this past week.

This past week has been interesting. I'll start at the beginning. Monday I went to class, and have now come to the realization, that once I learn more vocabulary, I will be able to speak Swedish. I have the grammatical knowledge on how to conjugate the verbs, and the order of sentences, so now I just need a good amount of new vocabulary. I really do thoroughly enjoy learning Swedish. Its helped me so much. And I must add that after being somewhere else this past weekend, I realized just how much Swedish I am beginning to understand. I will explain where we went, and what happened later. Also: I have never been so thankful that I am looking at moving to Sweden.

Tuesday was spent relaxing, and with good cause. If I would not have spent Tuesday relaxing, I would have been one very tired person during our vacation. It probably would not have been very nice.

Wednesday was when the real adventure began. Wednesday we left on our journey. We were headed to Berlin. Yes. Berlin Germany. We began by catching a train Copenhagen, and after about 20 mins were directly deposited in the airport. Once our check in desk opened up, we dropped off our bags and were off. I did not realize how big the airport actually was the last time I was there. (arriving here) It literally has a mall in it. Its interesting. I would have never guessed that beyond security there would have been a mall, but there it was. There was an H&M, a couple different tourist shops, and a lingerie shop. Interesting choices for an airport.  After eating dinner, because we realized that we didn't want to go looking for food the first moment being there, we headed to our gate.



Now at the gate, we played a game that many musicians know well, called "hurry up and wait" We all hurried in to the boarding area, once they finally let us in, which was about the time that our plane was originally scheduled to take off, and then we waited. and waited. and waited. and finally we were let out to go board the plane. Its different boarding a plane here. We were let outside, and got on the plane outside, using a set of stairs that were rolled up and secured to the side of the plane. Once we were on the plane, it was a short flight, and then we were there. After getting off the plane in the same way that we got on, we walked through all the halls, and got to our baggage. surprisingly we were never once asked for our passports.

After getting our stuff and heading out, we bought our welcome cards, and our bus passes for that night. The welcome card was a VERY good decision. The welcome card entitled us to free public transportation, and got us discounts at various museums, and other sites around the city. After getting our bus to the U-Bahn station, we took that for a while, and then we had to change to a bus again, because they were doing some sort of work on the tracks. I thought it was interesting how many casinos there were. In the span of a few kilometers there were  9 casinos. Another thing that we noticed RIGHT away was the amount of graffiti that covered the city. That was one of the thing that makes me so thankful to be moving to Malmö, and not Berlin. It was just everywhere, it was on the escalators, it was on the buildings, it was on the trains. Every where you looked there was graffiti.

After arriving to our hotel, we soon realized that we should have done our homework, and looked more into the hotel. It may have only been a few kilometers from a lot of the attractions, but in no way did we think the neighborhood that it was in, would be as shady as it was. By this time, it was after midnight, we were tired, and somewhat cranky, and just wanted to get some sleep for the next day, but of course, that was not going to happen right away either, because the room that we got, was not the room that we paid for. We were first placed in a hostel room, with six beds, a table with three chairs, and no tv remote. We had paid for a hotel room, with two beds. It was very upsetting to us that we had paid for a hotel room, and got stuck in a hostel room, although we have no objections to staying in a hostel,  that was not what we paid for. So we hauled all of our stuff back down the stairs and after talking with the desk clerk, we secured ourselves a proper room.

the view from our hotel room.

our  desk in the morning as we were getting ready.

the couch in the room. 

Upon waking up, and eating breakfast,  I decided that I didn't like the compromise that we had come to at the desk the night before, about the room situation. The compromise was that we would sleep in the room pictured above for two nights, and then on our last night would be placed back in the hostel room. I  was not alright with that, so I took it into my own hands, and called the company that we booked through and asked for their help  in making the situation right. We got an answer back fairly quickly, and were told that we were allowed to keep this room! I was very happy. After that we headed out for our first day of adventuring in the city.