Back with another update! On the weekend of March 27-30, I went to a meditation retreat in Gothenburg, Sweden. A big part of my experience abroad has been exploring new things, and one of those new things was meditation. Through the wonderful website Meetup.com, I found a Buddist-inspired mediation drop-in course in Copenhagen. I went to a few of the classes and that’s where I found out about the retreat! Took about 3.5 hours to get from Copenhagen to the Gothenburg Central Station. I met up with some of the group members there who had arranged to be picked up by a van and driven to the retreat center. It was about a 1 hour drive.

The retreat center is located on the edge of Lake Hullungen, in a beautiful mountain village-town. Residents of the town run the center. The food (vegetarian) was INCREDIBLE. Amazing.

We had classes and guided meditations on the clarity of the mind, led by a teacher from Germany. He taught us how to let go of negative thoughts, how to make peace with ourselves despite our percieved faults and how to seek happiness from within. It was very eye-opening!

We sang prayers before every class (in English, Swedish and Danish), including the Buddhist liberating prayer. Plus, there was a gift-offering ritual performed on Saturday night (the gifts were candies, chocolates, fruit, juices, all arranged nicely on plates. After the ritual we all got to eat some)!

The people were all very nice. Many of us were new to meditation and Buddhism and so this was our first formal introduction. I met a lot of interesting people with whom I’ll be maintaining contact! There was also plenty of time to take walks around the woods and by the lake.

Had an interesting journey back to Copenhagen. Left the retreat a bit earlier in hopes of making it to class on Monday. I’d asked the folks at the Gothenburg Central station for train times on Sunday. The latest time was 22:42. Lo and behold, when I got to the Gothenburg station Sunday night, I was told there were no more trains going to Copenhagen that night. There must have been a miscommuniation somewhere. Luckily, there were still busses going to Copenhagen that night. I go to the bus terminal and found out that the next bus wouldn’t leave until nearly 3 in the morning. So much for going to class.

I thought I’d just spend the night in one of the many hotels around the station. But the rooms were quite expensive for just one night. So I decided to just wait up for the bus. Good thing I had a book to read! The bus ride was fine and dandy, but quite long. I dozed off for most of it. Got off at the airport and took the metro back to the dorm. Slept most of the day on Monday (too tired to go to class) and woke up later in the afternoon to shop, do laundry and go to the gym. Oh and when I went to exchange my Swedish money for Danish money, I was only given 158 Danish crowns for 240 Swedish crowns. The Swedish crown isn’t very strong right now. But Sweden is a gorgeous country with a beautiful language (both written and spoken)!
Here are just a few of the hundreds of pictures I took:

The wish offering plates! I put together the plate to the right of the candle-holder thingy

The main house where we ate and attended meditations and classes

To see many more pictures, (I took hundreds), click on over to: Pictures of Nordic Meditation Retreat

Here I am, back with another update! First I want to thank everyone who left such nice comments on my last post, I really appreciate it! :-)

Secondly, there are HUNDREDS of new pictures on Flickr from this past month. I’d been too lazy to upload them but they are finally up now. Whew!

Well a lot has been going on for the past few weeks and I don’t even know where to begin. I suppose I’ll just mention the largest highlights:

The Bike
First, I got a bike! I got it from my classmate, Maria who let me have her old one when she got a nice new one! Thanks Maria!! :-) I got some things fixed on it at a bike shop and have been riding it around a park near the dorm. It’s a nice bike!! Yes, I still remember how to ride a bike, even after not riding one for over 10 years! I took it out in the street a few times as well. It’s going to take a while to get really used to riding it in the street though, since people here drive like they are trying to kill you. But the nice thing is that all the drivers here actually look for bikes at intersections, and the bike lanes are sooo nice and wide. Copenhagen is built for bikes! :-)

Afenginn Concert
I have a new favorite band!!! Thanks again to Maria, I was introduced to this wonderful Danish band called Afenginn, and went to their concert in Nørrebro almost 3 weeks ago. They play this amazingly unique, energetic and upbeat folksy music, and some of the songs have vocals. The vocals are in this invented language that sounds a little like Latin with other stuff mixed in…it has almost a choir-like sound. I love them and have been listening to their songs over and over and over and…yeah. They are playing again in about a month. I’ll be at that concert for sure!

Culture Night
October 10th was culture night. Museums, businesses, libraries, restaurants and plenty of other institutions all over the city stayed open all night and people could come in and view exhibits, go on tours, try new foods, hear music, etc. For 75 Kroner, the culture pass allowed free entry into all of the culture night exhibits and free transportation on the Metro, busses, S-trains, etc. I ended up going to 2 places, an art museum downtown (I forget the name, unfortunately, but they had a lot of stone sculptures) and the old stock exchange building. It was interesting, people were dressed up in costumes. Heh. There were so many lines that it was hard to get in anywhere else.

Fall Holiday: Louisiana, Zoo, Malmö
Last week was the Fall Holiday. It was a nice break from school before all the major project work begins. On Tuesday we went to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art to see this manga exhibition. It was really neat, and in addition to seeing the manga we checked out some other exhibits. Plus, the grounds outside of the museum are amazing. Pictures are on Flickr.

Then on Saturday we went to the Zoo and had a fine time. There were soo many animals yet it was all very close together and it was easy to see everything. They had a monkey house, a giraffe house (but we didn’t get to see the giraffes because they were cleaning the house. Oh well), a huge elephant house, a butterfly/tropical house, reptile/lizard house, a petting zoo area and a lot more I’m forgetting at the moment! We even saw part of feeding time for the lions! Haha. I’ve got plenty of pictures of the zoo up on Flickr!

Finally, on Monday, I went with Yeliz (who is from Turkey and in the bachelor’s program at RSLIS) across the bridge to Malmö, Sweden! It took less than 40 minutes total to get there by train. It’s a very nice and peaceful over there and thankfully we had nice weather (although it was quite windy). Malmö, we walked around the shopping streets, visited an old church, and a castle (one of the oldest surviving castles of the Renaissance period) that had been converted into a museum, saw the famous Twisting Torso tower and walked around by the waterfront. For dinner we had kebabs! The guy at the kebab stand was a little rude but the food was good!

The funniest thing that happened in Malmö was when we were looking for the museum and entered this old little building that LOOKED like it could be a museum…we weren’t sure where to go so we went to the desk labled “Information” up front. The lady didn’t even look at us even after we tapped on the window and called, “Hello? Excuse me…” We both realized that maybe she had some sort of problem (as in not “all there” in the head).  We decided to go on upstairs but saw no signs or any indication of where to go. I thought that maybe it was just an old house for people to tour or explore. Upstairs, we found a coffee vending machine and were almost about to buy coffee and tea but decided to do so on the way out so we wouldn’t have to carry it around the exhibits. We went around the corner and ended up in a hallway; maybe this was the main exhibition area or something. There was a door nearby. Yeliz slowly opened it and we both peeked in — and found ourselves staring into the faces of at least 10 older men decked in black and white suits sitting around a table in the midst of what looked like a business meeting. We were both like, Oh-My-God and quickly dashed out of there. Oopsie. Looks like it was a private office building we’d walked into!!! We couldn’t stop laughing. We had been about to buy hot drinks from their vending machine and everything. Shortly after that, we found the actual museum (the castle museum). What an experience!

Other places of note:
I’ve also visited Christiania a few times, both by night and by day. Christiania is an alternative, hippie-like neighborhood-community within Copenhagen (in Christianshavn). They have their own government and there is an on-going controversy over whether or not it should stay separate from the city. It’s a very interesting spot…a little touristy, but still different. At least 800 or so people live there, in unique homes around a lake shaped like a thumb. You are not allowed to take photos anywhere but we did manage to snap a few when we went to a Jazz night at a club there. By night, Christiania can be a little creepy since there are no streetlights (only bonfires and lasers whenever they have a laser-light show).

We also had a chance to visit the Black Diamond, which is the Royal Library of Copenhagen. It’s one of the architectural marvels of the city, and on the inside it looks like mall, not a library. There are old fashioned reading rooms as well as modern ones. I can’t wait to go there to work on my project paper. Sure beats working in the dorm!

That’s about it for this update! Til next time!! :-)