Göteborg and Abandoned Islands
I am currently sitting in the train on my way back to Uppsala. The good thing when you carry you laptop with you is that you can edit all the pictures already, this saves some time. Why don't I just look out of the window and enjoy the Swedish landscape? Well, that is easy to answer.
The countryside between Uppsala and Göteborg pretty much reminds me of our "Westerwald" in Germany, where you have many fields, from time to time a house and everything looks a bit abandoned. Here in Sweden, there are even less houses and lots of forests. Next to that, the weather is not really good, it had been raining since I came to Göteborg and it still is.
So editing pictures while in train seems to be a good alternative. Additionally, the car of the train where I am sitting in is unbelievably cold. So the laptop warms a bit. :-)
Göteborg
About Göteborg: I liked the city, however, as already said, I was unlucky with the weather. So what we did on Saturday was to go to a museum first. We picked the "Universum", a kind of science park, which is divided into several areas.
First you "follow the water" from its source to the ocean. You can see a lot of different sorts of fish (all alive), from normal Swedish fish to more exotic ones. Then there is a jungle part with lots of butterflies and plants from the tropes. This part is incredibly hot and humid, I was happy when I was out of it.
Finally, there is -maybe more meant for children- a part in the museum, where you can explore different sorts of science (biology, etc) and see "how things work". They also had a morse key there, which was nice to use and reminded me of the fact that although I can still send the code properly, I cannot read it anymore.
Bränno Island
After having visited the museum, I wanted to explore the southern archipelago of the city. I went to a small island called Bränno, a very deserted place. There was absolutely nothing going on, the one grocery store the island has (it includes the post office and a pharmacy) was closed. In summer it is for sure a nice place to be and relax at.
Since it was still raining and very windy, I decided to go back to where the ship stopped. The island was actually said to have a cafe, but I couldn't find it (most likely it was closed anyway). Unfortunately, I had to wait one hour for the next ship departure.
With me waited a married couple for the ship. We talked a bit and I came to know that they wanted to buy a sailing ship on the island. Not a big one, but a small one with a kitchen and 2 beds. However, the ship didn't meet the expectations of the husband, so he was very disappointed.
They were really nice and so the time quickly passed by. They were also looking for a toilet, but a quick look at the information leaflet said that "The toilet beside Rödsten pier is open from 1 May". Since it is still April, there is no toilet on the island.
A few pictures of my stay are here.
This is Gothenburg calling…
I am currently in Gothenburg (that is Göteborg) for the weekend, accessing the Internet via an open Wireless LAN access point, which is apparently somewhere in the neighbourhood. Haven't seen that much of the city, yet, but so far Gotheburg seems to be a bit different from the Uppsala and Stockholm region. Unfortunately, the weather is not the best, so I hope that it improves tomorrow.
There are still the same shopping chains here, so when I stepped out of the station after a 5 hour train ride from Uppsala, it felt a bit strange to see a shopping center where everything looks so familiar. But there is a nice opera building here, I went in there and picked up the programme.
Pictures soon, so stay tuned...
Cultural Differences
A few short comments on some minor cultural differences I am observing here in Sweden:
In the bus...
...it's quiet. Altough the bus might be packed with people (one of the very few places in Sweden where that is the case), nobody talks. You can easily play "Spot the exchange students" by just listening. The loudest conversations are either in English or sometimes, and then even louder, in German. The whole thing can only be topped by Dutch ("Jeetje!").
Ipodding and calling is socially allowed, as is reading academic articles. The later observation is especially funny, since at home most people read the "Bild" tabloid when travelling in bus or train, a news paper that has in total less letters than the title of the academic paper only.
at the checkout...
...in the supermarket, it is absolutely important to mark out your purchases by one of these "things", where I don't even know the German name for (there is even a discussion [DE] going on, whether a name exists at all).
I mean these bars you place on the band that mark the beginning of the next customer's groceries. A "separator" maybe? Anyway, even if there are like 3 meters between your stuff and the customer before or after you, they directly put one of those things in between. Today I tried whether it would work without one of those bars. It didn't. The cashier scanned my apple juice together with the stuff from the woman before me.
This procedure takes place very quietly, too. The silence is only interrupted by dragging the bank card wrongly through the card reader. I was wondering whether there is any intention behind this behaviour. Is it that the Swedes don't want to talk to the cashier? Do they want to prevent a mixing up of groceries at any rate? I don't know.
at home, they talk...
But actually, the "Swedish model of silence" has also its positive sides. The most stupid conversations can be heard at a German discount supermarket.
The actors: cashier and customer. The customer is proud that he or she "knows" the cashier. The customer has some meat and cigarettes on the band and a small child sitting in the cart and just says "One never knows these days...". The cashier looks irritated, the customer explains "I mean with the bird flu." The cashier now gets the point and says: "That's true, we don't know what we eat anymore."
"There is something bad in everything, be it chicken, beef or salad", says the customer, pays, takes the cigarettes (!), her child and leaves the supermarket.
DL4CB @ SK0TM
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QSL card of SK0TM
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Yesterday, I visited the Technical Museum in Stockholm. Next to the exhibitions, the museum has also its own amateur radio station, callsign SK0TM.
So, of course, I visited the station, entered the room and said like "Hello, I'm DL4CB". Immediately, Bengt (SM0YX) smiled and noted my callsign, stood up from his chair and said "Here, please sit down and use the station!". So did I.
I used their ICOM 756 transceiver, which was connected to a 5-element Yagi antenna. I made two contacts, the first one with a German station in Spain, where the temperatures were 30 degrees higher than here in Sweden. The second OM I talked to was in Rome in Italy. The audio quality was excellent, I would like to have such a Yagi antenna (and the space to put it up), too.
After one and a half hour, I left the station with 2 QSL cards (see picture) as a souvenir. Actually, we wanted to make a radio contact when I left the museum (I had brought my 2m/70cm handheld), but unfortunately that didn't work. We were not sure how to properly connect the 2m antenna to the transceiver. Bengt was only familiar with the shortwave station. At least the people at the busstop looked at me as if I was an alien when I tried to call him from outside :-) .
Oldest Swedish City
Again some pictures: Photos of the oldest Swedish city Sigtuna (more about Sigtuna on Wikipedia) can be found here.
More Photos: Stockholm, Uppsala
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Faster...
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I added some pictures of Stockholm and some pictures of snowy Uppsala to the photo galleries.
Ruter And Me On Tour
This midday, I went together with Ruter from the IKEA back to Flogsta. Who is Ruter? Ruter is IKEA's low-cost ironing board and everybody has been missing it. We now share the cost of it among four people. There is no other ironing board in my corridor and in my building, either.
Some words about the weather: Although it feels not really cold (we have around -3 degrees centigrade), there now is a lot of snow. In contrast to home, when it snows the snow remains on the ground and does not melt away. When it is fresh it is quite difficult to bike on it because it has not compacted yet. I think if we had this amount of snow at home, everything would brake down. But here even the busses run on time.
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Snow scene right before my house
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Another thing that bothers me for quite some time is the local petrol station. They have a banner hanging there that says "Sänkt bensinpris" (=lowered price for petrol), but they do not display the actual price somewhere. Someone else seemed to like that banner though and put it on his or her balcony (see below) here in Flogsta. I guess he or she didn't pay too much for it.
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Lowered petrol price
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The other thing I did today was that I upgraded my bike with respect to traffic safety. Although lights came with the bike when I bought it, the holder of the frontlight broke. So I bought a complete set of lights and mounted them on my bike. The rear light first did not fit on the sattel pole, but luckily I had brought some rubber tape and with that I could thicken the pole. Now the rear light sits perfectly.
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My bike (see arrows for new lights)
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In addition to that, I also bought a bike helmet. In Maastricht, it would never come into my mind to wear such a helmet, but here you directly interfere with the car traffic as a cyclist. And I have heard from a lot of people who crashed with their bike. But luckily, no fatal injuries so far.
Touch And Go
This weekend, I took my "cargo" flight back home and today back to Uppsala. Still, I had 20 kg of luggage on my way back and mainly brought my subwoofer (my neighbours will be happy), my suit and German "Milka" chocolate and Haribo jelly bears.
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"Spirit of T-Com", D-AKNR, at Arlanda Airport
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I flew again with Germanwings, which I can really recommend. The plane I flew with was the "Spirit of T-Com", better pictures here. The personnel is nice, the prices cheap and the airplanes are clean. Tonight, the flight seemed to be nearly fully-booked, there were only a few seats left empty.
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Snowy Street in Uppsala
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On the flight last Friday I had one seat row for myself (see picture). There was a delay, however, due to the snow. The runway had to be cleaned from snow and the plane had to be de-iced. That's why there was a delay of 45 minutes.
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In-Flight Flight (Cessna in MS Flightsim at CGN)
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Thanks to my laptop, I could watch some movies during flight and listen to my mp3s. There is a Wifi hotspot at Arlanda airport where you can check incoming and outcoming flights for free. One hour of Internet costs approximately 5 Euro.
If you are looking for good ear plug headphones, try the ones from Koss. You plug them into your ear and it dampens the noise of the plane. The amount of bass is incredible.
Choir
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Värmland's songbook
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I just returned from an introduction meeting at Värmlands, the student nation (=student association) I joined. It was supposed to start at 5 o'clock in the afternoon and lastet until 10 in the evening. In little groups we were shown around the nations building and had a quite formal dinner afterwards.
Due to the fact that our group worked very hard on the quiz we had to take, we won in the end. The prize was a Värmland's songbook. A lot of speeches from supposedly important people were held, most of them in Swedish, which made "decoding" for me very difficult if not impossible. The whole scene reminded me a bit of the dinners in the Harry Potter movies. When they spoke in English, they used an academic sounding British accent.
Highlight of the evening was for sure the choir. Although I didn't understand the text of the songs, it sounded really beautiful. Luckily, I had my digital camera with me that is capable of recording video. Since it was too dark, you can listen to a short audio sample only (play it loud for best performance :-) ).
Sunday Afternoon Walk
Due to the huge amount of positive feedback I got for my picture gallery, I decided to take a "Sonntagsspaziergang" (Sunday afternoon walk) and some pictures of Flogsta, the area where I am living. I first was thinking about posting the pictures in black and white only, which would make them look more shocking, but although the houses might not look as you would expect Swedish houses to look like, living here is really nice. More or less everybody has his or her room here, the supermarket is just around the corner and you meet a lot of people here.
Have a look at the Flogsta pictures.