My First day(s) in Sweden

Well I've actually gone and done it. I flew to Gothenburg on 17th August and it has been so crazy I have struggled to find time to write a post! Moving to a new country has been completely overwhelming and terrifying. I have met loads of amazing people already from all around the world! I'll try to cover as many bases for those of you reading who are interested in everything that I have been up to since I got here.

Let's start with the first day- STRESSFUL. I arrived at the airport and after weighing my bags and paying a hefty £50 fee for my extra bag- I didn't manage to fit everything into one suitcase because, if anyone knows me, I never pack lightly! The flight was delayed but after finally getting on it was over in a blink of an eye, only an hour and fifty minutes to Gothenburg. This was when we realised that the key collection for our accommodation was only open until 3pm (ridiculous right?!) and we still had to get the shuttle bus to the city centre which was roughly 30 minutes and our train to Karlstad which was 2 and a half hours! Realising we wouldn't make it there by 3pm, I emailed ahead to find out what we should do. After about an hour of still not hearing back from the accommodation office, the sinking feeling began when we started to look at a hotel for the weekend whilst on our train journey. The cheapest place was around £300, which was something I had definitely not budgeted for. Upon arriving into Karlstad we were really hungry and decided to try Swedish McDonald's (how original, I know). Definitely different- they have sweet potato fries which are so good! After not expecting a reply to my email I had stopped checking every two minutes and decided by chance to check again whilst I was waiting for Bethany to get her food. There it was, an email from the office saying they could stay open until 5 for us! So we rushed back to the train station, after some rather strange conversation with a taxi driver who had no idea what we were saying we were on our way to campus. It was 4:45 by this time so we had no idea if we would make it there in time or not, but we did! Thank god, we were so lucky to get our keys!

And so I got the first look at my room. But I'll do another post with photos of that soon!

Liv