[SWEDEN] I'm in Lund!

So how is it being in Lund?

From a geographical standpoint, most people think Stockholm when they hear about Sweden. And if not Stockholm, then maybe Gothenburg. In fact, I myself didn’t know about Lund until I was told I would be going here. And with me being here just a few days so far, I don’t really know that much more about it than the average person. In any case, let me take a crack at trying to tell you what Lund is like.

Lund is a city in the Southern part of Sweden. It’s more than 200 km away from Gothenburg and more than 600 km away from Stockholm. So for my friends who have said “hey, I know this person in Stockholm” to me before, I’ll let you know when I am ready to take that 600+ km trip to Stockholm (which I surely plan to do at some point over the next few months). Lund is actually closer to Copenhagen in Denmark. That’s why I flew to Copenhagen on my way to Lund. It’s also right next to Malmo, Sweden’s 3rd largest city.

One nice thing about this city is that you will find Lund University here. This means that there are a lot of relatively inexpensive places to eat here. Last night, I had a decent pizza meal with softdrinks for 55 KR (Kroner, the currency in Sweden), which translates to about P385 or under $8 (or about €6). I say relatively inexpensive because when I was in Brussels, a meal like that would probably have cost me €10. The variety of food is pretty good as well. So far, aside from the pizza, I’ve had a chicken pesto wrap and lasagna (both of which were actually about twice as expensive as the pizza). I’ve also eaten in Burger King (twice) and Subway. What’s missing here is Starbucks (so far I haven’t seen any) but there’s seems to be a local version of it – Espresso House. I had coffee and cake there yesterday (not sure exactly what cake it was, I just pointed at it and said I wanted to order it hehehe). The cake was okay, but the coffee was excellent. The ambience is just a notch or so short of being artsy fartsy which makes it quite interesting and cozy.

The other thing about being a university town is that there are a lot of young people around, so the feel of the city is vibrant and young and energetic. That kind of atmosphere certainly does help when you are alone in a cold country where you get sunlight between 830am and 430pm only. (For my friends who thought that I will be in that part of Sweden where you don’t get daylight at all, well, that’s way up in the North so I don’t have to deal with that, thankfully.)

Another nice thing about being in Sweden is that English is spoken by practically everyone here. So far I haven’t had any difficulty going around. In fact, yesterday, I got a couple of people to help me figure out how to go to the Malmo central station (I had to go there to visit the office – I’m a consultant here in Lund so I’m located in a customer site). Anyway, I haven’t had the chance to learn any Swedish words yet, but I will try to pick up at least 'Thank you', 'Excuse me', and some other common phrases ust so that I get to feel more like I live here. I also get a lot of English shows and movies on TV (am still in a hotel so I don't know what my set up will be once I move to my own 'permanent' housing here) which is great for me since anyone who knows me knows how much I love my TV. :-)

There are a few things to see here as well, but since I haven’t seen them yet, I’ll hold off on blogging about them until I do (and I’ll post some pictures as well). In the meantime, let me log off and head off to Espresso house again for my late afternoon coffee and snack. (I should check if they have wireless internet there too!) And click here for a link to the wikipedia entry of Lund in case you wanna read more about it. (There's a map here as well for you to sort of see where I am).