Top 10 Experiences

Honorable Mention

Latvia -  Really cool city with super cheap food.  My kind of city

Iceland- Unique place with unbelievable scenery

International Gasque-  I had fun getting all dressed up for the formal dinner.  Met quite a few people that night and had a blast!

Top 10 

10. Amsterdam- One of the weirder but most interesting cities I’ve been too.  Before I went to Europe for the semester one of my goals was to make it to Amsterdam so I am very satisfied I made it to one of the most famous and scenic cities in the world.  

9. Copenhagen, Denmark-  Extremely scenic and very walkable.  I was pretty sad after leaving Sweden for good but Copenhagen was a nice cure for that sadness.

8.  Swimming in the Aegean Sea, Greece-  The clearness of the water was unbelievable with schools of fish swimming all around us.  Rivals the virgin islands for best snorkeling experience I’ve had.

7. Plitvice, National Park-  After driving for a couple hours through a former battle zone we made it to this beautiful national park.  The vegetation wasn’t green yet but the scenery was still breathtaking.

6. Valborg Weekend- All the Swedes wouldn’t stop talking about Valborg all winter but when it finally happened it was so much fun.  One of the most fun weekends I have ever had.

5. Tossa De Mar, Spain-  Met up with my hometown buddy Seth in Spain and kayaked around the picturesque coastline.  The waves were pretty frightening but we made it out alive fortunately.  We also ate a legendary pizza that makes a trip back to Tossa De Mar very necessary. 

4. Uppsala FC-  We started playing 3 v 3 games in the beginning of March with ice still on the field.  As the weather warmed our games got up to 10 v 10.  We played 3-4 times a week.  I met most of my friends on the pitch so hopefully the club continues that we started!

3. A night out in Berlin-  After a long day of touring a concentration camp the 5 of us in Berlin went out in the legendary city and the city didn’t disappoint.  The club we went to had some characters in it, which added to the experience.  One of the best nights I have had…ever.  I will certainly never forget that night with the wonderful friends I was with.

2. Northern Lights, Arctic Circle-  I went to Sweden with the goal of seeing the northern lights.  Fortunately we got extremely lucky in Lapland and saw an unbelievable showing of them after dog sledding.  It was a stunning display of the Aurora Borealis and it made the 15 hour train ride worth it!

deserves 2 pictures

1. Friends- The friends I met in Sweden made my experiences so great.  Without them, Uppsala would be just a freezing cold town with overpriced food and drinks.  I met so many great people and I plan on seeing them in the future even if they are on the other side of the world.  It has been hard leaving all of the friends I made over the past 6 months but at least I was able to meet these lifelong friends in the first place.

Future plans:

In the fall I am helping the Swedish students studying in Boulder for the year with getting adjusted which will be fun.  I have one more year left at CU- Boulder and then I have no idea what I am doing after I graduate at the moment.  Possibly graduate school or work for a few years and figure it out as I go.  I just hope I can have another amazing experience like I just did in Sweden sometime soon.

All the countries I traveled to in the past 6 months

This concludes my blog.  It started a long time ago in the dark cold winter where I wondered why in the world I went to Sweden and why I was doing a blog.  Now I am truly thankful I went to Sweden and will remember the memories and friends I had there forever.  I would like to thank everyone who read the blog.  If I didn’t see the view count climb to over 1,000 in 10 different countries I don’t think I would of kept updating it at the rate that I did.  I have a feeling this wont be the last adventure I go on so stay tuned for The Adventures of Nicholas (next country name here) Edition.  I have been to 20 countries in my life so far, which means there are 176 to go!

Until next time,

Nicholas Lagios

p.s. Anyone reading this who has or will have the opportunity to study abroad should do it.  If you don't believe me just read my blog :)

Iceland

Tuesday- Arrived at Reykjavik in the morning and it was about 45 degrees and raining when I got there.  The bus ride takes you over a barren lava field for about an hour and then you finally reach the city.  I took a short nap and then walked around the city of about 200,000 people.  Everything was really clean and the city was very upkept just like the rest of Scandinavia.  It was only different in that there were more cars than bikes than in Sweden and Denmark but I think that is like that because the weather is usually so ugly.  Apparently the 45-degree weather and rain is quite common in the summer.  I can’t imagine what the winter would be like.  There was snow on the mountain tops surrounding the city and the mountains were only about 3000-4000 feet so it gets and stays pretty cold.

Downtown Reykjavik

Walking through the rain

In the afternoon after a 25 dollar small pizza I went up the main cathedral in the city and got a great view of the town. 

Leif Erickson Statue

Atop the Cathedral 

The currency is about 100 crowns to the us dollar so everything cost in the 1,000’s. 

Whale and Puffin for 59 dollars

I just went back to the hostel which was kind of outside of the city so about a 40 minute walk from the city center and watched American tv for the first time in way too long.

Wednesday-

I awoke to sunshine and about 60 degree weather.  It was basically a heat wave in Iceland.  Since it was so nice out I thought I would make my way to the Blue Lagoon which is the famous geothermal pool in Iceland.  The hour bus ride out to it went through barren lava fields just about the entire time.  The light blue of the water contrasted well with the brown lava rocks.

lava rocks

outside the blue lagoon

The water was very warm at probably about 100 degrees.  I just kind of swam around for a couple hours and talked with a  couple people I met at the hostel.  It was pretty cool being there but you can only sit in a hot tub for so long so it isn’t really a whole day event.  I got back to Reykjavik in the afternoon and went into town to get some food with Daniel an Australian and Christian a German.  Later that night I stayed up to watch the Bruins win the Stanley cup!  I was the only Bruins fan and there were about 5 Canucks fans watching so that was fun. 

Blue Lagoon

Blue Lagoon

Thursday-  Thursday I did the free walking tour around the city.  I think I was the only college aged person doing the tour.  Iceland is much different than the other places I have been because Iceland is more of a outdoors place to go to.  People go there to hike and bike which is much different than Barcelona and even Copenhagen where it seemed like there was a huge college population.  The tour guide kept telling bad jokes so I didn’t really know whether he was joking or actually telling a fact.  But apparently Icelandic people believe that elves live in certain rocks and roads will go around big rocks because they believe an elf could be in it. 

Reykjavik with 4000 foot mountains in the distance

Later that night Christian, Daniel and I went to a geothermal pool next door to our hostel and it was 1/15^th the price of the Blue Lagoon and easily twice the fun.  It had 4 separate pools and about 5 hot tubs all different temperatures.  They also had a huge water slide that Daniel and I went down way too many times.  It was a ton of fun though and really relaxing.  I went to bed pretty early as my flight was at 9am but got awaken at about 5am with the 2 New Yorkers in my hostel room coming back from the bars hammered.  They just did a 600 mile bike tour on the island so I guess they were rewarding themselves.

Bruins with the Stanley Cup!

Friday-  Caught the bus to the airport and caught my plane back to Boston!  Then boarded a bus to Portland got picked up by my dad and my experience in Europe was complete.

back to Vacationland!

Copenhagen and Leaving Sweden

Saturday-  I packed up my entire room all day.  It took forever cleaning the little room I lived in for almost 6 months.  Trying to fit all my belongings in my luggage was also quite the effort.  It was really hot on Saturday and my room was on the top floor of the 4 floor complex so it got pretty warm.  Swedish buildings are terrible when it gets warm.  They really aren’t made for the heat.

A lot of cleaning was needed 

After I packed my bag and cleaned my room I headed to the lake in Uppsala.  It is about 7 miles away but I got so lost biking there.  I got so lost to the point that I saw a sign that said to Stockholm.  I finally figured it out and made it to the lake with about 1,000 other people there.  The water was so nice after a long day of packing and cleaning.  I then biked back to go say some good buys at Kantorsgatan which is another housing complex.  I google earthed how far I biked on my crappy bike and it ended up being 23 miles.  When I got back to Rackarberget I had my last barbeque in Sweden with Jonathon a swede and Dawn from Minnesota.  It was a good last meal in Uppsala. 

Later that night I head to Flogsta (the big student housing complex) for a birthday party for Constantina from Athens.  She had a bunch of greek friends there and they all loved that I was half greek.  I met a guy from Rhodes, Greece where I went and he asked me all about my experience there and was pleased to hear that I enjoyed it.  I stayed for the midnight sunset and said my final goodbyes.

bbq at Flogsta

Sunday-  I started the morning bright and early by dropping my keys off and dragging my 45 pound bag on the cobblestones which wasn’t too fun.  I got to Stockholm and then boarded the bus for the 9 hour bus ride to Copenhagen.  It made about 4 stops in Sweden so it was kind of nice the see a lot of Sweden I hadn’t seen. 

This is what Sweden looked like for 9 hours

Malmo, Sweden

I got to Copenhagen around 8 and made the 45 minute walk to the hostel.  My arm was about to fall off because of pulling my bag by the time I got to the Sleep in Heaven Hostel.  It was in a very ethnic neighborhood but was in much better shape than the ethnic neighborhood I worked in, in Biddeford during winter break.

Right when I made it to my room I met a kid from Brazil named Thiago.  He was moving to England to work on a cruise ship.  He worked on cruise ships in Brazil before.  After that we went out to eat at a pizza place and called it a night.

Copenhagen

Stroget walking mall

Monday-  Thiago and I walked from about 10-12 seeing all of the “must see’s” in Copenhagen.  The city was amazingly quiet for being such a big city.  The streets were full of people walking and biking but very few cars.  Everyone was friendly and stress free.  Only .02% of people work more than 50 hours a week.  I did 65 hours a week last summer for about a month.  Denmark is rated the happiest nation in the world and it seemed like it.  We then rented bikes and cruised the amazing bike paths throughout the city and saw quite a bit in just a day.  We headed back in the afternoon and Thiago took a nap while I started planning for Iceland!  For dinner I went to 7eleven…It is the only place that’s affordable in that city. 

changing of the guard

little mermaid

Later that night I met a guy named Kirk that goes to CU-Boulder.  I just can’t escape Boulder in Europe!  CU has the highest study abroad rate out of any university in America at 20% so Boulderites are pretty adventurous.  We headed to a pub with 4 extremely drunk Swedish kids who were probably 17 and a few canadians.  The Canadians invited them,  definitely wasn’t me.  We went to a pub for a little and and then an Iraqi kebab store.  The workers there were extremely friendly.  So friendly that it made you want to buy something even though you aren’t hungry at all.  When we left they gave us some chocolate.  I didn’t think I would ever be receiving chocolate from an Iraqi.

Tuesday-  Watched the end of the Bruins- Canucks game 6 when I woke up at 430am.  Go Bruins game 7!  Headed to the airport at 530.

Getting ready to leave Uppsala!

I have started to pack up!  I leave tomorrow for Copenhagen for 2 nights.  I will be there June 12-14th then Iceland for the 14th to the 17th and I am home the night of the 17th!  I am taking the bus down to Copenhagen which is about 8-9 hours which is pretty brutal  but it is about half the price of taking the train.    I will then head to Reykjavik for 3 days in Iceland.  My connecting flight was going through there so I thought I should just stop a few days being there.  I hope to see the blue lagoon and the midnight sun as the sun doesn't go down in Iceland all summer.

When I am home I will post a Top 10 Experiences Abroad post so look for that!

Here are some random pictures that I haven't posted yet.

3:00 AM...

The sun really never goes down anymore.  I took this during the first period of the Bruins game 5.  Tough loss.  It gets semi dark at about midnight but still tons of light in the sky and then starts coming up around 2:30.

Marmaris, Turkey

Tons of fish surrounding me in Greece! Anthony Quinn Bay

The Vasa Museum

Uppsala FC

What started with small 3 on 3 games on the icy field in March grew to 10 on 10 games in the hot sun of June.  It is one of my highlights in Sweden being one of the founders.  I met most of my good friends by playing.  10 different countries are also represented in this picture.

before...

after

dark and gloomy...

bright and sunny!

before

After

Uppsala