I'm a travelling man

Been busy the past few weeks basically doubling the number of countries I've visited in my life. First up was a week long trip to the Eastern Bloc, featuring Estonia, Russia (St. Petersburg and Moscow) and Finland, followed by a weekend trip to Barcelona to attempt to warm up.

Russia was scary yet cool. Never have I been so amazed and yet fearful that I would be robbed. I'm sure it is a rather safe country but from all the warnings we got from our trip coordinators and the dodgeyness of the traffic crossings, markets and public transportation, it definitely gives off a "wake-up-without-your-kidney's" kinda vibe. Had a lot of fun there though. Spent most of my time with my fellow Canadians (Terry, Rich, Sandy) and some french girls we met on the trip (Ghezlane, Anja, Estelle). There were about 60 people on the trip in total but it quickly became separated into the different nationalities - basically the Spanish and the French and everyone else. Fun times included asking for a menu and being subsequently shown the toilet, seeing Lenin's tomb and half expecting him to wake up and break the glass box, disgruntled drunk Finn's trying to break down the door of our room, Rich having to hang out with the mom of the girl he picked up the night before, 10 minutes of awkwardness due to no one being able to communicate to the restaurant managers after our reservation was overridden for a cash payment and many other moments that are a little blurry from the Russian vodka.

Two days after returning I set off of for Barcelona to play basketball with the SSE team for a competition at ERAMUS. Our team got thoroughly thumped by each team although in our defense the other teams took it waaay more seriously. Like coaches, trainers, and names on the back of their jerseys kinda seriously. Basically our entire weekend was over in 3 hours. And, can you believe it, Barcelona had the nerve to have bad weather so we couldn't even console ourselves at the beach - it had to be the bar instead. Very cool clubs there, open until 5:30 in the morning. Everything starts later there too, so if you show up to a club before midnight you're really early. Went to one big club, Razzamatazz, that was pretty huge and cool, only to find out the next day that we only saw one of the 5 (5!) rooms in the club. Still good times though. The rest of the school managed a bit better at their sports and we got to cheer on the women's football (soccer) team to gold. Dinner with Swedish people is always a blast, as they sure do love to sing. and drink. Basically once a reasonable amount of time had past it became a contest between the two tables of which table could start a beat and the other join in with the words. Songs included: Lean on Me, Final Countdown, In the Jungle, You've lost the loving feeling and many other Swedish songs (known as schlager, basically terribly cheesy pop songs sung every year in a national contest that people worship). Fun times!

But now I am back to my little residence room - so similar to a hospital room. Not surprising then is that my marathon training is lacking a bit, but I have no other plans to travel in the near future. Well, except for next weekend in which I go to Uppsala to start fires, spray champagne and celebrate the Swedish holiday of Valborg... (school is going good too)