastic people I’ve met not for a long time. That’s the downside to the whole Erasmus-experience I guess..

New shoes I bought in Monki a while ago in sale. Right after I got my leopard print coat, my love for all things leopard has grown. The moment I saw these cuties, I knew I had to add to bring them home with me.

At 19:24 we took our train back to Karlstad, where I spent my last couple of days..studying. Yesterday I had my last exam for a while. Now I have some fun things planned, but more on that later!

Have a great week!
Janice

Promising when a post will go online during an exam-period is probably not such a good idea. Apologies for the delay!

Day two of our Stockholm-trip started off pretty late. We were all kind of hungover from the night before, haha! So we didn’t had that much planned, only doing the main shopping street Drottninggatan, and we’d see where we would end up after that

First stop was Beyond Retro, and what a store that is! It’s basically vintage-heaven. Whenever I’m in Stockholm, I always try and make a stop.

I’ve heard and read so much about it before I got here. I was so curious and my expectations were really high to be honest, but I didn’t get disappointed. This huge store has a lot of gems, so be sure not to skip this one when you’re planning your Stockholm-trip! I bought a couple of things during my several visits, which I will show you in another post of course.

Tutu’s <3

During the evening, while walking over the bridge to Gamla Stan, we saw the most beautiful sunset we’ve seen in a while. A stop had to be made to take tons of pictures of this beautiful piece of scenery.

We wanted to end our last evening in Stockholm with a fancy dinner and a visit to one of the many Irish Pub’s that are spread over Stockholm.

We went to a place called Slingerbulten. We’ve never heard or seen this place before, but the food was relatively cheap for us poor students, so we decided to give it a go. The food was very tasty as you can see on the picture above. I had the fried haring with weirdly cut potato’s and vegetables.

I tried to take pictures at the Irish Pub, but it was just way too dark. We’ve had a great time though. There was a band playing folk music. The pub was so crowded, you could barely see them play! Afterwards we stayed and talked for hours until the pub closed. All in all, a very good last evening in Stockholm!

As you all know (or not) last weekend I went with a couple of friends to Stockholm! We had such a great time in such a wonderful city, I didn’t really want to leave ha! It’s almost depressing knowing that this whole Erasmus-adventure will be over soon. But let’s not think about that right now and enjoy the time I have left here!

Apologies for not uploading this earlier, I had an exam yesterday, and couldn’t really find a spot in between to edit and upload the whole bunch (because I took a loooot of pictures, as promised). But anyway, here’s what we’ve been up to on our first day:

Our plan for the day was to visit the southern part of Stockholm with Gamla Stan and Södermalm. Above you can see the little park-esque thingy behind the City Hall. It’s so nice to sit there by the water and enjoy the Stockholm scenery. Due to all the island the city is made up of, there are a lot of similar places to just sit, relax and enjoy your surroundings (which we did a couple of times during our stay, luckily for us the weather was perfect for that!).

One thing I’ve noticed is the huge amount of Irish pubs in Stockholm. We went to one in Gamla Stan (which is the old part of the city).

We decided to have lunch there. I ordered the fish & chips and a good ol’ Irish Kilkenny.

After that we wandered the cosy streets of Gamla Stan. One thing I really love about Stockholm is the beautiful architecture and colorful buildings like these. Do you notice the old streetlamps? Just wonderful!

Sam met this little gnome on our way. True love <3

In Södermalm you have this bridge high above the ground, where you can have the nicest view over Stockholm. But be prepared to do a lót of stairs to get there!

After wandering around through the streets of Södermalm, we decided to have a fika-break at Muggen.

On our way back we made a stop at a vintage store, called Emmaus. They have some pretty nice gems over there, sometimes a little bit overpriced, though.

For dinner, we decided to go to Kungshallen, the biggest restaurant hall in Stockholm. It contains 15 different restaurants, so plenty to choose from! We decided to keep it simple and went for taco’s.

We ended the evening exploring the Stockholm clubbing scene, which was kind of disappointing tbh. Admittedly, we didn’t do a lot of research beforehand, so we basically just wandered around, looking for a club that wasn’t too expensive or didn’t have a guestlist. I guess we picked the more adult and expensive spot in Stockholm to go out. Ultimately we ended up in an outside tent/club-esque thingy which was ok. We ended up having a great time, but that was mostly because we had a very good preparty, haha!

All in all I can say that the first day of my fifth trip to Stockholm was wonderful. I booked this trip very spontaneously, and I’m so glad I did it! I had a blast and a lot of new memories were made here, which are adding up to the big pile I’ve collected over the last couple of months.

Part two and three of the trip are coming up, prob this weekend!

Enjoy the end of your week!
Janice

Hi guys!
So, it’s has been a while, huh? I finally got my laptop back last week. Long story about that laptop actually. But in a nutshell: my hard-drive broke, it was too expensive to get it fixed in Sweden, so I sent it back to Belgium so my parents could give it back to the shop I bought it and luckily, because I still had my warranty, I didn’t have to pay a single penny, yay!

So, a lot has happened the last month here in Sweden, I’ll give you a little recap:

I celebrated St. Patrick’s Day on campus! It was my first St. Patty’s party ever. I still don’t know what exactly we should celebrate on that day, but whatever, I had a great time. One of the best campus parties in my opinion!

Had a lot of Sunday afternoon tea/brunch parties. It’s always nice to just hang out with friends and catch up while eating pie and drink tea. Definitely a tradition I’ll try to keep up when I’m back in Belgium!

And we had snow IN APRIL! If you thought weather in your country was unpredictable, wait till you come to Sweden. They predicted snow again for this weekend!

My friend Aline paid me a visit! We first spent two days in Stockholm before heading to Karlstad. I was so glad to see her after several months. We had a great time here, I really wish she came back haha.

Two weeks ago I made a trip to St. Petersburg. The beautiful architecture is probably the thing that made me fell in love with the city. We only spent three days in St. Petersburg, which was way too short to see everything. I’m already making plans to go back on day, haha!
More on St. Petersburg in another post!

On our way to St. Petersburg we made a little stop in Helsinki. I was a little disappointed by the city to be honest. It felt so… small. But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t have a great time there! But more on that later as well.

Monday we celebrated Studenternas Valborg here in Karlstad (and probably in every Swedish student city). We just sat outside in a park, having a good time. Also the sun finally decided to pop out of the clouds! It was only for a few hours, but still!

And to give you an idea where I went every time I wanted to check my emails, or work on assignments for uni. It was such a pain in the ass to go to uni every single day of the week. You probably can imagine how happy I was when I got my laptop back. It does make you realize how dependent you are on this little notebook, or on the internet in general.

So, now I have to wrap everything up, because I’m leaving for Stockholm in an hour! It’s been my fifth time there already, so you can imagine my excitement to be reunited with one of my favorite cities I’ve been to. I’ll move to Stockholm one day, I just know it, haha!

I promise to make loads of pictures!

Talk to you soon!
Janice

Hi guys!

I want to let you know that I won´t be posting for a while. I´m currently writing this on a computer in the library, because mine broke down a couple of days ago. I don´t know when I will have it back or if it is even possible to get it fixed. But let´s stay positive and hope that I will get it back very soon!

Janice

Saturday was the Döda kändisar på Frödings(höjd)! – party at a friend’s place. We all dressed up as famous dead people and had a blast! John Lennon was there, as well as two Amy Winehouse’s and two Frida Kahlo’s. We even had a sick cult-leader running around, how fun is that! I wasn’t that inspired so I just went as Audrey Hepburn, ha!

I tried to make pictures of that evening, but it was so dark inside. Don’t get me wrong, I like the whole candlelight-atmosphere, but it’s not a very ideal place to shoot pictures.
I’ve never liked shooting with flash, it makes your pictures look very flat and it sucks all the liveliness out of it (or maybe I just don’t know how to use flash properly, ha!). So after a while I decided to hide the flash and use a higher ISO, which as some of you know, gives grainy pictures. But to be honest, I like these ones better than the ones I took with flash. After I put them in black and white, they suddenly got this dark and mysterious feel over them, which kind of suited the theme of the party that night!

Anyway, here’s the result:

I’m curious, how do you guys feel about using flash? And what do you do when you’re in a setting with almost no (natural) light?

Janice

Here’s another recap of the last couple of days. I’ll try and make it as logic and short as possible, but I can’t promise you anything, hah!

Last saturday there was another party at campus. But Swedes love to preparty, so that’s why I attended a dinner/preparty downtown first. There I was served a typical Swedish dish: Flygande Jacob. It’s a casserole with chicken, bananas, peanuts and bacon. My expectations were very low when I heard the weird mix of ingredients first, but I have to admit, it was quite alright. Not something I will try again in the future though.
Anyway, I never really made it to the actual party. Had a bit too much fun at the dinner, so when I came home to drop off some things, I fell asleep on my bed. Oops!

Thursday was fika-time! I met up with my friend from Belgium (who’s also here on Erasmus) to catch up. I tried my first Chai Latte, and I really didn’t like it!? I don’t really know why everyone’s raving about it, or maybe I still need to get used to the new flavour. But I don’t think I will try this again in the near future, hah!

Thursday I also went to my first ice hockey match ever! We went to the Löfbergs Lila Arena, where we watched the local team Färjestad play against AIK (which is Stockholm.. I think). And we won with 3-1, whooo!

I really enjoyed the game, and the sport in general. Too bad I discoverd it when the season’s almost over.
I like the fast pace and the sometimes very violent players on the field as well to be honest, haha! Seriously, soccer is child’s play compared to this.

Us girls right before the game

Yesterday, me and a bunch of other people were planning on going to a local studentrestaurant UNO. But when we got there, there wasn’t enough food left for all of us. This place is apparently much more popular than I thought. Anyway, we’re going to give it another shot next week, and I’ll make tons of pictures, because the place looks really nice, promise!
Instead we went to another restaurant which was fairly cheap. Pictures didn’t turn out that great, so I’ll just leave you with this nice little piece of scenery from the restaurant:

I’m not really sure what I’m up to tonight. There is a bar downtown, who’s closing soon, so now they’ll throw their last party ever. I’ve heard a lot of good things about this club, and I really want to go. The downside is that they have an age-limit of 23 on Saturday’s (like all the clubs here in Karlstad) which is a load of bullcrap. I mean, why 23? It’s such a random number! Maybe I’ll try and sneak in with older people I know. Or I’ll just throw my own party here with all the ‘underaged’ students who are left behind, we’ll see. But I’ll have a good time, no matter what, haha!

That’s it for now, hope you all have a great weekend as well!

Love,
Janice