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.

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.

I spent the last weekend in Stockholm. It took me about three months to visit Stockholm and not only pass by during the Helsinki cruise™ or on my way to Arlanda.

Fabian and Thorsten from my home university in Aachen have had the idea to go there and so on Saturday morning (or to be honest – around 10:30) we left Linköping and headed to our destination: Gustav af Klint, a hostelboat on Stadsgårskajen. It didn’t feel like business class but for 180 SEK the night they offer accommodation at a fair price, being close to Gamla Stan and the next subway station (Slussen). And even parking was no big problem – if you don’t mind parking about 1 km away – as there is a small parking area for 40 SEK / 24 hours close to the Viking Line’s terminal.

On Saturday we tried to see all the “important” parts of Stockholm (aka “You look like a tourist!”) and walked around the city visiting Gamla Stan and the downtown area and because of the increadibly fine weather we decided to do a two hour sightseeing tour on a boat.

We spent the day together with Björn – a close friend from Aachen – who’s doing an internship at Infineon in Stockholm / Kista at the moment. We stopped over at Chokladkoppen and enjoyed an enormous piece of Kladdkaka. In the evening I was able have a look at his apartment before we headed to the “Tentapuben” at the KTH… – they party just as we do at Tentakravall at the end of the exam period so we were able to say “Hello!” to the KTH-(Erasmus)Students.

For sure a nice side effect of our Stockholm weekend was that I was able to verify a rumor about the Swedish dress code for the weekends! And yes, it is true If you like to learn more about it – just visit Stockholm on a weekend and check it by yourself…

A propos ‘check it by yourself’: When you’re in Stockholm you definitely have to see the Tunnelbana. No – not for just moving from one spot to the next, this is sightseeing as more than 2/3 of the subway stations are decorated by artists!
On Sunday we decided to continue to act like tourist and took a walk to the Vasamuseet taking tons of photos along the way and inside the museum. After a long, long walk around the city Björn and I again ended up at the Chokladkoppen and had some sandwiches for dinner before Fabian, Thorsten and I went back to Linköping.