I got back from my vacation last Sunday (August 19th) and wasn’t happier to be home. I seriously missed my friends and the city of Montreal.

Small review of the trip: it was awesome. I visited Denmark, Sweden and Norway in 18 days. Not a lot of time, but any more would have killed me, as I get homesick within 2 weeks. I saw quite possibly the most beautiful places on earth… the mountains of Norway are breathtaking, no lie. Stockholm in Sweden was such a nice, clean city; I found it equivalent to Montreal but more “European” and well-maintained. Definitely a place I would consider moving to, as their living conditions are superb. All I need to do now is pick up Swedish and I’m set. 🙂

Speaking of languages, I have decided to learn German at Concordia. During the trip, I spoke with the tour guide (whom I’ll never forget) that inspired me to learn. She knows six (6) languages! How crazy is that? English, French, German, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. Hopefully I’ll stick around Concordia for more than six weeks this semester.

My tour group was overall pretty fun to hang out with. Everyone was always in a good mood and respectful towards others. The hotels were decent, except two of them were crap. One didn’t have A/C (it is common in Scandinavian countries, as they don’t usually get continuous hot weather) and the other hotel was a bit ghetto overall (broken hair dryer, missing sink knobs, awkward room design, etc.). The food outside and inside the hotels were terrific, but extremely expensive. A can of Coke was equivalent to 10$ CDN. The Scandinavian countries’ minimum wages are much higher than North Americans I believe, hence the high prices. I got to check out some cool tech and gadgets though; the Sony Ericsson W880i phone was one of ’em. If it was quad-band, I would have bought it in a heartbeat (and quite possibly have buyer’s remorse right after, since I already have a perfectly working phone!).

One thing I found particularly cool was that a lot of people in Copenhagen use bicycles as a means of everyday travel. They have dedicated bike paths alongside cars; that’s how popular the transportation is. Of course, you still have your buses, trains and metro systems which work very well. The bicycles really keep everyone fit there… you sure as hell don’t see obese people around… which brings me to say the girls in Europe are HOT. 🙂