Stefan…

… I’ve been to Sweden again and it was just coooool! If you’d like to find out more about the SOF 2007 you can have a look at the official homepage, maybe this helps you to fill the gap until I’ll write a few lines myself.

I haven’t updated this blog for some time now – and suddenly there’s this thing about “Right now in: Chamonix”. Well, my time in Linköping is over by now and one of the last activities connected to the LiU will be my trip to Chamonix with 720.

So for the next week I will be in Chamonix and I will try to have a lot of fun in the snow – if there is some!

As I’m no longer in Sweden I won’t be able to share my Linköping photos on the LiU-Hub. And I haven’t included a working photogallery in my blog yet.

Considering both and the sheer number of photos I can offer the following: If you send me an e-mail with your postal adress I will send you a DVD with all my photos.

IT’S DONE! Finally I’ve been to Oslo, although 10 years later than originally intended!

It has been about 12 hours of driving, doing a little bit more than 1000 km and spending way too much money for just two days, but it has been worth the effort!

Markus, Uli and I arrived in Oslo on Friday night just in time to check in the Anker Hostel after I picked them up in Göteborg where they had spend two days. On Saturday it was again the good old schedule for the classical one-weekend-one-city program: 1st get a map, 2nd find the tourist info, 3rd get going! Yes, you noticed correctly, in this schedule the breakfast is missing we had to speed up because of the short time with sunlight in this time of the year – there are things you can do while moving! And yes – we’ve been busy in Oslo! We’ve been to: Karl Johans gate and the complete downtown area with Universitetet i Oslo, Nationaltheatret, Stortinget … – Slottet – Aker Brygge – Rådhuset – Munchmuseet – Akerhus slott og festning. In the evening we’ve spend some time at Akerhus festning to watch the sunset.

Later we checked out Grüner Løkka and ended up in a Britsh Pub right in Karl Johans gate with great music and audience But the Norwegian prices are incredible high, especially regarding alcohol… 70 NOK (that’s ca. 8,50 €) for a pint of Strongbow! And just like in Stockholm there seems to be an “interesting” dress code for the weekends… there have been at least three girls dressed up as Playboy bunnies on the tram from Grüner Løkka to Nationaltheatret
On Sunday morning we went on a sightseeing bus tour (we tried on Saturday, too, but November seems to be a little off-season…). The tour lead us to all the other parts of Oslo and the museums we had planed to visit! Perfect timing! We went to see Frogner Parken, the nice quarters right outside the downtown area, Holmenkollen and the surrounding quarters with an unbelievable view to the Oslofjorden and Oslo itself and stopped by at the Vikingskipshuset, the Kon-Tiki museet and the Frammuseet. And guess what: At the end of the tour it was nearly dark outside!

And as a last hint – there is a tourist information booklet called “Streetwise – your budgetguide to Oslo”…

Here you go: It’s been snowing yesterday evening! It has been getting colder for some days and on Tuesday finally it started snowing! In the afternoon the sky turned dark – and I mean DARK – and what looked like an enormous aproaching thunderstorm got us about 10 cm of snow.

This is how I like it: Binary seasons Just a few weeks ago I was able to enjoy my time here by canoeing with the ESN (swimming in warm lakes and getting sunburned), then there was “binary” fall for a few weeks (the leaves turned yellow, red and brown within a few days and it started to become colder quite fast) and right on time now there is (at least a little bit of) snow! And for a perfect start into the winter this was proceeded the next days with cold air and perfect sunshine without a single cloud! Jätte bra!

On the other hand Tuesday’s weather “looked” like an enormous thunderstorm in Linköping, but as a matter of fact it “was” an enormous stormfront for most of the norhern parts of Europe with storm tides along the German coastline, heavy snow-related traffic problems all over Sweden and as a result of the rough weather the container ship Finnbirch sank between Öland and Gotland right in front of the Swedish coastline and two of the crewmembers died. Considering this heavy weather all around we have been quite lucky here in Linköping.