Pushpin Post: Study Tour #1: Day One : Hej Sverige!

It has definitely been a while since my last entry, and I should probably stop procrastinating so much on blogging about my whereabouts and travels. As much as I tell myself that I have no time, I definitely do judging by the amount of movies I watch at home, or the amount of time I spend on facebook. Oh the wonders of the modern world....

holding on while on the Stockholm metro.

30 June 2012, Saturday

It's time for Study Tour #1: Sweden and Finland!
When applying for DIS, we had a choice of going to either Sweden/Norway or Sweden/Finland for our first study tour. I was ever so glad I chose to go to Finland instead of Norway, because I discovered how expensive Norway was when I was there for just 3 days. Although our program "pays" for some meals and gives us credit for maybe a lunch or two (it eventually comes out of the tuition/fees we pay...), I would have rather spent it on a new country- in this case Finland. I had visited Sweden before (only Stockholm) a few years back in 2008 when I did a short Scandinavian visit between Stockholm and Denmark.

The great thing about these study tours- aside from the endless mandatory sketching- was that you go off the beaten path of the tourist (student or typical). These sites were actually part of the case studies done by various groups during the first week of the summer program. The best part: we present our case studies on site. How cool is that? As an architect, that is like making love to a building. Seriously. That explained why I had the Holy Cross Chapel in Finland. And trust me with all your heart when I say that the Scandinavians definitely know how to beautifully design chapels and funeral homes/crematoriums.

I'll make this more of a photo journal, since I don't want to be over-wordy with my entry this time. But I will say that upon arriving in Stockholm, my hostel roommates decided to take their sweet time unpacking a bit and freshening up, despite the fact that we were specifically told that we were to drop off our items and meet outside the hostel to walk as a group to where we were to have dinner. So we missed going with the group. I went with only one of my hostel roommates- no idea where the other was. So we go off with the best of my knowledge of Stockholm from 4 years past. We were mapless. All I knew is that dinner was somewhere in Gamla Stan, somewhere on the western portion of the island- it was merely from memory from the program booklet we had received at the beginning of the trip. So we found a metro- and the only way we found a metro is because I spotted it from the bus as we were approaching the hostel.
Long story short, we made it to the restaurant for dinner. We actually beat the large group, which resulted in the restaurant telling us that there was no school group dinner that night. Liars... or rather that one employee we spoke to was misinformed. But we made it in the end, eventually returning to that restaurant aboard a boat, pretty determined that it was there. Because it was. I guess that trip in 2008 was meant to be. It helped me navigate our way to food!