Markus i Sverige

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 l

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

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 t

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 re

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

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.

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 (

I have improved my RSA program, but the computer sill calculates with the old one, because the algorithm has not changed. But the window presents a few details about what the process. The old program is now running more than 24 hours. This means, only infinit amount of year minus ONE day left. Think positive. Another thing were I have to think positive. My professor told me today he would be responsible for my problem. Always the same thing. Now I have to find somebody who is responsible and cooperative. Yesterday night Phil and I visited Gema to congratulate to her yesterdays birthday. Luckily we made it 5 minutes before midnight so we were there in time. Phil has found his old provision baking a cake. After one hour was nothing more left than one small piece for Iman. She was very happy about this late suprise. This is what birthdays are for, don't you think? The weather was very interesting today. Because of my phone call with Aachen I missed my lecture. But because of this, I

Today, I have to annoy you with my little child: RSA. I finished the prototype of my RSA program!!! Thanks to Michael, who helped finding through my final frustration (how do I load an unkown amount of items from a stream?) . And now, ladies and gentleman: tadaaa! It looks great, doesn't it? No, I am kidding. The window does not have much sense; now. My window is the small one infront of the big good looking one (the good looking one is the tool I used to create the bad looking one). But because frequental backups are implemented, the computer can be turned of during his calculations, without losing too much time. At the moment, the backups are made every 60 minutes. Multithreading is also implemented, so everything is prepared for upgrades. The technical problem is, that I have to check in the worst case approximatly 2 to the power of 350 items. It cannot be that much, but until now it looks like, so I cannot contradict the pessimists now. I have my reasons why I think it cannot

As you can imagine, sunday was not my most active day of the week. I almost got dark when I stood up. After breakfast with Phil and Stephan we went to Kårhuset in the evening and watched "Pirates of the Caribean 2". It is an unnecessary but funny movie, I think. But it ends right in the middle of the story. "To be continued..." I found to funny pictures of myself. The differnce between these pictures are 2 month. The left is from Karoline's birthday in september the other from the recent carneval party. My hair is now much longer and I look more crazy. How will I look in two more month? Ulrich phoned today with our department from FH Aachen. We need to apply for a study brake in Germany for staying in Sweden. Everything is clear, but we need a letter from the department which is about "Yes, he is in Sweden". But nobody knows, how this letter has to look like, because nobody of our department seems to have ever applied for it. And the incredible answer

Today most people of Nacksta drove to Norway. And I am not with them. I slept very long on and programmed my RSA algorithm. Now the threads are implemented, but the backup is not implemented yet, so it takes some time, before I can test it. In the evening Ulrich, Phil, Stephan and I went out to the town. First we joined Anders and Andreas. On our way, we became totally wet and I was very angry about my situation. I thought of becoming a cold and probably missing the Salsa party in three days because of illness. But when we arrived at Petter, he gave us a very healthy Irish Coffee to become warm again. This was at perhaps 8pm. At 11pm we went to O'learys. First I thought O'Learys would be boring, but it was quite cool after a while. We stayed until 3am dancing all the time. But the last hour was the hardest for me. I was tired and drunken people pushed me all the time. But all in all it was worth becoming wet in the beginning of the evening. Check out Phil's galery . And no

This morning Basti and I had a Decision Analysis lesson. In this lesson it was the first time how a teacher used snus. Snus is a scandinavian drug. The people here use it instead of smoking. It is usual to use it, but I never saw a lectuerer using it during a lecture. I won't see Basti for a while, because he is in Östersund. But he is not the only one leaving Sundsvall this weekend. A lot of people will drive to the fjords in Norway. This must be beautiful. I love the rough nature of the norwegian landscape. But I won't attend to the trip this time. Hopefully we will repeat this in spring, when we have more light. I really would like to see the ocean. After university Solène visited me for her study. I had to play the famous prisoner's dilemma . Because it was a machine, I tried to cheat on it. But in the end I felt sorry and tried to cooperate. But at the last game, the player had a different personality and cheated all the time while I was trying to cooperate. If you wo

Yesterday was the "Good Bye"-dinner of the exchange students in Sundsvall. My second Good-Bye-dinner this week. But this time it was just a usual party. Nobody thought about seeing each other again. Just singing and drinking. But it was a good party. The meal was excellent. And the wine, too. Everybody had a secret task to absolve. My task was to speak as much swedish as possible. After the dinner we went at midnight to O'learys, but in the way Magnus told me it would cost entrance so I turned and went back home. Phil has the best pictures. This morning was very hard to get up. I had swedish lesson at 9:15. And I was the only one, so I had a nice talk with Ella talking about speed limits in Germany and Sweden and things like that. After that I attended the Swedish1-Course. In Swedish2 I always think of I am unable to say the easiest swedish sentences. But in Swedish1 I realized, that I already learned a lot. After more than 3 hours swedish I had predicate logic. And thi

The weekend was to short. During the first days I always have to remember Östersund. On monday I had a predicate logic lesson. Until now I can follow the lesson. The lecturer started to express everything in mathematical formulas, so can finally learn that, too. Yesterday we had swedish lesson. I like these lessons. Ella has prepared something, but we have everytime something else to question. Yesterday we brought a article about Anna from a magazine. During the lesson we read the article and discussed it. And because it was full of partizipels Ella taught us partizipels. Today Basti and I had our first Decision Analysis lesson. Because Jim became father another lecturer taughts the lessons. Aron makes his job fine, I think. He tries to involve the audience and explains everything in details and with funny examples. But one thing I don't like: as always at this university you need a course book. And as always there are just two copies at the library. And the bookstores have to orde

Saturday morning the last EILCs from Sundsvall, Phil, Dennis and I, started our trip to Östersund. At the centralstation of Sundsvall we met the remaining Härnösand fraction Klara, Jana and Katarina. All others already went to Östersund on friday or even thursday. The train takes 2.5 hours to Östersund. At the centralstation in Östersund the czech girls went into the city while Phil, Dennis and I went by bus to the camping zone, where our remaining friends live. First we visited Malgosia, before the coffee part y at Conny's cottage started. We had a lot of cake, tea and coffee and for some of the participants it was the first time I saw them again since the accomodation desaster in the beginning of september. It was very nice to start the revival. After the coffee I slept a while. Because of the movie night on friday in Sundsvall I still had a lack of sleep. Thanks to Nico, I found again a fine accomodation in Östersund. And the evening became an event, too. It was an EILC-party

Yesterday, Basti and I had just swedish lesson at 10:15. But we both slept until 9:55. Don't ask me how this could happen. We switched our alarmclocks off at 9:00 and forgot about it. No, we don't sleep in the same bed or room. But it was possible to reach the lesson at 10:20. At swedish we watched the movie "Kopps". It is almost with the same actor group like in "Jalla, Jalla!" which we had watched during the EILC. But "Kopps" is absurd. The crew must have had a lot of crazy ideas, appending them to a movie. Some were funny, but most the time it was absurd. Well, it was our fault. We wished this movie, because we heard from it. After the lessen we made an exkursion to Subway. Everytime when I am at Subway I try to order in swedish. Everything is alright until I reach the guy with the sauces and the guy at the cash desk. They always recognize me as "not-swedish" and talk english with me. Because of this, I asked Ella for practicing Subwa

I have not much to do right now. My only lessons are predicate logic and swedish. Until now logic is easy to follow. Phil and Ulrich joined me at this course. Logic has less lessons per week than last period so i have a few free days. Next week decision analysis will start. Then things will become harder, i guess. Today i had just laundray. And one of the damn laundrays did not wash. Look for the right machine, when you book room number 5 at Nacksta. Sometime the right machine stops after the beginning with an error-code. I washed twice. First it worked, the second round it did not. But luckily I did not have time to be angry about it, because Fabian visitied us at Nacksta. He was in Sundsvall to visit a german-lecture at school as a native speaker. After the lesson he visited us for a coffee. It was very nice to see him again. I am always happy to see one the EILC again. Yesterday and today I had a movieproject in the evening. Lines project is to make a movie for university. And they

Friday evening Basti and I joined a karaokee-party at Felix's and Sandra's flat. But this time my vocal chords struggled with my cold. On saturday Basti and I stayed in the living room, wasting time. I tried to cure my cold, because at the evenening should be a party. First there was a pot lock (look, luck?) party. We made filled champions. According to the others, they tasted very good. Good to know. I fear, when Joana was here, I has forgotten the onions. And this time I tried more spices. Short after the food party was a second party at 20B: a carneval party. It is not common in Sweden, so some germans got the idea to introduce the carneval to Sweden. At home, carneval is not my thing. It is just usual in some parts of Germany. At carneval everybody becomes drunk. The days in february are the worst/best (depends on which side you are). It is the end of carneval and daily life changes totally. People don't go to w ork and just celebrate. After having participated as teena

A boring week. Since tuesday I have a slight cold. I hope it will be gone tomorrow, because it is weekend and few cool events promise to bring fun. Yesterday I have not been to salsa, because I wanted to avoid to cough all the time. That's not polite during a dance. But I wished I had been there. It would have been so much fun. In the evening I tried the spanish birthday party, I wasn't able to stand longer than one hour. I sweat and I felt cold and hot at the same time. I went home, trieing to sleep, but that was not fine either. I hope, I will be fine tomorrow. There will be a pot lock party. I don't know what to bring. Afterwards will be a german carneval party. According to rumors with carneval karaokee. Cool. Today I visited the universtiy just for taking my exam home. In Sweden you are allowed to take your exam home. You have to sign for taking it and than you are allowed to do. I remember when I asked my chief of my department at the first year in Aachen for my exam