16 days - 3 countries - 12 cities - nearly 5000 kilometers

I don't have to work during the whole July and so I'll start to travel tomorrow. I planned a big tour through whole Sweden with side trips to Denmark and Norway. I'll take the train and sleep mostly at CouchSurfing hosts. In Copenhagen I'll visit my former Swedish teacher who moved there and in Gävle I'll meet Cloe, the volunteer from France I already visited in the winter.

To make it short: 16 days - 3 countries - 12 cities - nearly 5000 kilometers.

my trip

Omberg and Vättern

This week i didn't have to work at the café and the weather was nice. So yesterday, I took my hiking stuff and went to a little mountain two hours away from Linköping with public transport.

good ol' hiking boots and pants

The mountain is called Omberg and lies exactly next to Vättern which is the second largest lake of Sweden with 1893 square kilometers. (The largest is called Vänern and situated in the same region.)

region of Vättern (with Omberg in the middle of the photo)

I started my day at 8 o'clock which is quite early for me and took the bus and train to be at Omberg at 11 o'clock. The bus stop was not exactly next to the mountain. Walking to it I passed some nice fields like that on the picture.

nice flowers at a meadow

After some minutes the wood began and so I started my way to Hjässan (the "h" is not pronounced) which is the name of Omberg's highest point.

the orange line at the tree is one of the marks

Good that the path was marked because I had no map.

my designation: Hjässan

Walking and walking, the trees became less and earlier than I thought I reached Hjässan.

some meters before Hjässan

On Hjässan I had a great view to all directions.

view to the southeast from Hjässan

But of course like always the pictures can't create an impression that comes close to reality.

view to the northeast from Hjässan

There was also a small kind of tower to get a view that was even better.

viewing tower on Hjässan

But after getting on the top my trip was not over. It was just the beginning because there was another viewpoint with a view to the lake that seemed to be very nice.

stream at Omberg

Hiking through the area I saw a lot of interesting things and untouched nature.

everything is green

Great was also that everything was pretty green. I like green nature and so I was very happy that I decided to do the trip.

path with orange mark again

The area around Omberg is not that large but it is interesting how different the parts of it look like.

on the way to Västra väggar

Anyway, I reached Västra väggar after one or two hours. That is the name of the second viewpoint towards the lake.

view from Västra väggan towards Vättern

The lake doesn't look that huge on the photo but first it's just the view from east to west and second it's a bloody picture. Maybe it's easier to get an impression by looking at the panorama. I was surprised about the view which was just awesome. That's why it was clear that I wasn't alone. Generally I met nobody walking through the woods (I guess because it was week) but at Västra väggar I met some pensioners who had fika (Swedish coffee break, remember?) there. Good for them that it is also possible to go there by car. Although I think it is far more interesting to walk the way because I'm sure they saw just a fraction of what I saw.

my first try of a panorama picture

Västra väggar was the highlight of the day but now I had to go back to catch the bus.

stairs in the wood

To bad that I didn't buy a map before because it was not that easy to find the right way back.

wonder if those cows know how lucky they are to have such a great view

I got a bit lost and wasn't sure if I would catch the bus at 18:10 (the next would be at 21:10!). After more than one hour I knew again where I was. I noticed that I had to go up to Hjässan again and the time was running. I really had to hurry because I didn't want to wait for the bus for three hours.

view from the lakeside

The good thing about my detours was that I saw some other nice places like that one on the photo. Coming to the bus stop the bus was already waiting and 5 minutes later (!) I was on my way back home. That was close!

fortunately the bus was still there

Family and Spanish days

Last weekend my mother and sister visited me. It was my birthday on Sunday and so they had a great reason to cross the sea. I was really happy to see them again and so were they. But they weren't the only visitors. Miguel invited four friends from Spain and one from Malmö (south of Sweden). Although it got quite crowded in our flat we managed it. My mother and sister slept in my room on an air mattress which meant that there was no place left for anything. Just look at the picture.

my room

The weather was very nice during the weekend with a lot of sun and nearly no clouds. I showed them the city and we were walking around a lot. My sister knew Linköping a bit because she brought me here with my father last year but for my mother everything was quite new. She was surprised how big the city was but I think that was just because I told her the city is not that huge (of course in reference to Berlin). Monday, we went to Stockholm to visit the city until my mother and sister would fly back home.

street in Stockholm

Now, I'm in the flat with 5 Spanish guys. Unfortunately Miguel is the only one who speaks English and that's why it feels a bit strange for me. I'm really happy that I can communicate in different languages. Otherwise traveling would feel very limited.

My Swedish lessons ended two weeks ago because Hanna, our teacher, will move to Copenhagen. It's a first thing that ends and I feel that also the end of my year is coming soon. Of course, there are three months left but according to the last months I know how fast time goes by, especially if it is summer and you travel and I plan to travel a lot during July.

Spring arrived

The last time I wrote that I still missed green trees. Although the weather now is not that sunny and a bit muggy the trees became green and now it really feels and smells like spring. So here's an update. I took the pictures in the area I live in just outside my flat. Enjoy!

Spring is coming to Sweden - finally!

Two weeks ago Owen visited us. He was a volunteer two years ago and came back to say hello to everybody. Coming to our flat he said that everything looks exactly the same and I think he really enjoyed remembering all the stuff that happened in his year here in Linköping.

Swedish house

The feeling of coming back after two years must be really interesting. Anyway, it was nice to talk about EVS and his experiences and compare it with our situation right now.

more Swedish houses

Let's focus a bit more on the headline and let me talk about the Swedish spring. About one month ago we had the last snow here in Sweden. After that, it got a little warmer but it was still cold. Then, from one day to the next the temperature went up 10 degrees. I didn't expect such a strong change but now it seems to be spring.

street with trees

The temperatures feel a bit like summer but I'm still missing one thing and that is green trees! They are slowly getting green now but if I take a look at facebook pictures of my friends in Germany it still looks a bit like winter here.

first green leafs

But maybe it's easier to have a look at the pictures than to follow my scattered thoughts. I took the pictures yesterday cycling around in the area round Linköping and I was once more completely taken with the Swedish nature. I have to say that you can only receive a rough expression of the landscape enjoying the pictures. Like always, being in the scenery is even more beautiful.

one of Sweden's countless lakes

Linus' visit

After Enrico left it was just a few days my next friend arrived. The easter weekend was coming and so it was the perfect time for him to visit me because Friday and Monday were free days for me. With Linus, I did a lot of things. We made music together, visited Norrköping, spent time in the café and lost a lot of money in pubs and bars. But it was it totally worth because there, we got to know new people every time. One day we hung out with ice hockey fans and nearly went to a match (unfortunately we were too late to get tickets), one day we went to a birthday home party we were invited to spontaneously right after the bar closed and other days we were just chilling.

Museum of Work in Norrköping

We were lucky because the weather was pretty great all the time (and it still is). Maybe spring in Sweden will come yet again.

industrial city centre of Norrköping

The highlight of our time together was Stockholm. We went there last Friday and stayed till Sunday. We booked a youth hostel in Södermalm (borough in the south of the city centre) and had tons of fun. Because I forgot my house shoes at the mid-term-training we had to go to Kärsögården to get them back. That was no problem and so we also had time to meet Stefan, one of the guys I met at the mid-term-training. A friend from Germany was just visiting him and so we spent the afternoon together. A Swedish friend of him joined us too and so our little group went to a café to have some fika.

our group on Gondolen (without me, I took the picture)

After that we went for a walk through the city centre and visited Gondolen which is an old elevator in the centre that connects two city boroughs which are on different levels. Going there we had a great view over Stockholm.

view over Stockholm from Gondolen

In the evening, we searched for a good bar and after walking around a bit we saw one that was called "Bahnhof" (German for station). Hanging around in the bars I noticed that the Swedes start to go out later than the Germans. Compared to bars in Berlin I felt quite young in the Swedish ones.

street in Stockholm

A surprise for me was also that I saw the barkeeper drinking "Club Mate" which I thought is only available in Germany. It is a non-alcoholic mate-flavoured drink and ordering it and taking the first sip tasted a bit like being back in Berlin.

street in the old town of Stockholm

The next day, Linus had to go up at 3:30 am to catch his bus to the airport. The plan was to say goodbye and to get some sleep afterwards. But unfortunately, we didn't book a private room and so it was impossible for me to sleep because we had a roommate that was snoring all the time. As a matter of fact it wasn't snoring. He was more making impossibly loud noises I guess no one else is able to make. And so, some hours after trying to sleep I took the train back home to good ol' Linköping.

view of Stockholm from a bridge

After Linus' visit I was a bit tired but very happy that we used every time we had the best way you could. In the evening I slept immediately and for 12 ours.

Stockholm by night

Enrico's visit

Last week, Enrico a friend from Germany visited me. (Greetings to you if you read this!) He arrived Monday and stayed until Sunday. It was great to see him because we haven't met since last summer and many things happened during that time so we had to talk a lot. His visit was also a welcome change from everyday life for me and probably also for him.

snowy view

He likes vinyl as much as me and that's why we went to different record stores to satisfy our needs according to that. Of course, I showed him also Linköping and Elsas Hus which he enjoyed a lot. Generally it seemed to me that he really liked Sweden and the area here around Linköping.

I'm glad that I went to Sweden (and not to Australia for example) because here it's no big deal to get visits from friends (next week another friend will visit me).

Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures when he was here. But to make this post a little more colorful you can take a look at the nice bread a baked two weeks ago. 

Right now it is snowing and although many people around here are tired of winter and snow I'm still enjoying every snowflake that falls from the sky. The upper photo shows the view out of the office at Elsas Hus I'm sitting in now writing this text.

bread

Visit to Växjö

Times are going by and so it's time for a new post!

Last weekend was one of the best I had here in Sweden. Miguel and I visited volunteer friends we got to know at the on-arrival and mid-term training. They live in Grimslöv which is a small village next to Växjö, a pretty nice small town two hours away from Linköping if you take the train like we did.

Växjö

We arrived Friday evening, met them in Växjö and had a lot of fun in a club during the night. The only bad thing was the bus trip back to Grimslöv which took nearly one hour (but felt like ages).

The next day, we slept very long. What a wise decision! It was bad weather and so we enjoyed the day inside. In the evening we were invited to a theme party that was organized by people from a folk high school. The costumes were very creative and we liked it very much. It was only some minutes to walk and I was really glad that we didn't had to catch a bus again.

Sunday was great weather and therefore we went out for a walk and enjoyed once more the beautiful Swedish nature. We walked to a nearby lake and visited a little church that was just some minutes away.

the church

the lake

Because it was such a sunny afternoon we had fika (coffee break, very typical for Sweden) outside. We prepared everything inside, took some chairs, a table and even a bed and enjoyed the fresh air and the silence. I think we've been sitting there talking for nearly two or three hours.

fika outside

Unfortunately, after Sunday followed Monday which meant that we had to get back to Linköping. But before that we had the great opportunity to walk through the streets of Växjö to get an impression of the city. We also saw the organization our friends work in. It was a bit different to ours because it was much bigger and therefore it felt a bit more anonymous (of course that is only a very rough expression of myself). Anyway, it was time to say goodbye and after a final fika we took the train back to Linköping where we arrived in the evening.

a last group photo before we left

Mid-Term-Training

In October we had an On-Arrival-Training in Stockholm. There, we met other volunteers from other countries that participated in EVS in Sweden. Most of them came from France, others from Czech Rebublic, Macedonia, Georgia and Miguel and me from Spain and Germany.

Lars, the trainer told us a lot about non-formal learning generally and EVS and we got information about our health insurance, rights, duties and a lot more.

The accomodation was quite nice. All volunteers slept in a big beautiful house and the food was very good. The place was called Kärsögården and situated on an island near the royal castle of Stockholm.

At the training we found new friends that visited us during the last months. We visited also some of them.

the house at Kärsögården we slept in

Last week we had the Mid-Term-Training. We saw most of the volunteers from the On-Arrival-Training and some new faces from Belgium, the Netherlands, Lithuania, France and many Germans. We had a lot of fun together and really enjoyed the time there. Everybody had to present his project. In the end it was a bit long but also very interesting because the themes and locations were quite different. In the evening we played dices and cards (good that I brought them) and laughed a lot. We also built an iglo which was very funny. Actually, it was non-sense but we worked  very concentrated and were surprisingly serious about it. Anyway, he next day we destroyed it. It was quite nice to meet people that were in the same situation as we are now and it was hard to leave them again. But we planned to visit some of the volunteers in Växjö in some weeks, so it's okay.

some of us having fun in the snowy forest

Before christmas we had Swedish lessons twice every week. Then Oscar, the teacher got a little boy and stress at work and had to stop the lessons. Some weeks ago, we finally got a new teacher. I've got the feeling that we really learn something from her.

Although Swedish is a germanic language like my mother tongue German (and there are similarities) it is still hard for me after six months to speak the language. But I listen regurlarly to Swedish radio, read newspapers, learn irregular verbs and so I understand more and more. I hope it will get better soon so that I can speak it after the EVS-year.

our iglo (with three entrances and a chimney!)