Välkommen

Last night was the official welcome from the city of Gothenburg for international students (Gothenburg has about 1,600 international students from its three universities), and it was magnificent. The reception, along with a cute little speech from the mayor, was held at City Hall, which was glorious. It was constructed in 1848 as a stock exchange building, as well as other governmental purposes, but you'd swear that it hosted royal matters at some point. Anyways, the welcome "wine and dine," as they called it, was lovely, and it was great to dress up and hang out with new friends in this beautiful place, being greeted with very open arms to our new home. My camera, like most of my electronics, dates back to high school, and doesn't do City Hall any justice, but just add quite a few degrees of splendor and grandiosity to these pictures:

After the reception, the Gothenburg International Students Association led a pub crawl through the city; all 487657865746 of us were divided into teams, and it became a drinking competition of sorts, with teams collecting receipts for different drinks at different bars (all the international students call them "pubs," which, okay, whatever, but we're not in the UK). It was a ton of fun, and also hilarious to watch hundreds of students descend upon these bars like locusts. The poor bartenders. Natsuko, Yuri, Jacqlyn and I were probably the least helpful team members ever, in terms of body type and experience, but hopefully we will improve by the end of the year:

Also, I have completely given up on beer here. Swedish beers are the cheapest at bars, around 32-37 kronor ($4-5), but they're just...disgusting. I am a firm believer in second chances, but they continue to disappoint, and I'm over it. It's watery and completely nonpotable. My new favorite drink is apple cider, which is sold in 50 cl bottles and is ridiculously delicious. Sure, it's girly, but whatever. So sue me.

the best

It tasted especially good after Jacqlyn asked for a dark beer and got this monstrosity:

Irish stout, or something? Whatever it was, it was no good. Next on our list are glassdrycker (I think that's what they're called?) at Kellys, which is a cocktail with a scoop of ice cream in it. 2010: the year of the girly drinks. I'm also simultaneously intrigued and repulsed by the idea of wine from a tap, which one of the bars had.

I also kept bumping into Americans and Americana last night. I met some guy named Nick from San Francisco, but in grey skinny jeans, white v-neck, fitted blazer, wing tip shoes, and gelled hair, I'm fairly certain he's lying. There's no way this dude isn't French. At Stars N' Bars (not kidding, this was the name of one of the bars), I bumped into Tori from AU (and APO). We didn't recognize each other at first, but she asked me to take a picture of her in front of a statue of Michael Jordan (with jersey #32...what?), and then eventually figured out we were both from the United States, American University, etc. AU: where degrees of separation implode upon themselves. More Americana:

Filed under: issues that are not germane to Swedish politics