And speaking of birds! Look what I found in the draft pile of the blog from a year ago, haha.
Hornborgasjön
Reply
Category Archives: Sweden
Four countries in one day
The end of our roadtrip is here and we are finally back home with our two cats where we belong. Mom has taken such gold care of them while we’ve been away, they were so soft and well-brushed! It has been a truly amazing trip, we have seen so much, been spoiled by Mikael’s family and tried world-class adventure golf at Die Rheinpiraten! But all adventures come to an end eventually, and this one ended now. I really do want to go on another roadtrip now though!
We had a long day ahead of us and left Amsterdam at around 9 in the morning and we touched down at home at 22:30. Several breaks and four countries (Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden) later we are finally greeted by two cuties at home! The sunset on the way was so beautiful amongst fluffy clouds. And it was sad when we left Autobahn and were restricted with speed limits again, haha!
I’m sure we’ll meet again, Germany! I want to improve my German more. Surprisingly much came back after so many days there :).
Three days in Sala
Time never flies as fast as in the summer. We’ve been out and about all the time except this last of our four weeks vacation. Three of those days last week was spent with my grandma in Sala and we had such a great time there. Mikael have met her once before, but now it was more personal with just the three of us.
July 19th
We arrived, had lunch and went to an incredible limestone quarry. 80m deep and we were completely alone there. I was afraid the water would be cold because it’s so deep and not as warm air temperature as three years ago, but it was amazing! Mikael and I were swimming for quite a while. Grandma couldn’t get in unfortunately. We had some friends in the form of a duck family with very curious spring babies. They actually nibbled on grandma’s toes.
July 20th
The full day we had in Sala was first spent in Helgonmossen, a bog north of Sala. Me and my brother spent a lot of time there both riding a bike and walking with grandma and grandpa when we were kids. Grandma and I were walking for a bit and Mikael rode his MTB. I tried out my new phone camera and I’m super satisfied with everything so far. I few weeks ago I got a OnePlus 9 with a Hasselblad’s camera and it’s out of this world!
In the afternoon we went to the silver mine. I think I’ve only been down to the 29m depth before. The children’s depth. You can also go down to 60m with stairs but we were badass and went all the way down to 155m below ground. Fortunately, they had elevators so we didn’t have to walk all that way. I think grandma said she hadn’t been down there either. Which is weird, she’s been living in Sala since the mid 70’s. It was a great experience, and they had adjusted it really well to the covid-19 pandemic. Here’s a link to a 360-picture I took down in the mine.
Inside Victoria’s hall, one of the women working there sang us a miner’s song, and wow. I’m not kidding about those goosebumps. The acoustic in there was amazing! They told us what it was like working in the mine back in the day and I’m glad I didn’t have to risk my life every day, jumping onto the swinging big basket that transported tools down into the mine, and silver up to the surface. They were hanging on on the outside of it. Insane. Mikael had never heard of the silver mine in Sala so I bet he thought it was super interesting. It has an important part of the Swedish history.
In the afternoon/evening, we took a swim in the lake where grandma lives. Which is not a lake, it’s a built dam for the silver mine.
The camera even takes great pictures facing the sun! I LOVE it!
Inside this big man, there’s a small farmer boy I think, haha ;).
Stens Botten (Rock’s Bottom, except that his name was Sten, which means rock, it’s funny). I remember this hole being open to the public when I was a kid. My dad brought me down there all the time. But a few years ago, there was a horrible accident and they closed it off to the public.
The lake underneath Queen Christina’s shaft. 
This was super cool! You see that snake-thing on the wall? That’s volcanic ash! We had volcano’s here in Sweden some years ago. 
July 21st
Our last day consisted of another swim in a limestone quarry, this time in Finntorpsbrottet, where I’ve been several times before. Grandma was smart and brought swim shoes. The rocks were not merciful.
A fun thing about this trip is that we did almost the exact same trip three years ago when grandma turned 80. On the exact same dates, we visited the limestone quarries and went swimming. What are the odds?
Thank you, grandma, for having us!
A weekend in Örebro
The Swedish summer has finally arrived. Just in time for everyone to have gotten back to work again. It sucks a little bit, but better late than never, I guess. My first week back at work was great. Not too many people, I had things to do and had a relaxing and quiet start. The weekend offered amazing weather and Mikael and I were invited to a cozy little house by the lake of Hjälmaren that his family had rented for the week.
Three and a half hour drive after getting up super early on Saturday, we arrived in Örebro where his grandma and grandpa’s widow had no idea we were coming or what we were doing that day. Surprises are fun. We spent three hours on a cute boat going around the canal of Örebro and then had lunch out on open water in Hjälmaren (is it called open water when the average depth is 1.5 meters?). It was hot! Sweat was inevitable but it didn’t matter. It was such a nice little trip. And I am so surprised about Örebro. What a nice city! The water, old architecture, the castle. I had no idea! And the lake, the water might not have been very nice, but what a beautiful lake with rocky shores and green trees right on the shores.
Swimming was the main attraction as soon as we could after the boat trip. There was a nice little pier out into the lake where we were staying. The water was muddy and I didn’t even let my feet down to touch the bottom, but I was told that you sunk knee deep if you stood up. Ugh. We also had a friendly snake swimming with us. Harmless, but nonetheless scary when it swam straight for us and cut us off from the ladder that would take us to safety.
It was such a lovely day. It was great meeting so many members of his family. His aunt and her husband with their dog had driven their camper up from Germany now that Sweden finally was open to visit for them, his mom and sister were there as well as was his grandma and the widow of his grandpa. Who are getting along really well. His family is interesting :). And very friendly and easy-going. I got lucky there as well.
His family from Germany slept in the camper, the rest occupied the whole (and very tiny century-old house) so we set up our tent right next to the water on the farmer’s property. He had sheep and hens but we still managed to sleep a good eight hours without being woken up. How? It was very cold during the night though. We were frozen, the one’s in the house had the opposite problem. Don’t know who had it worse, haha!
On our way home to Gothenburg the next day, we stopped at a limestone quarry, Kvinnersta Kalkbrott, to go for a swim. We visited it quickly after the boat tour but we didn’t dive in and saved it for Sunday. I thought the quarries up in Sala were cool. They are. But this one was so even, the edges very straight. The water was super clear and had a comfortable temperature. It was perfect. (Also as it was in Sala two summers ago)
It was a great weekend, I have savored every moment of it! ❤
Camping
The end of this year’s summer vacation is over and I can without a doubt say that it had been the worst summer ever, weather-wise. It has not been above 20 C for four weeks. Maybe a couple degrees a few days. But not nearly for long enough to go out swimming. I have not been in the ocean this vacation! It saddens me a lot to not feel that I have gotten enough vitamin D and ocean salt that will last me this upcoming long fall. It has however, been a really really nice vacation anyway. I’ve gotten my rest after this springs very unusual and stressful spring. I have spent almost every day, in some way, with my boyfriend who made this summer the best yet.
This last weekend actually offered a couple of really nice days, so we seized the moment and packed his car and went out camping. We’ve been trying twice before this July but first encountered a newly bought tent with missing pegs and second didn’t find a site where we could raise the tent. Third time’s the charm. And what a charming trip it was. Mikael received a recommendation from a coworker and it turned out to be a gem. We were all alone, perfect spot by a lake and it was so beautiful.
We raised the tent, took a short swim in the lake, cooked dinner over the gas kitchen and then slept through a night of no sounds whatsoever. It was so quiet and peaceful! Except that time when I woke up at 5am to hear a very weird sound. A lynx wandering on the other side of the lake, walking away from us. It was so amazing!
I really hope we’ll get the opportunity to do this again soon! I loved every second of it <3.
WordPress has done something new, adding a gallery to a post, so I thought I should try it out. Click the images down below to see them all and in full.
Stora Holmvatten 
Tons of blueberries 
Camping site 
Camping site 
Stora Holmvatten 
Stora Holmvatten 
The water got so still that the reflections were incredible 
Nighttime reflections 
Morning view 
Morning view
Hacked Instagram account
”It never happens to me, it only happens to others.” That’s probably the one and only thought that got me into this mess. Last night my IG worked perfectly fine, but this morning when I wanted to scroll through it before thoroughly waking up, I was logged out. My password didn’t work and when I wanted to recover it, a notification box told me an email with password reset instructions had been sent to “k*******k@m****.ru”. Definitely not my email. So I decided to get it back.
There is a support site on Instagram’s webpage where you can tell them that your account has been hacked. Shortly after I sent the report in, I got an email from Facebook telling me what to do in order to verify my account.
The purpose of this post is to help others in the same situation, because I was very skeptical to Instagram’s way of verification.
Facebook <info++aazqgct4b5q55e@support.facebook.com>
Hi,
Thanks for contacting us. Before we can help, we need you to confirm that you own this account.
Please reply to this email and attach a photo of yourself holding a hand-written copy of the code below.
XXXXX
Please make sure that the photo you send:
– Includes the above code hand-written on a clean sheet of paper, followed by your full name and username
– Includes both your hand that’s holding the sheet of paper and your entire face
– Is well-lit, and is not too small, dark or blurry
– Is attached to your reply as a JPEG file
Keep in mind that even if this account doesn’t include any pictures of you or is used to represent someone or something else, we won’t be able to help until we receive a photo that meets these requirements.
Thanks,
The Instagram Team
Very suspicious, right? The email address it was sent from, did not look like something official and I was not convinced that this was the real deal. But after some investigation, I changed my mind and did take that awful selfie with the clean sheet of paper with the code and my name and my username with my hand clearly visibly holding the piece of paper.
Only three hours later I received a response to my picture, from the exact same email asking me to give a brief description of my issue, write my email or phone number that I signed up with and any previous usernames I have had.
Only ten hours later I received another response, same weird email address, asking me to log out of my account everywhere and then click a link to recover my account. First, it only asked me to type in a new password twice. The next step asked me to verify my email address. And the email address that was in the box was “kuzmikow.tolik@mail.ru”, definitely not mine. After erasing it and writing my own email address, I once again had access to my 350 or so posts and 300 followers. Why would anyone even want to steal that account? I was honestly very afraid that my account would be deleted and everything permanently lost. So I am incredibly glad that I got it back. And I got it back real fast too!
So, for anyone who gets the same verification email from Facebook (which owns Instagram) asking for a selfie, do it! It’s legit. 🙂
Borta bra men hemma bäst
Today was not a long day in Spain, we left the apartment at 6:30 am and left the ground three hours later. I think I was asleep for the whole takeoff. Strangely I wasn’t tired when I woke up, but at the airport it hit me and I slept for a while. Then I was wide awake for the whole flight and read. I finished Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception and started reading Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony basically only because I read part of the first chapter at the end of The Opal Deception and realized that whole chapter was about Barcelona. It was great to see all the places in front of me. Pretty cool and random that the next book on my to read list took place in Barcelona just as I was leaving it, haha!
It was really warm when we landed. Picked up the cats right away and then Jesper and I went out for a small walk downtown and ate dinner out in the sunlight before watching Deadpool 2. A really funny movie, and for all Brad Pitt fans out there, he is in it.
I have now unpacked everything and taken a shower and finally feel clean again after all that sunlotion and sweat for a week. That’s usually not a bad thing, but it definitely feels better if there is also salt in your hair and you know that you spent all that time sweating and stinking at the beach in one way or another. Two days out of a week barely counts.
I think I am ready to go to bed now and back to work tomorrow. I am also ridiculously excited for tomorrow’s games in the series. I think my shoulder feels fine now, so that will be awesome. Hopefully good serves again!
UPDATE 2018-10-07!
Home, sweet home!
Beach volleyball at its finest
It’s been a while since I wrote about beach volleyball. I am still playing. More than ever in fact. And by more than ever, I mean three times a week.
I have played since 2007, that’s crazy long, but unfortunately my promising career as a beach volleyball pro ended before it could even start due to university studies (I know many can do both, but I couldn’t and decided that it was more important to get a good degree in a reasonable time and have fun in school while doing it), moving abroad also halted my progress a lot. Even if it happened to be to California, where I still played, but not seriously.
So now when I have been back for a long while, have finished my studies, have a good routine on my life with a nice job and salary (beach volleyball is very very expensive here in Gothenburg), I thought that it was time to put some effort into this sport again. Therefore, since January I am practicing twice a week and play in the series once a week. Which totals up to 5,5h every week. Not too bad for a busy project manager who also tries to write a book.
First of all, I want to send out a huge ‘thank you’ to my beach partner, Alice. She is the most supporting partner one could wish for. She brings out the best in me while playing and we are just so positive towards each other and we are extremely generous with encouragement. She is the perfect partner and a big reason why I find it worth paying 7000 kr per semester for this sport. Since day one we have been synched in game and we are developing together. And I felt that these past three months led up to tonight. When we completely owned every single set we played in the series. Last turn (the past 5 weeks) we got 3 points in total, we were hanging on a thread of being sent to the series below us, but we pulled through and managed to stay around for another five weeks. 3 points, for those of you who don’t know, is really bad. One period is 5 weeks, each week you play 2 games, each of two sets no matter who wins them, and you get 1 point per won set. So 3 points in a whole period is really bad. Today, we walked away with 4 points, we got more points in one night than in the past 5 weeks. And no wonder, we played like gods. Both of our serves were perfect almost every time, countless of esses. We played tight and communicated like never before. And what was best, in addition to the amazing serves, were our transitions (when we get the defense and have to counterpunch. We perfected transitions today! So many amazing saves, incredible sets from both of us and attacks that were beyond this world. I usually have a very good spike and am not very good at shots and placing the ball, but today I skipped the spike and placed all shots and they were all so very well placed. I can’t believe it. It is unbelieavable!
The only thing missing from today’s play was a block from my part. I have managed to do 3 successful ones this spring (that is 3 more than I have ever done in my previous ten years). But that takes practice, and it is hard when the coaches don’t really teach us women to block, with the argument that most women don’t block because we are short. Stupid argument. How am I supposed to learn then?
Nights like this is why it is so worth spending 7000 per semester on this sport.
Six months as a project manager
Today was the first day off my 6-month “trial contract” at WSP. I think it is a common way to go, especially for a newly graduated person. Not sure how it works in the rest of the world, but here in Sweden you get hired during a trial time of 6 months. Not that it is any different from working fulltime normally (I think it even says on my contract that it starts with 6 months trial and then goes on as a normal employment without any new contract needed – maybe I should double check?), but it still feels really good after my first day of knowing that I now am one of everyone else. I am another grown-up with a really fun fulltime job.
I have been very bad at updating this blog about how everything is going, but perhaps that is not super interesting anyway. But an update every now and then could be good. At least fun for myself in the future when I can look back on all of this, that I obviously save on an external harddrive.
The past six months have been really great. It has been challenging on many levels but I am getting used to it all. The whole routine of getting up the same early time every day, getting home the same early time (compared to university and Liseberg), trying to work out and compensate for sitting in front of a computer all day, trying to eat healthy, trying to write on my book and at the same time trying to do all of this and balance with enough sleep every night. It is harder than it sounds to find that balance and I am still not sure that I have. One really good thing about being a project manager is that it will always be challenging, no matter how long I have worked. The challenges will be different, and probably not as dependent on what I do outside of work (like getting enough sleep). Projects are never the same and that is why I really enjoy going to work every day. I feel that I do some good at WSP. I feel that I am appreciated, both from coworkers and bosses. I feel that I have found something that I am somewhat good at!
After only 4 months I took over a project regarding the change of control systems at Volvo and soon thereafter I was given a completely new project that I was part of starting up regarding a revision of all sprinkler systems at Volvo. That’s crazy. Think about it. I became the main project manager after only four months. How crazy is that?! What’s even more crazy is that it was only scary for about a couple of weeks after taking over when nothing was organized very well and I had to do a lot just to make sure that all the right documentation was in the right place and so on. Even if I don’t (well, maybe that is actually didn’t now) know a single thing about systems that control ventilation and such, I still did good. Because a project manager is not a specialist, a project manager is a generalist who is not supposed to be there and help with details, but rather be the spider in the web, the organizer to make sure that the project is going in the right direction. But of course, I learn new things every day that is basically just a big plus for my work.
Then there are also the days where I start thinking about what I am actually doing. How did I get here? I am working a 9-5 job (with flex hours of course), in an open office landscape. I use excel in almost everything I do and without my Outlook calendar I would be like a lost child. How did I end up there? Did I really get a masters degree? Really? Some days I feel like I have faked my way to where I am because I can honestly say that I don’t remember much from my bachelor time at Chalmers (2010-2012, so it has been a while). The knowledge I gathered from my master is more easily accessed. And maybe that is why I constantly hear that I am doing a good job (although I am not sure what is good and bad job)? Because project management is more than just education? I think perhaps I was born with a list and an excel spreadsheet in each hand. The structure and order have always come naturally. To not have things (the right things obviously, not everything) under control has never been an issue for me. And when I think about it that way, I reach the conclusion that I might feel lost but I truly feel that I have found my place and calling. Project management is what I want to do!
Now I am just rambling. Maybe I should have put these word counts into my book instead? Eh, to summarize, I can’t really believe that it already has been 6 months since I started working. It has gone so fast and I can’t wait to see what I will have accomplished in the future. I want to be good at what I do, I want to be a rolemodel for new employees as well as more senior ones. I want to see what kind of cool and big projects I could potentially get in the future. I am so eager to see where all of this is going and I think I have to remind myself that the road there will probably be as interesting as the goal. But now, for the first time, I have a goal, and it feels good. Real good!
I am so glad that it is not “just a job” that I have. I really like what I am doing and I am so greatful that I found this right on my first try.
Skiing in Luossavaara
Late last night, I came home to a cold Gothenburg. It was -9C and warm compared to what I had left behind. Today it was -10C when I left for work, I barely felt it. The sky was clear and the air crisp and dry. Really nice. Much different when I left work today though. It was only -5C, damp and windy, so I was chilled to my bones, it was horrible!!
On Saturday we woke up to a clear blue sky again and it was below -20C. The ski slope usually is closed if it is colder than -20 or when it is too windy. No wind, but really cold. Their Facebook page had not updated anything about it though so we walked the 800m to the slope from Malin’s apartment. The mountain Luossavaara lies on an old abandoned mine and only had basically two slopes going down. One lift. But it was really good skiing. I haven’t been on skiis in at least 8 years, but it went surprisingly well, at least Malin said it looked good for being 8 years since last time. The snow was perfect, one side of the lift was recently groomed (do you say that?) and no one had been on it. So nice!
My calves didn’t hurt, they were about to after the first try. But for some reason it stopped and never started. What hurt was my nose and cheeks from the extreme cold. But my calves didn’t. Well, they did afterward after being squished so tightly for quite a while. But I didn’t lose my sense of feeling in my feet at all, which I remember doing during each go last time. So that was a success.
We had waffle lunch, went some more and then the lift died so we decided it was time to go back home. Our faces hurt from the cold. But oh my, what a beautiful day!
The end of the day was spent in front of Melodifestivalen (the Swedish Eurovision) with homemade pizza. Haven’t seen it in forever and I feel like that was the right choice. Not impressed. But still a nice evening!
On my last day in Kiruna, we went on a walk in another super awesome day. Clear sky again, -26 when we woke up, -24 when we were out. We took a closer look at the church and then walked back. An hour outside was more than enough and our faces hurt again. We watched Hidden Figures before I had to go to the bus and leave for Sweden… I mean Gothenburg.
I am glad that I now know that Malin is having a great time up there and is doing really well. I can only imagine how scary it must be to move out of your parents comfort already as a 16-year old. Brave girl!
UPDATE 2018-10-06!
Bemm 