Valand, here we go again

Last weekend we tested some more of Gothenburgs nightlife. I can really say: I like it :)
On Friday we been to a club called Nivå. Great place! Great party! A fairly big place with 2 dance floors, lounge area and a big balcony to catch some fresh air.



The only down side was that I was more or less forced to leave the club since my two friends decided arguing with the bouncer is a smart move… no its not. Nevertheless we will definitely go there again.
Saturday we went to Valand. Not as cool as Nivå but still worth a second try. And today its time for that second try. Currently there are school holidays in Sweden and all students finished their exams last week. So hopefully the Valand student party lives up to its promise. I will keep you updated.
Hanni out.

Nothing in your way Hanni!

Today we can proudly annouce that Hanni graduated to the academical degree of a cand.-ing. (candidatus ingenieur). Everyone knows that he has really earned this success...I'm quite eased now that all the big efforts he's made the last months finally got to a very good end for him and us all. Would have been very sad especially for me to lost such a good friend and comrade in my everyday life at Munich..

Well done Hanni!
Pedal to the metal!

Running

First time running after almost 2 months break. Horrible.
But atleast there is a nice running track in the "Skatas" park near our house. You only have to cross one street and you are in the nature.

Stockholm

Home of the Swedish king. A really impressive city. The mediterranean style houses at the promenades near the sea almost give you the feeling being in Italy. But the cold wind and all people wearing caps and scarfs quickly bring back to your mind that you are about 2000km further in the north.
Our Stockholm trip should begin at 14:00 last Friday and surprisingly for all of us we actually managed to be on the highway around 14:30. The fact that Basti is an exchange student in Stockholm at the moment made it a lot easier for us to find a cheap accommodation. We stayed at his place in Tyresö for free ;) But of course we weren’t cheap and spent the saved money in our new favorite shop. The system bolaget. Driving from Göteborg to Stockholm took us about 5,5 hours and gave us the opportunity to enjoy Swedens beautiful landscape. The mix of coniferous and deciduous trees all colored in autumn colors is something you hardly find in Germany. This combined with the sunny weather made the time worth spending in the car.
The first night in Stockholm we spent at Bastis dorm talking with a lot other Erasmus students and finishing the box of beer we brought from system bolaget and the boxes they brought from their ferry trip to Estonia. As usual Sebbo went to bed first. Fault again…


Saturday we started our tour to downtown Stockholm around 10. We had a walk around in the city and watched all the mandatory sights like the royal palace, Gamla stan (the first old town I have seen so far worth comparing to the one in Regensburg. Different but as nice as the one in Regensburg. Well nearly as nice ;) ), the nobel museum, T-centralen and many more. Since pictures say more than 1000 words you can get a better impression at Sebbos flicker page.
After dinner at Bastis place we all went to the city again to enjoy Stockholms nightlife and visited some special places during night. Seeing the whole city from Katarinahissen and Södermalmwas really great. We also been to some bars. But none of them was a place which going to again is a must. They all been ok, but nothing special except the last one. A freaky mix of heavy metal and punk style people populated that place. I wonder how we ended up there and I am sure Jonny, Sebbo and me fit in this place like Will smith at the anual KKK meeting.

On Sunday we had another walk in the city and been to the Vasa museum. A really cool place.


The ship is called Vasa and sunk in the 1620s on its first trip. When it was 600 meters away from the harbor the wind became too strong, the ship started to roll too much, water entered through the canon holes and we all know the rest of the story… Swedish engineering for the win ;). If you ever go to Stockholm make sure to go there. Its definitely worth it!

First week of work and weekend 10th - 12th of October

For finally being up to date again I will make a short post about our first week of work and the last weekend. Event though it is already some time ago it is still worth reporting on.
I cant tell you much about work because not much happened yet. We are all sure that noone of us has to suffer heavy work load here and it might turn out just as it was predicted by our German human resources contact: “you cant compare Swedish students to German students. You have to tell the guys at SKF what you are able to do”. I’ll be damned if I will… ;)

Lets go back to the more pleasant things of life. 2^nd Weekend in Gothenburg. Friday wasn’t that spectacular at all. We did some preparty out our place with Richard and went out to a bar at the Avenue afterwards.

Compared to that our Saturday was way more interesting. IAESTE organized a cryfish-party, the Swedish would call it: Kräftskiva, for all the interns and some exchange students from Germany, Holland, Switzerland and Italy.

Of course you will ask now. What the hell is cryfish? And why is there a cryfish party. Here you go:

The first time you try to eat the cryfish it isn’t easy at all.

1. Rip of both pincers, collect like 2 gram of meat and suck out the “delicious” slime (I skipped the sucking part after the first one
2. Rip of the tail. Crack the tail carapace and collect an additonl 10 gram of meat
3. throw away all the rest of the cryfish caus it is full of guts and other disgusting stuff. Yes Sebbo, you aren’t supposed to eat it ;)

But now you still don’t know why there is a cryfish-party. Neither do I. No one of the Swedish guests knew why this is one of the 4 special days of the year where heavy drinking is a must...

So much about our time in Gothenburg. Tonight we will go out to the weekly pub organized by IAESTE to meet some other interns and maybe the exchange students again. Tomorrow we will start our first weekend trip to Stockholm. Hopefully reporting about our Stockholm adventures wont take as long as it took us this time ;)

Saturday 4th of October

This was our first night out in Gothenburg. We first met up with Kaj and Gyssy at Kaj's place and started playing the famous game "fill it up again". There are a few rules for this game, but basicly it is just about stuffing as much alcohol in you in the shortest time possible. So far so good.
After about an hour we were finished and all ready to hit the town. We went to a bowling club near downtown Gothenburg and it was the first time for me playing bowling. Actually it was a lot more fun than i ever imagined. But due to our great preparation at Kaj's place we really sucked. I think we all only scored like 50 - 70 points ;)
Here is a pic of the bowlingcenter:


After that we moved on to a club called Sticky Fingers. A pretty cool place with 3 different areas and a liveband.
It really remembered me of the Sudhaus club which used to be in Regensburg.
Not much more to tell about it if you cant remember ;)

Day two in Gothenburg

Our second day in Gothenburg should start at 9 in the morning. At least that was the plan when we went to bed last night. At 10:30 we were finally up for breakfast. After ham and eggs and the research where all the needed places for today are located we finally started.
Todays agenda was
- getting a personummer at the local tax office
- transfering our rent to the landlords bankaccount
- buying some stuff at IKEA
- paying a visit at Baushaus
- and maybe check out a bit more of Gothenburg

But as it turned out we should be done faster then expected. Our gps navigated us very precisely to the tax office. But the tax officed moved to a different location in town. Noone updated the webpage.Good job guys! Fortunately it was only a 10 minute walk and a lot of swedish people helped us to find it. When we finally arrived a very friendly guy at the entrance of the tax office who looked more like the trainer in a local gym helped us to find the correct persons at the tax office. A really good invention which makes stuff a lot easier. We should get one of those in Germany... . So far so good. Getting the personummer was very unbureaucratic compared to a german agency. The only downside was that we cant get a real personummer because we arent staying long enough in sweden but a temporary personummer will be send to us in the next 2 or 3 weeks.
The second stop for today was at swedbank to transfer the rent to our landlords bankaccount. Thats where the trouble started. Each of us wanted to withdraw 5000 KR (about 500 euro) to deposit it on the landlords account (direct transfer is not possible yet because we need a personumemr for that). But my ec-card didnt work and the bancomat refused to give me any money. Fortuntaelly we had enough money left to pay the rent. Since only Jonnay and Sebbo were able to withdraw money we are a bit low on money now we had to cancel the rest of our plans. All we can do for the moment is waiting for the next day until Jonny can withdraw antoher 5000KR from his bankaccount. But there is still some Carlsberg beer left...

Destination Anywhere

(use http://www.flickr.com/photos/30970874@N02/show for better quality)
Hi again!

We've now sucessfully arrived at Birkagatan 43a in Gothenburg. Our trip ends here for the moment and we're taking the time to settle down here at Sweden. Our journey was really nice and we had a lot of fun all together. Special thanks to Ruben and his mother for the excellent accommodation between monday and thuesday :-) The further ride to Kiel was very rainy and we had a typical north german lunch at "Nordsee" (fish). The ferry was nice but a bit too boring for my taste - the night club called "c-view" at the bow of the ship was even closed the whole night. The ferry crossing lasts from 7 o'clock p.m. yesterday til 9 o'clock a.m. of today. I think i didn't get a wink of sleep between 3 and 6 o'clock a.m. but the sea condition was not very strong. This morning we stayed on deck while we got into the harbour of Gothenburg, where we had a really fabulous view. I've uploaded the fotos to my flickr account - I hope you all can view them within this post. We've now a visit by a friend of Hanni - so i've to stop now...

more from gothenburg next time :-)
Sebastian