I took a boat cruise to tallinn, estonia, this past weekend. For those who know me and my history of severe motion sickness, you may be questioning the rationality behind such a decision. I just figured I'd have a good time until I got sick, which was the case. I won't be taking any more boat cruises, but I don't regret it. As far as estonia though, it was quite different from Sweden (Uppsala or Stockholm). They are obviously more similar to each other than to the US, given that they are both european, but the vibe was different. when I poke into the shops in sweden, I find all most all the clothing tasteful, but kayla and I couldn't help but remark on how gaudy a lot of the estonian fashion was. Not that fashionable clothes make or break a city, I'm considering erasing this whole last paragraph for fear that I sound very ethnocentric, but I'll leave it since it was my honest first impression. Also take into account that I was still feeling pretty sea sick all day and dreading going back on the boat. To top it off, there was intense wind and rain which made for a pretty miserable walk around the city.
Anyhow, the old section of Tallinn was really beautiful. The country is famous for making amber jewelry, which was quite lovely. I smiled to myself on seeing women with round fur hats. The alcohol was cheaper than here in Sweden (hence the reason most people went on the boat cruise) so I bought 2 bottles of wine, though I have no plans to open them soon. We ate lunch at a lovely italian restaurant looking over the main square. There were lots of pretty churches. Really I just love european cities for their old and weathered buildings. We climbed up a lot of stairs to look out over most of the old city below- it was postcard perfect.
In other news, we went to Kalmar tonight (our nation, where nation means student organization, of which there are 13 you can choose from as a student at uppsala university). They told us all about the nation and what we can be involved in there. Then we had a dinner and learned some of the swedish (drinking) songs that are sung at the gasques (fancy dinner parties). The choir sang for us too and I am planning to go see about joining it. I think that would be a fun way to learn some swedish. I just keep hoping that if I listen hard enough to people speaking swedish I'll magically understand, but I doubt this is the case so I should probably start working on that. Part of me sees no reason at all to expend effort learning a language I'll never use again, but then again, it would be quite useful now and what's the harm in knowing another language? Might come in handy some day.
My class is going quite well. We switched professors (which is quite normal here for them to do sort of tag-team teaching in their own specialty) and started talking about different models of democracy. It made me want to read up on the classics so I'll probably go pick up some aristotle and perhaps machiaveli's the prince. We talked a lot about feminism last week, and since sweden is known for being a more gender equal society than perhaps any other major country in the world, it has led to some very interesting discussions. I admit I hadn't spent much time formally considering the way society is constructed to reenforce gender roles. Still I don't like the idea of the government interfering with the way families choose to divide up tasks and responsibilities within the home. I doubt such a policy would ever be accepted in the US where we value our personal liberty above all else.
Well I should get to some reading. It's easy to fall into thinking that I have no work to do since there is only an exam in two weeks and that is the only grade for the course. In any event, time to learn about "the best of the degenerate forms of government".
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