Sweden for Christmas!

As an assistant, we are given a 2 week vacation for Christmas and New Year's. During this holiday, my best friends from my university in the US came over to Europe! We have 2 friends currently studying in Uppsala, so we all stayed with them during the holidays. From Sweden we traveled to Estonia, Belgium, and finally Latvia. We celebrated New Year's in Riga, Latvia.

This was a very rude awakening to what the weather would be like the next two weeks. This train was completely frozen!

Sweden really does look like a winter wonderland! Snow coated streets and trees. I've always wondered what a winter would be like in a Scandinavian country.

This is downtown Uppsala on Christmas. There were lots of people out and about celebrating. That's a major difference between Europe and the US. The young people spend Christmas Eve with their family and do all of the celebrating, dinners, and gift opening on this day rather than Christmas. On Christmas, the young people go out to the bars and clubs with friends. I don't think I could ever do that, I'd just feel... wrong! I found this to be the same way in Portugal as well when I was there last year for Christmas. My French students told me that's normally what they do too, so I'm guessing it's just what they do in Europe on Christmas.

This is the Uppsala Cathedral. It's one of the main "attractions" in Uppsala. It's so pretty on the outside and on the inside. The picture right above is a Viking rune stone. There were some of these scattered around the cathedral. So interesting!

This is the castle in Uppsala. It was quite nice, and big. Too bad on our tour at around 11 on Christmas we couldn't enter the castle! The picture right above is very interesting. Our friend who studies at the university in Uppsala told us all about the history of the sites we were seeing. This one in particular was intriguing to me. These are cannons aiming at the church. This is located just outside the castle. hmmm... wonder what the royal family thought of the church at that time....?

At the Uppsala University, they have these organizations a bit like sororities and fraternities. They are called Nations. Our friends said they were similar to houses at Hogwarts in Harry Potter. My two friends belonged to this Nation pictured above. I think this system of "Nations" is unique to Uppsala University. To get in as an outsider, you have to have a student identification card. When we were there during Christmas, the Nations were closed. It's a shame we weren't able to experience what it was like.

The most popular clothing store H & M. I love this store! It originated in Sweden along with IKEA.

These are views around Stockholm. I liked the city, I wish I could have seen more during the day! I must come back again during the summer. All of these photos were taken during our trek to the "Gamla Stan", the island in the middle of Stockholm. This is where most of the important touristy sites are located. We didn't have much time, so we only got to know what was in and around the Gamla Stan.

I really loved the colorful buildings here in Stockholm! I just wanted to take so many pictures of them. It really reminded me of a perfect Christmas village, except the snow was real!

This is the castle in Stockholm. It was pretty, and reminded me a bit of Buckingham Palace in London without the fence around it. However, if you look closely you can see the guards standing out in the cold. Ah, that must be terrible! The 2nd photo is the church and obelisk just outside the castle.

While we were in Sweden we visited Uppsala and Stockholm. I liked Sweden a lot, however I know I would much rather see it in the summer! During the winter, not only is it SOOOO cold and snow is everywhere, but there is NO sunlight! It took awhile to get used to. While we were there, we saw the sun for maybe 3 hours? Ah! However, after returning from Latvia we could see a difference in the length of the days just from 2 weeks ago! The sun was out a bit longer, but any bit helps. Here are sites for tourism is Stockholm and Uppsala: http://beta.stockholmtown.com/en/ and http://www.uppsalatourism.se/en/. I really will never forget my first night in Uppsala, walking from the train station to the apartment. That was the coldest I had ever been in my entire life! I couldn't feel my face or anything. After that first night, it seemed to get better or maybe I just got used to it.