Back to Sweden - Back to business - a short note...

Hejsan en gång till,

I'm back in Uppsala, sitting in front of my pc, waiting for a process to finish off and writing this little note. I will add some photos later but keeping my blog up to date is the "primary concern" - primary concern reminds me to my flight earlier today. Due to the strike at SXF we had our take off 5 minutes to 10 am - therefore too late to take the train which would have been departed 11:55 from Skavsta. So I had to take another option - however the ticket has been purchased and paid already. Since the time frames are very rare for trains from Skavsta to Uppsala I decided to take the Flygbuss from the airport to Stockholm (again) and later the Express-Bus to Uppsala. Unfortunately we arrived at Stockholm city terminal just a few minutes after bus departure- probably the luckiest day in my life ;( - "we" means myself and a friend, Andreas which is originally from Sweden but he studies architecture at Berlin, TU. I had a very pleasant trip with him so this was a kind of excuse for the inconveniences. And just before sunset I arrived in Uppsala. Back to Uppsala means primarily back to business and therefore I will focus myself on this issues for the next days. How the story continues - who knows -

Cheers,

Tillbaka i Sverige - Back to Sweden

Hejsan allihoppas,

As time goes by, my attempts to extend my stay in lovely Sweden might be successful. After application for a DAAD-scholarship in Nov 2008 I have been invited to the final assessment test in their office in Bonn. This assessment was last tuesday which was one reason for a short trip to my hometown in Germany. Beforehand my parents were visiting me and we spent together a few very nice days in Uppsala, Stockholm and surrounding.

My parents in Uppsala

Almost three weeks ago my parents were visiting me at my current living place in Uppsala. This was the first visit of firends and relatives but hopefully not the last. Beside very nice impressions from Uppsala one main event was our/my first visit of Stockholm - the Venice of the North. Located on 13 isles it has more than 750 bridges and with approximately 600.000 inhabitants it is the biggest city in Sweden - real city feelings for me :) We paid his majesty a visit, had a look on the castle, the "riksdag" and other famous buildings and last not least we visited the Skansen.

Skansen, located on the island of "Djurgården" is a miniature version of the whole country. On 800 ha you can find both Flora & Fauna as well as typical buildings from different sites in Sweden. And my first moose :)

A unexpected visit

One day after my parents arrival I had received my invitation to the final assessment of the german academic service. There I have applied earlier last year for a scholarship to extend my stay. After my final confirmations of courses I have done 45+x credits in the previous term- Out of the approximately 75 credits only 45 will be accepted from my home university - one reason for my attempts to extend my stay. Due to the loacl fares for travelling with Deutsche Bahn I decided to go by plane to Bonn - the typical business flights with the "penguins" in kavaj (suit) every morning from Berlin to Cologne/Bonn. In Bonn I paid a visit to some friends from the "Fachschaft" and have had a chat concerning university-politics with friends of mine which I met first on the ZaPF in Konstanz 2008. After the assessment which went rather good (from my opinion) I had a few more hours until my plane took me back to Berlin. Meanwhile Katha, a friend of mine from Bonn as well has shown me the center of Bonn and after a nice fika (I have to be careful - i got used to the price levels in Sweden) it was time to say goodbye. Hopefully in 3 weeks I will know whether the story continues or not.

Back in Berlin

Since it was a rather unexpected / unscheduled trip to Germany NOBODY except my parents, Martin (in Japan) and Katha in Bonn have known that I would stay for a week in Germany neither my reasons for that. Beside the assessment which was of course the main reason the other one was the birthday of my little brother. So it was a real surprise when I knocked at his door sunday late night one week ago. All in all this was a great time - he really enjoyed my visit as I did too ;)

At the moment I'm sitting in front of the gate doors at Schönefeld Airport (SXF). Due to local strikes from Ver.di no flight will be proceeded until 9.30 am (my flight back was scheduled at 8.35 am). Assuming a flight time of 1 hour and 20 minutes I have to go out latest 10:35 am to arrive at Stockholm/ Nyköping before my train to Uppsala (which has been paid already) leaves. Whether I have arrived in time or not I'll tell you later. :)

Cheers,

/Stephan

Busy days and my first visit...

Hejsan allihoppas,

In 3 hours my parents are leaving Germany for a few days and come to visit me. Beforehand it was a quite busy time the last days. But one thing after another. On last week tuesday my project in the local ATLAS group died eventually due to scientific reasons. It turned out to be not really promising to keep track on the approach I was facing. However it took numerous hours to get the code and the analysis finally proceeded and in Science a result providing no further investigations is also at least a result. Since this I am standing by for new orders by my project leader. Meanwhile the new semester started with rather busy courses I take. One of them is relativistic quantum mechanics and I have to admit, I don't like residual calculus really much... However I need to catch up with the content of the course - and I'm convinced that I will do this. The last results from my previous courses are still pending thus i don't really know at present how the last term was in total. Eventually I can see it was too busy. :)

Here in Uppsala new students arived now, friends are leaving or have left - I met again to a close friend of mine - finally we had fika as promised to each other last year and now a lot of new students are introducing themselves here in Uppsala during nice parties. :) Back in Uppsala I continue with my new "Uppsala-only" hobby - fixing my bike - no matter how cold it is (less than -4 °C during the night) and I'm still repairing friend's bikes as well.

Back in Uppsala means also back to the choir. Since I'm member of the choirboard this produces nice sideeffects from time to time such as "syrelsemöter", (formal) meetings at someone's place where we eat together and discuss about the plans for this term. During the last styrelse we did some advertisement for our choir - surprisingly I had the chance to took brush and colours out and "paint" a poster... A nice way to spend the saturday evening ;) But afterwards I have been to a party as well.

Since the future is rather unclear I appreciate to know at least about the next few days. At 8.20 local time my parents will arive at Arlanda, passing through the Sky City of the airport - a surreal place where you could believe that you took some drugs - as I did half a year ago. Then we will have some nice fika, talk a lot and visit some nice places - such as Gamla Uppsala as well as Uppsala itself but a planned destination is the capital, Stockholm (hopefully the weather remains nice) and probably a silver-mine not far away from Uppsala.

In preparation for the visit I had to deal with a problem of a special kind... Since I changed all my bank accounts before I came back in january I had no longer any access to my accounts neither could I took any money off using my card. However I wanted to present some nice dishes to my parents as well as I was supposed to buy some bedclothes. And I had 500 SEK to do this- however I did it! :) Hope they like it...

Stay in touch / kramar och puss från Sverige!