20:33 Wed.

1 Jan, 2014

An end once and for all

Sad to say hejdå!

Day 146 , 1 remain

Tags: end, goodbye, hejdå, leaving Luleå, on train, train

Lulea , Sweden

-1 °C

Mostly Cloudy

9:49 am

1:20 pm

I’m sitting on the train, slowly moving through last meters of Lulea. The time has come to leave my new home and return to the old one.

Luckily Veronika is accompanying me on the long journey south, which makes it easier. It was not easy to say goodbye. I have grown accustomed to the new way of life up here, and I must say I liked it very much. Nature, people, food I loved it all, but most of all I liked the polar climate with tons of snow, low temperatures and massive auroras dancing over the sky.

Speaking of auroras there is probably the biggest one until now dancing over our heads, it is so bright you’re supposed to see it from Stockholm. Sadly it’s cloudy here so … bad luck.

To be continued…

Last supper

Time to say goodbye

Day 136 , 11 remain

Tags: bye, dinner, goodbye, last supper, last time together

Lulea , Sweden

-6 °C

Light Snow

9:53 am

1:03 pm

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).

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. =)

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. — 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.