Writing a journal during our interrail, I get the feeling we’re eating our way across Europe. #interrail #LinneaAndGustav
Author: Gustav
My name is Gustav, as you probably know. I write for and maintain this blog together with my wife, Linnea.
Today’s safari outfit. One scarf away from looking like an American scout. 🇹🇿 #LinneaAndGustav
International Farewell Party (3 November)
On Thursday after Linnea had spent the majority of the day at the uni, we were set to go to the International Farewell Party hosted by UoN at the Queens Wharf Hotel – dress code: smart casual.
The party started at 6 pm, and we arrived about half an hour after that. When we arrived after showing our tickets and getting wristbands, we got drinks and started to mingle.
At the party, they had a photobooth so that you could get a couple of pictures with your pals. Linnea ended up getting a couple of them, below are two photos of them, the first one with Svenja and Nadine. The second one has pictures mostly of Linnea’s classmates from Sweden.
Apart from drinks, there was food at the party as well, although you could hardly call it food. It was finger food, so it was the smallest of portions and the hungry half drunk students flocked around the servers as they walked out from the kitchen with their newly filled platters.
As the party drew to a close, we got a bit of a surprise. When handing in the wristband that we got upon entering the party, we got a UoN duffle bag in return. A really nice gesture and very useful as the two of us hadn’t brought any duffle bags to Australia.
Outside the Queens Wharf Hotel before going home, the other Swedish exchange students and we had some fun with a couple of helium balloons and sang a few high pitched songs.
Gustav got the opportunity to say goodbye (for now) to his classmate Tanner. But as with most things, it feels likely that they will meet again. The world is not that big a place and either we’ll go to the U.S. in a couple of years, or maybe he’ll come to visit our neighbourhoods in the cold north.
The party was a hit. While most people went out to got to other bars, we went to the bus stop to get home before the buses stopped going and to prepare for another day – the last day of the semester (which contained a lecture at the Uni for Linnea).
/ Gustav & Linnea
Melbourne Cup Day (1 November)
After going to class in the morning of Tuesday 1 November, we met up with Jenny and Grahame to experience the Melbourne Cup.
The Melbourne Cup is the most famous and prestigious horse race in Australia. It takes place every year on 1 November in Melbourne.
Grahame came and picked us up at 1 pm. We went to their place from where we walked to a nearby pub called Maryville Tavern.
At the tavern, Jenny and Linnea got champagne while Grahame got a beer and Gustav got an apple cider. Jenny ordered a platter with crackers, cheese, olives, and more, for everyone.
The race was not on yet, so Grahame bought scratchers for the sweepstakes for the race. So we got one random horse each and therefore we started to read up on the horses and jockeys. Grahame had brought the section of the newspaper containing all the race stats for the day.
We also put bets on one horse each that we thought seemed got based on the stats. The bets we made were at one dollar each.
When the race came on everyone in the tavern moved their focus to the televisions. Even though there were a lot of people in the tavern, no one seemed too happy about the result and neither were we. No one of the four of us won, or even had a horse in the top three.
After this, we started reading up on the next race, which actually is not a part of the Melbourne Cup since that was just that one race. We selected a horse each and put a bet on the race.
This time the luck was on our side. Linnea’s horse came in first place and Gustav’s in second. Based on the odds, we both ended up winning about 8 dollars each.
After this second race and a few more drinks, we walked back to Jenny and Grahame’s place where we ordered some Thai food that we enjoyed together.
/ Gustav & Linnea
Surfing, Shopping, and The Color Run (14 – 16 October)
Friday, 14 October – Surf Session
On Friday, around 11 am at Nobby’s Beach the International Office, and Newcastle Surf School had arranged a surf session for the international students at UoN, which the two of us had, of course, signed up for.
Linnea had lectures before lunch, so she went to the beach on a chartered bus, while Gustav – who much like every Friday had nothing scheduled at the uni – went straight to the beach and ended up arriving a bit before Linnea. This, in turn, resulted in that we were placed in different surfing group.
Gustav suited up first. The guys from the surf school gave a quick set of instruction on how to go about when standing up on the surfboard as well as information about staying away from the riptide. The instructors said that, as beginners, if we had gone alone to the beach to surf, they would not recommend surfing since the waves were quite rough.
The water was quite cold, but with wetsuits and rash shirts on it didn’t feel that cold. It was quite hard to stand up on the board. The first step was just to sync up with an oncoming wave and to paddle to get up to speed. The second step was then to get up on two feet.
For the most part, Gustav just went in on the waves on his stomach. But after many tries, Gustav managed to get up on two feet just to fall over straight away. It was enjoyable and straining at the same time.
At one time, when falling over Gustav managed to pull a muscle in his back. This resulted in a very uncomfortable feeling, making breathing harder and painful for some time. This passed quite quickly after some massaging on the affected area.
After an hour, it was time to switch place. Gustav got up from the water and changed into his regular clothes while Linnea put on the wetsuit.
When Gustav went into the water, it had been cloudy. But when Linnea got in it had started to break up and the sun was starting to peek through the veil of clouds.
While Linnea was surfing Gustav got lunch (included in the surf session) consisting of sandwiches, juice, an apple, and a small piece of carrot cake.
When Linnea has surfed and eaten, we went to The Emporium, which is a small mall consisting of a few niche stores. All stores in the Emporium feels like they’re selling hand-crafted or at least local design goods made by the people owning and running the shops.
At one of the stores, we met one of Linnea’s Australian classmates who happened to own one of the shops together with two other people. They were designing and selling furniture that was very vibrant and fresh.
We continued home and relaxed in preparation for a busy weekend.
Saturday, 15 October – Shopping
On Saturday, we went on the 100 bus to Charlestown Square – a big shopping centre in the Newcastle metropolitan area. We went there to pick up merch for the Color Run that took place the day after.
Without having to wait in line for too long, we got our merch as well as one set for Svenja who was going to the Color Run as well. The merch we got consisted on a t-shirt, a headband, and a few other things.
We decided to stay at the shopping centre a bit longer and didn’t take the next bus back. We ended up going to an H&M that just had opened as we moved to Newcastle. As we were walking through the store they played Dancing Queen and many other Swedish songs. When Gustav was paying for the clothes he had picked out, we ended up talking a bit to the cashier who thought it was nice that we were from Sweden and we commented that we thought it was nice that they played a bit of Swedish music.
After H&M, we went to Sportsgirl – the store that was the main sponsor for the Color Run. We had gotten a discount and Linnea wanted a new pair of sandals. So, she bought a nice pair of sandals made of leather and got 20 % off thanks to the Color Run.
Instead of going on a bus back home, we instead went on a bus to the city centre to a café called The Press Book House Cafe. We bought sandwiches and our first filtered brew coffee in Australia. We had to argue with the cashier to get milk with the coffee since he thought we hadn’t drunk filtered coffee before. The main reason he was hesitant with the milk was because the coffee was a medium roast that you pretty much don’t need to have with milk.
We enjoyed our coffee and our sandwiches at a table on the sidewalk. Apart from the traffic, it was quite calm.
After finishing our fika, we went to Spotlight – a textile store – to look for some textile fabric for one of Linnea’s prototypes. Linnea managed to find a fabric that seemed good, so she bought a sample for her scale model to try it out.
Sunday, 16 October – The Color Run
The day of the Color Run, we got up early in order to get to the start on time. Svenja and we took the train from Waratah shortly after 7am and arrived at Teralba at about 8 am.
We participated in some warm-up Zumba and started to get pumped for the race. Linnea got some manicure as part of the colour-theme of the run.
At about a quarter to 9 am the people started to fill-up the start chutes. Linnea managed to make a path for us towards the front, so at the end, we were in the second start chute.
At 9 am, the first start chute opened and the people in front of us started running. When the first start chute was clear, we could start moving forward to the starting line. A short while later the signal for the second start chute sounded and we were off. Linnea sprinted off (in order to get a good photo of herself, see below). When we had run off the field we started to catch up with most of the people from the first start chute since the vast majority of them had stopped running and were walking instead after just 200 metres.
We ran past a lot of people and came to the first zone that had pink foam covering the street. Our legs got a bit pink, but nothing to speak of compared to how we looked after running through the colour zone where they threw coloured corn starch at us.
The run was nice and the ground was flat all the way, which was nice since there were a lot of hills in and around of Mayfield where we usually ran. The weirdest zone was the slime zone, which was a new zone for the Color Run. At the slime zone, they pumped out green slime onto the passersby and this slime also made the street slippery.
The weirdest zone was the slime zone, which was a new zone for the Color Run. At the slime zone, they pumped out green slime onto the passersby and this slime also made the street slippery. So that might not have been the brightest of ideas.
We finished the 5Ks in just above 30 minutes, which for the two of us is quite a good time.
Among the sponsors of the Color Run, there was LG promoting their washing machines. As part of the promotion they had a dunk tank – the kind where you sit on a board over a tub of water and the board is connected to a button that another person is supposed to hit with a ball. Both of us had a go in the dunk tank and in return, we got a clean t-shirt and a towel, a good trade.
We didn’t stick around much longer and went back on the train at about 10:20 am. We went back home where we washed our clothes and showered. Most colours apart from the slime went out of the clothes. But our shoes remained glittery for some time.
We spent our afternoon at the Ocean Baths mostly sunbathing. It was nice, but it was a bit too windy.
That was the end of a good weekend!
/ Gustav & Linnea
Sometimes art is hard to show in a still image. #goma10nasseri #LinneaAndGustav
Sometimes art is hard to show in a still image. #goma10nasseri #LinneaAndGustav
Linnea is looking at “In Bed” by Ron Mueck at GOMA in Brisbane. #goma10mueck #LinneaAndGustav #nofilter
Let me just move these seeds and kernels. Oh, hello there! #feedingbirds #LinneaAndGustav
Let me just move these seeds and kernels. Oh, hello there! #feedingbirds #LinneaAndGustav
Back to the Future at Sydney Opera House (8 October)
This was a day long in the making. On 4 August, Sebastian, Hermione, and we booked tickets to a screening of the 1985 classic Back to the Future featuring live music performed by Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House.
The performance started at 2 pm, but we had to fetch the tickets at least half an hour before then. So we went on the train to Sydney at about 9:15 am.
We arrived in Sydney at 12:40 and walked to the Opera House where we fetched our tickets. Outside the Opera House, people were preparing a small market, so we bought lunch there to eat while we waited for Sebastian and Hermione. Across the bay, an enormous cruise ship was anchored. Next to it, some of the big structures in the city didn’t seem so big anymore.
We ate our lunch and after Linnea went to find a coffee. While she was away, Sebastian and Hermione arrived and the time until the performance was getting shorter. On her way back to the Opera House entrance with coffee in hand, Linnea was stopped by a guy probably in his thirties who was working as a fight scene coordinator for the television show Game of Thrones. The guy, or rather his friend, had apparently been ‘stunned’ when Linnea walked past them. So he felt like he had to talk to her. They wondered if she could meet up later for a coffee. Although it was a testament to how stunning Linnea is (Gustav writing here), it was not the right time to chat. She explained the situation and hurried back to the entrance.
A few minutes before the performance started, we hurried up the stairs to the Concert Hall to take our seats on row L. Because of the screen setup the stage had been extended to fit the whole orchestra. Since parts of the screen could have been obstructed by the orchestra from the point-of-view from row L, we got a good price when buying the tickets. Fortunately, we could all see the screen and some of the orchestra. Our seats were pretty much front and center.
The conductor was a man, probably in his thirties, who was charming and jokingly talked to the audience to introduce the performance. The orchestra started playing the main theme of the movie before it started. It was interesting to look at the conductor especially when the movie started. On a small screen next to the score the conductor could see the movie with cues appearing or moving across the screen to indicate when he should cue the orchestra.
In theater tradition, the performance had an intermission in the middle when we could go out and stretch our legs. We took the opportunity to go out and get a few photos of the four of us together. As we wanted to make this, our one, visit to Sydney Opera House special, we had dressed up for the occasion. A man aided us and took our pictures.
We went back in and took our seats when the signal started sounding. The second half was also very enjoyable. The four of us thought it was really nice to see the movie. Sebastian and the both of us had seen Back to the Future before while it was the first time for Hermione. But it was quite some time since the two of us had seen it, so it was nice to refresh our memories as well.
After the performance, we walked to an Italian restaurant called Fratelli Fresh where Hermione had made a reservation. We ordered pizzas and a pasta dish. The pizzas at the restaurant were a bit quirky, they had one with black truffles and an egg on it, which Linnea had to try. The food tasted really good and we had a lovely time talking to each other.
When we had finished dining, we couldn’t help but try out an ice cream place Hermione recommended for dessert. We bought some exotic flavours there as well, this time Gustav got popcorn ice cream with salted caramel flavour. Later we headed to the trains at Circular Quay, and the two of us started our journey back to Newcastle.
/ G & L
Swedish Dinner (7 October)
On Friday the 7th of October, we had been invited to a “Hat or cat” themed Swedish dinner by three of Linnea’s classmates: Anna, Hanna, and Greta.
In the evening, we took an Uber over to their house in Merewether (one of the suburbs in the Newcastle metropolitan area). We arrived there around 6:30 pm and were met by the rest of the Swedish students from Linköping which came walking to the dinner at the same time.
All in all, we were 14 people at the dinner. All except Gustav are studying the same programme as Linnea at Linköping University.
The dinner consisted of three courses. The appetiser was Gözleme, the main course was tacos or rather the Swedish version of tex-mex, and finally the dessert was Eton mess (similar to the Swedish dessert marängsviss) but also containing Baileys Irish cream. All three courses tasted really good, and the dessert containing Strawberries made us think of Swedish summer.
After the dinner, we were joined by more international students many of whom the two of us know. Most of the students were either from Sweden or Germany.
We spent the rest of the evening talking to the people there. One of the talking subjects led to that Linnea got to borrow the newly released Harry Potter sequel Harry Potter and the Cursed Child from Anna, which was really kind of her.
/ Gustav & Linnea