Since Finland is really just Eastern Sweden (just kidding...), it's been really easy to travel back and forth. So easy, in fact, that you might not have to show your passport to anyone -- not even at the check-in counter (if you use the electronic kiosks) or at security.
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| Ekeby |
Passport commentary aside, I was happy and excited to take another trip to Sweden a couple of weeks ago because this time, I returned to Uppsala, where I lived as an exchange student for six months. It was very surreal to be there again. Mostly, Uppsala was the same way I left it four years ago -- a small, but beautiful city, dominated by the Cathedral, castle and university. There were some unexpected changes -- the train station received a complete overhaul and now has several tracks and escalators! And, there are lots of new shops in the city center and new apartment buildings near where I used to live. But, so much of the city remained the same. I walked around all day, feeling nostalgic and reliving all of the good memories -- attempting to learn Swedish, coping with sharing a kitchen with 12 people, adapting to the extreme winter with long hours of darkness and extreme summer with long hours of daylight, navigating the grocery stores and laughing at foiled attempts to buy milk, visiting the Systembolaget, having fikas, experimenting with baked goods, learning from language foibles and being lost in translation, celebrating birthdays, national days and everything in between, meeting wonderful people and making lifelong friends. Uppsala will always be a special place and I'm looking forward to returning in 2016 for a ten year reunion!
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| 2006 |
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| 2010 |
Wow... Still beautiful!
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