Crazy Times in Lund

Notice: Meghan is driving and looking at the camera while I am the one looking at the road!

     Meghan and I had our first official roadtrip. We took a little overnight trip to Lund, Sweden. It is a university town about 2 hours South of Ljungby. I have a friend, Steve, from University of Illinois that is studying abroad there this semester. We ‘rented’ a car for two days. I say ‘rented’ because I am not completely sure what we did. I emailed a guy and told him that we wanted to use a car for November 2^nd and 3^rd. He responded saying to just show up on the 2^nd, and he would have a car for us. We did just that. We showed up at the dealership on Wednesday afternoon. We were handed car keys, no questions asked. We didn’t sign anything. They never checked if we had driver’s licenses. Nothing!

     They don’t have any automatics so Meghan was stuck driving the whole time. Driving a manual is something that I am supposed to learn during my time in Sweden, along with how to swim. We shall see if either of those things happen!? I don’t have too much to say about the actual roadtrip because it was pretty uneventful, which is a good thing if you ask me. The only time we got lost while driving was in Lund when trying to turn onto Norra Ringen. We didn’t even get lost really because we had a GPS!  It told us to take the 4^th exit in the roundabout to get onto Norra Ringen. Well the 4^th exit was getting back on the road we just came off of, but we trusted the GPS. Recalculating. We made another probably 5 turns, then take the 3^rd exit in the roundabout to get onto Norra Ringen. We did just that. Recalculating.  We made another 4 turns before we finally successfully turned onto Norra Ringen! From there, it was straight sailing except for one stalled engine at a red light.

     We safely arrived at Steve’s dorm and parked in the ICA (grocery store) parking lot as directed. We dropped our bags off in Steve’s room before he gave us a tour of Lund. As we walked past the parking lot, I noticed that there was something yellow tucked under the windshield wiper. Sure enough, in the first 15 minutes of being in Lund, we got a ticket! This is when we realized that you had to pay to park at the grocery store. Yes, that’s correct. You have to pay to park at the grocery store! The good news is that we could pay to keep the car there over night as well. We haven’t figured out yet if we actually need to pay the ticket. Shhhhhhhhhhh, don’t tell the Swedish police! It’s for 400kr = $66 for a parking ticket!

     Steve showed us around Lund. It isn’t a huge city, but compared to Ljungby it’s big! There are two main squares. Just one of them is probably three times bigger than the main square in Ljungby. I felt like I was back in Champaign seeing so many people my age. I miss Champaign a lot so in a way it was comforting to walk around Lund. The main site to see in Lund was a huge church. It was awesome!

Replica of the church.

The bottom half has the whole church calendar on it.

Meghan and me at the altar with the pews all behind us.

There was a crypt in the basement underneath the alter area.

     After eating dinner at a burger place, we went back to the dorm to hang out with other students. We chilled and played some card games before deciding to go to a bar. This is where the REAL getting lost occurs! Meghan and I had left our coats in Steve’s room so we started back towards his room. We thought Steve was right behind us. We were wrong! We were lost. We didn’t have a cell phone. Meghan tried to go back to the room that we came from while I stayed in a different part (where we thought was close to Steve’s room) in case I saw Steve. I waited for quite a while with no sign of Meghan. This is when I met Petter. Yes, his name is Petter with 2 t’s pronounced like a person who pets a dog, a petter. He let me into his room to get on my Facebook where I had Steve’s phone number. I used Petter’s phone to call Steve to find out which part of the dorms his room was in (A very big event happened here, or more so didn’t happen here, but I will come back to it later. Just don’t forget Petter!). Leaving Petter’s room, we ran into his friend Peter who decided to help us out. Very shortly after that, we also found Meghan! We were ecstatic to be back together that we instantly hugged upon seeing each other. The four of us made our way to corridor C where Steve’s room is located. The problem now changed from finding Steve’s room to finding Steve. He wasn’t in his room and wasn’t answering his phone anymore. We finally found someone to let us into his hallway. We went to the kitchen and living room area to wait until he returned. I'm not sure what time he returned. But after everything that happened, Meghan and I were ready for bed. We fell asleep quickly after our heads hit the pillows.

     Remember Petter? I hope so! Well apparently in the search to find Steve, I forgot to sign out of my Facebook account on his computer. I realized this when I got back to Steve’s room and saw that there was a status update on my page. It said, “Lost my dignity today (puked on myself) , unclear when I will get it back.” It already had 5 likes and 7 comments before I saw it! I updated my status again saying, “i did not puke on myself. i got facebook hacked. or as the swedes call it... faceraped!” Faceraped is a term that I learned while in Sweden meaning “to have your Facebook (or other social networking site) used by someone else when you have accidentally left it logged in” (urbandictionary.com). I thought that this status update was the extent of it. I was wrong. I didn’t discover the other part until I returned to Ljungby on Thursday afternoon. When I logged onto Facebook this time, I had a notification saying that 50 people had written on my wall. There is only one day of the year when that many people write on someone’s wall… their birthday! Apparently, Petter also changed my birthday to November 3^rd. But Facebook won’t allow me to change my birthday back to the real date, so I just had to take my birthday completely off. I was the victim of a brutal facerape by a complete stranger. I should have known not to trust someone named Petter. I hope you are all spared from this terrible experience in the future. Always remember to log off your account when you are finished on a computer. I changed my password too, just for good measure!

     Yet again, another crazy adventure! I never could have predicted this one though. Overall, it was a successful visit with a friend from Champaign and a fun night. I definitely had a great time!