The coldest november since 1943

Today i've been told by a fellow swedish student that this november was the coldest one in Sweden since 1943… Well, I guess he was right!

Screenshot from yr.no

Seems that december won't be better :)

Snow is there!

Just have a look on the live webcam
:))

Moi je connais une chanson… v2.0 :D

Hello people from all over the world!

After some weeks away from this blog (well, I guess I was to lazy to write anything :s ), here is a new (and short) message to promote a new initiative of some crazy students from everywhere in Europe!

What is it all about? i guess you'll have to watch the teaser ;)


One more thing to do before you close this window: take your camera, take your craziest friends, your most unexpected music instruments, record the lyrics and send it to us: moijeconnaisunechanson@gmail.com
!!

See you soon!

Back from Bulgaria with BEST

Hi there!

After almost one month without any update on this blog, here come some news :D

Last week (oct. 8th - oct. 19th), I was in Sofia, Bulgaria, with BEST (Board of European Students of Technology). BEST is an international students organisation comprising 83 Local BEST Groups (LBGs) in 30 countries around Europe with more than 2000 active members. I am one of these members, in Grenoble.

This week of Sofia was the third and last part of a cultural exchange (CE), started in the beginning of the year between Sofia (Bg), Iaşi (Ro), and Grenoble (Fr). The upcoming articles will talk more about what this exchange was about, and what we did.

Routine…

Since I went to Oslo ten days ago, I didn't do anything special. But sometimes it's also good to let the routine come, and to appreciate some simple moments with our friends.

Dutch Fika with german food

Last week I've been invited to fika at Marloe's, after classes; There we had a warm tea, spoke together. And we ate… Spaetzle, a typical german dish made out of flour and cheese. That was great!

Slovakian dinner

On monday evening Michal invited us at his place to taste slovakian food. I have no idea about the name of the dishes we ate, but that was really good. Thank you Michal!

Linköping's University

Today, I went with Markus to take some pictures of the university. The only lessons I have there are my swedish lessons (intensive swedish course level 1 in august, and now level 2 once a week). ATM all my technical courses take place on the campus of Norrköping.

But anyway, Linköping's campus is quite nice… I let you appreciate!

Oslo

Pictures of my trip to Oslo last week-end:

Trip to Öland

Last week-end, (10th-11th-12th september 2010), I went with some friends to the sunniest island of Sweden: Öland!

Öland is the 2nd largest island of Sweden, and is located around 250km from Linköping. We rented two cars on the friday,, we left Ryd around half past five pm, and reached our final destination some four hours later.




View Larger Map

We were sleeping in a small guest house in Mörbylånga, on the western coast of the island. There we had a kitchen and everything to cook our meals… except the salt. Fortunatly, Patrizia had brought some with her :)

Guest house in Mörbylånga

On saturday we drove to the south of the island, where stands a charming lighthouse; moreover, the fauna of this part of Öland is very rich: a lot of migrating birds stops there on their way to the south of Europe. Then many swedish photographers like to get there too… we actually saw more cameras than birds!

Lighthouse on south of Öland

On sunday we first walked along the beach near our hostel, before getting back to the cars and driving to Kalmar, opposite the island. There we had a fika, visited the city… Some of us also visited the castle.

Baltic sea, from the castle of Kalmar

Then we drove back to Linköping… it was time to rest a bit :)




Many thanks to all those who organized and took part to this trip :-)

HDR

Yesterday, back in Norrköping for some classes, and… a photo session with Markus! On the bus back, we talked about HDR… here's a first try!

Actually it's only fake HDR, ie taken from a single picture… but still, I like the effect!

Canoeing

After our road trip of last week, we wanted to experience a new part of the swedish way of life: canoeing!

Step 1: Getting lost

We started our trip from Ryd at 10.30, to be at the canoe renting thing around 11, some 25km away. We got there around noon after 50km of driving to random directions… that's part of the experience, after all! Next time, we should maybe bring a map :)

Step 2: Paddling to the pic-nic area
We rented 4 canoes, for 3 persons each. The cost of the day-renting is quite low: only 200SEK/canoe! (around 20€). After some hesitations about the direction to take, we started to paddle in the river and we reached a fire place. There we completed step 3…

Step 3: Make a fire
Those who know me knows that i like to start fires… and I was not the only one today! So we set up a small fire close to the shore. We ate there, some of us swam also. Then we came back to the canoes, and started step 4!

Step 4: Paddling to some islands… and walk on the water!
After lunch we came back down the river to the lake, and paddled to two or three little islands. Some of us took a nap, some swam (again :p ), or made a race around the island. Around five, everyone was tired, so we decided to come back home. But we forgot step 5!

Is Jesus back?

Step 5: Don't joke about probabilities
The guy who rented us the canoes told us that we had 99% of chances to not capsize. This means that we had 1% of chances that a canoes capsize! And of course, this is what happend, some fifty meters before we reached the little harbour. Finally everybody survives, no electronic device was onboard… just a funny memory!

Canoes are not that stable, finally… :P

Bonus Track
A compilation of the day, by Clément :)




Thank you everybody…
… for this amazing and crazy trip! And many thanks to Anna, Maren, Clément and Casper for the pictures :)

No ducks were injured during this trip (even if we tried hard… :)

Moi je connais une chanson…

Ladies and gentlemen! Sorry to interrupt, but we have a hugely important video to share:

First day in Norrköping (updated on 9/9/10)

On Tuesday I had my first real lesson. It took place on the campus of Norrköping, 40km from Linköping.

Norrköping used to be an industrial city. Nowadays the old factory have been turned into university buildings. This buildings are spread in the city, where water is everywhere… a good thing to take nice pictures :)


click here for full screen

UPDATE: more pics added, from a new visit of the spot, yesterday, with Markus.

Road Trip #1 : Western Östergötland

Last saturday, we went for a short road trip of one day on the western part of Östergötland (Linköping is located in the middle of this region… it was not such a big distance to drive: around 200km globally.)

Here are some pictures of the trip :


Some pictures of our road trip - Full screen
We left Ryd (that's where we live in Linköping) around 9:45, direction: Berg, and its locks! Two of us had already been there two weeks before, but we wanted to show this place to the others… good idea actually, the weather was way better than on the last time!

Then we moved to Motala, where we had lunch. The weather was not that good and we didn't found a place to swim, so we just took the direction of our next stop: Vadstena!

The group splitted in two: some visited the castle, and the rest of us decided to walk around the city, trying to grab one or two ducks for our dinner… that was nice!

We finished our day by a walk to a panorama on the Vättern lake, 2nd biggest lake in Sweden. There we had the chance to view the sun going down on the lake… I let you watch the diaporama below :))

Here is the map of the trip :

Agrandir le plan

Bike trip to Roxen Lake

Last sunday (yep, it's been almost a week… I know -_- ), a bunch of exchange students and I took our bicycles to visit the city Berg, and to see the Roxen lake. We were something like 30 people, despite the quite bad weather. Some will say "swedish weather"… I don't know :)

Berg is a small village at 15km in north of Linköping. Its beautiful church from the XIth century has been a appreciate stop on our way to the lake. We have been told about its history by a retired man from the village, who really likes this place. The visit was then very interesting. This church is surrounded by a typical swedish cemetery: full of greeness, with a lot of trees and bushes… definitely different from the french cemeteries!

Berg cemetery… How quiet!

 After the visit of the church (and the picnic), we went to the "touristic" part of Berg: it's marina. The marina is located on the Gota Canal, a few dozen meters above the level of the Roxen lake. The ships can reach the lake by a serie of six or seven locks. We had the chance to see the departure of a sailing fish to the Roxen lake… it took it some time to move from the marina to the lake!

Sailing ship on its way to Roxen lake

Lock overflow

Then we took a bath in the lake (well, ok, only two of us did it :), the water was kind of warm actually! Finally we biked back to Linköping, and of course we stopped at Ikea for a typical swedish fika. Där äter ni en kanelbulle med ett kaffe!  :')

Price per kilo / Prix au kilo

Today I went to the supermarket, and I noticed something which seems totally swedish: the price of every single item is given either for one item and for… 1kg of this item. And it's true for absolutely anything, including the toilet paper! And I've to say it's really useful to compare the different products!

***

Aujourd'hui je suis allé au supermarché, et j'ai remarqué un détail typiquement suédois : le prix de chaque article est donné à la pièce et… au kilo ! Et c'est vrai pour absolument tous les articles, comme le papier toilettes ! Je dois avouer que c'est quand même hyper pratique pour comparer les différents produits !

Fika!

Today, first swedish lesson, and also first typically swedish concept: the Fika. It's the local name for a coffee break, in the swedish way. It is THE moment when the Swedes like to have a coffee, socialize, take a breathe, smoke a cigarette…

And they really do like it! They have a 30' Fika every 1hr to 1hr and a half. It's also usual in the corridors to have a Fika with all the corridormates on sunday afternoon…

And last but not least… 'Fica' means something somehow different for our italian friends; I let you google it :')

***

Aujourd'hui, première leçon de suédois, et premier concept typiquement suédois : le Fika. C'est la pause café à la mode suédoise, LE moment où les Suédois aiment prendre un café, faire connaissance, fumer une clope…


Et ils aiment vraiment ça ! Un Fika d'une demi heure toute les soixante à quatre-vingt-dix minutes. Et il est également de coutume de se faire un Fika avec ses corridormates le dimanche aprem…


Ah oui… 'Fica' a une toute autre signification de l'autre côté des Alpes ; Je vous laisse le soin de le googler :')

Arrival in Sweden / Arrivée en Suède

First real message on this blog; First I warn you, I don't know yet if it will be updated very soon (and if i'll have the courage to write everything in french AND english… but i'll try :-)

It's now four days I arrived here in Linköping, at 200km from Stockholm (or 20 Swedish miles, if you prefer ;-)
I'll stay there between 6 months and one year, depending if I find an internship here.

From St Etienne (Fr) to Linköping (Se)

Travelling through half of Europe with few money is not that easy. I had to take 4 trains and 2 planes, in a 26 hrs journey with a night at Düsseldorf airport, to get there.

As usual, don't forget to buy your plane tickets as soon as possible, for cheaper prices. I bought it one month ago, and the prices were already quite high… Also take in account the extraprice for luggages on lowcost companies. In my case, it was cheaper to fly with Lufthansa rather than Ryannair!

To avoid some hostel expenses, the SleepingInAirports website is full of tips to sleep on every airport of the world =)

One night at Düsseldorf airport

The corridor

A corridor is the swedish version of the student room. Basically, 8 students share a corridor with 8 rooms, a living room with sofas, TV, games, and a well equiped kitchen: 2 oven, 3 big fridges, 2 big freezers… very luxurious!

For the moment, the corridors are pretty empty, since people are globally still on holidays. But it seems my corridor has a very nice ambiance! This year is gonna be awesome :-D

***

Premier vrai message sur ce blog ; Déjà je tiens à prévenir, je ne sais pas si je vais le mettre à jour souvent… mais je vais au moins essayer :-)


Ca fait maintenant quatre jours que je suis arrivé ici à Linköping, à 200km de Stockholm. Je vais y passer de 6 mois à un an, suivant si je trouve un stage ici.

De St Etienne à Linköping

Traverser la moitié de l'Europe sans se ruiner n'est pas une chose des plus aisées. Il m'aura fallu en tout et pour tout 4 trains et 2 avions, et 26h de voyage (dont une nuit à l'aéroport de Düsseldorf) pour arriver à destination.


Comme d'hab, ne pas oublier de prendre ses billets d'avion le plus tôt possible pour payer moins cher. Là déjà en les prenant un mois avant, c'était limite… Et ne pas oublier de tenir compte du surcout supplémentaire des bagages en soute sur les compagnies low cost. Dans mon cas, il était plus avantageux de voler sur Lufthansa que sur Ryannair, par exemple !


Et si l'on veut éviter de se payer un hôtel, le site SleepingInAirports est plein de conseils pour dormir confortablement dans les aéroports du monde entier =)

Le corridor

Le corridor, c'est la version suédoise des chambres universitaires. En gros, 8 étudiants se partagent un bout de couloir avec 8 chambres, un coin salon avec sofas, télé, fléchettes, et une cuisine équipée bien équipée : 2 fours, 8 plaques de cuisson, 3 grands frigos, 2 grands congels… grand luxe !


Pour le moment les corridors sont assez vides, puisque les gens sont encore en vacances pour la plupart… mais il semble que mon corridor soit des plus conviviaux ! L'année s'annonce bien :-D