Blog or Clog

Winter is back

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 12:43:46 +0100

Blogging is notoriously difficult, writing random things is easy, but writing about things that are interesting is not. Also what is interesting or at least not normal becomes different after 6 months of living somewhere. Since the last time I wrote, the new exchange students for spring term arrived and they reminded me of the adventure this journey was in the beginning, now it is just life. You study, you eat, you work, you sleep, you fika, meet friends. Not that life became boring, quite the opposite. There is 106 new students to meet, I started my thesis work and the course Swedish for foreign students level 3. So what am I up to nowadays? Let me describe yesterday as an illustration of my life.

*beep* *beep beep* my alarm tells me to wake-up, but my body prefers to stay in bed. My nose is blocking, my muscles are a little sore, and I am coughing. After almost a month of thaw, winter returned and I caught a cold. Luckily a lot of ice melted away in the past weeks, but plenty remained to make the 5 minute walk to ABB’s corporate research centre a slippery one. A week and a day ago I began my thesis work at ABB, a Swedish-Swiss industry giant selling all sorts of machinery and equipment ranging from high-voltage cables, to cranes, to electrical transformers, to industrial robots and domotica. I secured a spot in their research department through a professor and will do work on performance modeling of a software architecture. I am beginning to understand what that is about, maybe I’ll be able to explain it soon.

I put my lunch box in the fridge in the lunchroom and proceed to my desk. Another day of reading awaits. I try to speed through a couple of papers because I want to spend some time to prepare our 1 o’clock meeting. It will be the first teleconference meeting with an expert on my thesis topic in ABB Germany. However, reading the survey paper written by our German expert seems more important. I struggle to take information in as my headache grows. Yuck, I think I’ll go home and dive into bed after my meeting. 12 o’clock I receive an e-mail from Germany: “I’m ill and at home, but I can participate in the meeting from there.” Great, that makes two of us. Luckily for my Swedish colleagues they’ll share the meeting room with only one source of viruses. Phew, lunch time. Tonight a colleague and I host a pizza evening. Should I cancel it already? Hmm, maybe not. We estimate the number of guests, so I can work on the dough. Whoops 12.50, time to find the meeting room.

ABB is quite big (if I got it right is has 80000+ employees) and scattered across the globe, so teleconferences are a perfectly normal way of communication. I did not find it difficult to get used to them, maybe because I am used to talking over a distance to family and friends back home? We managed to get a bare minimum out of the meeting, but productive it certainly wasn’t. Ah well, better luck next week. Hopefully my head will be able to think then. During the meeting I also got new reading material. My advisor at ABB (who is Dutch, what are the odds?) ordered a book for me. It rests on the reading pile now, together with two other books and a stack of academic papers.

I am invited to another meeting where our project team will talk to the developers of the system we are working on. I decide to tag along. If I want to model the system, I should understand how it works, right? Another teleconference, destination Gothenburg, this time in Swedish! Despite my condition I manage to catch at least 80% of what is going on. I am far from fluent in Swedish, but at least I now understand quite a lot. Last Tuesday I was in the first lecture of Swedish for foreign students level 3 with Maritha, who also taught the level 2 course I took in autumn. She regretted that I hadn’t dropped in earlier, she had wanted to use me as an example that it is possible to learn Swedish in one term.

“I think you have to go to bed”, words of my advisor after coming out of my second ‘telco’. I couldn’t agree more, so I went. Icy on the way to work, but now we had a full blizzard in progress. Home was nice and warm. Some paracetamol and an hour of sleep later I felt that I could wash my hands and work on our pizza dough. I wasn’t going to do any work, so why not have some fun? Now would be the time to give credit to my girlfriend for working the dough for me, thank you dear. Just when we brought most things downstairs to the common kitchen my ABB co-thesis workers began to drop in. Time to roll the dough and select our toppings. Bacon, ham, cheese, mushrooms, corn, tuna, tomato paste and cheese in various combinations. And I didn’t list all. Later we were joined by some of my neighbors and it became another multicultural evening with Finish, Greek, Swedish, German, Chinese, Dutch, and Russian. Some of my thesis co-workers also live in the Skalden complex and they knew some of the people from my building, who are new students I met during their introduction. Put short, Västerås is a small town.

*rrrinngg* *rinngg*, Thomas, a fellow fadder on the phone. “Hej, where are you? Khaled said you would be our speaker during tonight’s speed dating event.” The international committee is a nice family to be part of, but sometimes it brings some surprises. Khaled and I had spoken about who should be speaker, but I couldn’t remember committing myself to it. “I am sorry Thomas, but I didn’t know I was supposed to speak. And as a matter of fact I am a bit stuck here baking pizza’s and I hope to make it to bed early, because I don’t feel to well”. “Oh”. “I am really sorry, but I am sure you manage”. “Yes, it’s ok. We were just wondering whether you were on your way over here. Get better soon!”. I had planned to go over the our student union to have a peak at the speed dating, but I really didn’t feel like it anymore.

Following good ‘Norra’ tradition we ended-up making too much pizza. The Italians, responsible for this tradition, had left a couple of weeks ago. During the autumn term I had joined them a couple of times on their pizza evenings. Over eight oven-tray sized pizza’s for 6 people was common practice. Ah well, shrink-wrap to the rescue. And now I just finished some more pizza for lunch. The pizza evening was a success. On to bed, finally.

Home sweet home?

Sat, 15 Jan 2011 22:40:23 +0100

Weather had been quite warm in Sweden just before my return, so there was ice everywhere. Luckily by now we have had snow again and it is less dangerous to go outside. Did I just say I prefer the snow and cold? It is nice to be back in Västerås. The neighbours made me feel welcome instantly. Unfortunately, there were also an exam and project deadline waiting for me, so that is why this post only appears now.

My journey back went quite smooth as well. In Madrid a recently opened airport express bus service stopped in front of ‘home’ and had no further stops until the airport. I had expected it to take a little longer due to morning traffic, and it probably did, yet the ride took less than half an hour. Delays also plagued Frankfurt last Monday due to fog. This time I had a little longer connection time though, so I made my onward flight without problems, I just missed the 18.30 bus at Stockholm Arlanda. I did enjoy the Lufthansa service again and met some nice folks on the plane. One American military medic stationed in Madrid on his way to Frankfurt, and a German ABB employee on his way to Västerås (off all places). So we had a short chat on the internship I will start there in February and I showed him the way to his hotel on my way home.

My last week in Madrid I have gotten a terrific guided tour by Emilio, an Erasmus friend from Västerås. I still suspect he has a encyclopedia chip planted in his brain. He was also the one who took me to the three kings (epiphany) parade. Around epiphany it is a Spanish custom to eat Roscon de Reyes (king’s cake), so my hosts and I finished three of them and I brought one back to Sweden for a Spanish friend who was missing the taste. Further I did some shopping because after epiphany rebajas (sale) breaks loose, and I visited the Spanish Air Force museum in Cuatro Vientos. I let the attached photo album explain the rest.

Let me finish with a very big thank you to my hosts! A home away from home, a place to gain energy to enjoy all the fun spring semester will bring, and awesome food.

The good life

Tue, 4 Jan 2011 10:52:16 +0100

It has been a week since I arrived here ‘down south’. And there is less than a week to go. Yesterday I finally felt somewhat recovered from the stress and tiredness that had accumulated over the past semester. Just in time to meet an old friend from Britain who now enjoys a happily married life here in Madrid. He guided me through the parts of Madrid’s centre I had not visited yet or only too briefly. We got lost in El Corte Inglés (a Spanish Harrods/Bijenkorf like department store chain) in search for a post office. And we visited some other wonderful smaller shops in search for gifts and souvenirs. Meetings with exchangers I met in Sweden are yet to happen and hopefully I will make it to the Spanish airforce museum before I leave.

Overall, it is a great experience to live with a Spanish family for a while. I am not on your typical holiday. No crammed hotel room, no breakfast buffet that closes too early, no need to decide where or what to eat every day, and no need to rush through all city sights. It feels like being at home away from home, but not quite because there is no need to maximise time with friends and family who all want to meet you to learn about your experiences in Sweden. So I get up when I feel like it; do what I wish to do; enjoy more hospitality than I feel comfortable with; and sometimes get some work done: the good life.

Attached you find some of the pictures I took so far. All unedited, as editing on my Asus netbook (mini laptop) is cumbersome at best. They do tell you a little bit more of the story of my stay here and I did not want to publish them only after getting back to the freezing north.

Link to the pictures: Spain - part 1

Christmas time is here

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 19:16:28 +0100

What do you mean by you don’t go home for Christmas? It is time to be with your family, isn’t it? These questions typify the view of some of the students I met in Västerås. Others agree with me that it is also an experience to be away from home for a change and spend time with the Erasmus family. Besides that, the weather in the Netherlands is not very appealing. I would even say Sweden is better. Because of the constant freezing, the snow does not turn into slush, it is less windy and (compared to the Netherlands) is almost never rains.

Of course, it is hard to guess what it would have been like to go home. I have no prior experience staying in another country for this long. But, I had a great Christmas in Sweden. The 24th we had a dinner with about 40 international students. In one of the rooms of the student union building we put up a tree, some decorations, and lit several dozens of candles. Everybody brought some food and we had a cozy time. The next day I organised a fika in our accommodation’s common room. My homemade kolakakor (Swedish caramel cookies) were received very well. Now with a slightly smaller group and maybe lower expectations the atmosphere was really nice. It was almost a family gathering, not exactly the same obviously, but close. I am glad I decided to stay and experience something new.

Second day of Christmas revolved around trip preparations. That is, cleaning my room, packing my suitcase, etc. And Monday was travel day. Bus, plane, plane, plane, car. In expectation of snow problems I decided not to fly Ryanair from Stockholm Skavsta airport to Madrid, but to opt for Lufthansa via Frankfurt. That turned out to be a good decision. Obviously, Lufthansa is nicer in that it serves food and drinks for free, but also it offered me the possibility to reschedule my flights. My initial destination changed to Alicante as my Spanish hosts decided to spend Christmas there instead of in Madrid. The problems at Frankfurt made that I could rebook my flight for free to travel via Munich and arrive in Madrid earlier in time to catch a flight to Alicante. This last flight was with Ryanair, but after two lunches on Lufthansa (one on each flight) that was fine with me. The anticipated snow showed-up (see the picture) and my flight to Munich was delayed slightly. Having my 40 minute change over time decreased was slightly nerving, so I decided to ask the cabin attendant whether my connecting flight was also delayed. Yes, was the reply. “Because you are coming with us”. Coming with us in the most literal way, I travelled on to Madrid on the same plane with the same crew! All in all everything went fine, but it was a tiring day. I started my day at 6 and arrived ‘home’ at 23.15. Today all made it worthwhile already though. What made it so? A barefoot walk on the beach in the sun without having to wear a coat.

Santa claus is coming to town

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 22:00:49 +0100

Snow, shopping frenzies, more snow, and quiet. Sweden is expecting the coldest winter in a century and the country is covered by a nice blanket of snow. With Christmas around the corner the Swedes are shopping in high gear, but the student accommodations are turning quiet with people leaving for home, to celebrate Christmas or for good. Beginning last week (just after my slaving adventure) I wrote my first exams here in Västerås. Swedish level 1 on Monday to warm-up and then level 2 on Tuesday. I think I might actually have passed the level 2 exam, against expectations, but lets wait before celebrating. My Swedish is still improving albeit slowly. Today I had another practical test at the local hairdresser. The woman only speaks Swedish and it was much easier to express myself this time compared to the last time I visited.

Life is still good here, but busy, and even the winter is bearable. Of course I admit I don’t mind swapping the Swedish winter for the Spanish for two weeks, that is if I don’t get stuck in Frankfurt on my way... I’ll report back from the south soon! But for now:

Merry Christmas!

- Thijmen