One does not simply disappear for 3 months

Or well, actually I just proved that it's pretty simple.

University has occupied me well during the past few months. I'll spare you the boring details. My studies are still really interesting though, but I just wish we had a wee bit lesser to read, because it's just so much your social life will be destroyed when you try to read everything. Sometimes we really have to read everything though, and because you're a sane person who doesn't want to live as a hermit, you end up catching up on everything in the end and, well, eventually you do end up as a hermit. Or at least me. I can be quite an extreme nerd sometimes. In the upcoming weeks I also have to finish my application for exchange studies, which takes up quite some time. Yesterday I spent about 12 hours to figure out which universities I'd like to apply for. I limited my choice to 4 universities (two in Turkey, one in Poland and one in Lithuania) and I can list 3 in my application. When everything works out smoothly, I'll be going on exchange in January or February next year for about half a year. I also started to orientate a bit for my internship, which will be happening in the autumn of 2014. Pretty far away, but finding a suitable internship can be quite a pain in the ass. Therefore I registered for an information meeting in the upcoming week in which they'll tell us about everything concerning internships. I'm a pretty neat student I'd say.

Let's see if there's anything worth mentioning when it comes to stuff happening in the last months of last year... Well, some might already know that I ended up living in the freezing cold for about 3 days in early December. It was the most perfect timing ever, because I was working on a home exam. The heating in nearly the whole building stopped working and it was about -10 during the night and -5 at daytime during that period. It was so cold. Some people even put on their kitchen stove and oven in order to warm up their apartments. I didn't do that because I'm a stingy Dutch person who doesn't want to end up with an incredibly high electricity bill. Due to some miscommunication it took ages to fix the heating system. It was fixed after two days and then it still took over a day to warm up again. Everything I touched in my apartment was incredibly cold, it was pretty hilarious actually. But many things are hilarious once they've finally passed.

Actually I never mentioned how back in early November, a big group of Hell's Angels ended up eating in our university's cafeteria. That was also when I found out the main court of Malmö is right in front of our building. Yes, these guys were going to court and needed a place to have their lunch break. At first I didn't even notice, but after some time I started to notice that these guys weren't exactly looking like university students. Not even mentioning they were way too old.

In late December I went to visit my mum for two weeks. She was ''babysitting'' a house of a couple she knows. They have some dogs and cats who needed a guardian during the time the couple was off to Bali. During those two weeks I discovered my allergy for cats. We usually go well together, but I guess I just spend too much time among them this time. Before these two weeks, I don't think I ever spent more than a few hours accompanied by cats, so it makes sense. Despite the allergy, the two weeks were very nice. The house was in the middle of nowhere, so it was incredibly peaceful. I had my own room with a huge TV, so I could organize my own private cinema evenings. The house belonged to an old couple and there were many old and modern features about the house, it was very fascinating. The TV was quite a shock for example. And they had computers with touch-screen. They owned a lot of stuff I had never even seen before in my life. The first week some friends of my mum came over from the Netherlands. We celebrated Christmas together and during Boxing Day we went to some Dutch friends who live in the same village as my mum and celebrated Christmas together with their Dutch friends who'd come over from the Netherlands. You can notice it was quite a Dutch week. My mum's boyfriend also came and he's a Finn who grew up in Sweden. I'm sure he felt a wee bit out of place among so many loud Dutch people. It was a bit strange to be with so many Dutch people, especially because I don't hang out with Dutch people in Malmö. I don't deliberately avoid them, but I'm not searching for them either. Dutch students aren't well represented at my university anyway and those who are studying there are usually exchange students. There was actually a Dutch girl in my class last semester and the first time I talked to her was about two weeks prior to the end of the semester and thus two weeks prior to when she was supposed to leave, haha. My class consisted of about 60 people last semester, but a huge part of them were exchange students, another fair amount were doing their elective course and about 10 other students failed too many exams and were therefore kicked out of the program. Now there are only about 20 of us left, haha.

New Year's Eve was very interesting, to say the least. Wow, those Swedes know how to party! In the Netherlands there are quite some fun TV-shows being broadcast during that evening. Not all of them are that nice, but they do make the evening feel like something special. We also have access to German, Belgian and British channels and especially the last one has this great show called Jools' Annual Hootenanny. Jools, man, how much we missed you this year! The Swedes have only one show being broadcast, a show in which mainly classical and old-fashioned music is being produced by singers on a stage in the centre of Stockholm. The crowd is huge and people kinda seem to enjoy it. When the New Year is drawing closer, the camera is focused on an old guy preaching about peace on earth and whatnot. I couldn't understand everything and the stuff I did understand has almost entirely left my mind. But it was very depressing. He was saying everything in such a dark, low and serious voice that I felt like killing myself once it was 12 o'clock. It was definitely the most extraordinary New Year's Eve I have ever experienced in my life, and I do not mean that in a positive way, not at all. It was hilarious though and my mum and I had a great laugh about it while her boyfriend could not understand why we thought it was so funny, because this program had been on for ages and was a Swedish tradition. Well, yeah, okay. Sometimes you simply have to throw away some traditions, that's for sure. I understand why everyone watches it though, because it's the only thing on TV that evening that's not a movie. Like, what the hell, why would you broadcast so many movies during New Year's Eve!?!? About ten minutes after the depressing guy was finished, the show ended. Then, we ended up watching the movie Hulk. Yeah, such a New Year's Eve feeling was creeping up my body while watching that.

Another funny Swedish tradition, is the Donald Duck Hour. Really, sit back and relax while I tell you about this. You won't regret it. Every year at 3 o'clock on December 24, half of Sweden sits in front of the TV to watch a one-hour-show filled with Disney cartoons (Donald Duck isn't even in it that much), of which most have nothing to do with Christmas. The show has been pretty much the same ever since it aired for the first time in the late 50's. This doesn't seem to bother the Swedes in any way, they keep on watching it anyway and everything has to be taken into account during that day, because it's an absolute must to watch Donald Duck. My mum's boyfriend was talking like this: ''We have to finish making the food before Donald Duck'', ''We don't have time for that, Donald Duck will be on soon'', etc. I will quote a magnificent part of an article I found:

Watching Kalle Anka (Donald Duck in Sweden) for the first time, I was taken aback not only by the datedness of the clips (and the somewhat random dubbing) but also by how seriously my adoptive Swedish family took the show. Nobody talked, except to recite favorite lines along with the characters. My soon-to-be father-in-law, a burly man built like a Scandinavian spruce, laughed at jokes he had obviously heard scores of times before. Nobody blinked at the antiquated animation, the cheesiness of the stories, or even the good-old-fashioned '30s-era Disney-style racism.

The show's cultural significance cannot be overstated. You do not tape or DVR Kalle Anka for later viewing. You do not eat or prepare dinner while watching Kalle Anka. Age does not matter—every member of the family is expected to sit quietly together and watch a program that generations of Swedes have been watching for 50 years. Most families plan their entire Christmas around Kalle Anka, from the Smörgåsbord at lunch to the post-Kalle visit from Jultomten. "At 3 o'clock in the afternoon, you can't to do anything else, because Sweden is closed," Lena Kättström Höök, a curator at the Nordic Museum who manages the "Traditions" exhibit, told me. "So even if you don't want to watch it yourself, you can't call anyone else or do anything else, because no one will do it with you."

On a final note: the dubbing is definitely odd. There's a Swedish voice while you can still hear the original English voice in the background. It's really strange. But come on, I must be completely honest here by stating that this tradition is tremendously funny. I'm not surprised by it though, because Swedish people are really good in sticking to everything they're used to. They're not too fond of changes, not even when many ways of dealing with something in an easier way are incredibly logic. No offense whatsoever, but I always compare the typical Swedish personality to autism.

Let's move on to the current year. A lot of random stuff happened, as always, and I forgot about most of them right now. Let's say I'm definitely enjoying myself here. But of course there's the monthly story about the hairdresser. This time I went there after 2,5 months though, because they were closed for what seemed like ages, resulting in my hair looking horrible (even though I still got compliments about it, so at least it looked good to other people). Turned out there's a new owner now who took some weeks off before opening I guess. I tried to ask, but my Swedish skills are not that advanced yet and I cannot say anything different about his English skills. Plus, he was the only person there. With the other guys, there were always some other guys hanging around of which at least one could speak English. The fact that this one apparently is quite a loner didn't help much at all, because I had to explain how I exactly wanted my hair to turn out. The other guy merely asked if I wanted the same style and then he started. With the new guy, I got the impression he had never seen my hairstyle in his life, because his face produced some rather confused emotions while figuring out how he should cut it. Then he even charged me 100sek because I'm female, argh, okay, whatever. He seemed quite nervous and uncomfortable, but after some small talk in my best Swedish he seemed to lighten up a bit. After discovering he's from Palestine, I put my poor Arabic skills into practice and that most definitely made him the happiest man on earth at that moment. Maybe next time he'll cut my hair for 50sek after all, haha. Though there might be a higher chance of me hooking up with his son, because he asked me if I'm married and I'd guess he's about the same age as my mum. At least I hope he had his son in mind...

Talking about hair; it most definitely puts me in some awkward situations sometimes. By now it has happened dozens of times that people recognize me but I have no idea who they are. The record during just a few hours was definitely made at a party a few weeks ago. At the end of the night, I was almost considering changing my hairstyle in something ''normal''. But in the end it's really amusing and there's nothing wrong with so many people knowing you while you don't know most of them. Makes me feel like someone famous. Really good for my self-esteem. By far the funniest situation occurred about a month ago when I was entering my flat and walking towards the elevator. There was this girl waiting for the elevator who looked at me, smiled brightly and went: ''Hey! It's you!''. I couldn't be more confused and responded: ''It's me!?''. I had no idea who she was and there she was, obviously pretty excited to recognize me. Turned out I had met her before, even talked to her for a while, but my memory had obviously left me at that point in front of the elevator. This happens a lot; me simply not remembering people, but it has also occurred several times that people I have never even met, and who've just seen me walk somewhere, recognize me. This happened a lot at the party I previously mentioned. A really nice party by the way. I ended up going home around 3 at night, but because it had been snowing and I don't like biking in snow, I took the bus and forgot to double check the bus-schedule. I ended up taking a cab back home, because there was not a single bus departing from the central station. I had just enough money in my wallet to pay the 250sek, pfew. The next day I found out that I had just missed the last bus. I was about 5 or 10 minutes late. Oh well, at least I experienced something new, including a pretty drunk guy at the central station who was extremely interested in the difference between ''Holland'' and ''the Netherlands'', a question I've had to answer dozens of times since I came to Sweden.