The last weekend Ralf, Steve, Marta, Ward, Martiha, Christian, Jens, Stefan, Anne and I made our trip to Kiruna. Because there is so much to tell, I will make several blog entries about it.
Friday 7th December
Friday was a little bit stressy. I had still to read the master thesis for the master-defense I would participate in. I read the whole morning without really knowing what expectations I would have to fulfill. But I thought, my part would not be that important. The more I've been surprised when Aron opened the master defense very formal ending with the words "... the oponent will be Markus Stahl". Oj, that sounded very official. Until that I thought, Aron and I would act as equal testers, now I feard to be in a competition with the two students who defend their thesis against me. But it was not as difficult, as I had expected. I followed the presentations, got some clues and some new questions and asked them afterwards. As usual I did not get any feedback, so I have no idea, if it was ok or not. Afterwards I headed back to Nacksta and packed my stuff. The weatherforcast announced -1 degrees in Kiruna for the weekend. That should not be that cold, I thought and left my ski trousers and ski socks at home. But as I write since one year: never trust the Swedish weatherforecast.
In the evening our train left rainy Sundsvall heading first to Östersund until it turned after Ånge to north crossing Umeå and Luleå. 13 hours train ride is not only fun. After a while you get tired and when everybody sleeps and even your eyes close automatically without giving your mind free for a relaxed sleep passing strangers are the only entertainment you have. And our strangers were very scary. We called it the freak-show. One most impressive freak was a guy at least 2 meters tall sitting next to us. He made disgusting noises while sleeping and read newspaper and mobilephone with a distance of less than 10 centimeters between script and eyes. The second was a drunken Swede searching the whole night for seat number 64. 
Before midnight we were told that our train is broken and we would have to change the train in Luleå... that would be 7 hours later. So we drove further with a broken train for 7 hours. And still after changing we arrived in time in Kiruna. I have no clue, what was that broken, that we had to change the train, but still arrived in time.
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