Uppsala!

Uppsala, my new home for the next year and after a week and a half it's looking like it's going to be a damn good year. Following a rather late night with the World Uni celebrations the 5am start last Sunday proved reasonably challenging for Matt and I. We managed to drag ourselves onto the tram, followed by the train, followed by the bus and finally the plane after some well-deserved McDonalds.

This is the first year that I haven't been doing the same trip as above except the plane ride is a casual 35-40 hours as I attempt to get home post races for uni/work. Such a luxury to sit on the plane and nod off for 2 hours before touching down at Alranda (Stockholm airport). My biggest complaint is I ended up with a really sore neck after lolling my head back and forth when I fell asleep. I always find it hugely amusing watching people try to sleep upright, hopefully I provided the guy next to me with some good in-flight entertainment.

Kate was waiting for Rassmus and I at the flat and my new bed was even made for me! Having a good friend here in Uppsala has made all the difference. Kate and Rassmus had already sourced me a bed, a desk and curtains and lights. Some weird Swedish thing means that everyone brings their own curtains and lights to the flats, not just bedside lamp but the lights in the roof otherwise it's just a bare plug with a hook, funny Swedes.

My first week was spent doing not a whole lot. After 3 months of on the go travelling/racing I am fairly knackered. I tend to be a bit of a nana and like my routine so I seem to find it doubly tiring when things are changing every day. My achievements of the first week were I unpacked, did a ton of washing, slept in every day, didn't go for a single run, walked 10k to get my permit ID card cause I was too scared to bike on the right side of the road, found the clubhouse and listened to a great speech from Annika about her WOC gold medal race (I understood nothing, it was all in swedish), baked a cake and found the supermarket. Good week.

Rassmus was away for my first Swedish weekend for more races so Kate and I had the best girly weekend possible. Friday night I met her in town; before she got there I managed to find some live music and a cheerleading performance, busy Uppsala! We wandered the streets exploring, Uppsala has a beautiful old church, some cool viking ruins, a pink castle and fairly impressive botanical gardens. We got burgers and beer followed by fika (Swedish for cake and coffee, very popular pastime, loving this place already) then biked home. Saturday morning dawned early for an exploring/shopping (mostly shopping) day in Stockholm. A 40minute train ride and we were in the centre of town, it certainly didn't disappoint. We perused the shops for a good few hours before heading to Gamla Stan (old town) to look around the beautiful old cobbled streets. It feels like such a luxury not having to try and see and do everything all at once with Stockholm being so close. I already have a list of all the things I want to see and do before winter really sets in. We ended the day with fika before hitting the train station at 9pm and dinner at Max which is a Swedish takeaway burger place, kind of a mix of Burger King and Burger Wisconsin. Damn tasty after a day on our feet!

Sunday was a good day. IKEA.
To summarise we spent almost the whole day there, poor Matt and Jakob were very patient while I dithered over duvet covers and Kate over plants. It really is one of those places where you end up buying all this stuff you never knew you needed!
The food was good too, I had the traditional Swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes, peas and lingonberry jam. Probably the one place in Sweden where the food doesn't cost a fortune, so if anyone comes for a visit I'll probably be suggesting Ikea for a meal out.

My room now feels like my own, properly "Gretified" and the apartment is starting to feel more and more like home away from home. I've spent the last few days getting myself a part time job babysitting, doing fun jobs like getting phone and bus cards and being the housemaid while Kate is at work.

Writing this now sitting at Arlanda airport again. After a rather horrifically early morning I managed to navigate myself to the airport for a flight to Oslo. Todays activities are a train ride to Bergen, meant to be absolutely spectacular, followed by an evening/day tomorrow exploring. Then it's off to Stavanger to catch up with Matty and Van. Van's Mum arrives mid week and we head up to Tromso to do some adventuring and fingers crossed for some northern lights!!

Olomouc and World Uni Champs

My final weeks prior to my arrival in Sverige were spent in Olomouc, Czech Republic managing the NZ team for the World University Orienteering Champs. It was my first time in Czech Republic and as the taxi driver said "good to see the real Czech" rather than just beautiful but touristy Prague.

Fun facts about Olomouc and World Uni's:

Olomouc (said Olomoutz) is about a 2 hour train ride south east of Prague and reasonably devoid of tourists which was a bit of a relief post Zermatt, Prague and Vienna. It has a couple of lovely squares, one of which became an NZ favourite courtesy of the amazing gelato place on the corner.
People seem to like ice hockey, judging from the way they were all flocking to the stadium in team scarves in the 29 degree heat; we were in town for gelato.
The Czech language is damn hard, by the end of the first week I'd finally mastered how to say thank you but that's as far as I managed to get!
There is no air con on any of the public transport, making for some relatively uncomfortable rides, particularly with a bus load of smelly orienteers on the way back from training.
You're lucky to find anyone over 30 that speaks english. Every day we would head out on a bus for the organised training accompanied by one of the organisers and a younger person from the club to act as translator for us. Whenever we weren't lucky enough to be accompanied by them some seriously good charades would take place to get things solved. Whether it was to find out what was on the menu at the local restaurant or to try and get a constantly ringing phone unplugged in the room above us at the Uni accommodation; each experience would usually involve google translate or a phone call to someone who spoke english and could understand "no we don't want to change rooms, we just want to unplug the phone!"
They have crazy thunderstorms at this time of year. I thought the ones in the Italian mountains were good but they had nothing on the lightening strikes just outside the window in Olomouc. First time I've actually been a tad concerned in a storm.
They have very sneaky cats everywhere. One of them managed to get itself stuck between the 2 locked doors in the entry way and made its presence well and truly known at 3am when it wanted to go out. Another one somehow managed to find its way into Celia and my room the next night at 4am, luckily for me she was game to chuck it out the window (we were on the first floor, not that cruel).
They have a funny system for people that get picked up drunk. One of the Latvian runners got himself into such a drunken stupor at the end of the week party that Tessa and Tori (doctor and nurse from NZ and Canada) weren't game to leave him with his teammates as he was completely unresponsive and they were all drunk. After calling the police and ambulance and with the help of one of our lovely translators (one of the organisers, poor girl had her night just about ruined by it) we were told that if he regained a little bit of consciousness then rather than being taken to the normal hospital he would be taken to the equivalent of a psych ward for alcoholics; tad extreme! All ended well and pleased to say no Kiwi's ever got close to that state.

The two weeks were great, we were in the university accommodation for the entire time and gradually joined by all the teams. The NZ team had some really good races, best place was Laura's 11th in the sprint. The party was also great and thanks to some interesting choices for the NZ party uniform I'm now the proud owner of some crazy cat tights and a baseball top, the start of my Swedish dress up chest!

Prague

Having heard multiple people raving about the beauty of Prague I can happily say it delivered! With this being the back end of my trip I had done relatively little research into what there was to see and do. Rach was in pretty much the same boat so we happily set out on our first evening with guide Laura in tow to discover what all they hype was about.

Unfortunately for us this time of year seems to be plagued by reasonably frequent thunder storms. The humidity during the day slowly builds until it reaches its peak and drops a ton of water on unsuspecting travellers like us. Luckily we were close enough to town to duck into a restaurant and it seemed the perfect time to try out some Czech cuisine. According to Laura, who has been here a couple of times for past competitions, the staple is potatoes. Given my lack of self restraint for the entire trip so far, my increasingly tight pants were not hugely impressed by this. Luckily for us they do actually eat foods other than potatoes and a delicious traditional goulash in a bread bowl, accompanied by the obligatory dirt cheap beer kept us out of the rain.

A nice early start the following morning meant we missed the hordes of tourists and Prague did not disappoint. The cobbled pavements led us to the Powder Gate (not really a gate, more an arch which I managed to convince Tessa is named due to the locals throwing black powder on it. Not entirely sure how I got her hook, line and sinker); followed by the town square with the astronomical clock and down to the Charles Bridge. We made sure to rub the 'lucky' gold statues before continuing on our way towards the Prague Castle sitting majestically on the hillside.

The Castle is very impressive perched up above Prague. One of the more well known buildings, the St Vitus Cathedral, is within its walls along with multiple museums detailing Prague's history. We wandered around the museums and cathedral. I got a bit snap happy and ended up with abut 50 photos of the stained glass windows, none of which really do them justice. Ever the rebel I managed to get a couple of shots of areas where you had to have a photo license to be allowed to take pictures. A tad too much information in the museums meant we were frequently looking for the way out before discovering there was yet another room to get through first.

A wander around the Jewish quarter with the 'new synagogue' and 'old-new synagogue' (inventive names much?) led us back to the hostel to meet up with Jourdan and Celia. Out the door again we headed to the compulsory stop in Prague, the Beer Garden! A delightful evening ensued where we each consumed about 1.5L of beer and tried to guess what types of dogs were wandering around while their owners got sloshed. The cutest was what we thought was a pit bull/sausage dog cross, the beer may have enhanced our guesses at some stage along the way.

The following morning Rach had an early start (4.30am!!!) to head back to NZ. Laura, Celia, Jourdan and I wandered around for the day, finding some sort of festival with a band playing. We treated ourselves to a rather delicious meal for Celia's birthday. Celia decided to be brave and attempt the dish of "1/2 duck", literally a duck chopped in half, apparently a delicacy here!

With the arrival of Tessa that night, Jourdan, Celia, Tessa and I decided to splash out on a tour to Kutna Hora, a UNESCO World Heritage site about an hour east of Prague. It was a great day with the discovery of Czech public railways which have no air con, limited seating and maximum number of travellers. That combined with our hottest day yet took us out to the Bone Chapel which was a tad creepy. Prague has some pretty brutal history in terms of battles and loss of life due to the plague. As a result they had a ton of dead bodies in a graveyard that they claimed could degrade the dead (bones included) in 3 days. This lovely fable meant they had hordes of dying people flocking to the graveyard and literally waiting to die as supposedly the faster the body degradation, the more likely you were to end up in a good spot in heaven. What better way to solve this situation than to dig up the bones of long dead people and use them as decorations!!

This was followed by the slightly more normal Kutna Hora church which is a beautiful sight. The area used to have a lot of mining, originally for silver which meant they were fairly rich and powerful. Later during the communist regime (1949 - 1989) they mined zinc; now it has all been closed down and the place is left as a bit of a ghost town. Interesting day and quite good to get a bit more history which I wouldn't have known about otherwise. The train ride back we mistakenly picked the carriage for women with children (this was after an hour wait on the platform due to what we would eventually realise is the standard Czech delay) and I ended up standing after a few too many kiddies got on. It was actually one of the better options in the end as I managed to loll my head out into the breeze and see a bit of Czech countryside.

The thing I've noticed most while being here are the contrasting areas and the ton of what looks like wheat crops. Field after field have either just been milled or waiting their turn. A lot of the areas still look pretty communist inspired with big concrete apartments and housing squished in together. The main astronomical clock in both Prague and Olomouc (where World Uni's is based) used to have historical religious figurines which move around on each hour. During the communist regime these were all replaced with communist figures or people that the general population should supposedly aspire to replicate. I find it interesting that in both places they've chosen to keep them as is, I guess the communism is all part of their history.

Next up for me is 2 weeks in Olomouc playing Manager for the NZ team for the World University Champs. Should be a good couple of weeks then finally on to Sweden!!