Living in a tiny town has its advantages, everyone is really nice and everything is within walking distance-no lie, but also has its disadvantages. We practice Mon, Tues, Thurs and Fri, and all at 530 or 630pm. So before that, we have all day to do what we want, which is pretty much go to the gym and eat at the restaurant we get meals at. The girls on the team are either in school, at work, or don’t live in Tierp, so Carson and I are pretty much on our own. Which is fine.
Soo since we don’t have practice on wednesday, we decided to visit another (bigger) town via the train. First of all, just want to say that this train goes 200mph. Seems a lot faster when I watch it go by when I’m not on it. Thought that was crazy. Anyways, the town we visited is called Uppsala and it’s 30 mins south of Tierp, towards Stockholm. We got our train pass from the manager who helped us with it and were on our way after working out in the morning. We researched and asked people what to do in Uppsala so we had ideas of what we wanted to see and eat, since we are foreigners doing this alone.
The first thing we saw was the Cathedral, which just so happens to be the oldest church in all of Scandinavia.Built in the 13th century! It’s massive. 389ft tall and so beautiful. The details inside that church I can’t even explain, but I’ll try. Everything was marble or some shade of gold. The stained glass windows were like 100 ft tall and so pretty. There were so many rows leading up to where the preacher (idk the correct person to say here because I am a slacker on going to church) speaks and behind the preacher was of course a huge stained glass window and a large cross that was equally as beautiful. There were a lot of dead important people buried in that church, but I don’t know who because I obviously don’t speak Swedish. But the tombs were hugeee and had all these decorations. There were also tombs in the ground which you could, at one point, open with large circular pull type things. I def tried pulling them open and tripped over a few. I shall add pics once I figure that out. I lit candles for 2 close people in my life who have passed away.
The second place we went was the museum of the city. You pay like 40 kronor for a tour but we didn’t end up doing that because of time and decided to do that on another trip there.
After that we went to the Carolina Rediviva. Its the oldest and largest university library in the country. Its really big too. Built in the 1800s I believe. The cool thing about that is apparently it has like 5 million books in it (swedish museum lady told us that) and also has a silver bible. Thats a 4th century bible translated from greek to gothic about the 4 gospels i think. Crazy old. There were other reallyyy old books and writings by famous swedes on display too. Weren’t supposed to take pics but didn’t notice that sign until I was leaving the area. Teheee.
The next huge thing we saw was the Uppsala castle (slott). First of all, let me just get it out there that this castle is pink. So intimidating, I know. Don’t mean to hate on it but it was funny. Also, it doesn’t look like the typical castle you have in your mind. It was closed for tours but we were still able to walk around the outside. It had an area where you could tell it was def from the way back days and we wanted to explore that but you couldn’t. It was like partly underground and so cool looking, I think like tunnels and such. Sucks we couldn’t go down there, but it was kinda creepy too.
After all that we had lunch at this terrace place. I got a veggie burger ( I know, huge step for me) and baked tortilla chips with guac. It was awesomeeee. And some coffee to warm me up. We thought the menu said everything was priced from 11-17 kronor but learned at the end that that wasn’t the case. I paid 188 kronor for that burger. Sounds like soooo much! Throws me off the money differences here. I feel like I’m spending all my money in one sitting. 188 kronor amounts to around $29 US dollars, so it was a pretty pricey meal. Didn’t realize.
After that we walked around the city for a little, taking pics of the river in the middle of the city that has buildings/apartments on either side. Loved that part. Thennn, we had to find Swedish chocolate while we were in a bigger city than Tierp. Sadly, well not really sad, but the shop we found didn’t have swedish chocolate. It was from Italy, Belgium and Germany- not a complaint about it. 6 pieces of amazing chocolate cost me 66 kronor- gunna have to get used to everything sounding so expensive and things actually being more expensive than I’m used to and live it up while I’m here. We already ate all that chocholate. Lasted us about an hour after we got home. But anyways, we managed to catch the train home like 2 minutes before it left and it was packed because we left the city at 445 pm. Got home and went straight to the couch for the rest of the night. It was a fun day and really good (no offense Tierp) to get out of the small town. DIdn’t realize how much walking tires you out and works out your booty meat.
Fun little fact: Uppsala, and I’m sure a lot of European cities, don’t have public bathrooms. It cost 5 kronor to go to the bathroom in Uppsala and just my luck, the bathroom I walked up to had 10kronor in the change part just sitting there, so I got to go for free my first time!
I think everyone in Sweden has a bike. Every where you look there is a bike. I love bike riding so thats fine with me! I think we are getting some while we live here, which is cool.
Another fun thing we learned today: you can buy the right converters to charge your stuff but that doesn’t mean your appliances match their voltage or whatever. Turned on my blow dryer and it was awesome at first, most of my hair was dry in about a minute, then I realized it looked like it was about to catch on fire on the inside, so had to turn that off asappp. My straightener works fine though thankfully.
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