Markus i Sverige

Yesterday afternoon i slept until half past seven, because i did not know what to do. When i woke up everyone was gone! My luck. All the day long i am waiting for something to happen and when i sleep all are going to partys. But i phoned Phil who lead me the way to the others. First i met them in a club called "pipeline". There you can bring your own Mp3-Player to the DJ who will play your music. Because this club is also opened for older teenagers they sell no alcohol. That's a good thing, i think, because the swedish people cannot drink alcohol. Most of them drink to become drunk and not for having a nice evening/night. But at the "pipepline" nobody had a Mp3-Player so the DJ was playing annoying HipHop. Like in Germany, the youngsters love stupid HipHop, but here i haven't met one who did here something different. Poor Sweden. After the "pipeline" we walked to an irish pub and played dart. And this pub was the first location in sweden where i co

Almost one week has passed since my adventure in the forest. But poorly nothing happened. Now i am longing for an adventure. But the weather isn't that good anymore. It's wet and the clouds are hanging deep. We cannot even see Söda Berget and that is not very high. Another forestadventure would be surely wet, this time. Pehaps i would do, but Sebastian has left to Östersund for the weekend and i don't think i would find another freak who is stupid enough to follow me. Yesterday was the beginning of the first Salsa-course in Kårhuset. When i signed in i thought, it would be good to get back the feeling for dancing i had years before. Our teacher is from Cuba (i think), a little bit smaller than me, but muscles everywhere. He has a neck like a bear, but he can move like he was build out of gum. Crazy. I already get confused when trying to move shoulders and feets at the same time. Totally stupid. Than i feel like my dog Ayla when she is carried with a car. But training, train

I was sitting the whole day long in my room and was very lazing while doing... nothing. During dusk i decided to ask Sebastian for search for elks. Encouraged we went out searching the adventure at half past six in the evening. Our way was very interesting. It was a very warm wind out there. We missed the way we planned to go, so we took an tiny path through the wood. But the path leaded straight away from Sundsvall so at a forest aisle we decided to leave the path following the electric pylons on the aisle. But aside the path walking was never easy. Every stones and broken branches and brushes. Because of the brushes we always could only guess if the ground beneath them would be solid or not. But finding a way was our smallest problem. It was becoming dark - quickley. After a while we decided to follow a path leading through the wood, but after approximatly 200 meters we could feel our instincts: "Who has build this tiny path in the middle of nowhere?" - "Damn, i cannot

Today i stood up late. On my way to univertsity i passed Basti's room who needed little help with his network exercises. To my suprise had he to solve the same online tests i had to pass one year ago at my lecture for "LAN / WAN protocols". And i ever thought the testcenter was an invention of the FH Aachen. Now i suppose it's not, because the Mid Sweden University has it, too, but you can nothing see of the logo from FH-Aachen. As reward for my help i missed my lecture. Lucky i did, because one hour later my mobile phone ringed and my well expected visitors were standing infront of the door! My parents and my dogs arrived on their holiday in Sweden visiting me! I am so happy. They brought a lot of things and now i will surely need a second bag on my way back to Germany. In the afternoon i showed them the campus. After they left for a camping area south of Sundsvall i did my homework. And now, i have even finished 2 chapter! The second was much better to read. It is a

Today i would just like to give you an imagination of my homework. At the picture you see the conclusion of the author. The title of the chapter is "How decisions happen in organizations". The more often i read the chapter i feel like being able to write such a chapter by my own. I would just need a cloudless dusk and a glass of wine to get the mood for thinking a little bit about decision making in organizations. I just lack better scientific english. That's good being a theorist: you just need to think and to talk. Perhaps one day all clever people will listen to me while i am talking about "you first have to know what you want before you can make decision" and other wisdoms like that. I learned nothing essential from this chapter. But i can likley have missed the point. Below my exercise the lecturer wrote "After a week you will get feedback". 'Feedback' sounds nice. It implicits that i am allowed to make mistakes. I have no idea if the resu

Would a fine feeling sleeping until you wake up when ever you want. After the last days lacking of sleep i could sleep well and long. But now i lack on time for my homeworks. Friday is coming soon and i have not even began one of the three summaries. Because of this i started reading after lunch, but i could not concentrate on the book. Outside the sun was shining, the air had amazing 19°C and i had to sit inside... I decided, that i would need some entertainment before i could go on with my studies and went out for a walk. Phil joined me and we started to find our journey to a nearby lake. It was a quite nice trip, following the river that crosses Sundsvall. Before we reached the lake we arrived at a bridge and we had to climb down a hill to the river for finding our way further. We just planned to walk for one hour our journey took three, but it was worth the time, because the landscape was so beautiful all the time. Back home i started my homework and i am still reading. I don'

Friday wasn't finsihed when i posted my second blog post. Being already tired Line and Phil convinced me to go with them to a pub/club/whatever. There you should bring your mp3-player for having your songs played. "This is the chance to hear GOOD music outside our apartmens" i thought. So i tried to get some sleep until 21 o'clock. On our way to the city we changed our minds and got to a club/disco/whatever called 360°. There was a karaoke-party. The entrance was free so we thought we could do nothing wrong. But the party had not many guests and the DJ had absolut no talent for mixing the music and the singers voice. At 23 o'clock the security told us we would have bring our jackets to the coat rack. So we toke our jackets and brought them to the coat rack... of the kårhuset. So it was the second location of the evening and i got my second stamp on my hand. And at the kårhuset were almost all the other exchange students i know. At the kårhuset the beer costs as mu

Oh, i could not sleep this night. I stayed up until half past six in the morning, doing my homework for killing time. After that i slept until seven. But i wasn't tired! I went to school enthusiastically having done my homework in time (hopefully). I visited Jim at his office, asked him if would i hand him over my exercises in time and got the answer "It is enough if you give to me before the exam". Before the exam. The exam is 31th october. Well, i have not been able to sleep anyway. And he said "Now you have handed me over your exercise you don't even have to participate at the exercise-lecture today, because it's just practicing the exercises you have done already". Well, who needs to sleep anyway. But i went to class, because i had to wait for the library opening to bring back my short-loan-book. At class i met Marco, a dutch, again. I told him of my night, told him having done my homework and even more. His only comment was laughing and "You

Wow. I feel like being at home. Like every semester i missed the point everyone gets running. But this time i am not used to the settings. For example: i have a distance course, which means there will be no lecutre for it. The course is called: Ogranizational Decision Making. I am registered for the course, so i waited for an email or a message. Something like "Hej, welcome to the course, this is your exercise, let's got!". Yesterday (well now, the day before yesterday) i found at the webpage at the course the exercise. Since 4/9 i have time to summerize 3 chapters of a book called "Organizational Decision Making". I have time until 22/9. Shock. Today (well, now yesterday), i waited for the only available copy of the book at the library. It is a short loan book which means you can only loan it from 10-17 or from 17-10 o'clock. I went to the library at 15, the book was already there. They told me, if i would loan the book at 15 i have to bring it back at 17,

I tell you, my lessons are very different from each other. At "Introduction to Logic" i even do not need to participate, but i wanted for being sure not to miss something in the next courses. After 90 minutes "Logic" we were able to distinguish a AND-connection from a OR-connection. During the lesson i had to think about my beginnings in Aachen were i had to learn this in 5 minutes. But Aachen is different. In Aachen you begin with 200 students and the exams are meant to filter them. Here we are just 8 to 10 students each course and they take care for every problem. At the first lecture of "Decision Theory" the lecturer explained in detail how to calculate 90% from 30, because some did not get it. At home they will advise you to skip your study at your first semester, if you are asking something like that. But on the other hand it's just the beginning and there are not only computer scientist at the Logic-course, so i guess they are teaching that way,

This was the day after the party. I slept until 10:30, got up much later, decorated my room and went to Karo helping to defeat the remaining cakes. After the lunch Ulrich, Eva, Felix, Karo, Phil and i went out for a walk through the wood. It's very nice and i think i will try some less used pathes during the next days. We passed Sidsjön, a sea near Sundsvall. Have look at the photo. Back at home our visitor from Östersund had arrived. Ben was staying for a few hours waiting for his bus to Stockholm. Perhaps in a week he will stay again during his trip back to Östersund. Until he went out for the bus, we were sitting in the kitchen talking a lot. It was fun, but now i have missed my homework lecture again. I had started, but it is more complicated than i thought. Tomorrow i will read, i promise! Good night!

Today i did not much more than waiting for the evening. Inga and Kai from Östersund came to Sundsvall for this evening birthdayparty of Karo. The party was until 2 o'clock and it was a quite nice one. There is still much cake left, so i should visit them on sunday again :o) As always, Phil has all the pictures. Not much more for now, because it's weekend. I should do some homework, but i am too lazy... We will see.

The first week is over! And i already had my first lessons. My first lesson was "Decision Theory", where i had to calculate, if a swedish tourist should by a wooden camel in Sri Lanka risking it would broke on his way back to europe or if he should save his money risking being robbed. Sounds funny, but it is serious. At the Decision Theory lesson only 8 sweds, one dutch and i are participating. I also had my first swedish lesson for foreign students. It's interesting to see the other new students trying their first words in swedish. I cannot remeber my own beginnings anymore. This course is more international than the EILC, we have people from USA, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, China etc. Wednesday evening there was a welcome party at the Kårhuset. It's a house only for students having several partyroom. It's a big house, so you can have different parties at one time. The welcome party was nice, but i got home even on midnight. The music was not what i would like t

Today we visited the university for fullfilling some duties. First we paid our student fee for getting our student IDs. Sebastian and i visited Magnus, the man who organizes the master degrees. Now i am studiing the first semester of the master program " Management Sciences and Decision Support Systems ". And Magnus said i would fullfill the requirements for the option of the second semester. Because of this i have the oportunity of studiing 2 semesters the master program, going back and writing my master thesis in Germany. By now i registered my second semester as "optional", so everything stays the same now. It's just a (fascinating) option. The rest of the day we walked throw the town. When Sebastian and i arrived back at out appartment, we saw what Dennis had achieved by loot some other appartments. Because our appartment has no equipment Dennis was allowed to loot two other (empty) appartments. Our living room now was full of things! But in the evening we s

This morning Inga brought Basti and me to the centralstation. Thanks she did, because it was raining a lot! The streets were flooted. Sebastian and me waited 20 minutes, until the train entered the station and left it at 5:05 in the morning. At 7:15 left we the train and walked to the university, where we had an introduction meeting. After the meeting, we had a tourist tour by bus for one hour, but almost nobody listened to it, because everyone just finally wanted to put his luggage in his accomodation. At 14 o'clock we arrived at Nacksta and ~50 people tried to get their keys at once. Thanks to the others i was one of the first, because i had to be back at 15 o'clock at the university for another introduction meeting. So Sebastian and i left our luggage at the appartment and went to university, but after a few hundred meters it began to rain heavily and we became totally wet. This was not nice organzied. They should have canceld the bustour, because we had to hurry to find ou

This day we visited the campus of mittuniversitetet at Östersund. It's very modern, similar to Sundsvall and the architecture is amazing again. Windows everywhere. The offices have even big windows to the corridors. Nicola, Malgosia, Conny and i walked to the library to check mails. There we even met some others from the course and Martin's fellow-student, who showed us the campus and the city of Härnösand. After that, Nicola and i went shopping, to buy some equipment for her stuga. We even went into an junk-shop (german: Trödelmarkt), founding some magnets for hanging Nicola's family pictures at the fridge. But this shop was very... strange. You could get there everything. Books from 1927, radios from the 50's and so on. At the end, we found curtains for the windows, because the stugas at Östersund have none. At the evening, we looked some videos at Malgosia's stuga. At the pictures, you can get an impression of the stugas at the camping area.