September 18
Today has been pretty lazy. Went to bed late, woke up late. Tided up the room, took care of clothes, etc. It’s not to pleasant outside: cold, overcast, a bit rainy. The Swedish fall has arrived! Yesterday I saw the sunrise from the hilltop. Not as cool as the sunset, but I did get to see the mammoth Oresund bridge connecting Malmo to Copenhagen. In the afternoon I played soc- ahem, football with Frieder and Paul at a ‘field’ behind the Sparta residence. I say ‘field’ cause it wasn’t grass..just fine gravel. It was fun, but I prefer ultimate frisbee. I find just using the legs to be clumsier than using your arms. But most of the world would disagree with me. :)
I’ve been picking up more interesting cultural things.
- In most of Europe I believe, attending a university is free, or costs less than 1000 euros. Some students are balking at having to pay 500 euros a year in some places. In Germany, textbook prices are the same as in the US, but in Greece, textbooks are free. That’s right. When you sign up for a course, the university will supply you the textbook. And you don’t have to give it back at the end. And you don’t have to stay enrolled in the course to keep the book. I would sign up for 30 classes, get my books, then drop all by 6. It’s incredible. No wonder Amalia was complaining at paying 50 euros for a textbook.
- The Chinese language has an amazing grammar system. The verb doesn’t change when you change the tense. To speak past-tense, just add a small word to the sense. The same with the future tense. The verb itself never changes. And if you change the subject (I, you, he, she, we, they) the verb doesn’t change either (Swedish does the same). That’s awesome. If I were to create a new language, I would definitely steal this idea from them.
- Swedish (and likely Danish and Norwegian) does something very strange with the definite article. If we take ‘house’ for example, in English it would be “a house” and “the house”. In German it is “ein Haus” and “das Haus”. Note the difference in saying “a ____” and “the _____”. But in Swedish, it’s “en hus” and “huset”. The definite article is added to the end of the word itself. Weird.
More to come later.
