22:09 Mon.
19 Aug, 2013

Working on blog

Day 11 , 136 remain
Lulea , Sweden
17 °C
Fair
4:23 am
8:42 pm

Noting much going on today. I’ve been working on page split for way to long but now it’s finally working. I still have some ideas on how to improve it but it will have to wait.

On the other hand I’ve heard from Veronika that she’s got a job at bank. While this is great news it also means she won’t be able to come and visit me as we previously planned. That just sucks, I’m missing her already and it’s only been one and a half week. Maybe we’ll be able to go on a short trip during Christmas break.

23:25 Sun.
18 Aug, 2013

Covered in mud

Day 10 , 137 remain
Lulea , Sweden
17 °C
Fair
4:21 am
8:46 pm

Yesterday was raining whole day so I didn’t do much. I worked on blog and watched some films. At around 8 PM raining stopped so I decided to go on a close by hill to take some shots of drying landscape. The sun was just setting down so I got some really nice shots and I took one from where you can see my building and university in the distance.

Lulea’s centre in the distance.

Luleå city center from afar.
Luleå city center from afar.
Sunset road
Sunset road

You can see my house and university in the distance if you look closely.

University and my dorm
University and my dorm

Today I went for a walk around northern part of the area (where I haven’t been yet). The interesting part started when I decided to take a shortcut through a forest. Everything went well at first, there were a lot of mushrooms, berries and moss was covering the ground.

Mushrooms
Mushrooms
Mushrooms
Mushrooms

When I came closer to the shore the grounds started to get wetter and wetter until I was stuck in the middle of the bog. I was in that stinky mud up to my knees and to top it off a cloud of mosquitos came from nowhere. It took me about an hour to free myself from that mud and to get to the closest road. I was all covered in this reddish mud that stinks really badly from all the decomposing stuff in the bog. The worst part was I was about an hour down the main road from home. It must have been quite a site for all the cars passing by to see some guy walking covered in red mud from toes to head.

Forest path
Forest path
Infamous bog
Infamous bog

When I finally came home I took the longest shower of my life and started to clean my cloths. I needed to wash my pants twice. Now I’m drying (with hair dryer) my shoes for about 2h and they are still wet.

Tomorrow I’ll probably stay at home because my shoes will be, by the looks of it, still wet. Hopefully I will be able to finally start working on gallery for blog and I need to split posts to multiple pages, only images on them are around 20MB at the moment.

23:14 Fri.
16 Aug, 2013

In Luleå

Day 8 , 139 remain
Lulea , Sweden
13 °C
Fair
4:12 am
8:55 pm

Today’s one week since I’m here in Luleå. I can’t believe how fast it went by, I still feel like I arrived yesterday. The main reason I know it’s been so long is because days are getting shorter amazingly fast. Today the day is shorter for about an hour than it was last week. I don’t think it’s possible to see horizon throughout whole night anymore, although I’ve had some cloudy nights lately so I can’t say for sure.
Anyway this week has been fun, I did a lot of walking, exploring and took tons of photos. I wouldn’t mind if the weather would be few degrees higher, but that’s how it is up here in the north. I still haven’t managed to get a bike, hopefully I’ll find one soon.

After waking up this morning I went for a short run around the Björkskatan. Predictably I found out that I was out of shape although I didn’t break a sweat (guess why). After that Sofi called me and told me that king of Sweden is in Luleå and that we should go see him. We went to the old town (Gammelstad) where he would make an appearance.

I was hoping that he would be wearing a funny hat (example: King of Sweden) but no such luck. There were a lot less people there than I would have expect, probably because old town is quite far from centre and he was visiting a lot of places all over the city. I’ve managed to take some pictures of him. And yes, now I can say I was this close to the king of Sweden.

King of Sweden
King of Sweden
King of Sweden
King of Sweden

After that he went in to the old church and sadly, we weren’t allowed to go in with him. We used this time for a tour of Gammelstad. After king came out of the church we were allowed to go in again. The church is really old and nice inside, I took some pictures and then we were off to a coffee shop nearby.

Old door
Old door
Church in Gammelstad
Church in Gammelstad

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ordering at the coffee shop was a bit strange for me as you firstly had to pay for what you wanted and then took/poured it yourself from the table nearby. I had the most amazing cupcake in my life and Sofi had some warm sandwiches that looked more like salad than sandwich.

Cupcake
Cupcake

After that Sofi took me to a shop where I could buy shower curtains (yes I was missing one if I didn’t mentioned it before so every time I took a shower the bathroom was flooded). I bought a pillow as well. To my surprise this two thing were quite cheap (or at least I think they were) costing around 12€ in total.

After I came home a guy came to fix my window. It wasn’t a big fix he only greased the hinges of handle and the thing somehow started to work. Well I’m not complaining as long as it continues to work.

Today and tomorrow there is some sort of festival in the town. I was too tired to go today but if it won’t rain tomorrow I’ll probably go take a look.

23:41 Thu.
15 Aug, 2013

One week since I came to Sweden.

Day 7 , 140 remain
Lulea , Sweden
14 °C
Partly Cloudy
4:10 am
8:57 pm

Today it has been raining so I decided to stay at home and work on blog, instead of going out again. I’ve managed to create “index” of posts for easier navigation and have overridden home page so it shows as Lulea. I’ve finally managed to create edit post function, but I’m too tired now to go and correct all previous posts.

Today afternoon my new roommate has arrived so I’m not alone anymore. We exchanged few words and cleaned refrigerator (ok, he did most of the work) :). He’s from Germany as usually I didn’t get the name, will have to ask again tomorrow.

It’s been one week since I’m in Sweden now. I still can’t get used to the cold, I don’t remember when was the last time I was wearing long shirt and pants in the middle of summer while being at home. So far it has been quite exhausting and not everything was as I expected it to be (mainly internet problem and dorm room).

22:32 Wed.
14 Aug, 2013

Can't feel my legs (again)!

Day 6 , 141 remain
Lulea , Sweden
17 °C
Fair
4:06 am
9:01 pm

I don’t know why, but last few days I’ve been waking up around 5 am. Maybe because at this time sun starts to shine right on to my bed. Usually I’m too tired to think about this so I just turn around and sleep some more. Today was a bit different as I actually managed to drag myself to the window and to my surprise there was a lot of mists in surrounding forests. I will try to take some better pictures of this event, maybe from that hill I mentioned in previous post if I’ll manage to get up there in the middle of the night.

Misty morning
Misty morning Luleå

When I finally woke up around 10 AM, I decided to go for a long walk alongside beaches, through centre of the city and back home. I departed at around 11 AM. First I went south-west to the seaside and then south-east toward town centre. I took quite a lot of pictures as I walked. There were lots of benches and small piers, with picnic areas, all the way alongside beach.

Picnic area
Picnic area

When I reached bench for single person I couldn’t but help to think about “Forever alone” image and how people say that Swedes are shy. Here is the bench:

Forever alone bench
Forever alone bench, where else but Sweden? 🙂

As I continued my journey I decided to skip centre first and go around nearby forest. Grounds of the forest were filled with blueberry bushes and some of them still had berries on them. I think I was at those bushes for about an hour, eating I’d say almost 0.5kg of blueberries before continuing.

Blueberries in the forest.
Blueberries in the forest.

 

As I was preparing to continue to walk again I heard strange pecking noise in the trees. I looked up and found woodpecker at work. I don’t think I ever saw woodpecker in nature yet. I quickly changed current photo lens with a zoom one and tried to take some photos. The trees were quite tall and this lens is not as good as it could be so the picture is not as sharp as I would want it to be.

Woodpecker
Woodpecker

 

After taking a few shots I went on my way again, shortly to arrive to the beach with sand, volleyball court and again some people swimming. I really don’t know if these Swedes don’t feel cold or what but I was wearing jeans and long t-shirt and was a bit cold. They were in those swimming suits swimming in ice cold (I checked) sea like it was the warmest day of the year.
I forgot to mention that after this people were looking at me even stranger than usually, I later found out that I was all purple around my lips from blueberries, thankfully no one knows me in this town. 🙂

Luleå from sea
Luleå from sea
Luleå from sea
Luleå from sea

Not long after that I was on the main street of Lulea. I’ve been here twice and it has always been packed with people. Over the street there were hanging flags from all over the world, sadly I couldn’t find Slovenian. I took some more pictures of centre and went home.

Luleå city center - main road
Luleå city center – main road

At the end my legs were really starting to hurt, next time I will have to wear my running shoes and not this casual summer shoes I had today. Here is a map I recreated, it looks like I walked for bit over 20km, in about 6.5 hours.

MAP

Now that I finally have internet I can start working on my blog again. Firstly I need to create edit option so I can correct some mistakes from previous posts. After that I have to figure out what to do with scrolling, first post is quite long way down now.

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