Return to the Motherland... Sweden!

With a name like Johnson (originally Johansson) it is hard to hide the fact that you are Swedish.  I was raised by my parents to appreciate and embrace the Swedish culture.  My grandparents from both sides of my family moved to America from Sweden to begin their families.  My parents are both fluent in the language; I wish I knew more!  I have participated in a Scandinavian Studies Program back home and that was even one of the facts that Dean Cowdrey said about me during our Matriculation ceremony.  I really appreciate my roots and was extremely excited for the opportunity to visit Sweden this past weekend with DIS, hence "returning to the motherland."

The trip was organized though DIS and was a really good deal.  We traveled by bus to Helsingor, Denmark and then took a ferry to Helsingborg, Sweden.  We traveled about another 45 minutes to an area called Kullen.  The first day I chose to canoe with about half of the students on the trip.  It was a gorgeous day, great weather, and the trees had begun to change colors for the fall season.  We canoed down the river for nearly 5 hours.  It was a ton of fun and I was actually reminded of lazy days from this past summer hanging out by the river at SLU.  You can borrow canoes from the SLU Canoe Shack for a great weekend activity!  I loved doing it and I highly recommend it to you!

That night both groups reconvened at the hostel.  We had a big BBQ and had a few hours to get to know everybody.  It was funny as I chatted with new friends, I found lots of SLU connections (friends, relatives, co-workers etc.).  We hung out late into the night and had traditional danish desserts and drinks.  Everyone crashed fairly early though because we were all exhausted from the long day we had and were anticipating another long day on Sunday. 

Sunday, I was in the biking group and we traveled all over Kullen and the surrounding areas.  My group labeled ourselves "TEAM EXTREME" and we biked more than any human being ever should.  Most of the other groups chose one site that they would like to see, but we chose to see them ALL!  We started by biking to a lighthouse at the end of the Kullaberg peninsula in the town of Molle.  We left our bikes at the bottom of the hill and ascended 3 kilometers to the lighthouse.  We ate our lunch at the top and it was an amazing view of the rocky Swedish coastline.  Not realizing how far the walk was we needed to pick up the pace in order to see all the sight and still make it back in time.  So we found a nice Swedish family that "wanted" to drive us to the bottom of the hill.  It was an experience...  After leaving the lighthouse, we headed through a nature preserve "shortcut."  The shortcut ended up getting us VERY lost until a Swedish couple gave us directions after laughing profusely at the lost group of Americans with bikes in the woods.  We got back on track and headed to an amazing driftwood sculpture called Nimis.  The man that created it, did so on Swedish land and the government was not happy.  At first they wanted to force him to remove the sculpture, but after seeing and realizing the beauty of it, the government allowed Nimis to stay.  They actually gave away the land and do not acknowledge its presence.  The sculpture reminded me of the artist Andrew Goldsworthy, who we talked about a lot in my FYP.  After checking out Nimis, I wanted to touch the Baltic.  A friend and I walked out on a long rocky area only to get hammered by a large Baltic wave.  I ended up soaked to my waist in salt water... ugh. Not great for the ride home... we still hat about 12 km bike ride back to the hostel.  I was soooo exhausted by the end of the trip I would change our team name to TEAM EXTREME-LY TIERED!  My group got back to the hostel for our 4:30 deadline at 4:29...priceless!

Needless to say, I slept well that night and I am pretty sure I am still sore from the amount of biking that I did this past weekend.  It was definitely worth it and it felt great to explore some of my roots abroad. 

(Lastly, to be a chemistry-nerd really quick:  Today for Danish class we visited Assistens Cemetery in Copenhagen.  I took a picture of Niels Bohr's grave.  It was pretty neat!  Niels Bohr was a Danish physicist.  He made great strides in determining atomic structure and quantum mechanics, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922.  SWEET!  OK, that is the end of my chemistry rant.)