23:02 Thu.

29 Aug, 2013

Jag studerar svenska.

Learning Swedish

Day 21 , 126 remain

Tags: 3 weeks, blueberries, swedish for beginners, three weeks

Lulea , Sweden

11 °C

Fair

4:55 am

8:04 pm

On Tuesday we started our first lessons in Swedish. There are around 25 people in the class from all nationalities, so it’s really different than then language courses in Slovenia (/mother tongue). The Swedish language is a bit weird at some points as some words are written in the same way but pronounced differently based on their meaning (expl. Japan and Japanese). Other than that I think I’m managing to follow the lessons much better than French ones back in high school. The program is really intense as we’ll have oral exam next Friday and written exam the Monday after. And the course is worth 3 CET, so it’s about half of the normal Slovenian course taken in 2 weeks instead 2.5 months.

Lately I’ve realised that I’m not that cold anymore. Guess I have gotten used to a colder climate. In the day if the sun is shining I’m able to go outside in t-shirt. Although locals are saying that normally temperatures aren’t so high at the end of August.

On Tuesday evening we had another aurora. This one was bigger/stronger and lasted much longer than the previous one. I was able to go outside to a close by bridge, which has a bit less light than surroundings of my building. I haven’t talked about this yet, but the city is really well lit, even the smallest roads through outskirts of the city (forests) have lights. Anyway back to aurora, it was really beautiful, sadly this time I forgot my tripod, so no pictures, but I’m sure there will be many more to come. Here is a picture of sunset I took few hours earlier.

Yesterday afternoon we went to a nearby forest to pick up blueberries. We were picking them for about ¾ of an hour and even while I ate every second one I picked, I still managed to pick about 0.5kg of them. They are really big and sweet. Maybe I’ll try to bake something with them, maybe…

Picking blueberries with Sofi and friends.

I haven't seen so many blueberries before. This is from a half an hour of picking and eating at least as much. — I haven’t seen so many blueberries before. This is from a half an hour of picking and eating at least as much.

Today I’ve been working some more on the blog. I’ve managed to create and fill my expenses so far. You can see them on the right side slider. If you hover over price with your mouse, it will show approximate price in €. Although exchange rates change etc. so this is really approximation. So far expenses are quite high, although I’ve paid rent for 2 months, so I expect next month to be much less.

Today has been 3 weeks since I left Slovenia. Although I miss my folks really much, time flies here. We are busy all the time so I sure don’t feel like it’s been 3 weeks. Maybe one and half. If it will continue at this paste it will be time to go home really really soon.

Hike

Can't feel my legs (again)!

Day 6 , 141 remain

Tags: beach, blueberries, hike, lulea centre, tired, woodpecker

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.

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.

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, 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.

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.

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. 🙂

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.