Arriving of the girls and exploration of our surroundings

Since our house hunting wasn't as successful as planned, we wanted to explore at least our soon to be homeland. First step: Swedens third most popolous city (ludicrous 300.000 inhabitants xD) and not even 20km from Lund: Malmö.
Arriving there, we were welcomed by a strange Christian sect, singing and dancing around a silver cross. Although, we encountered them a few more times this day, Rico has already enjoyed them the very first time!

After Rico was able to take his eyes off, we continued our walk through the city and went to the harbour. First thing we saw there: a lighthouse! Rico was quite sad that it wasn't shining!

And there's another picture for a special friend. It's steel. Just steel. Masculine steel: Huge cranes! (And I guess it's the first picture without a thumb!!!)

Our next destination was the only skyscraper of Malmö. But it's really boring and not that beautiful. Instead, we passed another lighthouse. This time, I wanted a picture. But I was so discouraged: the lighthouse was much smaller than Rico's and I'm not (well, at least: not yet) able to smile as nice as he does!
(Wow... this is it? The first picture of me? I hoped for something better...)

Before going home, we had a Kanelbulle (some typical Swedish pastry; some kind of a cinnamon roll) and a coffee. The coffee was so large! You cannnot imagine how Rico behaved for the rest of the day!

As I've already said, we wanted to stay at Fabian's place for a few days. We were sure that until then we had an apartment on our own. Besides, there were two more Couchsurfers (yes of course Germans, like 50% of the Erasmus students) coming: Franzi and Anna.
Anna was just here for registering at the university. She is one of the lucky students who got offered a student apartment.
However, Franzi was in exactly the same situation than we: hopeless without housing (in fact, she was quite concerned whereas Rico and I had a great time xD).
Here's a picture of us:


Well, yes, it doesn't exist yet. Soon to come, I promise!


And another thing about our host Fabian: He is too generous. He moved to his sister and left HIS apartment to us! We really felt weird about that, but: What an amazing guy!
Since Fabian had to work and was already showing the city to Rico and me, it was our turn to show the girls around. More and more students were arriving; it was the last day before the official arriving day for exchange students. It was a huge difference to the situation before. You can clearly see that Lund is living because of its students (80.000 inhabitants - 30.000 students).
The route led us through the city park where Rico discoverd some ducks. Rico had some trail mix (German: Studentenfutter) with him - and of course, he had to feet the ducks!

What should I tell? Ducks are crazy about nuts. Swans don't like nuts at all. Ducks like Rico and Rico likes nuts. And of course ducks.
Next thing on our way: a VW T1 ("Bulli"). Since Rico still hadn't a place to stay he immediately wanted to have it. He dreamed of living in there, sleeping in there, cooking in there,... of course, it's a nice car, but Rico...!

The next picture is again something special. It's one of the university's building, just to give you an impression how it looks like in Lund. And yes, every building is more or less that beautiful; that's why we won't stain it with a thumb!

 The next building we wanted to show the girls was the so called "AF-Building" (Akademiska Föreningen). There, we would have to go the following day (Arrival Day) to register and meet the coordinator. In addition, the left student rooms (~50-100) would have been distributed at 9am. To have the chance of getting one (first come - first serve) we wanted to queue up really early. But behold! There are already students camping in front of it! And look at the guy left from Rico: He enjoys the wait so much!

I'm sure you already know what happened next: We got there at 4am (!!!), waited for more than 8 hours till it was our turn and everything that was left where some ultra-expensive apartments in Klostergarden (500€ per month!) and we had to deny. Now, we were officially on our own.
Everything they told us was to look at the common webpages like all the other approx 1000 students without housing and hope for the best. In addition, we should write an ad that we are looking for housing. This was our application photo (I don't have to say that it's without a thumb):

Yeah, I know, it's really nice, but we didn't have any luck. But it's still unbelievable how much fun Rico had looking for accomodation online!

Furthermore, Rico wanted to give his Swedish phone card a try. 5000 free SMS per month and ~0.08€ per call! Amazing! We paid 10€ for that. Nobody told us that we would get it for free at Arrival Day. But Rico doesn't know that yet, so he was really curious about trying it!

And yes, it didn't work: the phone company doesn't accept his credit card, so he wasn't able to charge it. After he failed so bad and was so despaired, he took a shower and he left his glasses in the living room. All of a sudden, I was curious. Am I able to look as good as Rico? It took me about 20 photos, but I managed!

Slowly, the walking get on our nerves, so we needed a bike. Luckily, Fabian knew a guy who would grant us discount. Of course, it was still much to expensive (only one gear is working at my bike), but we finally were able to get around fast! And look at Rico! He enjoyes so much to "get in" (German: einsteigen) his bike!

Now, that all the exchange students had arrived, introductory meetings and partying began! But this will happen in my next entry. I really hope, you don't have to wait so long again.
Please be patient: the waiting pays off for sure (yeah!!! more thumbs!!!) - and it really is a lot of work!