Guten Rutsch!

Ready steady go!

Last weekend we took the opportunity to test this winter's first snow. Together with some good friends I went to the Obertauern ski resort in Austria for two days of snowboarding. Although it was quite foggy and stormy on Saturday we spent all day on the slope. A great feeling and loads of fun! Fortunately, we had sunny weather on Sunday so we could actually see what the ski resort looked like and explore it a bit more. After coming back to Passau by coach in the evening, I immediately fell into bed - exhausted but happy.

Es weihnachtet mal wieder...

Jajaja, it's christmas time again and while the year draws to a close I'm getting more and more sentimental (am I getting old now?!). Fabulous memories of christmas time one year ago with Swedish christmas markets, glögg and pepparkakor, julpost, ice skating in Kungsträgarden and Gröna Lund... and especially today as TV and radio speak non-stop about the Nobel Peace prize being awarded in Oslo with the Stockholm Nobel prize cerenomy following tomorrow - no wonder I'm getting sentimental! (extenuating circumstances - yippie, I'm not getting old yet :-)
Other than that I'm also enjoying christmas time here in Passau with nice little "Nikolausfeiern" (St Nicholas parties) among friends and -självklart- visits to the christmas market. I'm even planning to bake some "tyska kakor" and write christmas cards ... somehow these christmas rituals give me a feeling of "being home" (wherever I am) ...

Old acquaintances..

Yesterday evening I watched the last episode of the thriller series "Forbrydelsen" (Kommissarin Lund). At one point I thought "I know that one person on the screen from somewhere" (as it happens quite often those last weeks...too many old faces I haven't seen in more than one year...). And yes, it was Kim Bodnia, the Danish actor I guided at the Stockholm film festival last year. It's a small world! (Foto: zdf)

The infinite is in the finite of every instant...

Yesterday I was at a nice funk-jazz concert of a band called Ronin. Very inspiring. If you like that kind of music and are open to experience something new look up their myspace page and visit their concerts if you have a chance to do so!By the way and kind of suiting: Did someone recently watch "The Drummer" (Die Reise des chinesischen Trommlers) by coincidence? Quite liked it as one could take something from it even if the story itself was a bit too stereotypical...

Back in Passau

After 1 year and 2 months, I'm back at my university town, ready to start the last semester of my Bachelor studies!

Tillbaka i Sverige (25.-28. September)

How nice to come back to that place where I spent a good portion of the last year. It's autumn again, the trees have the same intensive red-yellowish colour as one year ago and contrast to the blue of the lakes and the sky. Good feeling to see everyone again. My good friends Ken and Maria, the Erasmus "veterans" living in Stockholm now, my flatmate Ann and Annika who was also visiting Stockholm that same weekend. Feels a bit like coming home and yet I'm aware of being only a visitor - will that be the case of any place I'm coming back to?

Additionally, we were invited to the big birthday party of our good friend Claes. It was great fun including crawfish and a lot of Swedish singing. Tack för festen!

And of course I hope to be able to come back soon...

A Paris (22.-24. September)

Quick update: I left Toulouse on Monday and made it to Paris with all my luggage, before heading to Stockholm tonight! More updates soon!

Merci pour tout ma chère Florence!!!

C'est les vacances!

Oh yes, it's summer! And it's holiday time! As I've never been part of the working population before, it's only now that I start wondering how come our economy is working at all during the summer months?! And where these many cars on the southbound motorways come from every weekend! I'm literally alone in my department and the heat outside doesn't actually support my working motivation... but luckily, I was able to take some days off as well to spend time with my family at both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic (once again :-)
At the Mediterranean, my mum had organised a wonderful holiday flat in the old town centre of Collioure, a pitoresque village at the most southern Mediterranean coast of France close to the Pyreenees and the Spanish border. We spent some very nice days sunbathing, tasting wine and visiting the Roussillon region. After a short stop in Toulouse we headed to the Atlantic where we rented a cosy flat in the old town of Ciboure near St-Jean-de-Luz.

Fête de la musique! (21. Juni)

Last weekend Toulouse was one big music festival! When the Swedish celebrate Midsommar it is "la fête de la musique" in France! Already during the day there are concerts all around town, but in the evening Toulouse (and all the other big French cities) are one big party! Bands at every corner of the street, people dancing all around the place - a crazy atmosphere!
At the same time, it was the worldmusic festival Rio Loco which presents every year music of a different part of the world, this year the Balkans! So on Sunday evening we could get to know a part of the culture from the regions between Bucharest and Budapest - very interesting! At first we listened to a Romanian brass band called Fanfare Ciocarlia supported by the singer Esma Redzepova and afterwards the clarinetist David Krakauer played Klezmer at its finest! Genau mein Ding!

And yet another shore...

And that is the advantage of Toulouse! BOTH to the Atlantic and the Mediterranean it is just a few hours by car! So when Lorenzo called me at 9 o'clock Saturday morning to ask if I wanted to come to the beach for a day I couldn't help but accept! C'est les vacances (at least at the weekends)!

Atlantic!

Impressive! For me, who has never been at "the ocean" before, that was what I thought when I first saw the Atlantic last Friday! It was quite windy and strong waves where breaking loudly at the shore, the white foamy water pulling your feet powerfully back towards the sea (pardon, the ocean ;-). Perfect for what we came for: surfing! Well, maybe I should rather say perfect for people who actually came for SURFING and not for "somehow trying to get from a face-down position to your feet in a split second while the slippy something under you and the thunderous something around you move at different paces and into different directions while your body just wants to do what gravity teaches it"! ...as you might guess now it was not as easy as it looked and I reckon for most of us actually standing on their feet (ON the board ON a wave) for a couple of seconds was the biggest gratification! But luckily everything else was really nice too, so those who didn't get satisfaction from the surfing *äächchem* could get it from jumping into the waves, succeeding in passing over a volleyball 50 times without letting it fall or simply getting the tan (or the sunburn?!) they should actually have gotten in Toulouse during the last weeks. All in all, a really enjoyable weekend at the OCEAN!

Off to new shores

I left beautiful Mälaren and the Baltic Sea behind to arrive and settle down at the banks of la Garonne (well, more exactly at Canal du Midi). It was not only a journey of big geographical distance, but also regarding mentality it was a journey from one corner of Europe to more or less the opposite one. From not daring to look people into the eyes on the street (much less talking to them on a bus!) in order to not disturb their privacy, to being engaged in 15-minutes politics discussions on the elevator (to name the positive side) and as a (blond!) girl being whistled at and seized by the arm on the street by filthy strangers (to name the negative side).
However, the accomodating circumstances of living in a shared flat with nice flatmates, starting an interesting internship right away and getting to know other trainees from all over Europe as well as a big range of cultural events and activities made it quite easy for me to settle in here. I'm sure I'll have a very pleasant summer in Toulouse!

Festival of Culture(s) on Place du Capitole

Annemie's travels through Europe

Times are changing. Actually, I haven't found the title of my blog appropriate anymore for quite a time. After all, what I was writing about didn't only concern Sweden. Sweden has been the base of my "expeditions" for the last year, but my writing was also influenced by all the other European countries I visited and not least the people from all over the world I met, talked to and became friends with. Moving to France will mean a potentiation of these different (cross-)cultural experiences. That finally made me change the title (and url!) of my blog. "Travels" opens a broad semantic field, including physical and mental journeys which both contribute to the experiences shaping my writing. "through European society/ies and beyond" is also to be understood in those two contexts. I don't forget that those cultural differences I come across are relative in a cosmopolitan perspective. After all, compared to peoples on the other side of the globe, European's share a quite homogeneous mindset, in my opinion an opportunity to move from talking about European societies to European society. And the differences in habits and behaviour which remain plus influences resulting from exchange with other parts of the world ("beyond") give the soup of European culture it's special spice. Exciting, don't you agree?! We'll see what I'll come up with...

Don't want to say Hej då yet...

...I'll keep that till later...

Enjoying Sweden for a last time (for now...)

Alles neu macht der Mai

Jösses! You never remember how nice springtime actually is! Especially here, after a long grey winter, it is just amazing to see the nature awake and flourish. We already had such warm and sunny days and together with the deep blue Swedish sky it just feels wonderful to go outside and simply enjoy. For me it is also high time as I'll be leaving beautiful Sweden much too soon! But I guess it's not yet today that I become melancholic and start to resume the 10 last months - now it's time to go outside!
PS: Here are some pictures from the last 2 weeks including a much too rainy Valborg and my two birthday parties!