A bus, a few planes, and a taxi later and we have finally made it to our final destination, Gothenburg! We just checked into our hostal and are getting all settled into our rooms for the next 12 days. Kendall and I are back to sharing a room, so we will see how long we last:)
We started out the day Thursday night at 5:30 when we left the flagpole to begin our journey. Dave and Jayme drove all the way down to send me off to Chicago, and of course shed a few tears on the way. After hitting the famous Chicago rush hour traffic, we made it to O’Hare and through security. Our first flight left at 10:30pm central time, and got into Copenhagen, Denmark (coincidence, right??) around 2:00pm their time. We then had a short layover before taking our final flight to Gothenburg, and we arrived here around 3:30pm. The time change is hitting all of us and we can’t believe you all are just starting your day, get out of bed!
Our taxi driver gave us the lowdown on some popular topics that are very different than the states. Our professor had told us that tipping is not common here, and I think he almost crashed the taxi when we told him that the normal back in the states is 20%. He also informed us that Sweden is a big cashless society, so now that we all switched our USD to SEK, we will be using our cards for the remainder of the trip.
For dinner we headed to the Pasta Haus which was right down the road from the hostal. While most of the group went with pasta, I picked the classic Lyndsey option and went with chicken and veggies. Our server unfortunately did not speak much English, and we do not speak Swedish, so we struggled a little bit ordering.
After dinner we went for a short walk and visited Tin Tin, a local bakery, and the grocery store. Afterwards a group of us went to check out the garage, a local pub, and all tried the special Czech Republic beer.
3 things we learned today:
1. A lot of people here speak English, but it is important to talk slowly so they can understand us.
2. Tipping is not a thing here. If anything, rounding up to the nearest whole number is all that’s needed.
3. It is very hard to read a Swedish menu if you don’t know Swedish.
Talk to you tomorrow!
Lyndsey
Lyndsey Learns Swedish 