Veronika standing in the middle of a bay. The top layer is a bit melted so it looks like she’s standing on the water, but in reality there is 30cm of ice below.
Yesterday I had to go downtown to buy some things that cannot be bought in the store here. For some reason it was -17 so my face had a pleasure to be freezing for 3 hours (walking). The weirdest thing happened when I arrived home. In just about 1 hour, temperature jumped to 0 degrees. It’s incredible, I don’t remember that big of a temperature change in such a short time, ever.
In the evening we had a Christmas dinner together with all (or most) people who are still here. Each of us prepared a dish, I made “French salad” (literal translation from Slovenian, don’t know English name). Others made everything from turkey, ham, chicken, all kind of deserts and cookies. We were around 30 people, so there were just as many dishes. Too many to try them all! 🙂
Today I’ve been preparing for Veronika’s arrival most of the day. I still need to clean my room before I go wait her up to the train station, everything else is set. By the looks of it we are going to have a fun trip on Saturday to a land where sun never rises. =)
I’ve just spent last 8 hours updating my expense list. In total I had to read, translate to English and Slovenian, choose appropriate category for item, the store I bought it in, currency and date for a total of 600 items that I’ve bought over the past 5 months.
This must be one of the most boring / frustrating jobs there ever was, is, will ever be. I don’t know how people can do it, respect!
Short trip back to the numbers. So far I’ve spent a bit more than I was hoping for. Besides rent which was 1400€ for all 5 months, I’ve spent most of my money on trips and travel, plane and train tickets to come here and go home are also included here.
If we deduct this traveling expenses and trips (since I could have done that in Slovenia as well), the total price is around 1.5k€, which is not that bad. I will post a more detailed post at the end, when I’ll return home to Slovenia and analyse everything in details (with graphs & stuff).
The only number that really surprised me is how much I spent on food (note drinks are not included here). But from the looks of it I’ve spent around 150€ / month on food. Not sure how I managed to do that. 😀
Today was finally cold again. Finally? Yes, because there is nothing worse than melting snow that freezes over night. If the temperatures are low enough there is no ice here (at least on the roads). And hopefully we will be able to go walk over the sea when Veronika comes.
The weather forecast has as well gotten more pleasing. If the most optimistic forecast is true, we will have 4 days of not snow until New Year’s. Very good indeed, since I think it has been more than 3 weeks since I last saw the sun. Sadly it won’t be -30 when Veronika comes here on Thursday, pity…
Me in hockey gearMoon was extremely bright here, since there is little daylight. On a full moon you can see as good as during dawn/twilight, because of snow reflecting all the light around.It’s been a long time since I’ve last gazed upon sky like this.
Last Friday we had our last dinner together before everyone left. This was organized by us in our apartment and is not to be mistaken with farewell dinner from previous post. =)
As usually each of us prepared his own dish. I finally got a chance to taste paella from Mikel. I must say I was looking forward to this for a long time and it was worth the wait. Besides paella I got a tried salmon with cream, some French dish I forgot the name of, chicken, really spicy Chinese soup, wheat and last but not least my dumplings (Štruklji).
Paella by Mikel
Another fat French dish
Another broth made by Chinese pals, this one even hotter than the previous one.
As usually, food was good except my dumplings, which have merged into one gigantic dumpling when I left them in a pot for too long. =)
Time to eat some delicious food.
At the end someone actually brought up real champagne. It must have cost a fortune up here. This was the first time I’ve tried it and it was good, appropriate for the occasion.
It wouldn’t be true dinner without genuine French Champagne.
Despite burst of laughter between intense chatter you could feel that sad sub-tone where everyone knew this is the last time we will be together. At the end we took our final picture together and that was the last time I saw most of them. Now they are already thousands km away… hopefully I’ll be able to visit some in the future.
After coming home from Christmas market I only had 1 hour to defrost and get ready for a farewell dinner. Even though, I put hair dryer into my shoes as soon as I came home, I didn’t manage to get them dry in time so I had to wear my summer shoes. It look really weird and felt extremely cold, since they are below ankles, not to mention that evening was record low -19 degrees.
This time the dinner was in STUK not central restaurant, so it was half the price of welcome dinner. When we arrived we had a chance to mingle a bit with people and then we were seated. The program was fun again, this time a lot of students volunteered to do sketch shows so everything was almost 4 hours long.
Again we heard women choir singing us some Christmas songs, but we all agreed the best part was when the slide show with pictures from our stay here started rolling. Whole room was full of emotion, you could feel everyone being a bit sad since the end of our adventure was near. I don’t know anyone that is happy to go home and everyone would love to extend their stay for at least one semester if they could.
The food was ok. The fun part was with waitresses. Since STUK is student’s bar/club/restaurant it is managed by students. All the waitresses were students but for some reason, they were all acting like a professional restaurant. And by that I mean at the beginning of each course they all (around 10 waitresses) came out at the same time. Then they waited at the beginning of the tables until one of them gave signal to start. Even later on when they took our dishes back they always came from the right side etc… Really interesting to see.
Appetiser
Main dish with salmon
Desert
After the dinner and shows we had party at STUK. How was it I don’t know, since I went home to defrost some more. Besides I don’t like clubbing that much.
Daft punk show during the farewell dinner
This dinner was beginning of the end, it was the last time we all got together and it is sad that I won’t see some many of them ever again.
2 °C
9:53 am 
1:08 pm 
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