Markus i Sverige

Since Tuesday I am back in Germany (or like the Sweds would say: "Jörmänie"). Traveling home is not very interesting. You wait for your train, wait 3 hours until the train arrives in Arlanda, wait another 3 hours for the plane, wait 2 hours until the plane arrives in Cologne (Köln) and then you drive another hour to my home. And what do you do, when you come home? First: you eat bread. A real one. Not one of those swedish cookie-toasts. And what else? Of course. A real beer. A beer that you drink for taste and not for DPK (Dizziness Per Krown). My first day consisted of buying a box of beer, shoes for the winter (my old ones in Sweden are worn) and new clothes, for you get very bored of your old ones if you have to live for 11 month with a bunch of clothes just enough to fit into a bag. Since I came back I heard two common questions: 1. How is the weather? 2. When will you go back? First, the weather is cloudy but ok. From time to time we have rain showers and today I did not

The flat is empty now. Have we met rather accidently at the 9th of August of last year, I spent almost every day with Philipp the past 10 month. Today his semester abroad came to its final end for he left to Germany. In 10 days I will follow. During the past month I had conversations with people who read my blog concerning if I write personal things here or if I don't. My point has always been that I kept everything that was private for myself. Only things concerning Erasmus life I tried to publish. And Erasmus life is an emotional rollercoaster, so it was impossible not to affect private things. But you only see the references if you know me privately. I think you can see that clearly at my melancholical posts from November and December when I had to experience the first lost of close friends who went home after a beautiful time we had spent together. And I got friends from all over the world. On my list "Places I want to visit" stand cities like Leipzig, Mainz, Hamburg

Sunday, I went to Alnö again. This time we were Basti, Inga, Phil, Ulrich and me joining Ulrike, Lars-Peter and Petter. Thanks to Basti and Inga who gave us a lift in their car. We have been to the beach next to Tranviken which we have been at the day before. But the second beach is not as nice as Tranviken. The sand is not as soft, you have a lot of insects there and small black sandstones stick later all over your skin. After sunbathing Petter invited us to his brother who leaves in a house on the seaside of the mountain next to the beach. The view is incredible and the house is still under construction but you already now it is a dream. Idyllic. We also ate fish. Fresh, but smoked, "strömming". It was the first time I ate a fish like this. You had to brake off the head with your fingers and to extract everything you does not want to eat (for me: organs and bones). Not my favorite snack, but eatable. And much better than surströmming, for sure. And our tour on Alnö was not

Nacksta is quite empty now. Wednesday was goodbye meeting in Liquid bar, Thursday GoodBye-Party at 20b, Friday GoodBye Party at 16e and Saturday last Kårhuset. But my week did not only consist of parties. On Thursday I sent in my article and hoped for being done with it. The surprise came today: the article is crap. I am not really surprised that it is not good, since it is my first one. But I thought it would be at least enough for passing. It probably is, but they want an awesome piece of work if I want to stay PhD candidate. I have time until 30th of June. Good thing I did not start with the paper they gave me before (a few of you know the Bangkok story). For sure I would have screwed it up in my naive style of writing. At least, I know what I have to do during my last three weeks of Sweden before I'll go home for vacations. "Luckily" I did not plan any trips during that time :( Vacations is a good topic. Since the weather is so great in Sweden, I took some sunbaths du

Swedes never have problems with their flag. The swedish flag is pretty and they know it with pride. Therefore it is no surprise that you see every day swedish flags everywhere. When I came to Sweden I learned that there are some days known as "flag days". As the name implies at these days you hoist the Swedish flag. I wondered, how such a day could differ from other days, because they did not seem to run down the flags on usual days. But today is the Swedish national holiday. And since today I know how a flag day looks like. The difference is that one flag on each building is not enough. Not even sufficient. It feels like at the top of every single little corner has to stand a flag. During this so called " Nationaldagen " I've been with Benjamin, Cedric, Celine, Nawelle and Selene in the town center. A lot of people have been there as well and it was the biggest convention I've seen in Sweden by now. But with this amazing weather which we have since at least

I did it. Now everything is determined. At the 26th of June I will go home for a few weeks. That's earlier than initially planned, but I am looking forward to it. I avoided this time the Ybuss and Ryanair. The bus because of its exhausting way of traveling. More than 5 hours traveling just to wait another couple of hours in Stockholm. And Ryanair, because Ryanair just sucks. Ok, they are cheap. But who (except of those who travel for a weekend) can travel just with 15 kg? And the airports are so far away from everything. In Stockholm you need 80 minutes with the Nonstop-bus to the airport. And once you arrive at Weeze (which they proclaim to be "Düsseldorf") you have to drive additional 3 hours to my home. But not this time. My train will leave in the morning and will stop at the Arlanda airport, where I will have to wait for 3 hours until I can enter the plane. And from Köln/Bonn-airport in Germany it's probably less than one hour home. That makes at least 7 hours fa

This year of erasmus leads to its end. In Östersund as well as in Sundsvall. Some already have left Sundsvall, a lot will follow during this week and until in two weeks, I will be almost the only one who looks everyday at a white tower out of his window. Östersund faces the same. Only a few of the first semester had remained at all. Phil, Ulrich and I arrived at Saturday around 1pm and walked to the town for sightseeing. I showed them the loppis I visited with Nicola at my first day in Östersund and bought an ice at Hemköp. And we accidentally met already Julia, Seppel and Malgosia in town. At the camping area where the students live we spend the whole day in front of Conny's house on a bench. In the afternoon we visited the barbecue of the local international committee and joined afterwards Malgosia's birthday party . But I could not stay long outside. It was warm enough, the atmosphere was bright, funny... and full of mosquitoes. In August I brought some spray against them