00:54 Mon.
16 Sep, 2013

Blog almost finished

Day 39 , 108 remain
Lulea , Sweden
15 °C
Cloudy
5:48 am
7:00 pm

This week I’ve been kind of busy with assignments so I wasn’t able to post much. On the other hand there wasn’t much to post about. On Friday we had a quiz at Software engineering. I think I solved it kind of correct, we’ll see when I get results.

Over the weekend I’ve been working on blog. I’ve finally managed to make comments feature. So now I’m almost at the end with what I imagined blog should look like 1 month ago, before I actually went to Sweden. So yey only 1 month late. 🙂 The only thing I have left according to my plan is some weather animation/detailed look when you mouse over it.

Yesterday morning (and by morning I mean 5AM) I managed to wake up and go take some photos of the lake. There are some really nice mists forming overnight there, although they were too strong (yesterday) morning for a good photo. Maybe I need to find a better viewing spot.

Misty morning in Sweden
Misty morning in Sweden
Mirror lake
Mirror lake
Mist over the lake in Luleå
Mist over the lake in Luleå
Fall has arrived. Leaves are already turning orange on trees.
Fall has arrived. Leaves are already turning orange on trees.
22:37 Mon.
9 Sep, 2013

Already?!

Day 32 , 115 remain
Lulea , Sweden
11 °C
Fair
5:31 am
7:21 pm

Today is exactly one month since I arrived here in Lulea. By now I can safely say this is the longest I’ve been away from home. Though it really doesn’t feel like one month. I’ve been quite busy last 4 weeks with all the trips, exploration, parties and school. It’s really nice up here and now I’m kind of sorry I’m not able to stay up here for whole year. The only thing that would make everything even better is if Veronika would be able to come here and live with me. Then, it would be perfect!

So far I’ve gotten used to the colder climate. Although I’m really happy that I bought winter jacked yesterday. Mornings are getting really cold, especially if it’s cloudy in the morning. Days have gotten really short (compared to when I arrived), sunset is around 19.30, sunrise around 5.30. I don’t remember saying this before, but the only deciduous here is birch and the leaves on them have started to turn yellow and red. Now I can finally say Winter is coming! (haha I’ve been waiting months to say this!).

People up here are noticeably different than in Slovenia. The first thing you notice is that 4 out of 5 people are blond. The populous is in general fit and tall. You rarely see an obese person up here. The second thing I noticed is that clichés about Swedes are surprisingly accurate. They really are shyer (at least that’s how I’d described them). They love standing in lines (not a joke!). I’m sure they get double kicks when going to amusement parks, first one when they are waiting in line for ride to start, the second one when they ride the ride. When standing in line they are calm and no one tries to cut in front or jostling forward. I don’t remember if I’ve shown this photo before, but here it is (again), how swedes wait for bus:

Waiting for the bus like a Swede
Waiting for the bus like a Swede

In general people are really nice and helpful and everyone speaks English very well. I was really surprised when saleswomen/men talk to me in perfect English. And this is tested in multiple shops, restaurants, kiosks …

The prices here are quite higher compared to Slovenia, but so are the salaries. I talk to a student doing a PHD here and he told me that here he gets around 3000€ monthly salary. For comparison PHD student in Slovenia gets 800€, professor around 2400€… The food costs I would say around 20-30% more than in Slovenia, the really expensive things are different kind of services like barber for example. Here it costs around 50€ for men. Oh ye, almost forgot about gasoline: little below 2€/l.

Thus be it for now, I shall describe more wonders of north in months to come.

19:30 Mon.
9 Sep, 2013

Swedes don't joke around when it comes to exams.

Day 32 , 115 remain
Lulea , Sweden
16 °C
Fair
5:31 am
7:21 pm

Today I had my first exam, Swedish for beginners. Here exams are written in special classroom that is big enough to accommodate around 300 students. Room is underground with no windows. Tables are for one person only, although they are big enough so you can have enough space for everything you are allowed to have with you. There is a bathroom in the room as well.

When you enter you have to put your jacket, bags, mobile phone, etc… to a special place. When you are left with only pen and ID with you, you can go sit to your table. For every 20-30 tables there is an exam supervisor seating: facing towards students. And there are some supervisor that walk along the isles as well.

When the exam starts, you get a piece of paper, where you fill out your info, exam info (name of class, number of pages). And later when you start to solve exam, you have to mark which exercises you have finished. This is something similar to Slovenian matura exams.

After you fill this page an examiner comes over and gives you exam. You have to sign your name and ID number on every page of exam. The exam is only printed on even pages. Our exam consisted of 7 pages.

While you are writing an exam an examiner comes over and checks you ID and name, which he also does when you turn in your exam. Exams last from 1.5h (our) to 6 hours. And you can’t leave examination room for the first hour. Although you can bring whatever food and drink you want with you (example; pizza with coke).

Back to the exam. Exam consisted of 4 grammar exercise. 2 that tested understanding of words/text, and one where you had to write short paragraph about yourself. Here is that paragraph that I wrote, if anyone is interested how Swedish looks like (note I’ve changed my parent’s profession for something easier to write).


Jag heter Jani. Jag kommer från Slovenien men jag bor i Luleå nu. Mitt gatunamn är Väderleden och mitt gatunummer är 11. Jag talar slovenska, engelska, lite franska och lite svenska. Jag studerar på Luleå tekniska universitet. Jag pluggar till programmerare. Jag fyller 24 i år. Mitt telefonnummer är 070 123 42 42. Mina föräldrar heter Lilijana och Jožef. Min mor är född 1966 och min far är född 1964. De har födelsedag samma dag, 17 maj. Min mamma arbetar som läkare och min pappa som tandläkare. Jag har en farbror, en faster, en moster och fyra kusiner. Min flickvän heter Veronika. Hon studerar till ekonom. Hon talar slovenska, engelska, italienska, franska och lite tyska. Veronika fyller 24 i år.

21:53 Sat.
7 Sep, 2013

Boat trip

Day 30 , 117 remain
Lulea , Sweden
12 °C
Fair
5:25 am
7:30 pm

Today we went to an island, not that far from Lulea. Here is a map link: island location. The boat ride took almost 1 and half hour. Despite very high (20 degrees) temperature it was chilly on the deck. The winds here are really cold.

Island moss in Sweden
Island moss in Sweden
Colorful vegetation on island
Colorful vegetation on island

On the island there were free saunas and a lot of BBQ places. For the first hour we went around exploring the island. The paths were nicely build with wooden floor few inches above grounds. Grounds were covered in different kinds of mosses. Above them there were conifer trees reaching the water. For me this looks weird, because we are used to see conifer trees at high altitudes. After a while we found an observation tower on a small hill and went up. Despite not being too fond of heights the climb was worth it. The view was amazing, you could see whole island (and beyond) from the tower.

When you were climbing up it felt much higher.
When you were climbing up it felt much higher.
360 island panorama
360 island panorama
View from the tower
View from the tower

After that we went to a BBQ place to cook lunch. While we were cocking there were some people running from saunas to the sea water for a quick dip in 13 degree water. I think they are going to try and go swimming when there is going to be ice as well. 🙂

Sandy beach on the island
Sandy beach on the island

After that we were ready to head back.

21:59 Fri.
6 Sep, 2013

Tasting gyros again

Day 29 , 118 remain
Lulea , Sweden
16 °C
Fair
5:21 am
7:34 pm

This week there is an international food market in the centre. There are stalls with food from different countries, mainly European but one stall wit Thailand and one with Australian food as well. Yesterday I bought some fudge candies from Britain’s stall and a gyros from Greek’s. It was really good eating it (gyros) after so many years. Last time I ate it was on Ios, 5 years ago. (Oh and the candy, I ate it yesterday despite planning on eating it throughout whole week). The food at the stalls is good, although some (especially Spanish) students keep saying that food (Spanish) is nothing like the food in Spain. They even said that they’ll cook us some real Spanish food, so I’m looking forward to that.
Today I went to the food market again and had an Australian crocodile burger, some friends had a kangaroo burger and we all agree it tastes really similar as a normal (beef) burger. I would love to try some more food but the prices are sky high.

I haven’t described the classes in too much detail last time so here it goes. The courses (at least the ones I’m going to) have around 15-30 people attending. This is somewhat similar to the ones at my faculty (FMF). Until now we only had one lab class and it looked like this; we went in to a room with computers (there were some people not belonging to our class in as well doing their stuff). We then continued working, from what we did at home, on our assignments. The professor was walking around and if you wanted to ask him something he was there, so basically the lab works is not another class (like in Slovenia) but more like consultation for assignments you have to do.

Majority of the classrooms have a glass wall toward the hallway. Not sure why is this, maybe because of light (there are few windows because of position and style of the rooms). Because of this I had an interesting opportunity yesterday. When I was searching for my classroom I was able to look at what other people were studying in their classrooms. This is campus so there are a lot of different types (faculties?) of studies in the same building. The most interesting was a classroom where students were massaging each other. When I first saw it I thought they had a free period or something but then I saw the teacher at the front of the class giving instructions. Maybe I should volunteer as a test subject for massages. 🙂

I had a lot of assignments to do till today, but somehow I managed to do them all. I’m not used to getting that much work the first week of school. I think I spent 10+ hours doing 2 assignments. Also we had a dictation exam today at Swedish course. Hopefully I did ok, despite knowing I misspelled 3 words. I just hope the rest is correct. On Monday I have a written exam.

Tomorrow is supposed to be record high temperature here, around 20 degrees. A great day for going on a boat trip.

Lastly, if you check at the upper part of the post you can see I’ve been here for exactly 4 weeks. I’ll write more about this in my next post.