London HQ - Ramsay Hall

With a couple of weeks under the belt, I was starting to get used to the lifestyle of Ramsay hall student living. Some new things were getting more familiar such as laundry, earplugs at night, an indoor swimming pool, biking London and the daily trips back and forth to KCL or UCL.

The lifestyle of college halls is somewhat different to what you get back home. Every weekday, I wake to the smell of a hot breakfast as hordes of drowsy uni students proceed to the dining hall at the latest possible moment to collect their rightful prize. The dining hall servery production line is the primary source of nourishment with your daily serving of bacon, eggs, beans and hash browns. While this might sound ideal and a dream come true for some, the novelty wears off rather quickly when you realize the bacon is normally a day or two old recycled from previous days leftovers and when the powdered scrambled eggs always take the prime time towards the end of the week when stocks are getting low. Luckily that is not all that is on offer to the residents of Ramsay hall.

A brief taste of Paris

I realized how lightly I had prepared for the trip: I knew there were a set of sites and museums I just had to see but I hadn't really paid attention to the finer details of your typical trip to another country. Without mobile Internet, I whipped out some offline maps on my phone that I had thoughtfully got before leaving home. With the help of GPS it was pretty easy to find my way to the hostel relying on nothing more than a photographic memory of the hostel's location on Google maps (this could have ended badly though with no backup plan had I recalled falsely). While I had intended on using the Paris rental bike scheme, Vélib, my credit card kept on getting declined so while maintaining my resolve to see the city from above ground and not from the dark tunnels of the metro, the long walk was the only choice.

Getting to Paris in a hurry

So after a solid night out from 11pm at Tutu's last night following the last exam of the year, following a solid 2 hours of sleep, I was remarkably lucky to have heard the life saving call of my 4th alarm notification as sleep tried to pull me away from the 6:22am Eurostar trip to Paris. I felt so inclined to check the time as the watch blared away again, luckily choosing not to doze back off one once again. The time read 5:55am which kicked me into gear as I realized that I had no more than 27 minutes till my Eurostar train would leave St Pancreas, hopefully with me on board.

New York, London

I was starting to get used to Heathrow by my fifth visit and found my way to the Heathrow express to Paddington. With a student fare I was in the city within 20 minutes and made my way to the underground. At the Euston square I was confronted with ever more stairs to haul my year stay suitcase up and down. I whipped out my little map and headed to Astor Hall which was just a 15 minute walk away. On the way I passed the main entrance of University College London (UCL) and what seemed like one of the older buildings, a red brick colossus with all sorts of turrets and 4 distinct wings. Immediately I was in awe of this old institution I would soon be involved in. It wasn't long before I was re-directed to my permanent halls being told that the document I had received regarding early check-in at this Astor wasn't happening. It was just around the corner so I was happy to be able to move straight into my permanent residence rather than having to move out of Astor in a couple of days.

Stockholm, Sigtuna and Skånes Djurpark

Arrival in the morning was perfect to get the most of my first day in the Swedish capital of Stockholm. Walking along Vasagatan, I was taken from the central station to the waterside and the water took me to Kungliga Operan (The Royal Opera) where I planned to meet Lena. I found the stage door and signed in, receiving my security pass as Lena arrived at the door. She took me to her office where I could drop my heavy luggage before we set on about a tour of the opera house. My first opportunity for amazement was when we slipped through a warren of doors, finding myself right in the middle of an orchestral rehearsal for Rigoletto. The music was exciting and very polished, getting ready for the opening night a couple of days later. We moved on towards the back stage area and then to the under-backstage area where we found interesting contraptions like trap door riser platforms, the heavy mechanisms to change the rake steepness of the stage and even the very low pistons to sink the whole stage down for scene changes.

Småland

Taking a thereputic train journey with my digital right hand reattached, I arrived in Nässjö and was met by dad's brother, Peter. We drove through the forest lined highways, passing the occasional elk sign. Eventually we came to the vast expanse of water by the name of Vättern, marking our arrival at Jönköping, Peter took me to the waterside of the lake, remarking about my time there as a young child, playing in the sand in the warmer months of the year. This sight was just minutes from the home of Owe and Ann Marie who greeted us at their door. It was a rather strange experience to walk into this place where I saw old photos from over a decade ago where Ann Marie is sitting beside their white upright piano and I am sitting with her, white-haired and small.