Borås to Göteborg
Went to a concert on Thursday night in Borås last week. Probably not my kind of music but it was interesting! The next day we went to Göteborg which was pretty cool. Nice city, there’s no underground transport so they have trams everywhere. And apparently you can travel by boat to Denmark from here.
Svensk Studerar, Bicycling, International English and Kultur Studerar
Today was a beautiful day in Borås. Shining sun and all that. I’m staying in a hostel at the moment with about 12 other ERASMUS EILC students. Fantastic hostel called Vila Vandrarhem on Lilla Brogatan (Little bridge street). Large mix of students on the course, mostly German, with some Hungarian, Estonian, Spanish, Portugese, French, Turkish, Czech Republican, Slovakian (apologies to anyone I may have missed) and British (just me).
Started learning Swedish on Tuesday, through a very interesting approach. We are basically talked at and asked to respond and you are forced to remember it otherwise you look stupid when you can’t answer it! However this approach works for me. I am slowly gripping cardinal and ordinal numbers, days of the week, my (sort of) personal number (Nittio, NullSex, Sexton) and dealing with names and food and even tenses which strikes me as incredible progress for 2 days work.
As for International English, without being arrogant as such, Great British English is not the governing body of the language. International English is the language that Europeans speak when they speak to each other. It is standard and they can all understand each other but I have converted to speaking as such to be understood. Most colloquialisms that I use in UK English are dropped and it seems quite strange because my vocal tones and dialect seem to completely change.
Cultural Studies I had exceedingly low expectations for… however my expectations were exceeded. It was a very interesting class which lead us to learn about how to understand culture and individualism.
Video posted above, just a short day of Borås. Enjoy.
Från Poole Till Borås
Hello Sweden
Spent the night in Heathrow Airport at the Hilton, having got an excellent deal having paid only £50 for the room, (always try lastminute.com’s Top Secret Hotels), the price including access to the swimming pool and gym! I was also chatting to the concierge, who gave me a meal voucher for a free buffet so it went pretty well.
05:30 I set off to Terminal 5 on the free shuttle (another benefit), and dragged a thousand tonnes of bags up the lift. I confused the check-in staff by willingly aware I was going to pay the oversize and overweight baggage charge. I got a huge suitcase and a bicycle checked in for £50. The suitcase was the £50 – £25 for overweight and £25 for oversize. The bicycle was free.
So I got on the plane, all fine bar one major bolt of turbulence which got the crew strapped in pretty fast and arrived at Stockholm Arlanda. Caught the express to Stockholm (bought ticket on www.sj.se months ago) and now on the X2000 to Malmö. The scenery is beautiful. And the train is very very fast.
Will be arriving at my destination in approximately 6-7 hours, most of which I will probably be watching the trees!
£32 away from target and 2 weeks to go
I am leaving on the 31st for Heathrow and staying there the night, which is in two weeks time. When I came back to Poole, from Uni, I set myself a target of £2000 to save for Sweden. £600 of this I had already saved. Through lots of ebaying and working at the shop, I am now £32 away from my target. And I just listed a laptop, granted it is heavily used but it’s still a good laptop hopefully to make another £100.
And I need to keep £6 for Harry Potter on friday.
My New Flat.
Have now got myself a 42m2 flat in Sundsvall. Rather pleased with myself, it has a bathroom, kitchen, balcony(!) and a bedroom. It also has room for guests. The plan now is to rent furniture so I have something to sleep on. Furniture rental was initially concerning me with the whole needing to have a bed to sleep on when arriving but not having any furniture initially complex. Turns out they will furnish the apartment prior to my arrival for a fee after I send them a list of what I wish them to furnish the apartment with.
On another note, I need to be Grenoble on the 19th so am flying to Geneva to sort this out. Found a cheap flight with SAS, but due to an error in their credit card form, I had to exit the booking and start again. They put the price up by £30 in the two minutes that it had taken me to find they’d screwed up. On a technical note, I’m hoping that the system had held that session open for me at that price while I was booking that ticket and that it will expire and allow me to rebook at the normal price tomorrow.
So I was saying about accommodation..
In the previous post I mentioned the lack of email replies about accommodation for the language course. Well, I just got one. The description of the course states you can use the university accommodation booking service, it also says you can not book until the accommodation guide has been sent to you.
I just received an email saying that they do not provide accommodation and that I must find hostel/hotel accommodation, which has to be a hostel for money reasons. Sadly, because of their delay in replying to my email, there are no consecutive 23 day bed lets available.
If you do decide to do an EILC, do NOT be afraid to contact the institution to clarify everything with 2 months notice. Also do not be afraid to keep emailing if they don’t reply. They are getting money for this and you are gambling your entire summer/year’s plans and travel arrangement costs on this!
Managed to find 13 days accommodation so far, another 10 to find and a connecting train to Sundsvall.
Post and the stresses of accommodation
Got a package from the Swedish uni with a letter of confirmation, a big booklet for international students, my letter of confirmation and a tourism brochure. The place looks pretty nice. It also detailled how to get accommodation, which I have submitted an application to book. I may have gone overboard on sizing, I chose a 60m2 flat. For myself. That’s huge. My house is 72m2 total. So I will expect guests. The pricing is considerably cheaper than what I’m paying in London, so I decided to pay the extra and go for larger accommodation to myself with a kitchen, bathroom etc. I’ve done the whole halls of residence thing and I’m not prepared to repeat it. I’m working my backside off so I can live comfortably so I’m going to!
The only thing is that I still don’t know where I’m living in the language course uni. They are not being particularly proactive in informing us of how to get accommodation and I am not grateful for their lack of email replies so I’ll probably carry on harassing them some more right now.
Until next time.
06.24.09Communication and Work
I work in a supermarket, and may have previously mentioned this. Currently working as many hours as I can get to build up the savings fund, which isn’t going too badly, worked 9 shifts and up to £330.
Also decided for sure that I want to spend a year in Sweden. It’s better for the language aspect and the whole getting into the culture thing. I can finish learning German later or during. Just received an email today about the courses actually which is progress.
One gripe, everything works so slowly and last minute. If you are reading this in anticipation of taking part in an erasmus exchange, you (and I) just need to accept that this is the way it is. It drives me mad waiting to hear about accommodation still and certainly you will not know whether you’re accepted onto a language course if you choose to do one until less than two months right down until 6 weeks before which makes it difficult to plan your summer!
I decided that I didn’t want a social life this summer and so I’m working full time at work and on ebay trying to scrape together as much cash as I can to save up because as tiring as it can be, I’m certain it will be worth it in the end.
On another note, I blew my tyre valve up on my bicycle trying to inflate it this morning before work and had to but a new one for a fiver. Turns out they are quite easy to fix.
Until next time.
06.16.09And the Swedish wheels are rolling
Recently I applied for a place at two EILC’s (european intensive language course) in Gothenburg and Boras. I got accepted to Boras which starts on the 3rd August and I am most pleased as I have been able to arrange everything else..
So I’ve now booked a flight to Sweden. And a hotel at the airport. Now for anyone reading this that is interested in doing a study exchange, you might be interested in thinking about these factors when considering a flight:
If, like me you wish to take a bicycle with you, you may have to pay an extra fare depending on who you travel with as well as paying for additional baggage. You need to be very careful about choosing which airline to go with. This is hard to explain so I’ll use examples:
Ryanair offer the cheapest flights. But you get a baggage allowance of a pathetic 15kg. And to take a bicycle/extra bag is £25/£35.
British airways flights cost more. But you get a decent 23kg baggage allowance. And the bicycle is free.
Ryanair charge about £15 per kilo extra. So a ryanair flight of originally £60, would cost me £215 which includes a bicycle and the extra weight.
With british airways, it cost me no extra for a bicycle and the flight was £114, which includes the carbon emissions which I chose to offset.
Okay, because I need to be in Sweden at a decent time, my flight leaves at 7:30am, argh, which means I need to be there at about 5:30. So we need a hotel. Lastminute.com is fantastic for this because I wanted something decent and close to the hotel, which you can find but at great expense. So using lastminute.com’s top secret hotels, I found a “Prestigious hotel with pool at Heathrow Airport – 4*“. The deal is, you get a reduced rate at a nice hotel and they only tell you which hotel it is after you’ve booked it. Basic location details and hotel information is provided on the website, but if you put this information into google, you’ll probably work it out like me. I worked out that this is the Hilton Heathrow and booked the room for £50. So for about £160ish, I have a good flight and hotel booked. My budget for travel is £200 and Swedish transfer trains should be between £20-40 so it should be alright.
