And back again...

My week in Germany passed way too quickly. For the first time in a very long time I really enjoyed myself in my hometown. I met so many friends, some of them I haven't seen in ages. I had some major flashbacks to my schooltime and the summer after graduation which in retrospective was one of the best ones ever. Knowing, that I have about three months to do whatever I like, having fun and simply enjoying life without any thought about the future but at the same time knowing, that I have a letter of acceptance for university in my pocket, made this time really special and absolutely fantastic! Apparently having a certain time window, a limitation to a certain period of time, seems to make it all easier to enjoy. From time to time doing nothing can be so damn good, but not knowing, when this doing-nothing-period ends kind of takes away the fun-part.

Christmas eve also turned out to be the best in years. I don't know why, but maybe the absence of presents helped a little bit. This year we simply decided, that we skip the whole christmas stress and instead try to relax and enjoy the food and each other's company. In my opinion, we definitely suceeded.

I also managed to do everything that I planned to do, like sorting out my old stuff and getting rid of some of my old furniture. My couch found a new owner and my old closet is going to furniture heaven. Going through the boxed I discovered old photographs, games, toys, schoolstuff, diaries, tons and tons of old clothes and shoes: it is pretty impressive how much stuff we tend to collect over the years. The good thing is that with every moving we have to face our collections and sort things out. On the one hand it is shocking, as I suddenly saw myself as a borderline-messy but on the other hand I could be proud of myself when I looked at the full bags of rubbish. Now I "just" need to do the whole procedure once more with my student-room in Stockholm.

Now I am on the ferry, waiting for the departure. My car is fully packed with furniture, decorations, kitchen stuff and food. I am dead tired and fell asleep in the car twice while in the waiting line for the check in, fortunately the trucks woke me up when they started their heavy machines. The weather conditions have been slightly better than on my way to Germany, but the first four hours were also very slippery-snowy. It started snowing half an hour before I got going... all the other days: dry. Someone up there has it in for me... Let's hope the streets in Sweden are ice-free so I can go home fast. Time for sleeping now.

Wish me luck!

Oh what a trip!

I left Stockholm on Saturday early evening right after 6 hours on the market with -10°C, although my ferry was leaving from Trelleborg on Sunday late afternoon. Due to the very winterly weather conditions and constant warnings about foreign trucks on Swedish motorways with bad summer tires I decided to leave early. The first three hours of my ride weren't pleasant at all, I don't even remember having seen such a winter before. Tons of snow, the snow plough cannot work fast enough and barely any vision at all. Surprisingly I still made it all the way to Malmö, where I arrived round 2am. Fortunately there was also a nice hotel right next to the motorway so I did not have to search for long.

The next day, after taking a nice 9 hour sleep I went to the car, which was covered in about 30cm of snow. In my opinion this is quite a lot, especially for Skåne. Global warming and its effects: even in Germany winter has arrived, my hometown is also experiencing snow, which has not happened for a longer time. I hope though that there won't be so much on the motorway. Now it is 11.30pm and my ferry is supposed to arrive at 0.45. I am tired and still have some four to five hours of driving ahead of me. I am not too psyched. I already tried to kill time by watching Ice Age, which is a shockingly short movie when you plan to be entertained as long as possible... but it was the only movie besides Planet Terror that I still had on my mac. Afterwards I tried to sleep a little in the café as I did not book a cabin. In general this would have worked well if there weren't the drunk Dutch truck drivers singing from the top of their lungs. I cuddled up on a couch-like bench anyway but got woken up a little while later by the sound of a camera being switched on. When I turned around and lifted my hoodie from my face one of the truckers made a run for it. He was apparently standing behind me trying to take a picture of my back...Disturbing and disgusting! With that incident I decided to give up the thought of getting some sleep and since the café just opened again I got a cup of coffee instead. As I never drink coffee the effect is immediat: nervous and fully awake like a squirrel! I am listening to a very funny christmas cd right now, with cheesy Swedish christmas songs and comedy versions of christmas songs mixed with the usual christmas stuff (Mariah Carrey, Wham). My favourite right now is "Ho ho fucking ho" by Monty Python and "Jul igen" by Just D... although the South Park Christmas song also got its charm :-D Can't wait to sit in the car again to sing as loud as I can... of course just to keep myself awake ;-)

The past few weeks have finally been busy: Trying to arrange my new place although admittedly I am not doing as much as I want to. I applied for a job in Oslo as well and put a lot of effort in that application (with the support of my sister and friends) to make it as perfect as possible. This job would be incredible! And until I hear back from them and know if I am staying in Stockholm or not I don't want to invest to much money and time into this place. I don't really think I have particularly big chances to get the job but at least I cannot blame my application. It was actually one of the best ones I send so far. So people, keep your fingers crossed! I really need to start working now, earn money, live the life of a grown-up plus I really WANT to work! Though I don't want to leave Stockholm, but with a youth-unemployment rate of 30 percent, tendency rising to 35 percent next year, I cannot be too picky about the place, plus Oslo is not too bad either.

Working two jobs, having a friend visiting, writing applications, getting my car fixed (3 days in the shop and nobody could find an explanation for my battery constantly dying) and of course shopping at IKEA: my first real own bed, no bed-sofa, no futon, a REAL bed! My first night in the flat should be awesome!

Half an hour to go until Travemünde, finally. The coffee kicks in and hopefully the effect lasts some more hours. Otherwise Erik Grönwall's single and the new Mando Diao single in constant repeat have to do their job.

And off I go!

Oh happy day!

So, yesterday my Idol favorite Erik Grönwall won and it indeed made me very happy! Not that I did not expect his win, but still.
Today I picked up my car from the shop. They inspected it for 3 days now and could not find any reason for the (new) battery constantly breaking down. On the one hand that is good, because I do not need to pay for expensive fixing but on the other hand it is a little worrying. Driving a car for a long way down to Germany without knowing if or when it might break down the next time... Keep your fingers crossed that it survives.

And another good thing about today: the sun came out. Has been ages since I last felt so energetic!

Little by little...

... finally there is some motion coming into the deadlock of my past weeks: I finally got an apartment thanks to my lovely friends Eva and Anders. I am now a proud hirer of one sleeping room, kitchen (my own!!!) and bathroom. So glad, it is actually the first real flat that I am renting on my own. I was getting so incredibly excited, about changing the interior and some minor things, but apparently times are getting busy. I had a friend visiting, currently have two jobs, still looking for a full-time job, need to get my car fixed the third time this year and my training. This is of course my own choice, but I really need sports to be balanced. In total I have positive stress but I would love to finally take care of the apartment and somehow end up not finding the time. End of next week I am driving down to Germany to pick up a few things of my old stuff and of course celebrate christmas with my family. I am counting the days! And the good thing about this year's christmas is that my family and me decided to not go crazy about presents and rather spend some relaxed time with each other... and eat a lot of course :-) We all need a time out!

I just booked the ferry as I really don't fancy driving 17 hours on my own. Pricewise it doesn't actually make such a big difference, which I find very surprising. Nonetheless it will be a 20 hour journey with 12 hours driving, yuck!

However, tomorrow is finally the day: I have absolutely nothing booked in and therefore I will go and buy paint for the kitchen drawers as they are in a very disturbing blue and I will check again for a lovely wallpaper for the hall. I already keep my finger's crossed that my car can leave the shop tomorrow so I can take a ride with it.

The evening is also dedicated to calmness: the final of Idol!!! I would have loved to see the amazing Erik Grönwall live in Globen, but I think then I would just realize how childish my excitement about Idol is when surrounded by 13-year old screaming teenager girls. Besides my dignity I would probably also suffer an akute hearing loss.

Saturday then will be the day when I finally get started in the apartment. Can't wait! Get rid of some of the old furniture inside, painting, enjoying having my own place, all the good stuff. Now I should actually finish an application that I started about 12 days ago. Damn, time really flies sometimes.

Have a good evening and don't forget to watch Erik Grönwall :-)

quiiiietsch

If that isn't the cutest thing ever, I don't know:

Swine flu can be funny :-)

what to do....

Since I do not really have that much to do, I rediscovered "That 70s Show". Eric decided to take a year off and only do stuff he wants to do, like catching butterflies. Awesome!

Shocking!

The photographer Chris Jordan took pictures of Albatross chicks on Midway Atoll in the North Pacific.
"The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.

To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world's most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent."

If you are interested in the entire series, go to http://www.chrisjordan.com/.

Got lazy

Well, well, someone neglected her blog. I finally managed to get busy again with my job, meeting friends, house- and job-hunting and of course travelling. So this week I visited my sister in east-Slovakia. A lovely town called Kosice. After a flight to Bratislava and a 6 hour trainride I arrived in a different world. Everything looks like having stopped in the 60s to 80s, kind of trashy and poor, the busses have a certain Sovjet-touch, the streets are bumpy, the trams have flickering lights so you are afraid of getting a seizure soon and the houses look a little depressing.

The nightlife however is suprisingly nice though different as well: the music is oldschool (80s and 90s trash), though not in the good way, but the locations are cozy (without any ventilation) and expecially the cafés are snug. I have also hardly ever seen so many ill-dyed hair in shades of light purple, red, orange and yellow-white-greyish combined with white boots. Yuck!

It is pretty weird to be in a country, in which it is difficult to communicate: I do not speak Russion or Slovakian, while they don't speak English, though sometimes hints of German. Things changed when we went to Budapest, where it was no problem at all to speak English. The weather was not the finest, but the fog somehow gave the city a certain touch. The hostel, in which we stayed was lovely (Casa de la musica) and close to the center and a few bars and coffee places. In Budapest you actually get a hot chocolate with the consistency of a hot chocolate. In Slovakia it is more like pudding, really thick and incredibly sweet. I made the typical beginner's mistake by eating the whipped cream first before I discovered the thickness of the "chocolate". I learned my lesson and the next hot chocolate with whipped cream was mixed first: by this I could actually drink it and not sup it.

The time in the East flew by so quickly, what a pity!

The outlook from my sister's kitchen window:

Kosice Business Center... Impressive, right? 

The city center, which really is beautiful:

Getting ready for nightlife:

Cosmopolitan Bar with Jenny and one of my sister's classmates:

Club Ibiza, oh yeah:

Welcome to Casa de la musica in Budapest... well and the swine flu:

Weirdest dog I have ever seen. Looked like an old mop (and smelled like one):

Fortunately there are jackalopes

Helping against the Novemberblues: