Matt and Janelle in Europe

In the morning, Jack brought us to a nearby cafe that he had been to before. We each got a Swedish pastry and a cup of coffee -- this might have been the only cup of coffee in Europe that had free refills (definitely the first we had seen). After drinking our fill, Jack took us on a tour of the small university town.

We walked past many of the university buildings and Jack told us some history that he had learned in one of his classes. He showed us how you can see by the color and pattern of the bricks how big the buildings were originally and how they have been changed and added to. We made our way to a park and botanical garden which had many flowers blooming. The greenhouse was free, so we shed some of our warm layers and checked out the hot, humid rooms. There were many different plants and flowers and even a room full of desert plants. We also enjoyed spying on some little flightless birds and their new chicks which ran around on the ground in some of the rooms.

Next we stopped by the grocery store to pick up some sandwich supplies, which we took to a different park nearby for a picnic. Even though Lund is the northernmost European city we have been to, we were lucky to have great, sunny weather. We sat in the sun eating sandwiches and talking while watching people and dogs running around.

Jack often gets together with other UC students who are also studying in Lund this quarter, and there happened to be a dinner planned for this night at Jack's apartment. We returned to his room and worked on some blog posts until his friends started showing up. After buying some supplies at the store and cooking for awhile, we had a great meal. We made some traditional Swedish foods, like Swedish meatballs with lingonberry sauce and mashed potatoes, and ate a lot of other food (that wasn't so Swedish) that the others brought.

During dinner and afterwards, we all talked about many of the European cities we had been to and how they differed from each other and the US. The students also explained to us what they'd noticed about people from Sweden -- apparently they can be very quiet and won't approach you, but stare if you do anything un-Swedish, like put lingonberry sauce on toast or wear sandals when it's not summer. It was almost midnight before everyone went back to their own apartments around the town, and we too turned in shortly afterwards.