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.
The gang from Linköping in Newcastle (Photo: Anna Johansson)
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.
Linnea and I had been thinking about it for a long time and today was the day, we were going to Ikea!
We started off by taking the train to Sydney, which in itself took some time (about 2h 30min). We passed the time by listening to podcasts or music, or by sleeping. Side note: on the trains, there are some really cool seats. You can move the back of the seat to either end of the seat (I will show a photo/video of this next time).
When we arrived in Sydney, we took another train to Circular Quay and arrived with a view over the harbour, Sydney Harbour Bridge, and Sydney Opera House.
We walked along the water and walked into an exhibit on the wharf next to a museum. The exhibit showed what I would call the “deer-apocalypse” and wetlands, not far from how some parts of northern Sweden looks (although with fewer horns laying around).
We continued up to The Rocks, where a market was going on. A lot of preparation were also made, it seems, for the Aroma Festival happening on Sunday, which is the largest coffee festival of the southern hemisphere. As soon as we got to know about the Aroma Festival, we decided to go.
We walked up to The Australia Heritage Hotel where we had lunch. The food on the menu was a Coat of Arms pizza, which is a pizza with one half of emu meat and the other half kangaroo meat. The pizza was really good! Linnea liked the emu most, while I preferred the kangaroo. So now we can tick off eating the coat of arms pizza on our bucket list.
After lunch, we walked back down and walked along the water again. We arrived at the opera house and took our pictures. While stopping, we also put on some sunscreen as the weather was splendid and we could feel the power of the Australian sun.
From the opera house, we walked on into the Royal Botanical Garden. We saw some impressive trees growing there. The outlook over the water was spectacular with a good view of the opera house and the harbour bridge. Linnea relaxed a bit in Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, a carved rock seat, with this outlook.
We were meeting up with Sebastian later at the Art Gallery of NSW. On our way over, we saw a flock of wild cockatoos. Linnea got excited as she wanted one when she was younger. But we have now heard their screech, which I think is all you need to hear to reconsider.
When we arrived at the museum, we went in together with Sebastian and had a quick look at some of the paintings. Linnea took the opportunity and voted on a painting for the People’s Choice in the Archibald Prize. We looked at some aboriginal paintings. They were simple, yet complex and also peaceful.
After the museum, we had fika along with both Sebastian and Hermione. We discussed the possibility of going to an opera, concert, or show at the opera house.
By bus, we went to Ikea in Tempe. The Ikea warehouse was far bigger than the one in Linköping and the one in Örebro. It was huge!
We started our Ikea visit by having dinner. Meatballs with lingonberry jam! Linnea tried the chicken meatballs; they were good as well.
When we had eaten, we started our search for the products on our shopping list. We knew we only could buy as much as we could carry, so we had planned in advance only to buy the things we needed.
A the checkout register, Linnea could use her employee discount, which was nice. This is a bit impressive that they manage to keep all the warehouses connected even though they are so far apart.
We bought some food in the Swedish Food Market at Ikea. Herring, Kalles creamed smoked roe, cloudberry jam, lingonberry jam, elderflower juice, etc. So good!
We walked briskly to the Sydenham train station and got into Central a few minutes late, making our wait a bit short. So we ran through the central with all our Ikea stuff, making it to the train to Newcastle just in time before they were about to close the doors.
Home, at last, we assembled our clothes rack Rigga and started to sort and hang our clothes. A picture of our room after the Ikea transformation will come tomorrow.
