First days in Stockholm

Arrived at long last, after what felt like such a bloody massive build up!

First views of the my uni – Konstfack – A W E! Its pretty damn Uber-cool. Will add pictures soon.

My room – small and cute and starting to feel like home. Surprisingly though, despite the very small size, there is a lot of empty space in here – I don’t exactly have many possessions here, so there’s quite of bit of blank space.

Couldn’t help myself with the Sheep skin!

My first wanderings of the city have encompassed the cool part of town – Södermalm (also known as SoFo)… where I found all the trendy kids, the Cheap Monday store (Weekday), and some cool design stores.

The old town – Gamla Stan. Not that interesting – lots of tourits, icecream places, and scandi touristy shops.

Östermalm – fancy part of town – and more city-like – lots of impressively large sqaures, lots of department stores, lots of H&M stores and a few Zara stores.

ZARA!!

Also excitingly happened upon a market with fruit (lots of berries!) and flowers.

And of course IKEA. I’ve never been so excited by IKEA, as I was when I went to the superstore and realised how crazily cheap it is!! My bedside table in my room costs 49SEK – about $8. yep. My lunch, on the other-hand, cost more. Go figure. I love things that cost $1. Especially when they are kitchen items. Though 50 cheap items, isn’t so good for the bank, or the arms when you have to carry them home on public transport. Worth it though!

Stockholm collection

My bags, post IKEA

In other news:

My feet are eternally sore.

The language barrier is proving to be a bit frustrating. I realise how little exposure (or I should say, none) to any Scandinavian languages, I’ve had. Unlike Italian (I vaguely understand when people talk), French (ditto), Greek (obvious), etc – Swedish…well, I have N O Clue. The pronunciation is hard. The words mean nothing to me. Is a P R O B L E M. Am working on it, but its a pretty daunting language.

Lots of people having babies here. Lots of blonde and beautiful young people with babies. Lots of dad, pushing prams. Prams everywhere.

Classes start in 3 days. eek and excitement. Looking forward to getting back into it. Wondering how hard it’ll be…?!

A weekend in Athens

So am back in Europe, 2 years later.

Left cold Melbourne to go to Athens for the weekend to break up the arduous journey – and it was a well planned detour, as I arrived on the friday and collapsed at my cousins apartment, and did not see the light of day til Sunday – having recovered from travel, aeroplane food (or lack of consumption of food because of the very fact that it was aeroplane food).

And spent Sunday in a blanket of euphoria/nostalgia for Athens… Happy times. I contemplated more than once, the idea of moving to live in Athens for a bit. So the short of the long is: I heart Athens.

Essentially spent the day in a repeat of my usual Day #1 in Athens – Monastiraki and Plaka wanderings.

Walked around the Sunday Flea market and lusted after the wonderful objects of yester-years.

Ate a gyros – the smell was too good – as was the price – 1.80euro. Shit yea!

And went home to lie on the couch and watch the glories of greek tv – amongst which I saw a greek soapie about a ‘cougar’ – a rich old woman who ‘bought’ this young guy out of the slums, but then this guy fell in love with a maid at a hotel they were staying at…. ended with the cougar/sex slave guy still together. yep.  ALso relived the glory of Baywatch. A m a z i n g!

And then it was sleep and prep for the 4am wake up call to catch the next plane.

La La Land

So am in LA staying with my old housies in the suburb or Silver Lake, living the LA life and absoluely loving it!

Been to some great places- food and drinks, and seen some famous sights and put a picture to some very famous places (Melrose -and not the road to the tulla- Beverly Hills, Sunset Blvd). Unfortunatly don’t have many photo’s to tie to these words….

Went out to the Getty in Brentwood which is spectacular- the views, the gardens, the building and the art, on top of a big hill, all white marble and modern architecture.

Went for drinks on the rooftop pool-bar at the Standard downtown… such an amazing place- drinking with a mid height view of the downtown LA high-rise’s….

Oh and had some great celebrity spottings- Orlando Bloom, Pamela A, and Sean Penn amongst the top ones!

Had a crazy and disastrous Mustang experience with Ari’s friend Arsi… this is us, very drunk the night after the expedition…

And then just some chillin with the gang here… like the great ‘family’ dinner that we had tonight…

So this week will be Venice Beach time and hanging in West Hollywood… and then i’m just days away from being home… bitter-sweet.

some food delights

Mission two accomplished in spectacular form…

My first (two) hotdogs from a great place and institution Gray’s Papaya… two ‘dogs’ and a fresh papaya juice! Worth every 3 dollars! Funilly ordered one hotdog, but the indian guy who served me gave me two because i was ‘beautiful’… when a compliment ends in free food, i’ll take it anyday!

And I made the pilgramage to the infamous Magnolia Bakery… Walked a very long way up Bleeker Street to find it but was well worth it… couldn’t decide on one though, so I just HAD to get two, right?!

NYC

So… although I find myself in LA at the moment, i’ll go back retrospectively…

For most of the month I was on the East coast I felt a bit like a hobo, carrying around my worldly possessions from friends house to friends house. I moved from Connecticut to NYC to NJ and back again, but had some fantastic times. Went to another exhibition opening and party with my friend Phoebe in Hartford, Connecticut…. It was an event called NoMad II and there was a great after party too where i had my first real experience of 16mm film and a portable projector which i was allowed to have a play with… brought out the film nerd in me!

Met up with some more friends from my Greece group and ate with them all… Burgers mmm… and lotsa cake!

Maria and me. And later, cakes with maria and phoebe.

Burgers. And Ali.

Spent a very chilled and fun time in NJ with aother friend Dimitri, and did the NJ to Manhattan commute for about a week and checked out the museums and hoods of NY.

Moma and sur-reality. And the Guggenheim

And just generally enjoyed my chances to explore the delights of NYC…

art and shopping = fun times

Spent a few days with my ol friend Phoebe… had some of my best times with her… She works at a gallery here in CT and has the high and mighty title of visual arts coordinator there (check out http://www.realartways.org/). Spent a day there with her, as they prepared for the nights exhibition opening and creative cocktail hour… not one to sit on my hands, i got right in there adn helped the artist with finish one of his works and spent the rest of the day picking paper out between the gaps of where the nails had been nailed into the wood- check it out (current exhib at the gallery). Was torturous works, but the work is actually really fantastic.

 

me hammering the nails into the mall for a piece that broke the bounds of the canvas…

 

Anyway, topped the night of with lots of g and t’s while chatting with peops at the opening and while listening to the “white rasta” dj…. was great!

you can actually see me on the web site in the photo’s bit from the event… http://www.realartways.org/events.htm … scroll down to first lot of photo’s and i’m in the first thumbnail!! Hilarious!

Then spent the next day shopping in Soho, NY! Bought some skinny leg jeans (i’m in love!) and a hoodie, while dreaming about the vintage designer courture with the $200 price tags…. Had lunch at a little cuban resaurant and sipped on mojito’s and then moved over to times square. Must say, didn’t have high expectations of times square… but wow, was i proved wrong! It is such an amazing place… loved it.

Didn’t take too many photos… but here is what i got:

streets of soho…

a city park in soho

phoebe and my nose in soho

and times square

a toys store with a ferris wheel in the store… where was this when i was a kid?

and

*$

Oh and starbuckerounies … unsurprisingly…. not great coffee! Ordered a plain ol latte and got watery milk. So my order now comprises of a “tall latte with a double shot of espresso”. I make better lattes at home and i ain’t got no coffee machine. Also expereinced the frappachino, which is good, but will try and make up one of those complicated orders, just cos i can…. sugar free flavoured syrup with triple shot of decaf etc etc….!

… is that capachino froth i see….? where’s my crema!

the fat on food in A

So i know what we all hear back in oz about the fat and fast food of America, and i’d like to report back on what i have found….

I begin with a little story to illustrate this.

Wallmart (see pic below)

Apart from spending half an hour in the lolly section, i did venture over to the rest of the food section to buy some “healthy food”. In general i noticed how many more options there are here for the same product which translates to many more options for different versions of crap… so many more lollies and chos, so many more chips, so many more packaged foods. Anyway, thats beside the point in my little story. I bought veggies, i bought a drak rye 12 grain loaf of bread and i bought a multi-fruit, multi-vitamin juice. Ok. And onl one choc bar, so i thought i was doing well. Went home, and made a sanga, and what do i find… the bread is sweet (ingerdients list literally go… flour, water, sugar…) and the juice tastes like lolly-water.

So why do we ask are people so overweight and unhealthy in the States? mmm, well, beacuse literally everything here has sugar…. nothing is a normal and healthy food option.

Candy attack

Ok, so have been doing my bit and tasting all the ‘candy’ that I can get my lil fingers on…. so far the taste test has included… starting from the best and then in random order…

drum roll please… the “Butterfinger”… joy in a bar! Its this penut crunchy brittle stuff coated in chocolate… mmm

And the rest….

a black and white cookie (!) has been in my head since Sinfield

And my mecca at Times Square….

The land of the free

So i do find myself in the US of A… after being fingerprinted and mugg shot taken during the customs process i was released into NYC… Caught the bus into grand central station and only got a glipse of the skyline, but wow, what a place it is… there is just an energy on the streets… Stayed a night in le city and stayed at a friends place, and had dinner out, before sleeping and catching a train straight up to sticks-ville Connecticut to catch up with some old friends….

So i find myself just off campus at UCONN- University of Connecticut, staying at a friends apartment, which is a 20min walk through bushland to get to campus… see below… The UCONN campus is actually really nice, but because there is really nothing else there, it can seem pretty isolated. Connecticut in general is really leafy green, with forests everywhere…

The campus below… (think latrobe style)

So college life at an American Uni is exactly as i and most of us imagine it to be… have spent many a night drinking beer and watching baseball and/or American football- i include the and because two TV’s had been brought into the one room, to have two games broadcast simultaneously! Yes, i am serious. Oh and if you didn’t guess am staying with boys here.

Slowing finding all my old gang from the study abroad program in greece, and its nice catching up with them….lots more of that to come.

There will be plenty of NY shots to some… am heading back there soon- maybe next week to hang out in Soho and check out MoMA amongst other things which include lots of bagel eating and ofcourse, my manditory hotdog!