It's the end of the world as we know it (And I feel fine)

After very impressive days I write probably the last from sweden this year. Yes, I am going home. Over chrismas. But I promise I will be back, telling you how sweden gets out of the darkness turning into the sunniest place on earth.

On thursday I had my last salsa course. I really enjoyed this course. I would have never believed that I would dance salsa, but I did and had much fun with it. Gema told me, that originaly only old people in spain dance salsa. Well, I think, I am well prepared for the age. In the end there were just a few people left at the course, because there was a good-bye pizza dinner at town of the exchange students. But we finally even received a diploma. What a contradiction: german and a salsa diploma. The last course is documentated at Phil's page. After salsa Phil and I went to the dinner, but we were that late that we did not get food anymore. So we traveld back by foot always looking into the sky. Because of a message from Malgosia we knew that northern lights were expected at the night. And really, after 11pm it started. It began as it did in Härnösand 4 month ago: they appeared to be clouds first almost invisible, but becoming brighter and brighter. Phil and I went very fast back home to fetch our cameras. And when I stepped back out the house at the field infront of Nacksta the incredible began: it were no longer clouds like in Härnösand. It was a fire of green, violett and white running over the sky. Like it is known in the movies. My pictures can be viewed here.

On friday evening we kisse Cris good bye. She and Victor took the same bus I will take at wednesday in the morning. And it was the introduction of good-bye's that followed at the weekend.

At saturday was the last party of kårhuset. And this time it was very crowded. I don't know where the swedish hide the year over, but they were even so many that they closed the doors after enough people had entered. And we enjoyed it a lot. We were dancing until the end. It was not even the last party of the kåhuset, it was the last party with most of the exchange students. This time Marco was the only one with a camera, so you have to check his site.

On sunday I slept long, ate breakfast with Phil and Basti in the afternoon and went over to Phil's place in the evening with Gema, talking until 1 or 2 o'clock. But in the end, even when I got home, I could not sleep until half past 4. Suddenly I had to think about all the things I have to do before I leave. And at the morning I had a lab at 8 am, but I was still confused about my travel and were not able to solve many exercises. But I have my first lunch from the university kitchen today!! It is twice as expensive as at home, but much more on the plate. And it was eatable. You see, different in all aspects.
Tomorrow I will have to pack my luggage. I am very nervous. But I am very excited. Phil already has left this morning. I will be the next. I hope, I won't forget anything

Crimson Tide

What a night! Everybody feels still high because the last night. Most of us not because of the alcohol. Sandra & Felix had the amazing idea to celebrate a cocktail party as good bye party. After the carnevalparty (also an idea of them) it was sure: with their talent for decoration, music , fun and atmosphere this would be a hightlight of the year. And it was, indeed! It was even better than the carneval party! The invitiation was "dress up somhow sexy", so I took a shirt from Basti for not having on one of my four already well known party-shirts.

After midnight the security of Nacksta came to warn us, if we would not stop, they would call the police for ending the party and claiming for 700SEK penalty. Because of this, Johnny had the great idea to move in his apartment in another building. Even if his neighbours would claim for silence, we would just receive a warning first, like we did at the first place. But there was no security or police anymore, so we celebrated at his place until the late morning. But it was a pitty for the nice decoration of the first appartment Sandra and Felix worked so hard for. But they should not be sad, because we are all thankful they initiated the most wonderful parties of the year. They were a few amazing photographers: Nicol, Phil, ...

In contrast to the (so called) good-bye-dinner we could feel this time the spirit of evanesence. I had some really sad moments. I thought of losing friends I celebrated with on this party. But I also thought again about my EILC people widespread over europe. As beautiful this half year was as bitter is its end. I talked with some guests and they said "Time passed so quickly. I can remember my arrival like it would have been yesterday". I cannot remember my arrival realy, because of the strong memory of Härnösand, but time passed really quick. I don't know really where the last 3 month were. October, november and december felt equally. It was so short. I feel of having not invested enough time on very good friends. And in addition some friends here I really learned to know only in the last weeks and they will leave too soon. It's hard to realize having lost time.


Basti and I left the party at half past 4 in the morning. We still were not tired and still filled with the wish to carry on, tasting the last dance until its very end. But we had a lab in the morning at 8:15. And after 2 hours of sleep, we made it! We went to the lab. Totally wasted, but we were there and even finished our assignment! I think more than the half of the work for this lesson is done by now. I am really happy we worked so efficient on it. But because of the night I were not able to accompany Phil at the logic-lesson, so I skipped it (again). And I slept wonderful until 17:30. Now we wait for "sista salsa kursen" (the last salsa course) and will meet the other exchange students after that somewhere in town at a good-bye pizza dinner. Again a breath of a dream we want to taste as long it lasts.

The Chronicles of Life and Death

Today nothing special happened. Well, there are some things. First, I wondered about my lecturer in Decision Analysis who knows my name and I don't know why. Second, after 18 month of abstinence I posted a picture at www.fotocommunity.de. You probably know it already from my blog about the barbeque in september. I changed the cut, as you will notice. But I like the motive and the depth of the picture. Have a look!

In the evening I had a nice walk with Phil through the woods. Since my adventure with Basti at september I was longing for something like this. We started at almost nine o'clock in the evening and were prepared with torches this time. We went tiny pathes and after almost two exciting hours we were back at Nacksta. During our walk we swichted the torches sometimes off to see the stars. It was amazing to realize when they became more and more the longer the eyes got used to the darkness. For the picture we installed one of the torches in a tree to light us during the exposure. We did not see any animal. We even heard none. It was totally dark and silent out there. I always expected wrinkling eyes infront of my torch, but the were only trees, mudd and frozen ground. Now we have an imagination of the pathes. They do not seem to be made by animals, because they cross like ordinary roads and at the end was even a small wooden bridge. And we found food traces from humans on them. Next time, we will test the other pathes. We know now the "main"-path an will test the others next time. I hope soon, because I love these small adventures. They touch your senses and make you feel alive.

Together Again

My day was very boring. I just watched some movies and in the end of the day felt as tired as in the morning and was upset with my room. I decided to make a nightwalk, because I long for another adventure like the one Basti and I had three month ago. But instead of this, I joind Gema to a walk to the Kårhuset. Iman and Cristina went by bus. But when Gema and I arrived at Kårhuset it was closed. Even the restaurant. Gema and I went to LiquidBar but we did not find anybody. So we gave up and took the next bus home. Just when we got out of the bus, my mobile ringed and Martin was calling me telling being together with Iman and Cristina at a bar next to LiquidBar. After one hour odysse Gema and I decided to stay at Nacksta now and watched "Mupparna på Manhattan" in spanish with english subtitles. Since I bought the DVD in september this was the first time I saw it. I have not expected to see it in spanish, but it was very good. The songs sound good in spanish, too. And it was really funny. I will have to search for more Mupparna-DVDs; I just love their humor.

That's what I like

Weekend passed by and it was pretty short again. The weeks are flowing now. Suddenly it will be christmas.

On saturday Phil and I went to the university for lunch. Why to the universtiy? Because they have so much microwaves which we need for baked apples. And because universities are closed at saturdays we were almost alone in the building (you remember: all students can enter the university 24 hours a day with their access card). And now, because Phil wrote it already and everybody seems to know it: I made some movies of this procedure. But I don't know which tool I could use to cut and edit it. If anybody knows how to edit mov-files (Quicktime movies) please tell me. The baked apples tasted very good. We are the opinion of we have to repeat it. Pictures and a german receipt can be found at Phil's diary.In the afternoon we had a laundry and in the evening we went out to O'Learys with our spanish friends. It was nice there, especially with so many friends. But the music was worse than the time before. And when it became better I did not feel well, because I did not eat enough (night was too long). Because of this Phil and I left O'Learys at 2:15am and went to the Subways and ate. This was not a healthy day. I started with baked apples as breakfast, a pizza as lunch and a sub as (late) dinner (not to mention this very good spanish sangria...). Life needs days like this. Everything is documentated here.
On sunday was our advent-afternoon-dinner. It was very cosy meeting with a lot of cake, biscuits, indish tea and selfmade glögg. We even had christmas music. We were 10 people talking and eating until the evening when we made a nice walk through the wood.
Today, we have the weather as the rest of europe, I think. A lot of clouds, but this time high on the sky. And they are very fast flying. But this means also no sun today. I need a light even at half past 11am. And it becomes finally colder! Yesterday we had -1 degrees in the evening! Check Philipps measure site for more details.
This morning I confused my dreams with the alarm clock. When it alarmed I dreamed it showed an "Error" on it's display. After a while I dreamed seeing "12:34" on its display. Again a few minutes later Phil phoned me (in reality). But I was too slow to get to the phone in time. I thought he wanted to ask me for meeting at lunch. Another few minutes later I woke up slowly, watched the alarm clock and realized that it were just 10:25. I am very very confused now, because my expected day was only dreamed, but I enjoy the 2 extra hours. But I missed classes
and left Philipp alone there. I hope he can stand the lesson.

You Don't Know

The last five week were dominated by my third assignment for organisational decision making (odm). I can hardly remember monday or tuesday, because I always thought about this damn book. Anyway it became interesting to me. If you ignore all the repetition and don't ask "and who should wonder about this? who cares?" it started to become interesting to see many obvious theories collected in 200 pages. But the problem at this university is: they do not have an satisfiing amount of copies of a book. Only two for each book. And these short-loan books. You can have them only from 10:00 to 17 :00 or from 17:00 to 10:00. I had to take the short-loan for two reasons: first, the two long-term copies are borrowed and, second, because it is a distance course I am writing for, I don't know all the other students, so I don't know who has these books. From monday on I walked to the library every morning and every evening. Just to give back the book and loan it imidiatly again. On tuesday in the morning I came at the library at 10:15, because the lessons start at 10:15. They said nothing. On wednesday I came there at 10:20... and had to pay a penalty of 100SEK, although I was the only one who wanted to borrow the book. 100 SEK! That are exaclty 11 € !!! Damn system! But obviously it was my fault. I loaned the book again and studied further.

In the evening I went to Phil looking german news, but because the internetconnection got lost, we went imidiatly to 20B to gratulate Ulli for her birthday.
On thursday Basti and I had our third Decision Analysis Lab. A lab is like a "praktikum" at home. The difference is, that you do not have to be there, but you should, because the exercises are compulsory. And they are quite hard. Not because they are very complicated, but you have to think a lot about theories and gather informations before you can start working. But after 2 hours we had a flow. Everything went fine and we were able to solve the given problem. We felt fine and worked on and after 4,5 hours we were the only group who had finished their assignment. I looked satisfied on my watch and realized that it is 17:30... the ******* book!!!! I ran to the library, but it was too late. The claimed for another penalty of 100 SEK, although I was to only one who is interested in that book. It was a real shock. I worked so hard and successful and I felt like being punished, because I did. Because I worked so intensivley on Decision Analysis and because I did read this damn book instead of just copied pages from the book to paste them into the assignments like others do. It was knocked down. A few minutes later I came back into the library begging for mercy. In the end I got it, but "only this last time". Last time? For sure. Next time I will copy from others, before I loan a short-loan book again. I tried it in the brave way, but they don't let me. I don't care anymore. They assignments are not read anyway. Instead of a feedback I just receive emails with "ok". So why should I invest more effort in this. Ideals can be an expensive thing.
In the evening was salsa course. The balance between girls and boys was even (5 to 5). I was the only non-swedish person there! Therefore Julio (teacher) spoke swedish almost all the time. In the beginning I understood not much, but in the end I was able to follow the instructions and understood even some of his jokes. In the end he said "Nästa gången är sista gången salsa" (The next time is the last time salsa). I was so proud having understood this important information. He said, we would earn diplomas, but I am not sure if this was a joke. But it would be pretty. I tould Gema, if I would earn a diploma for salsa, I would be a miracle: salsa dancer and german in one person. She agreed. In the evening I sat until almost (-> another thing I finally learned at salsa: 'nästan' betyder 'almost' på svenska; guess why I learned that at salsa...) midnight with Basti in the living room. After that we started homework. I still had some notes left for my
odm-assignment.

I went to bed at 2. Basti at 3. And at 8:15 we were at the decision analysis lab again. We were again very successful, although we were so tired. And we needed again 4 hours, before we left the room, but we did not work all the time, because we had to wait before the swedish students stopped to chat with the lecturer so we could ask questions to work on. This time had not to think about a book. Arrived at home Basti and I had to think about lunch. Rice or pasta. And we were so fed up with this limited decision, that we decided to cook something very good. Well he cooked. But he has to, because his creations are very tasty. We went to ICA bought some fries. Fries. The first time after month. He cooked chicken and vegetables in addition to the fries. In the afternoon I finished my assignment. I did not write about the missing last three chapters of the book, but I was fed up with that. I reached the limit of 5 pages anyway. In the evening Phil and I went to Ulli's birthday party. It was really nice (thanks for the punch!). We were just a few people sitting on the couch and were talking all the time. I showed Phil my last experiments on making pictures: (long) time exposure. The disadvantage of flashlight is, that you lose atmosphere and colors. But the disadvantage of time exposure is, that your motive and you have to stand still for a moment or even seconds. He experimented a little bit and when he made a time exposure picture from Nikola and Ulli a flashlight from Markus "disturbed" the time exposure from the right. The result was amazing. The flash illuminated the motive, but because of the time exposure, the colors are very good, especially the backgroundcolors. And, because of the flash, the motive during the flash overlaps the noise of moving by the motive during the time exposure. Phil did and will experiment further. I am very interested in his next results.

Do Right

The salsa party was good. I had expected more, but all in all it was good and we had our fun. I came home at 1am in the morning. Basti and I had laboratory at the following morning, but we felt better than we had feared. Laboratories practical exercises which has to been done. Luckily we are allowed to do it in small teams, so Basti an I can work together. In the evening was salsa lesson, again. Basti and I came 10 minutes too late. And guess what: there were only 5 boys! No girls! Damn! After another 10 minutes 3 other boys and 5 girls arrived. Very funny. The good thing: because we were oly 5 pairs, our trainer were able to help each of them. The bad thing: three men always had to dance alone. As you can see, I had fun with salsa at two days in a row and I would have had three (every friday: salsa party at Liquid Bar!!!), if Basti and I would not have had another idea.
During the salsa party on wednesday Basti and I had decided to go to the biathlon world cup in Östersund on friday (yesterday). To reach the women sprint in time we had to take the train at 7:45 in the dark and cold friday morning. We felt even earlier, becaue we had forgotten the time the night before while sitting in the living room with Dennis until 2:30am. As you can imagine Basti and I slept during our journey to Östersund a lot. After having arrived at Östersund we made our way to the camping area. It was my third time there this year. Because we did not know the busses we traveled by foot the long way to the biathlon arena. We missed the right way and walked a wrong way to the stadion and stand suddenly next to accomodations of the teams. Every way was watched by securities, but not the way we took. At the tribune we met Felix and Sandra from Sundsvall. I was very suprised seeing them. And we decided that we need flags on our skins and went to a place at the stadion were we could paint ourselves. Prepared we enjoyed the race. At the beginning it was very thrilling, but after a while I lost the overview, because starting, shooting and finnishing happened at once so I did not know exactly were to look first. That's the good thing on looking it on television at home, because you do not realize if you miss something. But in the end the thrill was back when Martina Glagow run to the goal. She had a chance for the third place and was one of the latest starters. And it was so close! I always switched my view between the big television screen at the stadion where you could see the time and between the real scene just a few meters in front of me. The thrill was unbelievable and she made it with 0.1 sec faster than the fourth! Incredible! I love this sport. It is almost always that close.
a a But I was suprised how "small" and "ordinary" this event is. It couldbe a usual local sport event like from a smal town at home. After Olofson had missed one of the first three places all the swed left thestadion and only 100 people stayed to see the congratulations to thewinners. In television everything looks huge and you can always seelot of people. Yesterday you could see it, too, but it were alwaysthe same people! And the athletes look like usual persons. It was very interesting to see. The pictures in newspapers look always likehuge celebration in each end of a race. But it was really small. Just a few flowers, the first three winners stand on small steps and a fewphotographers took pictures. Very funny. If you have seen thecelebration on television you should have seen me. I stood in thefirst line of the audience. Watch my galery.
The rest of the day I was very tired. I don't exactly why. Perhaps because of so much fresh air. Perhaps because of it is still cold and there is a lot of wind in Östersund. At the evening we watched a movie at Ingas cottage. And thanks to Malgosia I even had finally a bed to sleep.
On saturday morning I stood up and went out for Lilsjön ("Small lake"). I finally found it, but I lost my self back in town and needed 2 hours to find the camping area. Our train was late during our way back. So it just skipped our station (Västra stationen) to get to the centralstationen in time. And Basti and I had to run for the bus back to Nacksta.
In the evening we celebrated Annas birthday. It was not a loud but a nice party. I guess she like more loudly, but I hope, she enjoyed like we did anyway. Phil has the most important pictures, of couse.
Tomorrow we will look for the chrismas market in Sundsvall Norra Berget. And I will have breakfast at Phil's place. I hope I can reach in time.