Das Capitol

The last day in NYC we went to MoMA. It's one of the best museums of modern art in the world, the only one in US that I've encountered that can compare with European art collections. They have the really famous paintings of the really big names.

The entire family packed into an over AC:d bus to DC, drove for 4.5 hours and arrived at Union Station. Unfamiliar with the public transportation system, we received a lot of help from kind locals. Within an hour we had concluded that the population of Washington DC is the most beautiful and kind people anyone of us had ever encountered. NYC is supposed to be full of fashionables and models, but the only beautiful people we saw there were Swedish tourists. Swedes on the other hand are reserved and not very kind to strangers. DC is clean, they don't leave the trash in the streets like in NYC. The black population is not marginalized, but rather rich middle class. Seriously, I had not expected that.

Under the blazing sun in 34 degrees Celsius we wandered on the National Mall. The White House had snipers on the roof but no protesters in front of it. The Washington monument was huge ( What part of Washington was the monument modelled after...?). There were all the places you use to see in the moives: the reflecting pool between the Lincoln and WWII memorials, the Capitol with its impressive dome, Arlington cemetary with the rows and rows of stones rised for soldiers who'd died in battle. However, the thing that gave me thew chills was "visiting" Pentagon. We took the metro to the station with the same name, submerged from the underground scanning the bus stops for signs to Pentagon. Then we turned around and saw the gunmen, the do-not-enter and no-photography signs and behind all that the beige wide-angled walls.

Another pretty cool thing was the Smithsonian museums. The Air and Space museum had the Apollo 11 lunar lander and space shuttle, the Wright brothers flight and The Spirit of St. Louis that Lindbergh used to cross the Atlantic for the first time. I really wanted to see Enola Gay, but it's displayed at Dulles Airport instead of the museum downtown, and there was no time this morning when we flew from Dulles to San Francisco for a detour like that.  The Museum of National history was awesome, with the blue Hope diamond and big dino skeletons, but we had way too little time to enjoy it in the way the exhibitions deserved.

Disclaimer: The last 10 days I've been sick, with a nose running like the Niagara falls, shaking with coughs and with respiratory problems of somebody mustard gassed.  Hence, if you noticed lack of rationality and ease in my posts, that's the reason, I'm more or less brain dead at the moment.  

These Boots are Made for Walking

We hit the streets. We hit them hard. Manhattan is best seen on foot, so the Pirate and I walked. We've followed the guidelines of the "Bible", we went on a pilgrimage to to the UN building, Empire state, Central park and Strawberry fields, Guggenheim, which had a lovely architecture but nothing worthwhile inside, we crossed Times Square and strolled on Broadway, it even dictated what to eat in Chinatown and Hell's kitchen...

Monday night we partied with six other Swedes, three of Turtle's friends, the ones he lived with, and one friend of mine and his cousin, who just happened to be here right now. We started off in Aquavit, a fancy Swedish restaurant where Turtle and his friend new the waiter, Jonathan. We ended by closing the bars in East Village.

Tuesday night Mom and my three younger siblings arrived. Some people say that it's weird to meet your family after so long, but for me it was as if it was yesterday. My littlebrother, the Comedian, told entertaining anecdotes, the Spartan, on the other hand, doesn't talk too much, my baby sister, the Fashionista, was more concerned about matching her outfit than wearing comfortable shoes, and Mom, well, she is Mom. Without any ceremonies, I turned into a domestic dictator, telling the Fashionista to get different shoes, pushing them to walk up and down Manhattan, only allowing them breaks every once in a while when they started to complain about hunger or hurting feet. Look, this is the Flatiron building, it is very beautiful, there we have the Library, watch the ceiling, over there is the Statue of Liberty, take out your cameras...

My camera started working again, it was the moisture that had killed it, it improved my mood dramatically. Still, we went to B&H and bought a camera for the Comedian. Almost everyone who works at B&H are orthodox Jews and buying a camera is a mere procedural, they have to many expensive stuffs so you don't get the camera before you've payed it. There are four stations, first you look at the display items and make your decision and get a printout of the camera you want from a Jewish worker, then you go to a counter where they send for the camera from the storage and it arrives on a conveyor belt, you order the memory cards and everything is put in a bag and sent on the belt to an elevator downstairs where you pay and then at the last stop you pick up your bag. 

PICTURES (from the days when my camera actually worked):

The UN building is ugly as fuck...

...but it's a beautiful idea of peace.

This is the ceiling in the public library:

Most of the streets looks something like this with crazy traffic and yellow cars: 

From Empire State Building we got a pretty view of Manhattan...

 

More cabs.

 

The intersection of Broadway and Fifth Ave, with the Flatiron Building and the Manhattan skyline in the distance, first before dusk and then after dark.

Manhattan by night.

 

The Statue of Liberty from the Staten Island ferry and the Manhattan skyline

And the photographer...

...wearing her San Francisco T-shirt, tsk.

A Swedish Woman in New York

Our heroine arrived in New York at midnight on the same plane as Turtle. She will live with her family in a hotel in the countryside of New Jersey, while Turtle stays with his friends one block from Times Square. Life is fair. This is out in the bush, so the first night she had a hostel close to the airport. In fact, the hostel even picked her up from the airport, which is nice after a long trip. She mused about the fact that she seemed to know the English language better than the driver and the hotel receptionist, but the area was called Jamaica after all. When she entered her shared dorm room, ready to crawl into bed, someone was already lying in bed number 5. What on earth? A very unsuccessful communication with the Asian girl followed, after repeated excuse-mes and some poking, she murmured something, got up, and wandered out in the living room area. Strange. 

At the airport, when asking for directions one man (you know the anonymous white middle-aged business looking guy) who'd noticed the confused look in her faced and helped her out, asking her in a true New-Yrkian way: "Why are you staying in Jamaica?" It was not before she got up and out early Sunday morning, that Vanilla Ice realized why he'd asked it with such an emphasis. Jamaica, just like it would turn out, New Jersey, is very multiculti, which is the politically correct way to say that it's a segregated area with mostly Spanish speaking immigrants and African-Americans. She was uncomfortable in her skin. Walking around with a too thick sweater saying "University of California Santa Barbara" she was probably the only one who had attended college. Underneath, she had a T-shirt with neon colored "Las Vegas"-print, and showing that, she would probably had not received God's blessing from that self-proclaimed preacher in the corner. On the subway to Manhattan, she got acquainted with a tall colorful young man from Brooklyn, who very kindly offered to show her around the city and make her "Experience things she'd never imagined". Vanilla Ice felt terribly prejudiced when the first thing that popped into her mind was getting robbed in an alley. She wants to be tolerant and open-minded, and anything but racist, but today, she got extremely aware of the color of her skin, just like that day a long long time ago in Los Angeles. However, there was a difference between Chinatown in NY and Chinatown in LA, here there wasn't at all poor and many tourists walking around, in LA it was a ghetto.

She was supposed to meet  her aunt at 2 pm on Sunday, but she was lost in the public transportation between her hotel and Manhattan and missed the reunion. She was standing all alone in lower Manhattan, with a cell phone with a dead battery, not even able to call Turtle. And then it started raining. She bought an umbrella and wandered alone on Wall St, looking at New York Stock Exchange, discerned the Statue of Liberty in the fog. There was some contruction work going on at Ground Zero. 

Further north she saw the a picture perfect view of Chinatown, pulled up her camera ready to shoot, and everything went wrong. Lens error. No, no, no, no, no! She couldn't take pictures anymore. This was sad, especially since her iPod had met it's Waterloo in a wave and it seemed there was an epedemy among her electronics. She tried to memorize the views of the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. Her brother, the Pirate was supposed to arrive Sunday night. He didn't. She tried to trace him for a few hours before she got to know that his plane was delayed. He arrived in the morning, together with a sore throat. The vacation couldn't have had a worse start.

The Power of Goodbye

This was our last night together. 

Today I cleaned and packed the last things. Tomorrow I'll fly to New York City with Turtle. It will be awesome, of course. My brother and I will come to Santa Barbara in two weeks, but it will not be the same, then almost all my friends will be gone. I got people to sign my skate board, Pokerface contributed with a heartfelt piece of poetry: "Everytime I eat something sugary, I get acid reflux. Everytime I drink beer & coffee, I get acid reflux. And everytime I'm with you, I get acid reflux." Eddie wrote a lasagna recipe, because he's always cocking Italian cousine. We emptied a way too expensive bottle of sparkling wine that Youtube (Trulli) gave me on our shared birthday. Then we hit the streets of IV and the house parties. In some sense it was a perfect last night, because I met so many people I've made friends with here. Some of them I'll meet again, I'll definetely go to Copenhagen for a visit, but there are so many people that I don't know if I'll ever see in person again. We'll keep in touch through social medias, but it will never be the same again.

This might seem like a sorrowful post, but I'm not sad, I'm merely reflective. I'm thrilled about my three weeks of travel, I'm looking forward to return to Sweden, hell, I could teach Candide optimism. In the future, I'll remember the good times we had together, not the last time I saw you.  

Time is (Undie?) Running Out

The last days of the quarter are vibrating of intensity. I'm aware of every moment that goes by. Every time I'll run into a person in the street it might be the last time we'll ever meet.

Last night was hilarious, it was the Undie Run. Each quarter, at midnight between Wednesday and Thursday in Finals Week there is an Undie Run. A couple of thousand gauchos gather outside the library in underwear and then run through Isla Vista singing and cheering. The underwear was more or less revealing, there was a couple of Borats, some lingerie, a lot of glow sticks and body paint. 11:30 the Davisdon Plaza was packed, techno music blasting while people stripped down and threw their clothes in a pile that will be donated for some charitable purpose. Singing "Olé, olé, olé, olé, gauchos, gauchos!". At midnight the horde stormed the library (that is open until 2am) and run around between desks and computers with studious wide-eyed people. Then the flood of people turned and run across campus, past Freebirds and into Isla Vista. There was a poor woman in a car stuck in an intersection, waiting for the mass of more or less dressed students to run by. There was much confusion what route to take and soon the runners split into smaller groups. The event was definitely on the bizarre side of my experiences, but it was not at all weird to walk through the center of IV in a neon pink bra and matching Converse when everyone else did it too. 

Check out pics from the event on Facebook. 

This morning I had one final in history, quite fast and painless, then I did my laundry and packed my bags, everything before 10:30. I have my last final at 4 and then it's time for one last dance down town. 

Live Like We're Dying

I have four days left in Santa Barbara and really need to get my affairs in order. I have a long TODO-list (of things, not people!). Sell back books, return books to the library and to a certain train wreck partner from last quarter that lend me one, get refunds on deposits and from my student billing account, do laundry, pack and clean, print flight tickets...

And yeah, I have to study for my finals too. At least I don't have to bring all my stuff to NY, since my return ticket to Sweden is from Santa Barbara (the curse of buying the ticket 10 months ahead).

I also have to maximize the time I spend with my friends. Tonight I went with Eddie, Turtle, MaryJane, Cleopatra and one more Italian guy to an all-you-can-eat-spare-ribs restaurant. We were so full that we fell into food coma at the table.

It's a little bit sad to leave and have to say goodbye to everyone. I'm really bad with farewells, especially when I might never see the people again. Eddie said something insightful today: "I'm not sad that I'm leaving, actually I'm fed up with Isla Vista, what I'm worrying about is coming back home". I think many exchange students think it will be boring to return to a dull normal life, after such and intense year abroad. Still I'm not sorry for leaving, I always look forward to new adventures and if I know myself at all, there will be plenty of adventures.

The reason we love it here is because we know it must end soon, so we live like we're dying.

Not Any Given Sunday

On this sunny Swedish National Day I went downtown with two fellow nerd girls, Lucky and Arty. I'll leave in less than a week and we wanted to hang out before I disappear to live my awesome Swedish life.

The plan was lunch, but in the beautiful and spoiled Santa Barbara a lunch is never just a lunch. We did a tour worth a Lonely Planet recommendation. First it was lunch at Something's Fishy – a sushi bar with half price sushi during weekdays and apparently a Sunday too. It is a nice little restaurant on State St close to the ocean where they prepare the food just in front of you, either at the glass bar or on a big metal frying plate at the tables. We got two rolls each and shared between us trying all the different kinds of sushi.

Then we strolled along State St. Lucky needed a dress for her graduation, so we went  to Forever 21. However, I was the only one finding a dress, and what a dress it was! Flaming red, the fabric is folded into big roses, it's so pretty and sweet that I looked like a red cupcake in it.

Arty recommended the small art museum, so we went there, it was free. They had some wonderful Monets and amazing contemporary art. After the art we wanted dessert. We tried some gelato, but the goal was Crushcake cupcakes. It's a little cupcake place with the sweetest looking and tasting cupcakes you can imagine. We sat in the park devouring the delicious pieces, looking at the turtles and fishes in the pond.

On our way back we went up to the court house tower and watched the view over Santa Barbara. In the south there's the blue ocean, in the east the mountains. In the north and west the roofs are red, the walls white and the lush palm trees stick up between the houses.

When I got back I finished my take-home exam. Now there's only two more exams to go. What a wonderful Sunday, the last one in Santa Barbara.

Cred to Lucky for the pics.