The Most Epic Night In Europe

This weekend as you know from the Stockholm post that I published a few days ago, that we went to Stockholm, Sweden.  The trip was just Matt, Gabe, and myself, and we experienced the most epic series of events ever! If you have not read the Stockholm post click here first, as a basis for everything I am about to say. CLICK HERE!

Ok, so let me start from the beginning so that I don't miss anything (even the part where we woke up with 3 beautiful German girls in our hostel room).

Saturday morning we woke up to 3 beautiful German girls in our hostel room with us. (if you have ever stayed in a hostel you know this is like the ultimate). Normally you get smelly fat men or sometimes women from England who smell like alcohol, whose clothes smell like alcohol, and eventually YOU smell like alcohol. This is a perfect example:

Maybe them 30 years younger though.

After talking to the German girls we went to a cafe for breakfast. As it is only light in Sweden from 8:30/9:00am - 4:00/5:00pm, you have to utilize all of your time (we slept till 10:30)!! Also, let me mention how expensive food is in Sweden. The only thing we ate for 3 days, besides Gabe because he refused, was hotdogs from street vendors at 150 SEK each (1 euro or 657 dollars). However, because we got a discount for staying at the hostel, we had a full breakfast for 450 SEK!

So after breakfast we went to the changing to the guards at the Royal Palace. Where we got to see the army march like this for almost an hour! PS - this is actually my Youtube video!!

After that we explored the city squares and conducted the rest of our very touristy activities such as buying scarves to look more European! At 4:30pm it was dark, and to be honest we started running out of things to do for the rest of the evening, so we decided to go to the Stockholm Ice Bar. I of course was the idiot that when the man started handing me the parka for the bar. He promptly stated "No, you will want to keep that on. It is freezing in there!"

As we were walking in he stopped us one more time to ask us if we liked American Baseball.

I responded with a very quick "Of course!"

In which he responded in saying "Well, do you know Derek Jeter... (pronounce more like Gabe DeJong than Derek Jeter) He is in the bar right now." Obviously we gave him that stop messing with us, we don't believe you look, and he definitely knew it because he opened the door and his last words to us were "Go see for yourselves." If you don't know who Derek Jeter is, you should be ashamed of yourself, but even if you do, and mostly for the women reading this, here is another photo of Mr. Jeter;

Some say he is dreamy, others say he is an uglier me...

So of course being smarter than this guy we ordered our drinks and were just hanging out for a while until Gabe looked around the corner of one of the ice sculptures and literally gave us this look;

This is Gabe (not really, but this was Gabe)

All he did was follow this face up with "Derek Jeter is definitely over there!"

So as stupid American tourists would do, we instantly started walking towards good old Derek. Only to be stopped by a man that was his "Financial Consultant". We talked to him for a few minutes, and recognized that Derek was actually leaving the bar, so of course we said hello very quickly and got a nice wave back and out of site he disappeared. We finished our drinks and talked about how we really thought that was the coolest thing that had happened to us since we had been in Europe.

After the Ice Bar we had run out of money and went to an ATM. All weekend we had seen walls of posters like this one and Friday night we literally spent 30 minutes looking at all of these posters and wishing that one of the artists would be there when we were without any luck. HOWEVER when we were taking out money we had a moment of amazingness.

Wall of posters, my favorite one: Poetry Gang Bang (check my Facebook if you don't believe me.)

Dear Mom and Lucie: I want my beard to look like his!

Meet My Morning Jacket (look to the right). They are one of Gabe's favorite bands. There poster was directly above the ATM that we used. We were in such shock after meeting Derek Jeter that we knew this couldn't just be a coincidence, but rather we were meant to go to this show. Obviously we ripped the poster off the wall and started walking around trying to find where to go. We walked into a really cool bar we went to the night before and they pointed us in the right direction. Once we got to the venue we were surprised to see people already sitting outside and the doors didn't open for another 2 hours (bare in mind that Sweden is closer to the north pole than my middle name being Michael... maybe not that close, but it was cold!!) We discovered that the concert was more than just "sold out", but rather that people had flown from all over Europe to see MMJ's last show on their European tour.

We ended up making friends with a bus driver, and after us standing outside of the bus for an hour and a half (warming up at a local bar for a beer halfway through), he introduced us to their tour manager. After we talked to him and told him our story of being Americans, having him and Gabe call us crooks for being in business, and Gabe explaining that he was at the concert in Iowa City when Jim broke his leg, he told us we were in!!! It felt something like this... actually

After a celebratory beer we went to what ended up being potentially the greatest concert I have ever been to. The venue was at most 1,500 people (the reason why it was super sold out and not just sold out, the opening act The Head and the Heart was the best opening act I have ever seen at the concert, and we were second row the whole night!

Myself and Gabe before the concert started

The Head and the Heart performing

My Morning Jacket

Stockholm, Sweden is officially one of my favorite cities in Europe (Paris, France being the other one), and I must say that if you ever travel to Europe it should definitely be on your list!

Stockholm, Sweden

This weekend Gabe, Matt, and I went to Stockholm, Sweden. It was an absolutely awesome experience, and I really enjoyed myself. Stockholm was not only an amazing city, but the people of Sweden were really cool as well. These are some of the highlights of the trip (excluding one of the greatest nights of my life!! - it needs to be a post on its own, so be looking for that tomorrow as well!)

This is Gabe and Matt at the cafe we ate at the first night! The food was amazing (if you go to Sweden you MUST eat the meatballs with jam), but if you look closely you can see a lady in the background. She was super helpful in telling us where to go during the day, but also at night so that we could have an awesome experience, and an awesome experience is exactly what we had!

This is a picture during the changing of the guards that happens at The Royal Palace that happens in Stockholm. Right before these two men walked out the leader (who spoke the whole time so you knew what was going on) announce "The Swedish Army Band!". This was not the first wave... this was the whole band! On a side note though, the changing of the guards was actually a really cool thing to watch, and if you are in Stockholm you should go check it out!

     

This is a photo that I took at 13:14:10 (1:14 PM) in Stockholm. The fact that our shadows were so long because the sun was already starting to go down brought up a very interesting conversation between us. At one point Gabe made the statement of why do some of the best cities and civilizations call the worst parts of the world home (aka why can't Stockholm be by the Equator and have it nice and warm there!). Regardless I think I will enjoy the 18 hours of sunlight a day in the summer if I go back next semester!

The rest of the photos are just photos of buildings, parks, city squares, and then the three of us in our new scarves. Stockholm is an AMAZING city, and I would suggest to anyone in Europe, or ever traveling to Europe, to take the time and go visit it!

Central Station Stockholm.

Buildings and Train Yard.

Matt, Gabe, and I in our new scarves.

Building in downtown

A main square in downtown Stockholm.

Awesome park in downtown Stockholm.

Reflection of some buildings.

Getting To Know the People I Hang Out With

     So I haven't written on my blog for a while, because I recognized that I didn't even enjoy reading it that much and I was talking to my roommate Gabe (the one in purple. He is from Iowa) about it one day over a beer, and he just suggested continuing writting, but maybe switching it up to be something that I would want to read. 

So here goes nothing. This is my attempt to make this blog a little more interesting and enjoyable for you as my readers.

This is Gabe (my roomate from Iowa), myself, and Matt (one of my best friends from school).

 

      This is when we went hiking in the Gran Paradiso. I like this photo because it is a reflection of our relationship. We get along very well and have lots of fun together. This coming weekend we are finally all going to be able to go on a trip together for the weekend as just the three of us. We are going to Sweden together!

      Having lived with these guys for 3 months now, I am recognizing how fortunate I truly am to live with them. Sometimes I wonder who will cook me burgers when Matt leaves in December, and who will clean the apartment twice a week when Gabe leaves. This will be a problem that I have not solved yet!

     This is our kitchen, the guy in red in the front right is Cesare, our Italian roommate. He has been an amazing help to Matt, Gabe, and I. He always is patient with us trying to speak Italian (it always sucks) and enjoys hanging out with us all the time. All of these crazies is the normal group for an evening dinner at our apartment (don't tell anyone in USAC because apparently this is not supposed to happen). Matt, Gabe, Cesare, Enrico (Cesare's friend in Orange), and I are lucky to be able to hang out with some really cool girls (from left to right; Marina, Emily, Carson, Alexa, Cristina, and Samantha) that share the same ideas about this trip with us; yes going out and being 20-23ish is fun, but you can also enjoy yourself when surrounded by good company and a good plate of food in front of you.

     I am comfortable saying that I enjoy having what some would call a nontraditional study abroad experience; we don't go out and drink every night, but rather walk around a check out the city, have great conversation, and cook dinner together. Although everyone is different and some people enjoy different experiences, I like the one I am having here in Italy, and wouldn't trade it for any other experience.