At a certain point it is just enough!

First of all, I am more than familiar with the popularity of Sweden and Stockholm in particular. I know, that it is a popular travel destinations, especially amongst Germans. For some of you it might come as a surprise, but just because I live here does not mean that I am a hostel. And just because we grew up in the same village or went to school together does not mean, that I am your personal tourist guide. Seriously, when we did not even hang out in school times, or just because we are facebook friends does not mean that we have to be friends in real life. I graduated from highschool seven years ago. All those years you freeloaders did not give a rat's ass about how I am doing, neither did I care about you; mututal disinterest. But all of the sudden (or more in the moment that you booked a ticket to Stockholm) you remember me. And of course you were wondering only how I am feeling and how great it would be to meet me again and hear all about my life. No, certainly, it is not to get a free accomodation, it is just about me and refreshing the (before non-existing) friendship.

Honestly, do you think I was born yesterday? I also learned the lesson that you shouldn't tell new facebook friends "Sure, when you're in Stockholm give me a buzz so we can meet" because it apparently is misunderstood with "Great, book your 2 weeks vacation and stay at my place the entire time even though we did not see or speak to each other in 10 years". And with the 2 weeks self-invitation I am not exaggerating, this is based on a true story.

I know this all sounds very negative, but believe me, after 4 years in a pretty amazing city, you have heard all kinds of self-invitations and honestly, I consider my time a little bit too precious to be hanging out with people that only contact me, because they want to save money on an accomodation. I rather spend this time with my real friends, which can crash at my place any time they want to because I know that if I need a place to stay they would do the same for me. Again, don't get me wrong, I think it is a lot of fun to meet childhood friends again after a long time, but those people that just contact you for a free accomodation most of the time won't contact you again after their pleasant stay. If this initial reunion was to actually catch-up and renew the friendship, of course, then I am the last person to decline this opportunity, but unfortunately this is hardly ever the case or to not over-generalize, this has hardly been true for my case. The result is of course that I am not that open anymore with letting people stay at my place.

To all you freeloaders: Don't bother contacting me if it is just for saving money and GET A HOSTEL because that is what they are there for!

Primates ahoy!

Since the Worldcup started, I got super excited again about football. It just feels good to be proud of the own nationality again and not feeling weird about showing the German flag when my friends and me paint our faces and put sticker tattoos on. Especially when you grow up in a country in which showing flag is not too common. However all the cheering has also one downside. Old grudges between certain countries grow stronger again. Some particular people from particular countries (I am writing cryptically on purpose to not offend anyone) would rather cheer for anyone but for Germany despite them getting along with Germans perfectly fine. When it comes to football their "primary grudges" against Germany seem to re-awake for no apparent reason. Don't get me wrong, I do not want everyone to cheer for Germany only, that would be completely silly and the tension before those matches just heats up the emotions and that is also one part that I really love about international football matches. Still I think that one of the general thoughts should be that the whole world (or in case of the Eurocup whole Europe) is participating in one competition and through that feels united; everyone is getting excited about football; people all over the world are following the matches and media all over the world cover one main topic for weeks. Well of course, this is still the case, but those negative vibes, which of course are unavoidable, feel rather disturbing, especially when you get them from people that you used to get along with so well...

Just checking out facebook and recent posts amongst friends show a clear picture: during the Worldcup the competing teams/countries become the enemy. People write nasty remarks, make fun of each other when one team looses, become jealous when their nationality just lost and so on. Sure, some people do not take football that seriously and therefore don't take any harm in childish remarks from their "friends", but some actually take the competitions very seriously and do take those comments amiss.

I know, this is part of the game and especially during a worldwide sports event identifying with your country and nationality becomes very important. I am simply wondering why especially football is causing such a backwards development in us? Why is it not happening to such an extend during the Olympic Games, which are also mainly about sending representatives of one nation to the games to compete against other nations. The difference between the Olympic Games and the Worldcup is obvious: in the Worldcup only men are participating.

I am also wondering, why women, who normally do not really care that much about watching sports on TV become so territorial and nationalistic when it comes to the World and Euro Cup? Could the explanation be as simple as "because it is exclusively men participating" and therefore becomes a male domain and a representations of a macho culture? Is football a "civilized" and updated version of the primary hunting instinct: 22 men hunting one ball= 22 men hunting one prey animal?
And honestly, women, many of us are watching football for one single reason: the hot men! And isn't there a part in us that adores really manly men, that scream out gorilla-like if they miss a pass or the goal and support each other in good and bad times? And men like watching other men sharing emotional moments, being a team and doing something that seems to be exclusively manly?

A big exception from the "I support my country" rule is Sweden. Just a couple of days ago there has been a survey amongst 12 Swedes on Metro and all of them support either Argentina, Spain or Germany. That the Swedish women's football club won 17:0 against Azerbaijan was hardly even mentioned in the news. How come, that in a country like Sweden with a male football team, that does not really succeed that much, no one is supporting the women's football team, which ranks 4th in the women's football world ranking? Is their success not worth supporting? Why? Are those women no longer considered as sexy women as opposed to female tennis players with short skirts? This is, besides volleyball, the only female sport that I can come up with that men are actually watching for quite obvious reasons. Why do they not even get support by other women?

I know, that I am now walking on thin ice, but are Swedes rather supporting another nationality and by this men than their own women's team because it is women that are successful in a male domain?

hihi

I just stumbled over this comment and found it incredibly funny (written by a Brit):

"What do the World Cup 2010 and WWII have in common?

The French bowed out early, the Yanks showed up late, England was left alone to face the Germans and Japan came out of nowhere."

Cheers!

Crude

Recently I updated myself on the website of a German scandal sheet. There was this case of a kidnapped wife of a banker. After weeks of searching and desperates appeals of the family to the kidnappers to release her, the women was found dead. Apparently there had been a struggle with her kidnapper, who in the end stabbed her. Just imagine me reading this article, being very consternated, when a google advertisement on the right side of the article caught my attention: special offer on knife-blocks. How incredibly crude is this? Of course, those advertisements are not put there by another individual but rather automatically with the help of keywords and user profiles, however it feels very disturbing. Of course I should not take this too serious considering the kind of "newspaper" I was reading, which, by the way, is in itself already the most inappropriate sheet ever. But still I am taking the freedom to feel offended and disturbed by this crudeness.

Who is still saying that this was a goal???

Sorry this just had to be ;-) Of course this was a goal, no doubt about that!

Time for a change?

Sometimes it is easy to get the impression that all signs show the direction "leave your current location and start something new". The past few weeks have not been particularly easy, neither has been the decision to quit my job. End of last week someone broke in into my car and stole the radio and some other rather worthless things. Please note, that this is the third time in 3.5 years, that this happens to me! Yesterday I got a note from my landlord saying that there had been some problems and within three months I need to move out. This leaves me down with pretty much nothing: no job, no apartment, no reason to stay any longer in Sweden. I really try hard to think positive and think of the whole "if life gives you lemons, make lemonade of them" mantra, but it is admittedly becoming more and more difficult.

So if I am pretty much at a point, where I have to start all over again, it couldn't be any more of perfect timing to pack my backpack and go travel. Something that I really need right now is positive input and an adventure. More and more of my friends are also considering moving back to their homecountries. Ok, sure, in summer Sweden is beautiful, but the winters are a major downside.

I can already hear the voice of a friend saying "Oh you simply did not try hard enough" and everyone of our mutual friends also returned to their homecounties. In her opinion all those people are just too soft and gave up too early... which is easy to say if you do not have to worry moneywise and in terms of an apartment.

So if anyone of you has ideas where to travel to and experiences with making some money for survival abroad (preferably Central and South America), please do send me you suggestions!

Pensive

Wow, it has been quite a while since my last entry. In the meantime I actually managed to find a job and get a routine into my life. As it tends to be, you always want what you don't have. So I find myself counting down the days, as I quit my job. As it turns out, working as a marketing assistant was not really meant for me. I became more and more depressed, moody and simply sad. So I decided to take the consequences (rather early, I know, but better early than too late) and get back into my unstable life of temporary jobs, back to the doubts if I will ever find a job that I love and endless hours of application writing. Of course it can be considered unreasonable to quit a job before having found something else, but what are we living for if we are not happy. I feel like life's too short to be unhappy if it lies within my power to make myself happy again.

Don't get me wrong, I really want to work and I want to have a career but doesn't it always come down to timing? Maybe it was not meant for me yet, maybe discovering the world with an around the world ticket is what was meant for me now? Quitting this job, enjoying the summer and collecting energy for a new round of applications - who knows? However I KNOW that I made the right decision!

As disappointing as it might be to have found a job and figuring out, that it is the wrong one, the time spend in that job taught me a few things: 1. I still need to figure out a lot about myself; 2. I am not too old yet to travel around the world and enjoy being unbound; 3. There are WEIRD people out there! 4. With a cool head nearly everything can be solved.

Well of course there are many more things I found out but those seem like the most important ones to me. On top of those valuable lessons I had the pleasure to work with some truly amazing people and I am happy that I had the right timing to be working at the Embassy at the same time as them. Again, it is all about timing!

When working at a working place with some, mmmh, let's say "characters", the annoyance level can be very high, but so is the fun factor. Every person has a code name, so we have Mr. Chaplin (walks like him, behaves like them: a copy of the great Chaplin), Lasagne (as his English is on a level which does not allow a distinction "resigned" and "Lasagne"), MS (both initials and abbreviation for mouth smell), snake (unfortunately this person behaved quite back-stabbing) well and so on. Sometimes it was only one's self-control that prevented boiling blood shooting out of one's ears. At other times those character would make you cry from laughter.

For today I had booked an appointment at "The Studio", where they take amazing pictures of you after pampering you with make-up and hairstyling. Their catch-phrase is "Be a model for a day". I felt, if I am starting all over again with writing application, I need a new approach. And why not starting with giving myself an ego-boost? I was so sick of those application pictures on which I look like a 16-year old babysitter: innocent and trustworthy, babyface and not to be taken seriously. I spend hours in there and some pictures I actually like. I am unfortunately one of those people, that do not like the camera nor does the camera like me. In 90% of the pictures I close my eyes and the other pictures, well,... are mostly not that great either. Today I left with 4 pictures. Happy Svenja :-)

This weekend was also the royal wedding. Oh ho beautiful it was! Thousands of people where there, trying to catch a glimpse at the couple and I was lucky enough to see them. I don't know why this kinda corny stuff interests me so much, but when they said yes to each other, I was so touched. Such a beautiful wedding, (besides the tax money spend on it) it still felt down to earth and kinda simple, not as pompous as I expected, just nice.

Here is at least one picture, that I could shoot. As it turns out, my aiming skills are not the best ones, as 99% of the pictures show policemen and guards. Well done!

Lately I also started thinking about some people in particular. It is always difficult when one person's life changed in many ways while for another person everything stays more or less the same. This always creates tension. With some of my friends it works out perfectly fine, I can rely on them and they support me and vice-versa of course.
Some other people however showed a different face during the time when I started my job: jealousy, mean comments, back-stabbing, insults or simply childish behaviour like deleting the friendship on facebook for no apparent reason nor with an explanation. It has been pretty hurtful but apparently this is how it goes: living your life means also loosing touch with some people but it also means to strengthen the relationship to some other people and meeting new people. Loosing friends is always very hard on me but I also came to the conclusion that as long as you develop and want to become something/someone this is inevitable.
Those friendships that you describe with "man, this person has been my friend since early childhood" are extremely rare!

Well that's it for today!

CSI: Miami

I really love watching CSI: Miami, but what I haven't understood yet is the role of "Horatio Caine". He never really investigates, he only occasionally appears at crime scenes to sum up, what the others have found and appears as a kind of superman, that does not require seeing the crime scene himself etc but solves it all anyway with one cheesy comment. But really, what is his role? Jim Carrey has a perfect act of David Caruso's "Horatio Caine:

Weather-god or Murphy

First of all I need to stress, that I like snow and I like winter. What I don't like on the contrary is to dig for my car. Especially not at 3.15am! It took me 35 minutes to discover my car, remove all the snow and trying to get it out the parking lot. A lovely taxi driver, that passed me by helped me with a shovel and a lot of pushing. The snow plough, that passed by in the middle of the night put about half a meter of snow next to my car which made it nearly impossible for me to get out again. Tons of ice under my tired did not really make it easier either.

Now I am wondering: How is it possible, that those massive amounts of snow always occur when I am about to use my car? Does one of the weather gods has it in for me or is it simply Murphy's law?

¿Que?

Living in a foreign country can be tricky in many different aspects. Foremost of course the language barrier has to be named. In Sweden of course everyone speaks English, no matter the age. This also means, that most Swedish people wonder why you even bother to learn their language. Apparently it hasn't occurred to some of them, that it is first of all exciting to learn a language and that it is also a sign of respect towards the country you decided to live in.

I sometimes get the feeling, that some Swedish people believe, just because I am not particularly eloquent I am some sort of a retard. I am, on the other hand, quite happy to finally have reached the point, where I just talk and not bother too much about the mistakes I make but rather follow the rule "learning by doing". After 4 years of learning Swedish I finally start to get a feeling for the language, for idioms, choice of words and so on. However I still make a lot of mistakes and often realize how uncertain I am with specific grammatical questions. Still I have improved in comparison to for example one year ago.

Unfortunately it does not really help if you are talking to someone, who corrects your mistakes all the time. Don't get me wrong, I want to improve and I am deeply grateful for those friends of mine that find my constant mistakes and correct them. But being interrupted after every single (!!!) sentence doesn't help at all but rather takes away all my self-confidence so I don't dare to even finish my sentences anymore. This is of course due to a recent situation I was in. I am convinced that this person had good intentions only, but it just did not help at all.

Another problem with languages of course occurs when you want to find a job. Even if the job sometimes just requires English and the office language is also just English, some employers demand perfect Swedish skills which kind of implies that they wish to employ Swedish people only. A close friend of mine found the lovely quote "Efter 20 år i Sverige har man samma chans att hitta jobb som infödda svenskar" (After 20 years living in Sweden you have the same chance to find a job as a Swedish person) and he commented it cynically with "... 16,5 years to go..." Well that would make about the same amount of years for me. I don't know where he got this quote from and to whom this is referring, but it sounds unpleasant.

In the end it comes down yet again to luck: if the person reading your CV likes your background and your skills, small language mistakes won't matter so much. If someone else however is focused on finding a Swedish person in particular I don't have a chance even if my application is error-free. But oh well, it was my own decision to come here and to try to find job!