17:00 Sun.
2 Aug, 2020

Workation

,
°C
12:00 am
12:00 am

Uff, this was so long ago I almost forgot I went. I’m not sure if I just couldn’t find it now or really didn’t even mention it anywhere. Thank god for the pictures, looking at them brings back the memories even though it is more than 3 years since I was in San Sebastian, Spain.

In middle of June of 2017 I had another project meeting, this time in San Sebastian, Spain. I was so happy to go there, not only because I have a thing for Spain, but also because Mikel, one of my best friends from Sweden, lives (or rather lived there).

I touched down in Barcelona, from where I thought it would be an interesting experience if I took the train to get from there to San Sebastian, which is on the west coast of Spain, and I was not sorry I took it, the train was fast, clean, nice and the best part was I was able to enjoy great vistas and see a bit of Spanish landscape which you otherwise just fly over.  The ride took over 6 hours if I remember correctly so in the evening I just made it in time to crash at my hotel.

The city of San Sebastian is very nice and quite different compared to the rest of the Spain. It is belongs to Basque country and the natives there consider themselves Basque before Spanish, they have their language, which is actually spoken there on the streets, but everyone also knows Spanish. The city is also quite rich, not sure from what, but just by watching the houses or rather mansions you can tell.

Other than that the city lies inside a gorgeous bay surrounded by small hills. Perfect for watching sunset.

As luck would have it, I arrived as usually during the extreme and unusual heat wave. It was way over 30 C all the time I was there, which is really unusual, so ofcourse no-one has ACs. Luckily the beach was large and nearby so it was not so bad, when I was not at the meetings.

Besides travelling, these project meetings are also great because of the social aspect and dinners that accompany them in the evening. I still haven’t eaten anything like the year before in Haliklidi, Greece. Though the Spanish variant wasn’t bad either. Up for eels anyone?

In the northern (I think) part of Spain the so called tapas are very popular. When you go into a bar or hang out with friends you don’t usually go for a dinner but into a bar, where the whole groups orders various bite sized snacks called tapas. They were very very good and the idea that you can try many different ones alongside nice cold beer, huh, really fantastic.

I said that Mikel lived in San Sebastian, well that was not actually true anymore, he moved to Valencia, where he had work. But luckily he came back just in time for me to meet with him. We spend a wonderful day of chatting, remembering the Sweden and all our friends from there. We even went to a nearby town just across the French border just, so we could send Jean a postcard from France. All in all it was a great day, well worth suffering the heat for the whole week.

Mikel and I in San Sebastian, 2017

I usually I also wrote some postcards to send back home and to co-workers.  I have slowly started abandoning this practice as it is becoming incredibly hard finding post stamps lately. But in San Sebastian I had a different problem, I couldn’t find mail box. After complaining to Mikel about it, he actually drove me to the post office in the end I was not surprised how I couldn’t find it earlier.

Mail box in San Sebastian

After the day I spent with Mikel I had to return back to Slovenia. To go back, instead of going by the train again I took a plane to Barcelona, which gave me whole day to explore the Barcelona.

The city is really amazing, I’m always overwhelmed with such big cities, since in Slovenia we have nothing like that. Since it was summer it was full of people, literary everywhere, on the buses, underground, I don’t think another person would fit on the beach and don’t get me started on the other tourists attractions. The  city is also notorious for the pick-pockets so I was kind of nervous whole time there, but luckily survived without any incidents and managed to see quite a lot of it. Still, I don’t think I would want to go on vacation there.

In the evening I returned back home, back to Slovenia. Huh, again, thank god for the pictures otherwise I would completely forgot about everything. But still I should be more diligent in the future and do this thing more real time like, otherwise what’s the point. 🙂 So now I’m off to the next overdue trip from memory lane.

20:33 Wed.
1 Jan, 2014

Sad to say hejdå!

Day 146 , 1 remain
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…

03:30 Mon.
25 Nov, 2013

Helsinki & St. Petersburg

Day 109 , 38 remain
Lulea , Sweden
-2 °C
Fair
8:47 am
1:46 pm

Long way down

After I finished my home exam, I had approximately 1 hour to finish packing. Soon after I was on my way to central bus station with my roommate Mikel. When we arrived I was pleasantly surprised to see that our bus was double decker. I’ve never rode on one so I was really excited about it, we got a sit in the upper floor at the front window. View was great as we started driving up toward northern coast, through vast forest, numerous lakes and rivers.

After about 3 hours we arrived to Tornio – town on the border between Sweden and Finland. It was already 7 pm here, since Finland is 1h+ in regards to CET. Soon after we boarded another bus and were off to Kemi, from where we had train to Helsinki. As we were entering a bus we could already notice we were not in Sweden anymore. How? Well bus driver didn’t spoke English. While in Sweden nearly everyone (from my experience everyone) speaks English in Finland only younger and more educated generations speak it. Besides price was in €.

After waiting few hours at the train station, which was luckily opened, train arrived. It was really big and long train with double decker sleeping wagons. Since we were on a tight budget, we booked seats, which weren’t as cosy as beds, but much better than seats on bus.

Helsinki

After 10 hours of restless sleep we woke up to a cold and clear morning in the outskirts of Helsinki. We arrived to central train station at 9 am, took some tourist maps and went exploring the city right after.

Helsinki train station
Helsinki train station

Around noon we decided to go eat something and yeah where else do you go, if you don’t know any restaurant then McDonald’s? After paying 7€ for standard BigMac menu, we were reminded how expensive Scandinavia is. While in Sweden prices are even higher, you don’t feel them as much since they are in SEK, but in Finland as you know they have €.

After lunch we continued walking around old city centre. I think at the end we saw all interesting buildings and landmarks in the centre, so toward 3’o clock we walked toward harbour where our ship was waiting.

While we were boarding the ship we met some other exchange students that booked the same trip as us. As it turns out they were mainly Spanish (hooray for my roommate who’s from Spain as well 🙂 ). As we later learned the trip was mostly booked by exchange students that are currently studying in Helsinki. As far as I know we were the only two from Sweden.

After boarding the ship we found our room, it was small, as expected. It was for 4 persons, and had a bathroom. It was about 9m^2, which makes it almost smaller than the bathroom I have here in Sweden. : )

Ship

The ship was relatively big. It had 8 floors, from which only 3 were used for sleeping cabins, others contained 3 bars/restaurants, cinema, “disco”/club, casino, swimming pool, sauna, fitness and most importantly duty free shop; most importantly because they’re kind of famous. We actually mentioned them when we were studying Nordic country in my Geography class in 6th grade of primary school.

As you can guess prices are n times lower than Finland or Sweden. For example 1l of vodka costs 4.6€. In Sweden I have no idea, since you can’t even buy alcohol above 4% in normal stores, but I would guess it’s around 20€. (As I’m writing this I’ve checked and cheapest vodka is 188 SEK, here is link to the only shop that sells alcohol here, if anyone is interested Systembolaget). One more thing that might be interesting here is that the store (whole ship) was accepting three currencies €, SEK and RUB with some really bad conversion rates for € and SEK (usually +0.5€).

Ok enough about shop. Evening or should I say night ended up talking/hanging with people we met there. It was really fun and hours flew by fast.

Russia

We docked at St. Petersburg at 9’am local time. Bear in mind that Russia doesn’t have winter/summer time so it’s another 2 hours + from Finland. I don’t remember at what time we went to sleep but in the morning I was almost dead. After disembarking we had to go through border control, where I got my first stamp in my passport. Border control was much stricter, than usually when you cross border somewhere in EU (before we were in Schengen), as expected for leaving EU.

Harbor where we landed.
Harbor where we landed.

I was officially in Russia. And first impressions were … hmm exactly what you see when you type “in Russia” in to Google. When we left harbour building it was still dark, at 9’o clock, sky was covered in clouds, harbour building looked like “general soviet Russian building”, big, grey block of contrite, a band was playing some traditional (I guess) Russian songs in front of it, yes it was Russia just as I imagined it. : )

St. Petersburg

After everyone passed border control we boarded a bus and went on a city tour. “Soviet” style soon disappeared, though I couldn’t but chuckle when I saw submarines and battle ships in city canals and later on train full of tanks.

City is about 300 years old, it was built by Peter the Great and was at that time capital of Russia. Because of this there are around 500 (if I remember correctly) palaces in the city. Everything is big, with different building styles, starting with barroc … this isn’t interesting so let’s just see some pictures. Besides if someone is really interested he or she can google it. =)

After few hours of city touring we arrived to our hotel, on the main street. I was really impressed with hotel room, it was nicely equipped, with a big bathroom. I didn’t have much time to admire it thought as we just dropped our suitcases and went on a hunt for food. It’s maybe cliché but we ended up in McDonald’s again. After struggling to order, for about 5minutes (no-one speaks English there), we ended up with something that looked like large menu, 0.8l of Coca-Cola, big French frieze, and what must have been burger that’s twice the size of normal McDonald’s burger. We paid around 4.6€ for this.

After lunch we went back to our hotel, where we slept until evening, when we had next activity planned. Whole trip was designed around different excursion that you could book, I and Mikel booked everything, so in the evening we were off to traditional “Russian dinner”. Meal was nice, though I’m quite sure they could have given us something more traditional :). While we ate a Russian “group” was singing and performing some “Russian” games, songs and dances for our entertainment. After the dinner we went back to our hotel, where we fell asleep in not more than 2 minutes.

Next day we woke up around 9’o clock, it was still pitch black outside. We went to a buffet-breakfast in the hotel dining room, where we ate for 3 days back and front. After an hour of feasting, we had next excursion planned. This time we went to outskirts of the city to visit Catherine’s palace.

After palace tour was over we were free to stroll in the park behind palace. There we met a Russian teacher of English with her class from Moscow. I’m mentioning this because she was really surprised to hear (young) people talking in English there. Furthermore the whole class wanted to take a picture with us. I mean come one, we don’t look that different than Russians. 😀

After about two hours we went back to the bus. As we were walking back we saw 4 or 5 couples that were about to get married. Never before have I seen that many grooms and brides in one place or even in one day.

When we came back to the hotel, we had free time until evening. Some people were hungry so we went searching for a restaurant that’s not McDonalds. I was still full from breakfast so I decided to take something to drink.

Super refreshing fruit smoothie made from different fruits in layers.
Super refreshing fruit smoothie made from different fruits in layers.

As you may guess it was some sort of smoothie, but in contrast to usual one where all the fruits are mixed together (and there is at least 80% of banana in it), here each fruit was separated, and there was no banana in any of them. Furthermore the mash wash thicker than in regular smoothie, all in all it was really good. If I remember correctly it costs around 2€ and I was full afterwards as if I ate at least 5 of each fruit.

After lunch, we went for a walk through the city, trying to find some landmarks we missed on previous excursions. One thing I noticed while walking around was just how full of people the city streets were. Yes, it was the main street, but still, people were everywhere. Second thing was their driving ethnics, to say it shortly: not good, everyone were beeping, driving over speed limit, red lights etc. We were also warned to really watch when going over the street, supposedly drivers don’t stop event on crosswalks.

Obelisk
Obelisk
Cathedral
Cathedral

While I’m talking about cars, as a Slovenian, I always tend to try and estimate wealth of population by judging their cars. This being said, I unintentionally took notice of what people were driving and it was all over the place. From old Zastava to new Ferraris and Porches. The only thing missing, to make it more Russian, was a tank driving down the main street.

In the evening we had another excursion planned. Limo ride through the city. About 24 people signed to this excursions, so at 23.30 two limos were waiting for us in front of the hotel. One for 8 people and one for 16. We got in the bigger one. It was that hummer limo thingie … for me it looks less luxurious than normal one, but inside it was much more spacious.

Inside we were greeted with some bubbling wine that actually didn’t taste bad, it was kind of sweet, nothing like what we usually drink for New Year’s. I’m not sure what we are usually drinking in Slovenian, but as far as I remember, every wine I ever tasted was bitter and/or sour, thought I haven’t tasted that many kinds in the end.

Hummer limo
Hummer limo

After about an hour of driving, partying, taking millions of photos, we made our final stop (we had some stops before) in front of the biggest night club in the city. Majority of people went inside, I decided it will be better if I go to hotel and catch on some much needed sleep. From what I’ve later learned I didn’t missed much. Club wasn’t that big, there were Russians everywhere (I’m not sure what they (students) expected that they will find some Eskimos or something inside? 😀 ) and they danced weirdly.

Group photo
Group photo

Last day morning, routine was same as the day before. Shower, big breakfast, excursion. This day we went to Hermitage museum. It’s the biggest museum in (Russia if not Europe). They told us that if you spent 9 seconds at each exhibit, it would take you 15 years to see them all.

Hermitage
Hermitage

Anyway the museum was …. eh museum. It was interesting first 25 minutes, then you get bored of seeing thousands of pictures, vases, busts etc. It kind of reminded me of the time I visited Louvre. Really big museum that you are too tired to visit whole, so you get bored quite soon. After two or three hours of guided tour of museum, we finally found a bench where we could sit/sleep and wait for the next excursion, exactly like Louvre 6 years ago.

Hermitage throne
Hermitage throne

For our last excursion we visited 3 famous cathedrals in the city. As you may know, Russians have a special way of building cathedrals, with lots of towers and colours. Everyone knows how that famous cathedral in Moscow looks like.

Cathedrals were really big (tall). Decorated with mosaic all over the walls. Every other thing was coated with (real) gold. I’ll share one fun fact that our tour guide told us: How can you tell the name of cathedral? When you look toward pictures around altar, the first picture to the right is always Jesus, the second one tells you the name.

With this excursion we have finished our visit of St. Petersburg. We then slowly drove back to our ship, where we spent night similarly as before. This time a day had extra 2 hours (remember Russia is CET +3) which was good for much needed rest.

In the morning we arrived to raining Helsinki. We (me and Mikel) bid farewell to our new friends, but not before we helped some smuggle some cigarettes off the ship. In retrospect I’m kind of sad I didn’t remembered to do it myself, on the ship you can buy a pack of cigarettes for 2€, in Helsinki they are 5€. The problem is you can only bring 1 big (?) package of them per person. So per one big pack you can actually earn 30€ (since I don’t smoke I don’t know how many packs does a big one include, I’m guessing that 10?).

Helsinki Numero Due

When we (me and Mikel) were planning this trip we were always counting on nice weather. A bit too optimistic for this place on Earth, since it’s raining almost every day. Because of this, we didn’t know what to do whole day, since we didn’t want to go sightseeing while it was raining. We ended up going to the train station where we waited 3 hours for rain to stop. It was noon and rain was still pouring, we were bored as hell and hungry, that is why we decided to go out and try to find something to eat, that’s not McDonalds. We ended up walking across the street in to a big shopping mall complex that was interlink with underground tunnels, spanning over large area of city centre.

We were walking around this mall for about two hours, trying to find a nice restaurant. When we finally agreed to going to an Italian restaurant. The waitress greeted us with big smile and was really enthusiastic to explain their daily menus etc. I’m not sure if she is generally this nice, or they rarely get customers (restaurant was well hidden in the furthest corner underground).

As we were eating we noticed that decorations in the restaurant are nothing like usually Italian style, but look more like Egyptian. Later we learned that the Italian restaurant was 5 meters to the left, and we really were in something that looked like Egyptian restaurant, though food was normal (nothing exotic). I had salmon and Mikel had chicken, if I remember correctly. I’m not sure, if it’s because we were really hungry or because it really was good, the dish tasted amazing. Everything was great, potatoes didn’t felt like frozen ones you get from McDonalds, fish was greatly cooked, seasoning was there, I even ate the “green” stuff (read as vegetables) that I usually leave. The meal all together (with Coca-Cola, salad-bar and main dish) costs around 13€, depending on what you choose for main dish. All in all I think it was worth every cent of it.

Sadly I don’t remember the name of the restaurant. If you are in Helsinki and want to check it out, it’s underground somewhere around here Google Maps. After entering at main entrance, go to the lowest floor, continue toward west, alongside bus station, near the end of hallway turn left (I think there is Lidel at the corner), continue forward, go up half floor and turn right at something that looks like restaurant. If you follow my great instructions you can’t miss it. =)

After lunch we went through the mall again. This time we found a spot where we were in reach of Wi-Fi, so we stayed there for few hours. After we got bored of that, we went outside where as it has stopped raining. We decided to go on a quick tour of the city again, this time it was night.

We took some pictures of the city and went back to the train station, there we waited 4 very very long and boring hours, until our train arrived. This was the end of our visit of Helsinki.

Longer Way up

Finally we were on our way back, but not for long. As soon as conductor came to check our tickets, he had a problem with our student cards. Now when I think about it, we were naïve to think Swedish student ID’s will be accepted in Finland, but at least on our way down nobody checked them.

First problem was figuring out what the conductor even wants from us as he didn’t spoke english. Later on he actually found some students who translated for him. Anyway, we had to pay difference to adult’s ticket, which was double the price as a student’s ticket. The “translators” later told us that we were actually lucky, since he could have charged us first 80€ penalty for bringing wrong document/ticket and then make us buy new ticket t.i. not considering what we already paid for student one. Though I wouldn’t count myself lucky. Another friend from here, went with the same train few days before us unnoticed with a Swedish student card in both directions.

After restless sleep we woke up to an icy cold morning in the middle of nowhere with snow everywhere and train standing still. There was some announcements over train’s speakers but they were in Finnish. Somebody later told us that the train has broken down, so we were stuck there for an additional hour.

When we finally arrived we were pretty late. It was cold outside, around -10, with lots of snow. Totally different landscape, that what I remember from the way down. Thankfully we just caught the bus from Kemi to Torni, before it left. When we wanted to pay for it we found out that it didn’t accept credit cards, luckily bus driver allowed us to ride for free, which was really nice of him and felt good after overpaid train tickets.

In Troni we changed to double decker buss for Luela and we were off. Again we found the front sits in the first floor and this time it was still daylight outside, so the view was amazing. At around 13’o clock we were back to Lulea. Our trip was over, the only thing left was going to sleep to catch up for lack of sleep in the past days.

Some fun things that I didn’t know where to include in the text above

    • As Russian is in the same language group as Slovenian, I was able to understand and speak surprisingly a lot of it. Well understand is an overstatement since they spoke to fast in most cases, but if I have pronunciation written down (as I can’t read Cyrillic) I understand surprisingly a lot.
    • Everything in Russia is much cheaper than in Sweden, even cheaper than in Slovenia. For example take a look on the lower picture of oil prices. Remember 1€ is around 43 RUB, do you remember when was the last time you paid 0.8€ for 1l of gas? 🙂
      Oil prices in Russia
      Oil prices in Russia
        • I’m still not sure if this is genius or not. When you enter a store (usually gift shop) they give you free vodka shot at the entrance. They probably figured out, that customers spent more if they are drunk; that’s why genius. 🙂
        • Nobody speaks English.
      • Take a look at some must know sentences in Russian that the agency provided us with. 🙂
        Some Russian words
        Some Russian words
          • From 1 AM to 5 AM all the draw bridges in St. Petersburg are lifted, so if you are on the wrong island at that time, you’re stuck there until morning as there is no other way to get across.
          • Vodka is almost cheaper than water. They sell it in all shapes and sizes, and they actually have more choice for different kind of vodka than water.
        • When I bought something in store, I got 10 Rubi cents back in return. That’s like 0.002€. 😀

There are some MORE PHOTOS in gallery, so check them out.

21:45 Fri.
9 Aug, 2013

Train ride

Day 1 , 146 remain
Lulea , Sweden
15 °C
Fair
3:49 am
9:21 pm

After landing at ARN airport, I found small trolley for baggage and began to explore the place. Airport is quite big, you need around 20-30minutes to walk from one side to another (on the same floor) and there are 3 floors in total. Airport features lots of shops and restaurants.

Throughout whole airport there was available Wi-Fi, the bigger challenge was to find electricity socket. Luckily there was some kind of waiting area just above train station with comfortable couches, electricity sockets and great view on the runway.

Arlanda airport.
Stocholm airport.

The airport was the first opportunity to spend some SEK (Swedish krona). Among restaurants there was a McDonalds, it’s prices were approximately 2 times higher than in Slovenia, sadly I’ll have to learn that this is true for all service here in Sweden. Standard menu (burger, fries, drink) costs around 70-90 SEK (around 10€), while large drink costs 20 SEK (2.3€).

Around 6’o clock I went down to the train station, which is located below airport and forms (if I remember correctly) the longest tunnel in Sweden (2km or something). Train station is small and only has two platforms with few benches to sit on. Sadly my train was delayed for 20 minutes, which is insane since this is the 3rd stop on the route Stockholm-Lulea.

Arlanda airport underground train station.
Arlanda airport underground train station.

The train ride from Stockholm to Lulea lasts around 12 hours. Because of this I chose the sleepers wagon, with 6 cosy bunk beds. After finding my room I thankfully learned that I’ll only be sharing it with 1 person (instead of 5). The guy I was sharing room with was from Algeria and was working in Sweden. He said that he was regular traveller with this train, so he knew how to prepare bunk beds (in the day time they are folded, so people can sit rather than lie). After talking for a bit with this guy (I never learned his name), I went and prepared for sleep. What really surprised me was the toilet, it was actually nicer than in Venice airport and to no comparison to Slovenian “hole in the floor” toilets on trains.
The room was equipped with electricity sockets, which was really nice as I was finally able to watch Scarface before I went to sleep.

Sleeper train SJ.

Even if I was really tired I barely slept. When the train went in to a curve, it slightly moved me from one to other side of the bed. The train was electrical, so it was very quiet, but still wagons (and people from other rooms) were making quite a lot of noise. I woke up at around 5 am, with sun quite high on the sky. I went to the corridor in front of rooms, to watch landscape from there (there were really big windows in this corridor). Scenery was beautiful with lots of lakes and the trees were everywhere.

Sweden from train.
First morning in Sweden

At 7 am I disembark the train, I have arrived to Lulea.