Back in March, I flew from Cayman to Sweden to present at a conference. One of the greatest things about grad school and being an academic is the opportunity to convene with specialists in your field in spectacularly cool places that you may not have normally considered travelling to. Case and point, the small town of  Vadstena, Sweden. You can fly to Linkoping or take a train there from København which is what I did. After you arrive in Linkoping, it’s is another hour drive to the hotel by the beautiful but frigid Vattern Lake. The conference went spectacularly well and I know now why they decided to host it at this beautiful resort area rather than at the University of Linköping. Here is a link to the monastery converted-to-hotel that we were housed in. My room was a nuns quarter and even the name of the nun was on the door way. I assure you that I was on my best behaviour 😉 http://www.klosterhotel.se

I squeezed in a trip to the Copenhagen School of Business and am proud to say I figured out how to ride to campus on my own and got lost only half as much as I thought I would! I stayed at this awesome hotel near the train station in Copenhagen before and after my trip to Sweden. The room was very small but really comfortable. It was a completely organic and eco-friendly hotel…plus it was really affordable compared to the other hotels in the area it offered a ton of nice little amenities like a small spa, bike rentals, free tea and snacks in the evening and a great breakfast buffet. I’m looking forward to staying there again! Here’s a link and a few photos of my room, my view, and my travel/gratitude journal which I am never without! Write in a journal guys! You won’t regret it!

http://www.guldsmedenhotels.com/Copenhagen/Our-Copenhagen-Hotels.aspx

I also wanted to add that after my 11 hour flight from Cayman to London, I had an 8 hour stopover at Heathrow. Since I booked a separate flight to Copenhagen from London, British Airways offered me an upgrade to business class for like less than $100 which included access to their 1/2 acre lounge full of hot food, soup, sandwiches, cookies, wine and ICE CREAM. I couldn’t pass it up. It was basically the best $100 I could have ever spent. If I had flown business from Cayman to Copenhagen it would have cost me an extra $2000, but because I booked a separate leg (London-Copenhagen), the upgrade was substantially cheaper and that’s how I ended up curled up on this couch for 8 hours, catching up on some sleep, eating, reading, and unwinding.

Having come high off watching Canada do an awesome job in the winter Olympics, I also decided to bring my Canadian socks abroad with me. I also packed 8 pairs of the official Canadian Olympic mittens and mitten keychains to give as gifts to my colleagues in Sweden and maybe to remind them of our recent Olympic Gold win over Sweden in Mens hockey 😉 . They loved them! I should have picked up more keychain mittens, they make great little gifts abroad and I think they’re 100x better than my next alternative, little jugs of maple syrup.

This is the arrivals area in Copenhagen by the way. I should have documented my time in Copenhagen more but I was too busy trying to navigate my way on bicycle  and stay on it. Boy that was an adventure. I was sworn at in Danish only once…I think….