Birthday, Departure, Sweden!

So much has happened the past week+ that I can't even hope to include it all.  Add in that I'm super sleepy, and you get a meandering, incomplete blog post!  At least, that's what I expect it will be.  We'll see how it turns out at the end!
Birthday: mostly awesome.  Got to eat a surprise cake for breakfast, courtesy of my roommate Veronika (which was incredibly nice of her, since we weren't really good friends and she'd only known me about a week!), though no one was awake to enjoy it with me.  Went to class and got a lovely bouquet of flowers from Miriam's (my teacher's) garden, and she gave me a chocolate egg to boot!  Ate a delicious mixed berry pie/torte in class, topped with awesome curlicue candles (which I blew out in one breath!).  Received a super cool Berlin t-shirt (see album for details).  Had a low-key afternoon, except when Veronika (different Veronika; this one lived on the 4th floor and was in Ric's class, from Russia) brought over a beautiful bouquet of flowers, which was awesomesauce.  Pre-gamed in the apartment with Ric, Peter, Elodie, and Russian Veronika (other Veronika was out), then took the U-bahn out to Warschauer Straße to visit Monica's bar.  We were, of course, very late; I didn't realize we had an actual reservation so made no effort to get the guys to move a little faster.  Elodie ended up getting sick on the street, I think because she wasn't used to Ric's style of bartending (the more alcohol the merrier), so we ended up waiting for her to feel good enough to head back home at 3 or so.  Unfortunately, Ric had made plans and reservations at a couple of clubs, which we did not get to go to (major sadface).  On the upside, we got broccoli pizza (delicious when tipsy) and a taxi ride with the best taxi driver ever.  Not a perfect birthday, but very fun nonetheless!  That weekend I had to pack things up and say my good-byes to Berlin, which was super-sad and a pain in the butt.  Did some crazy last-minute souvenir shopping, though, and got some little things for people!  Keep in mind, everyone, that I was on a budget, so don't have high expectations...

Sunday I had my last döner of 2010, but got an awesome picture, and I had to eat it in subway stations along the way to the airport.  It was a pain to lug my two suitcases and computer bag, but it was so worth it when I got to the airport and the woman behind the checkout counter didn't charge me for my bags :-)  Then I got to sniff perfume in the duty free store before settling down to wait for my plane and discovering Tegel has free internet!  I slept most of the way to Sweden, and was oh so happy to see Jasper and his family on arrival.  The house is a little ways outside of Stockholm, overlooking the water; it's open and beautiful and the views are superb.  The next day we went on an adventure to a hotel in rural Sweden, on a lake.  The setting was truly gorgeous (see pics!), though the rooms themselves weren't anything too exciting (hence our staying only the one night, not the two that had been reserved). It was a 4 hour drive there, but I slept for a lot of it.  That night we went to an extremely delicious and classy restaurant with a beautiful view of the countryside; though it was only a few miles from the hotel, it took us more than half an hour to get there, due to the annual American classic car rally/parade taking place the next town up.  It was rather entertaining to see a bunch of blonde Swedes driving in perfectly-restored American cars, and even more entertaining to see the crowds gathered to watch the circling cars.  Wednesday Jasper and I did basically nothing, which was a nice relaxing time.  Yesterday we took the ferry to Vaxholm, an island on the archipelago, and wandered around for a couple of hours.  It was so picturesque!  I'm constantly astounded by how perfectly presented everything is here.  It's kind of ridiculous.  I apologize for all the adjectives synonymous to "beautiful", but there's really no other way to put it.  This morning the whole family went to the Vasa Museet, a museum centered around a sunken warship (the Vasa).  It was the pride of the Swedish navy in the 1600s, but sadly it sank after a mere 20 minute voyage, due to being too top-heavy (64 guns!).  It was near-perfectly preserved, thanks to the low salt content and cooler temperature of the Baltic sea.  The excavation took several decades (well, only 3 years to dig the boat up, but 30 years after that to restore and preserve it), and the result is an enormous 400-year-old ship with 95% original pieces.  After we ate lunch at the nearby organic garden, Jasper and I peeled off to go subway station hopping.  The subway stations in Stockholm are freaking awesome; they are still shaped like caves, and the interiors are painted and decorated, earning it the honor of being a 110-km long art gallery.  We weren't able to get to them all, but we went to a few stops, including the one I really wanted to visit (water lilies on the ceiling!).  It was a very enjoyable day, though the train back to the house was really really hot.  Pictures from all the adventuring will soon be uploaded to FB (I'll post the link once that's done!).

I'm not sure what we're doing tomorrow, but I shall take pictures and report back!