Erasmus Closing
It’s the middle of August and I still can’t quite believe it’s already been seven weeks since I returned from my Erasmus exchange in Sweden. Now that I’ve had time to reflect, I can really think and speak about the entirety of my experience there. However, it’s not easy writing this, knowing that it’s the last blog entry about my Erasmus life in Sweden. These next paragraphs focus on the month of June which, and let me be honest here, felt more like a whole exchange in itself — filled with unforgettable moments, breath-taking adventures and a rollercoaster ride through more emotions than I had ever felt in such a short time span before.
Where to begin? It feels like the experiences I’ve been lucky enough to make in June can hardly be put into words but I’ll try nevertheless and let pictures speak for themselves more than once. Just to give you a quick overview of how dense and geographically vast June was for me, let me give you some numbers:
- I set foot in six countries,
- travelled a total of 8.400 km on trains and
- slept in my own bed for only four nights.
Let me walk you through my journey — I hope you find it as exciting as I did and can grasp how special this time was for me.
Malle ist nur einmal im Jahr
I spent the first week of June with my closest friends from back home. Having finished three years of studying for our Bachelor diploma, we rewarded ourselves with a week in a typical Finca in Alcúdia, Mallorca. We swam at marvellous beaches, went to beach clubs, embarked on a boat tour and successfully completed an road trip to the mountainous western side of the island. Also, since courses in Sweden had already finished at the end of May, I allowed myself to truly put up my feet, enjoy warm temperatures with my dearest friends from Vienna and relax in a completely different context compared to Sweden. My perception of our Bachelor trip to Mallorca was an interesting combination of Holiday and Home. Holiday because (although temperatures in Sweden were very forgiving) we enjoyed a week of hot Mediterranean summer on a beautiful Baelaric island and Home because my friends reminded me of Vienna, my roots and “home home” so much, as stupid as that sounds.
Even though I travelled by train (a journey I’ll come to in just a second) and had time to ‘adjust’, I was surprised by how short days in Southern Europe were compared to Scandinavian ones. I was used to seeing the sun set around 11PM and rise again around 4:30AM in Sweden. Coming to Mallorca, the number of daytime hours was definitely noticeably lower. Maybe this is the kind of ‘jet-lag’ you experience when travelling so far from North to South. More on the amazing concept of the midnight sun below, but let’s stay along the shore of the Mediterranean for now.
From endless beach days, endeavours with jellyfish, Catalan ‘Estrella’ beer (thanks Marta and Eric for your recommendation), cocktails on rooftop bars to the notorious Ballermann in Palma de Mallorca — my friends and I really made this trip, our graduation trip, very special. Although I would leave out an important aspect if I wouldn’t mention how confusing it was to travel this far from Sweden. Especially because I also knew that I would go back to Sweden first before finally heading back home to Vienna. A lot of back and forth — but the good kind of back and forth: the kind that keeps your energy high, your mind curious and soul alive. Below, a few impressions from our time on Mallorca:
Trains, delays and frustration
Travelling by train is frustrating, duh?! Not only does it take more time and money, but what became really noticeable during this trip — my journey from Lund to Mallorca, was how frustrating and energy-consuming travelling by rails is. Briefly, for the ones unfamiliar with the process, let me explain how booking international trains in Europe works: Since there is hardly any European train-booking platform apart from Trainline (for whose service they charge you an arm and a leg), travellers depend on booking tickets through national operators (SJ for Swedish trains, DSB for Danish trains, DB for German trains, etc.). Because that gives you very little flexibility, I always opt for Interrail passes for my (long distance) intra-European journeys. For the month of June, an Interrail Global pass (valid in all EU member states) seemed fitting and I went for the 7-travel-days-within-one-month option, setting me back 250,- EUR (as of August 2021). What Interrail doesn’t tell you right away though is that there is an extra fee for most (if not all) high-speed rail connections within Europe. So in case you don’t want to spend countless hours on regional services getting from A to B, your travel expenses will go up with every additional train reservation you book. This ranges from the 8,- reservation fee from Copenhagen to Hamburg to a solid 36,- for the high-speed service from Paris to Barcelona. Given how many transit stops there are between Lund and Mallorca, this quickly adds up — in particular if you miss a connection and rely on booking a new reservation (because reservations are non-refundable and non-rebookable).
Missing trains happened to me a lot of times during this trip, to no fault of my own of course (delayed trains, cancelled services, border checks due to COVID-19 stopping trains etc.). Exactly that’s the reason why my journey was so frustrating and energy-consuming. In the end, I spent a total of almost 500,- EUR for the journey from Sweden to Spain and back — not to mention all the time I spent on trains and stations in the process. On the left, find a map of my journey through Copenhagen, Hamburg, Karlsruhe and Paris to Barcelona, where I took a ferry to Alcúdia in Mallorca.
What’s particularly frustrating to me is that eco-friendly travel seems so much more burdensome. This system needs to change, quickly. Train travel needs to become more accessible to broader parts of society in order to be a viable alternative to flying intra-European routes. Let’s push for that change!
The Final Countdown
After this short excursion to far-away Spain, let’s go back to Sweden and my final three weeks there. What you should know is that there’s no final moving-out day at Swedish university dorms at the end of the semester. Rather, summer semester students move out throughout the second half of June, which is why that time of the exchange was particularly emotional and tough. Friends who I’ve been with for multiple months suddenly started leaving the familiarity of a temporary home — one that felt very much as if it was shared by all the Erasmus students there. But the community wouldn’t break apart that easily we were sure, so we crammed a lot of things into our final weeks:
From cycle trips to Lomma Beach, more barbeques, excursions to Dalby (a natural freshwater lake a good 15km from Lund) and amazing birthdays — we really made sure that time was well-used.
Coastline Living
At Lomma Beach, we did some sand-jogging, streamed the France-Germany game of the EURO2020 while enjoying a stunning sunset in the background and played heaps of Volleyball. I will miss having a beach this beautiful only half an hour away from my front door. As a landlocked country, I feel like it’s extra special when I get the chance to run my fingers through the sand. I’ll miss finishing an exhausting day at the seafront, staring into the sunset and enjoying conversations with the wonderful people there. Find a few images of Lomma-life in June below:
Dalby Cliffdiving and Ven Island
On June 17th, we went to Dalby Stenbrott, a lake in a nature reserve quite close to Lund. We used the day as a way to connect all remaining Erasmus students and enjoy a full afternoon at the lakefront. Although not having a beach per-se, Dalby has a wonderful freshwater lake with relatively large rocks surrounding it. These proved to be quite tempting diving platforms from which we could jump into the water from. Apart from our ‘cliff’-diving adventures at the small lake, we played endless rounds of card games and even started a BBQ there. A week later we went on a trip to Ven Island, a small island only a few kilometres off the West coast of Southern Sweden. We rented tandem bikes and cruised around the island, ticking off every lighthouse along the way.
Bauta T’s
One of my top moments in June also has to be the surprise all my closest Bautastenen friends decided to plan for me. In a moment of complete unpreparedness, they surprised me with T-shirts they printed with a special Bautastenen logo to remind us of our community for years to come. But that’s not all. Because I was planning a lot of events and trips throughout the Erasmus time from January to June, my edition of the “Bauta T” had a specialty. Apart from the ‘team logo’ on the front and back of the shirt, mine also said “BAUTA — CREW — COACH” on the front. What an honour to be surrounded by such thoughtful people and caring friends. Below you can see a group picture with all of us wearing the dress code. Thank you to everyone involved — I’ll be treasuring that shirt for a long long time to come! ❤
Midsommar i Stockholm
For the weekend around the longest day of the year, I visited Linnea and her boyfriend in Stockholm. Besides a pool party in one of Stockholm’s poshest neighbourhoods (Lidingö) and swimming in the lake surrounding the city at two unforgettable spots (Fredhällsklipporna and Kärson), we also hiked through forests in the city. These dense forests so rich in biodiversity sit right on the marvellous island Kärson close to Drottingholm’s Slott, the Queen’s summer residence (which reminded me a lot of Schloss Schönbrunn in Vienna). To top it all off, we spent the evening of June 21st in Ivar Los Park, a park on the island of Södermalm overlooking the skyline of the entire city. Looking North is crucial on the longest day of the year since only then you can spot the beautiful colour palette the sky can offer. From pink to orange to dark blue and purple — I think I saw combinations and gradients of the light spectrum I had never witnessed before. Wonderful red wine joined the party also. Thank you so much, Linnea and Eric — witnessing your city through the eyes of locals was really special!
New beginnings
In June, we also celebrated birthdays and spent a good deal of time in the Botanical gardens of Lund — a meeting hotspot and one of the most beautiful parks in Lund dotted with patches of flowers wherever you look. Disco lights and collective presents were omnipresent also. One birthday stood out in particular though, because it coincided with one of Sweden’s most celebrated days throughout the year: Midsommar. Orla celebrated her 23rd birthday on one of the longest days of the year. Apart from a few people who had already gone home by then, this was yet another occasion for all of us to meet and celebrate together. Orla’s boyfriend Elliot’s family’s home hosted us for a BBQ, Volleyball in the garden and a fun evening including drinking games, ice-cooled shot glasses (I never saw a freezer for shot glasses before — have you?) and a lot of dancing. A grand event with way too many memorable moments to even consider listing them here. Thanks Orla, thanks Elliot!
Apart from new years of life, there are also other new beginnings that were rooted in June. Caro (another Viennese Erasmus student who I met in Lund for the first time) and I decided to move together in September of this year (in a couple of weeks, I can’t believe it). So in a way, I’m automatically taking a bit of life in Lund back to Vienna by means of my future WG (shared flat). And to all my Sweden people: This serves as an automatic invitation to everyone we’ve met to come to Vienna and stay at ours. It’ll be a pleasure to host some of our future reunions in Austria. That’s the beauty of Erasmus.
Stockholm Archipelago
Another beauty of this Erasmus in particular was my very last trip ‘up North’ to the Stockholm region. Linnea and I went to the famous Stockholm Archipelago, a collection of almost 30,000 islands East of Stockholm (I didn’t even know the whole of Sweden had 30,000 islands).
During the four days that we were there, we only visited two of them, but that didn’t make our trip any less worthwhile. Here is a zoomed-in map of the region of the Stockholm Archipelago we went to (the whole collection of islands spans over 150km). The first island we went to, Nåttarö (green on the map) was a mere 1,5 hours from Stockholm C by public transport and ferry. Once we arrived, we set up our tent, rented some bikes and explored the vast nature on the island. Since there are no cars allowed on Nåttarö, paths are kept narrow and follow directly through the dense forest bustling with fern, deer and other wildlife (once during the night, we even saw a moose wandering by). I’ll long remember walking through the forest to reach the bastu (Swedish for sauna), which we rented for the first evening.
I really had to work hard here reducing it to three pictures per island, but find my absolute highlights below.
I couldn’t say which island I liked more, Nåttarö or Utö, the island we stepped foot on next. Both were unique in their own way. While I enjoyed the forests and nature more on Nåttarö, there is nothing that beats Utö’s marvellous beaches and our camping location right next to the beach. Plus, we had a fire pit located a good 10 metres from our tent. Here again, I’ll let three pictures speak for themselves, as no words fully capture what I want to express.
Since we were in the Stockholm Archipelago on the weekend after midsommar, it was relatively quiet and there were hardly any people on the islands most of the time. Especially during the evenings and nights, we were often completely alone, surrounded only by the scenery which kept us awake endlessly. This image of the fire pit concludes this chapter of the blog post and reminds me of all the good things that happened in the month of June. Looking at it, I can’t help but feel all the warmth I sensed coming from the people around me during this special period of my life.
See Ya Soon
This is all, I promise. Thanks for sticking through until the end. I hope you got a glimpse of the journey this whole Erasmus experience took me on. As I said, the month of June was packed, probably the densest 30 days I ever experienced, which is also the reason why it feels like I had a whole exchange within the month itself.
To all my fellow Erasmus students: See you in Vienna or wherever our paths may cross again. See ya soon! ❤
-ben
