In Swiss-German (for once)

Uf villfache Wunsch us dr Heimet, gits hüt mal än Itrag uf Schwiizerdütsch. So vill gits zwar nöd z'brichte; gestert isch eher än ruhige Tag gsi und hüt liid ich chli unter dä Mäntigsmüedigkeit. Ha am Namittag frei gha und mal es paar Sache ufgarbeitet, aber leider nur öpe halb so vill wien ich ha welle. Nachher gahn ich dänn no äs bitz go Sport mache, um s'Wuchenänd usezschwitze. Die Wuche wetti unbedingt au wiedermal go hockey spile, s'Fäld isch ja nur öpe 500 Meter vo da (Eigentlich än Fuessballplatz, aber im Winter mit Is überzoge). Muess da mal öpis organisiere.
Äs würd mich no interessiere, ob min Blog überhaupt gläse wird i dä Schwiiz und vo wem. Villicht chönder ja mal än Kommentar schribe. (für das gits die Funktion!)

tschau zäme

late night update

It's four in the morning and there was just an afterparty at my place. Yesterday was the first meeting of our mentor group and I think we have quite cool people again in the group (our mentors are anyway some of the best). Ok, on the teambuilding day today, we finished on the last place, but we had still a lot of fun. Hot coffee with additions also helped to have a good time, even it was snowing.
In the evening (since it was the first saturday night of the new semester) there were quite a lot of corridor-parties. I went to two of them; first to Emmy and then to Luise. But we had to leave there at two, because a girl was complaining. Actually I don't know who she was, but damn, if she can't stand corridorparties she should move away from West-Ålidhem! But anyway, at the end we went to my place to cook some fish-sticks, the traditional late night dinner.
Tomorrow (or actually today) I want to play icehockey with Markus and some others, and I have to invite for fika. I hope I'll be recovered again.

God natt.

First week

The first study week of the spring semester is over and it is time for a short review. At the moment I have microeconomics in Swedish. It's actually not that hard to understand (since it is a lot of mathematics) but the level is not that high too. I think I heard a lot of it during my second year courses. But the funny thing is that I had to discuss when applying for it, whether I've already done enough on C-level or not.
But at the moment I don't mind. It gives me more time for other things.

This weekend could be quite hard, there are a lot of semester-begin parties, where I should go. For saturday night Ålidhem party-hopping is announced.


Ach ja, habe gerade meine Agenda (endlich) mal nachgetragen und dabei festgestellt, dass ich im Januar diverse Geburtstage vergessen habe. Also, hier an dieser Stelle Happy Birthday in die Schweiz zu Liselotte, Sämi, Beeli, Berni und Joey. Sorry, ich versuche am Wochenende euch allen noch persönlich zu schreiben.

Farewell

They are gone now,
There were a lot of farewells during the last weeks, and on monday was the ultimate last good-bye party. And at the end, two of my best and most important friends from last semester went home too.

Sandra, my corridor neighbour, organisator of many trips and "fikas", you were my consultant and I think sometimes also my psychiatrist. I'll miss drinking tea with you in the kitchen late at night. Thank you for the good time we had, and thank you for the espresso-brewer. I'll try to continue with the fika-tradition.
.

Mark, my brother in arms in so many hopeless battles against alcohol and latterly also snus, I hope I do not have to drink twice as much now. You were also the initiator of the men's cooking club Umeå, now Anders and me have to cast a successor. We had a great time, but I still think I paid too much for your scrap bicycle.
.

I wish you both a good time back home I hope to see you again on Brännbollsyran.

Back from Ammarnäs

So, I'm back from Ammarnäs and this morning I've started again with my new course. The weekend was really nice. On thursday we started our journey to Ammarnäs at 4 p.m., it was snowing, of course already dark and it took us 6 hours to drive there. But it was really great, I saw my first elks here in Sweden. First, a whole elk-family was standing on the street and later on we saw two more. On the way back then another elk almost run into our car. And we have also seen a bunch of rendeers and two deers. I won't ever doubt again that these animals really exist in the swedish forests.
In Ammarnäs we could live in the cabin of Emmy's grandparents (tack så mycket Emmy, tack så mycket Emmy's morföräldrar!), which was really cosy, eventhough we had some problems with the electricity first. Ammarnäs itself is at this time of the year quite calm, it is lying at the end of a dead end valley and out of season there are not many guest there. So, on saturday we went skiing, and we were almost alone on the slope. The snow was great, new powder, just incredible. Since only a few people were there, Emmy could talk a lot with the guy responsible for lift and slopes. So she could manage that he drove us up to the top of the mountain with his snowscooter the next day. And it was beautiful, on sunday the sky was blue and the sun was shining and we had a great view over the mountains and hills around there.
We had so much fun this weekend and I think I could write a lot more about Ammarnäs just now but there are already other things going on as well.
As I mentioned, today started the new semester, and I'm reading now some courses in swedish, my first impressions of that, I'll probably write down on wednesday or thursday.
Furthermore is this evening the big farewell party of Mark, Sandra and some others, so I'll publish a party review tomorrow.
By the way, I promise to publish the pictures from Ammarnäs as soon I have them.

Hej då!

Ammarnäs

Tomorrow morning we have the presentation for our strategy paper. This will be the last study event in the fall semester and also the end of the management master program (actually not the end, but since I do next semester different things, it is the end for me). I'm glad it is over, but the course was really interesting.

Tomorrow afternoon I'll go with Emmy, Amy, Mark and Dario to Ammarnäs for the weekend. That's a place up in the mountains near the norwegian border. Hopefully, there will be real nordic winter, not like here in Umeå.
Maybe, I'll also see an elk or at least some rendeers. But if I won't see an elk, then I really believe that there are no elks in sweden.

So, my next update will follow maybe on sunday,

I wish you all a nice weekend.

New arrivals party

The last two days I was quite lazy. I slept a lot and did some sport, but nothing special.
Tonight was a "social event" for exchange students at NH, (especially for the new ones, but also for the older). So, I surly went there, but first I went with Mark and Julia to Emmi's place. It was a really cool corridor party with a "socialistic touch" (pictures to this will follow). Afterwards we went to NH. It was really crouded and there were a lot of new faces. So I already met a lot of new international students this evening. The funniest thing was that I met a finnish girl, who lives in the same building, on the same floor, just on the other side. I think she is really ok.

By the way, I just signed up today for the trip to the sami market in Jokkmokk and also for the trip to St. Petersburg. I hope it will be a lot of fun. The trip to Jokkmokk starts at 4 in the morning, so we just thought to go to Corona on friday till 2 o'clock and then go to the sauna till 4. It sounds great, since the bus take five hours, we have plenty of time to sleep till Jokkmokk.

And also: as soon as I have my digital camera ready, I will upload more pictures.

PS: I would really appreciate some comments of you.

PPS: You really get addicted to snus quite fast.

Björklöven

Yes! We finished our strategy paper today. We were quite good in time and didn't have to work till late. So I had time to go to the icehockey game.

Björklöven played against Oskarhamn. It was a bit like allways, Umeå had a good start and were 1-0 in front after the first period, but then they let the opponent to get back into the game again. Only because of Björklövens goalkeeper Lundström Oskarhamn was not able to score in the second period. The third period began good again for the home team, and Olofsson scored the 2-0 with a really nice penalty shot. But one minute later, the team was already spleeping again and the guest were able to score the 2-1. After this, Umeå had problems to get into the game again and they took many unnecessary penalties. Oskarhamn, able to play a powerplay 5 against 3, highend the pressure and could equalize the game. This time Björklöven showed a reaction and started fighting, the hard work was rewarded with the 3-2, three minutes before the end. Björklöven won the first game and three important points in this seasons Superallsvenskan.

After watching most of their home games in the last time, I think, Umeå has quite a good team, which has its strenghts when its fast wings can be launched with precise passes. But unfortunately, the defenders are often not able to find the free wing, or they are doing risky things in front of their own goal. They also seem to have a sort of mental problem that they are not able to be concentrated (more or less) the whole game. But I still hope, to see Björklöven at the top at the end.

Jag har dessutom bestämmt idag, att jag ska skriva en text på svenska en gång i veckan för att träna mitt skriven svenska. Nästa vecka, jag ska börja en nationalekonomi-kurs som är bara på svenska. Jag hoppas att jag kommer att förstå föreläsningarna.

So, und noch die deutsche Übersetzung (in kurz): ich habe beschlossen zu Übungszwecken einmal die Woche einen Text auf Schwedisch zu verfassen.

And at the end, show respect to my dear friend Mark and visit his fantastic site www.dieaxt.de.md (which is a lot better and more professional than mine).

heute mal auf Deutsch

Hallo,
Ich möchte mich zuerst für den letzten Eintrag entschuldigen, ist ein bisschen konfus geraten, denke ich. Nun ja, das Strategiepaper ist auf gutem Wege, und heute blieb mal wieder Zeit für etwas Sport. Bin am Vormittag im Team-cycling gewesen im IKSU, musste aber ein wenig leiden zu Beginn. Ich war wohl gestern zu lange in der Sauna, bzw. habe vielleicht zu viel Bier dazu getrunken. Jedenfalls war ich am morgen völlig matt. Am Nachmittag habe ich mir dann endlich einen Hockeyschläger gekauft und bin dann mit Markus zum ersten Mal hier aufs Eis gegangen. War noch lustig, wieder mal hockey zu spielen. Wir müssen nun nur noch einige Leute mehr organisieren. Aber nächste Woche kommen ja dann die neuen Austauschstudenten, da werden wir schon einige Interessierte finden.

einen schönen Sonntag miteinander

So, the week is almost over again and I think I have to write something today, but actually I don't know where to start. On tuesday I was down-town in Blå, and the music there was like allways very bad (at least on the dancefloor), but you get the drinks for half the price till midnight, that's still a reason to go there sometimes. Yesterday I had a delicious elk dinner at Mark's place.
Today, I was allmost the whole day at the university again and also in the evening I had to write on our strategic paper. We have to be finished until sunday, which shouldn't be a problem. But right now I'm concerned about the direction we started to go for our proposals. Some people in our group seem to believe to strongly in the text book and I feel embarrassed to present it like this to the company. I don't think we have to prove again that we have read the text book and the models in it are good to understand the topic but if we present it like this to the board members, they will believe that we didn't learn anything exept book knowledge. I don't care about the grades at the end, but a positive feedback from the company would be a good reward.

I just don't know anymore what I actually wanted to state right now, but I think I'm just to tired. Perhaps I should try to sleep enough once, instead of doing this.

And by the way, the weather in Umeå just sucks this week.

Ich wünsche allne ä gueti Nacht

and a lot of work again

Tomorrow (or today now) school starts again and so I just finished my paper, for which I had time to write the whole christmas holidays but I started as usually on sunday evening. But the weekend was quite busy, on saturday I started the day with some sport, than I had to go to town to drink coffee and in the evening I went to the sauna - that's something I really missed.
Today I was at the hockeygame. Björklöven played their first Superallsvenskan game (so quasi Aufstiegsrunde) against Hammarby. It was quite a good game at the beginning, faster and thougher than most of the games before, but than it seemed as they got tired. The third period was boring and the game ended 3-3.

Also, ich wünsche allne ä gueti Nacht und würd mi freue au mal öpis vo eu z'ghöre

Back in Umeå

Now I'm back in Umeå, it is still quite long dark, but at least it has snow again. Yesterday evening I saw my second northern light here, cool.

Välkommen

Welcome to my blog. After four months in Umeå it was time to do something like this to publish by pictures and some informations. The newsletters from last year (unfortunately all in german) you can find on my homepage.

Bis bald

Rolf