Lapland (20.-25.3.)

Stockholm - Narvik by train: the longest (20 hours!) but most beautiful sight-seeing-tour I ever had!View from Narvik towards the Lofotes (68° N)Exciting cross-country skiing trip in Abisko (Vi såg två älger!)Highlight of our trip: the dog sledge tour in Abisko

Hur gulliga de är!Kiruna church on Easter Monday morningOne of the suites at the Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi

Travel mates! Too cold to be true - inside the Ice Hotel it actually felt warmer than outside! What an experience!

Short detour to Copenhagen

This weekend I've been to Copenhagen to work for a German company in the field of market research. Although I had to work the whole Friday and Saturday I had some time to get to know a bit of the city and it's people on Saturday evening and Sunday morning.

The street I was working in...do you find the shop ;-)?!

By pure chance I entred the Glyptotek which had that impressive indoor garden, some pretty sculptures and free admission on sundays. The last hour before taking the train back to Stockholm I spent in a cafe enjoying the beautiful warm and sunny spring day...how I'm longing for summer!

Min första svenska lunch

Finally! With all that Swedish people around me these days I'm getting more and more used to Swedish habits. Today was the first time I actually prepared a lunch in the evening which I will warm up tomorrow in one of the microwaves they have at many places at university! At least something to look forward to ;-)!

Daily cinema performance...

No, unfortunately the title doesn't mean that it is the filmfestival again and I can go to the cinema every day. I am rather referring to the view from my window when sitting in front of my desk (which I now do daily from afternoon until late at night)! The highlight of every afternoon (prime time so to say) is the sunset which takes place later and later from day to day. At the moment we're winning 5 minutes of daylight every day so that the days will very soon be longer again here than in Germany.I will also use this occasion (and prolongen my study break...) to give a brief comparison of the Swedish and German university systems. I have to stress that this is only the opinion formed from my experiences as a student in Stockholm and Passau and doesn't have to hold true for all universities/subjects/courses.

Here are the biggest differences:
1. The courses don't run parallel throughout the whole semester, but students are rather expected to take one (max. two) 5-week course(s) at a time and start the next one after the former one has been finished with an exam/paper. This implies that the work load is spread more evenly over the semester; one has to study more every week (including lectures of the same subject almost every day), but the exhausting German "Klausurenphase" with up to 7 exams a week at the end of the semester doesn't exist. In my opinion highly positive, unless (as in my case) the required courses are scheduled in the same period...
2. Studying at Swedish universities is in my opinion a lot more "active" (compared to the passive German system of mass lectures with the professor lecturing monotonously in the front and 300-800 students scribbling down every word he says to learn it by heart afterwards). The majority of the courses I took here were limited to an average of 30 students (about 15 in Geography, 50 in Politics, 7 in French Litterature and 30 in Swedish culture) and consisted mostly of discussions about texts/articles/books we had to read preliminary to the course or papers we had to write and then pass on to other course mates to judge them. In Markting we have big lectures (about 600 students), but additionally there are 2 seminars where we are about 30 students who have to prepare and present our marketing project in groups of 4. Same holds true for Accounting, where we are about 80 students in the lectures and have to prepare balance sheets for the seminars in groups of three. I have to admit that I remember more from the courses I did here than from any course I did in Germany!

Ojojoj, this should do for a start ... by the way, that is what it looks like outside now:

Update

As the calendar is changing from February to March (and obviously from winter to spring (whereof the former didn't really exist)) I'm once again hurling myself into work. Finally I found some courses which will actually be recognized by my home university, meaning that I don't have to do them again back in Germany if I'll manage to pass them here (with an acceptable grade!). The only problem is that two of them are in Swedish and one even in French, so the dictionaries (both the old style printed ones as well as leo.org, pauker.at and lexin) are my bibles!! (actually I use them by far more than I've ever read in my bible ;-). It's an interesting mixture: Marketing (Marknadsföring), Intermediate Accounting (Affärsredovisning) and French literature outside France (Fransk litteratur utanför Frankrike). Especially Affärsredovisning is killing me, because it would already be hard to understand it in German! Well, I'll do my best and try to be a good student for the next weeks.
Fortunately, my life here in Stockholm still also consists of more agreeable activities! I'm especially enjoying my new flat, including being able to invite friends over for dinner and going to the cinema/ watching TV/ chatting with Ann. I'm actually discovering my qualities/ambitions as a cook, inventing new recipes and preparing apple crumble as dessert (if my inventions went wrong I'm on the safe side with the latter as it erases all memories of the former :-) ...so far no one has died, but quite the contrary (tvärtom, Ann?!) we spent some funny evenings in the kitchen.