Oboy! and Marshmallow Fluff

My holiday weekend in Sweden!

My friend Derek is studying abroad in Lund, Sweden this term, and we decided to do an exchange within our exchange - he visited Vienna in October, and I just got back from my visit to Lund!  This past weekend was filled with the holiday spirit, and goes down in my book as probably one of my favorite holiday weekends ever!

Day 1 - Party at the Nation!

The water over the bridge even LOOKED cold

I managed to book a puddle-jumper flight from Vienna to Copenhagen, Denmark at a reasonable rate, considering Vienna is an expensive airport to travel through, and Denmark is just expensive in general.  I found Derek, and we headed off to Lund!  There was snow EVERYWHERE, and I was ridiculously excited about that.  The trek from the Lund train station to Derek's dorm, Sparta, took about a half hour, but we pit-stopped for some free hot cocoa which made the cold less intense.  I dropped my stuff at Sparta, and then we went on an expedition to find me a Nation guest pass, and to eat some delicious pizza.  After dinner, we met up with a few of Derek's friends, and headed to a Nation to, as his Aussie friend Mike would put it, "get a little greasy."  In other words, we wanted to kick back a couple of drinks, and dance!

Delicious Bolognese Pizza!

Nations are to Sweden as Greek Life is to the U.S. - Even Derek couldn't fully explain the Nation system, but basically, it's like a house you have a membership to, they throw parties, and some people live there.  This particular party was a blast!  There's a small dance club in the Nation where we got our groove on, and I was shocked at the amount of tall people surrounding me.  It's true - Swedes are tall, blond, and good-looking!  We decided to head to the city center for some 1 a.m. McD's.  I'm always down for some french fries.  We had to get back early to prepare for a late Thanksgiving dinner the next day!

Day 2 - Celebrating the Holidays

Because Derek's meal on the actual day of Thanksgiving was KFC, and mine was from a Kebab stand, we decided we were going to celebrate Thanksgiving in style, just a few days late.  The turkey went in at noon, and came out at 4:00 looking delicious as ever.  It was quite the finger-crosser, as neither Derek nor I had ever cooked a turkey before.  We are now seasoned pros.

While the turkey was in the oven, we made our way to the center of Lund for a flash mob pillow fight.  As ridiculous as that sounds, it was a BLAST.  Pillows were supposed to be hidden, of course, so we had ours stuffed up our jackets.  I looked either preggers or obese, but either way, the pillow kept me warm on our walk over.  The fight started with someone screaming "Charge!" across the square, pillow raised and ready to hit someone, and then all hell broke loose.  There were probably at least 100 people with hidden pillows who appeared out of nowhere for a gigantic fight under a Christmas tree.  It was epic, I loved it, and Derek's friend Erin got most of it on video. 

Derek showed me more of downtown Lund before we headed back to check the turkey.  The buildings were beautiful, and like none I had ever seen.  It's surprising to me (though it shouldn't be) that almost every country I've been to has a distinct style of buildings, and Lund was no exception - it looked like a little Christmas village out of a book, and I couldn't get enough of it!  The pillow stuffed back into my jacket was keeping me warm, of course, although I'm sure I looked a little ridiculous.

Our Table - Note the tinfoil place-mats.  We're classy.

Arrival back at Sparta, the turkey was smelling great.  I wanted to make Cornbread dressing, a staple of my family's holiday meals, and went on the hunt for some corn meal to make said cornbread.  It was nowhere to be found, although not speaking Swedish, I definitely thought that I was getting some cornmeal - instead, Derek got an addition of corn flour and corn starch in his food cupboard.  I then went on to try and make regular stuffing, which also failed miserably, but I award myself 5 points for effort.  Thanksgiving dinner was WONDERFUL!  Nobody knew how to carve a turkey, so instead we just tore it to shreds, but still - I was stuffed when we were finished.

Derek and I had purchased some Gingerbread House kits to fully turn this into a day of holiday celebration.  The kits, however, came with no icing and no decorations.  We improvised, and bought some Marshmallow Fluff (basically, creamed mallows), M&M's, icing, sprinkles, and gum drops.  We both had an itch for some hot cocoa, too, and so O'Boy Hot Chocolate powder was added to our drag-along shopping carts.  Gingerbread houses were a huge success once we figured out how to get them to stay up, and to complete the whole package, we watched Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer while building and drinking cocoa.  About 10 minutes after our houses were built, they were destroyed - what can I say, Gingerbread is a fantastic holiday treat for my STOMACH!  Why look at it when you can eat it?  Overall, Saturday was a very memorable celebration of the Holidays!

Shopping Carts in Sweden - Oh, what fun!

Day 3 - Adventure to Copenhagen

Santa is a Pyro

Day 3 started out with yet another cup of O'Boy! and Marshmallow fluff.  I had heard a lot about a falafel place in Lund, so lunch was a falafel wrap.  Oh my goodness, DELICIOUS.  Then, Derek and I made our way to Copenhagen to do some exploring.  Our train there was about an hour delayed while we were on it, lovely, and we arrived around 3:00.  Because it was a Sunday, the tourist  office was closed, but we did manage to get our hands on a map to do some exploring.  First stop: McDonald's.  A hot chocolate sounded good, and once we got in there, fries sounded good too....and, the McD's in Sweden has milkshakes.  I was EXCITED!  We left McDonald's to head towards the town square, which was filled with people surrounding an unlit Christmas Tree.  Stumbling across the Copenhagen Tree Lighting ceremony?  Score! 

The Lighting was awesome!  Santa climbed a crane with a huge flare or something, and when the clock struck 4, the tree lit up, and Santa proceeded to shoot sparks EVERYWHERE, lighting the star on top of the tree.  I was fortunate enough to get it on video, and Derek was fortunate enough to get an insanely sweet photo...which I stole, and have posted here :)

We headed up a huge shopping street, stopping for souvenirs, to check out the street and to make our way to the Round Tower.  In addition to my every-stop spoon that I got, we also slipped into a kid's toy shop to warm up for a few minutes, and I invested in a sweet Santa hat.  We made it to the Round Tower only 10 minutes before it closed, talk about lucky!  Power-walking up the stairs, I couldn't help but notice the fantastic view outside.  Once we got to the top, we could see all of Copenhagen surrounding us!  It was dark, but that made it even more cool.  Snow was everywhere, and all of the houses and buildings were pretty low, 3 stories maximum, with a few steeples and clock towers poking up all over the place.  That's one thing I've noticed about views in Europe: Everything is relatively flat, and classic - you don't really see the skyscrapers that are so prevalent in the U.S., and I appreciate that.

From Left to Right: Derek, Butler, Me, Carl

After the round tower, we found ourselves only a few blocks away from the King's Gardens.  Although they were covered in snow, the garden area was beautiful, and we even found a moat!  We stumbled across a little snowman and decided, what the heck?  The snow in Lund is pretty powdery, and no holiday weekend would be complete without a snowman.  Thus, "The Butler" was built.  We must have been in the King's Gardens playing in the snow for a solid hour, but I was so distracted by our awesome snowman that I didn't even notice.  Between the two of us, The Butler was featured in probably a solid 100 photos...slight exaggeration, but still.  You'd think he were famous and we were the paparazzi.

Neither of us had used a Wok before - I am now a believer.

We decided to hold off on eating, because we were going to make dinner at home anyway, and since the train ride was only an hour, and we were leaving at 7:30, we could wait.  We didn't count on the train being delayed about a half hour, and didn't get back to Lund until 9:00, at which point we missed our bus back to Sparta because we were trying to recover a borrowed book from another OSUer.  With 20 minutes until the grocery store closes and about a 25 minute walk, we powered it back to Sparta to make sure we got some pasta sauce before the store closed!  We made it...and then proceeded to make a great dinner of pasta, peppers, sauce, and Swedish meatballs.  Delicious :) 

Day 4 - Heading back home

And so, my holiday weekend visiting Derek in Sweden must come to a close.  Of course, my send-off started with none other than a mug full of O'Boy and Marshmallow creme.  Between the gingerbread houses and the hot cocoa, we finished off an entire jar of Marshmallow creme, and an entire box of O'Boy! in less than 3 days.  And that, my friends, is how you do it!

My Sweden trip was fantastic!  Derek made an excellent host, and it was fun catching up with him over the weekend, and embracing my obsession for winter holidays.  Thanks, Derek, for a FANTASTIC weekend!  I miss Lund already!!