Coming home for Christmas...

After getting the Christmas spirit in Stockholm

(baking Plätzchen& Bratäpfel and visiting julmarknader),

I spent the holidays with my family in Lengenfeld.

long walks between the years

As every year a lot of church music accompanied the celebrations...

O Tannenbaum

Weihnachtsoratorium

God Jul!

It's all about Nobel!

Nobel Nobel Nobel, the last days have been all about this one topic! Last week the Swedish media portrayed this year's nobel prize winners and gave plenty of useful (as well as unuseful) background information - from the "male" history of the famous prize to Astrid Lindgren's rememberance and Mario Capecchi's "horrible childhood". On Saturday, the laureates of the physics, chemistry and economy prizes held public lectures in Aula Magna (I attended the one of Eric Maskin on "mechanism design theory").

On Monday (Nobeldagen) Swedish TV broadcast and commented the Award Ceremony (Prisutdelningen) and the famous Banquet (Nobelfesten i Stadshuset) - but one thing wasn't part of the media coverage: the inofficial after party (Nobel NightCap) which is every year hosted by one of Stockholms universities! This year it was Stockholm University's turn - and of course jag var med!
Together with about 80 other Swedish and exchange students I volunteered to help at the party - which included preparations in advance as well as cleaning afterwards. Our first big task was to build the decorations last weekend. We had big fun stamping bricks and attaching them to the bar in Allhuset for one whole day!

We had also been looking forward to trying on the dresses we would wear - as the party's theme was "The roaring 1920s" they were especially lent for this event. Many were really nice although most of them were quite big and the materials where not the most comfortable to wear.

After many hours of building, dressing up and waiting the after party eventually started at midnight when the first guests arrived straight from Stadshuset. And our efforts had been worth it! The atmosphere was amazing: a big dancing hall with big band, fashion and dance show, a lounge with coktail bar and piano music and the Moulin Rouge with more music, casino tables and a burlesque dance show at an advanced hour.

I myself served hors d'oeuvres in the dancing hall (which was quite fun thanks to my waitressing experience) - I now know the incredients of "cobbsallad" by heart (to be sure that no one allergic to gluten or nuts deceases on my account)! Roquefort, chicken, bacon, red onions etc etc...just ask me for more information...
All in all, it was an exhausting but one-time experience and I hope you agree with me after my report and don't juge the party by Aftonbladet's very limited coverage (which is the only newspaper article I could find)!

Borås (30.11.-3.12.)

As I will only be able to experience "Christmas in family" when back in Germany (20th december), I was really happy about the invitation to stay with our friends, the Asps in Borås, for the first weekend of Advent.

After an exhausting week and 5 hours of swebus-travel I was very warmly welcomed in Brämhult with Glögg and a nice dinner. Moreover I had the pleasure to meet the Oscarsson family again, most of whom I hadn't seen since we all met on our skiing holiday in the Dolomites almost 3 years ago. Rebecca's and Andrea's boyfriends "joined th party", too, so that we had a really funny evening including nice chats, Sing Star and a delicious berry pie.
On Saturday I was offered a little sightseeing tour of Borås, mainly because Andrea needed to practise for her driving test (whereby I don't want to say that there is no reason in having a sightseeing tour of Borås, the limited "picture-taking-views" were of course only due to the persistant rainy weather ;-).

In the afternoon, Andrea and I went to the church's jul lotteri. You could buy lots to win fruit baskets, a hammock or even a julskinka, but as I know that I'm not the luckiest person I invested into something concrete instead - Glögg :-)

We also did some Christmas baking. The pepparkakor were given the most different forms ;-) and adornments and the Vanillekipferl (reduced to tyska kakor due to pronounciation difficulties...), powdered by Marcus with a lot of love, made our mouths water.
The weekend ended with some exhausting sports and relaxing sauna, so that I could start the new week with recharged batteries! Tack för senast!

Switching over...

With more and more people reading this blog whose mother tongue is not German I decided to switch to "the world language" English. Swedish would be of course more reasonable considering my whereabouts and my ambitions to learn Swedish, men tyvärr, even less people would be able to read it then (the Swedes' old dilemma ;-). Omi&Opi, I'm sure Martin can help you :-)

Advent

Wenn ich schon sonst nicht so viel Weihnachtsdeko habe, ein Adventskalender darf nicht fehlen! Und wirklich, meine liebe Mami hat mir einen selbstgefüllten als Überraschungspaket geschickt, so dass mir die Tage bis Weihnachten (und erstmal bis es nach Hause geht) etwas versüßt werden.

Aber in Schweden feiert man natürlich auch Advent (der Mangel an Weihnachtsdeko in meinem heim ist darauf zurückzuführen, dass ich mit einer Chinesin zusammen wohne - aber ich habe ihr auch einen Adventskalender geschenkt und sie erzählte mir, dass es in China unter jungen Leuten echt "in" ist, Weihnachten zu feiern). Zum schwedischen Advent gehören die zahlreichen Weihnachtsmärkte in und um Stockholm, Plätzchen backen, Adventskerzen und natürlich auch Adventskalender! In Gamla Stan gibt es sogar einen "lebenden", jeden Tag um 18 Uhr bieten Künstler etwas von verschiedenen Fenstern der Altstadt aus dar! Für mich gibt es die nächsten 2 Wochen also noch viel zu erleben, denn zu den ganzen Adventsaktivitäten kommt ja noch das Nobelfest (auf dessen After-Party ich anwesend sein werde) und das Luciafest am 13. Dezember, das ich auch gern miterleben möchte - ich halte euch auf dem Laufenden!