Duisburg

Posted on Monday, 24 July 2023, 1:23 by Alexandra

Ouch, our butts! They have withstood so much today, but what a super sweet day. It was our last day in Germany with Ina and Burki and we spent it in Duisburg where Burki’s mother lives, who celebrated her 85th birthday. The four siblings had arranged for a surprise party, including breakfast at her house, then a bike ride and dinner at a restaurant. Such a sweet family. We all had a great day, and Käthe was so happy that we had come all the way to Sweden and joined in on the birthday celebrations. Mikael have met her before and I got the introduction to the whole family. Lots of names and dogs to keep track of.

The pimped tricicle bike that Ina and Burki had rented for the day. Käthe rode in this one and everyone else had their own bikes.

Molly got her own cart and joined in. Ina had a really nice electric mountainbike, but had forgotten her battery. It must have been heavy.

We took a break at Egelsberger Mülhl and had peach cake and cherry cake bought in the Netherlands. Apparently, when Burki was young, they bought fancy cakes like this and took long bike rides. While we were resting here, Molly was picking blackberries off a nearby bush. Adorable!

We were told we were going on a bike ride. But we were not told it would be 22km and 2,5 hours. Haha! It was a beautiful ride along fields and lakes. My saddle was kind of soft, but it still made my butt sore, haha! Mikael had a very hard saddle and is also in a lot of pain. He also had troubles with his bike that he loaned from Burki. For the first 25 minutes after the windmill break, his rear tire got crooked somehow, it sounded and was grinding against the metal frame. Which made it so much tougher. Poor guy! It was supposed to be a leisure ride, but he was sweating like crazy when the rest of us were beginning to tire a little bit.

After the bike ride, most of us drove to a restaurant called Landgasthaus Sellner. It was not super special, and several people were not very happy with their food, but I really liked min. Pork filet with fried potatoes and mushroom sauce. Molly was adorable here as well. She picked up the bag of candies that is attached to the leash and tried to hand it to us, telling us that she wanted candies. She also came up to me and Mikael and tried to shake hands and pushed her head against our thighs. She is so sweet!

We didn’t stay too long, the tricycle bike had to be returned and we said goodbye to everyone and headed in the opposite direction to the border to the Netherlands.

It was POURING down some of the way. Like scary much! But after the clouds cleared a bit, the sunset was really pretty.

We reached the hotel, finally, but not without trouble. We came into the city very late and we are staying in the complete city center at Dam Square. There was a small road leading in to the hotel and the parking, but there was a taxi blocking the way when we arrived so we weren’t sure it was the correct way. So we drove on, put in the address again and called the hotel and they confirmed we were supposed to make a turn there. Oh well. 20 minutes later, because the city is full of tiny streets and one way roads, we arrived and the taxi was still there. We blinked, the taxi gestured for us to drive past. We insisted and he got mad at us and drove out eventually. Stupid!

We are here finally, super tired but will hopefully have energy for tomorrow’s sightseeing.

Pumpkin carving

Posted on Friday, 31 October 2014, 2:20 by Alexandra

This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

I didn’t get much sleep last night. I hate Wednesday evenings, I get out of class at 10 pm and I have to get up early so I am in class at 7:40am the next morning. It sucks! But tomorrow I don’t have to get up until 10:30am, yay!

After my first two classes today I went to the bike guy and traded my bike (and a 6-pack of Corona as a processing fee) for a new one. It is way nicer, the breaks works and the tires are wider so it’s more stable to ride. Love it!

On my break today I painted my nails and watched the latest episode of The 100. Love that show!

In the lab we handed in our latest lab report and got a long introduction for our next lab which is a four class project about AutoCAD Civil 3D. We are gonna design a road in the coastline mountains north from here. That will be fun. It s a 30 point lab. Normally they are 10, so this is big.

I went to Target with Kelsey to buy LED candles for our pumpkins. And when we got home we started carving them. We were a few people sitting on the floor on the third floor carving. This year I made a similar design as the one I did last year. But instead of a howling wolf, I made a cat. The problem was that I carved out the whole moon before I realized that I shouldn’t have done that. I got really upset, but went to my room instead, picked up the tape I bought yesterday (that was lucky) and taped the whole piece back onto the pumpkin and started over on the other side. It turned out pretty.

Toby, Rachel, me, Cody, Ryan, Margarita and Lauren. (Ryan’s pic) The five steps to the end result. First an ugly design which now looks like a mutilated Mew Pokémon, then the taped pumpkin, the new cat design, the carved cat and the cat pumpkin in action. It’s funny when the cute cat is facing out, and Mew is visible from inside our living room/kitchen, haha.

After that the same people hung out in our apartment, eating ice cream and brownies. A very nice evening, many many laughs with Ryan’s weird horse head (those are very creepy, but very funny) and Kelsey’s funny video when she brushed the horse’s teeth. Hilarious!

Our pumpkins are decorating our living room window and tomorrow’s Halloween! I am so excited!

Bank account, PolyCard, bike

Posted on Tuesday, 16 September 2014, 0:58 by Alexandra

Today was very very warm again. And it started with a 2.5 mile walk to the bank. With no buses (because of the move in which by the way has made all of campus chaotic, the line of cars in to campus was so long today!!) and no bike I didn’t have another option. I was late and walked fast and was sweating a lot when I came to the bank where Johanna already were, starting up her account. Everything went smoothly and I put in $530. I had to withdraw most of it later in the day when we found out that we could buy bikes for $150 (Johanna didn’t have that cash on her American bank account and couldn’t use her Swedish to withdraw so I let her borrow $200). Right after that we walked back up to campus where we checked in at the international center where we also had to sign up for an appointment with an advisor on Thursday morning to go through all our papers and check if everything is signed and ready and okay. Our next stop was to get PolyCard which is an ID card. It was a bit troublesome for me. My full name is Hanna Alexandra Camilla Bemm, but my given name is Alexandra, and that makes it really complicated here in the US, here Hanna is my name. I told the guy who took my photo and made the card that my given name is Alexandra but he said he could do nothing about it (even if I have put my preferred name in the system to Alexandra) so now my card says Hanna Bemm (like my email hbemm@…). Maybe I should have changed name to Hanna this year.

Our last stop of important things to do was to check in to WoW. There are over 400 groups, I am in 325 and our activities starts tomorrow at 3:30pm. I am so excited about that!! We got a bag and a t-shirt and information sheets.

No more plans for the day so we went downtown to do a little bit of shopping. I just bought a new pair of sunglasses and sunscreen. I found both of them at Ross, $4 for the sunglasses which are black and light blue on the inside, and the sunscreen was $7 instead of 9, win for me. We also did pedicures. That was way overdue. The woman doing my feet felt sorry for my blue big toe nail so she put on some diamonds on it to cover some of it up. It is a tiny flower and the blue/dark going out on the sides actually looks like petals. Very nice of her.

I got this after my first two days at Liseberg when I had too small shoes on. I will probably have this for another year…

Then we went home to the bike guy at Cal Poly. He sells bikes to international students and I and Johanna got one each. So great!! I haven’t been on a bike in probably five years, so it was a bit shaky at first, but it was nice, and it will be so fun going around town now. The breaks started making a lot of noise though so I will get help from him fixing it hopefully. It was awful!

Free dinner at campus for us WoW participants and then home where one of my roommates, Rachel from northern California, dropped most of her things off. She was very nice and so was her dad. They stayed for a while and we talked. The dad was excited for his daughter to have a Swedish roommate. I am so exotic, haha ;).

When they left I unpacked all my stuff so now my room is done. My drawers and the cabinet are so empty I think I need to go shopping for more clothes! One day soon 🙂

My building looks like a “U” and my apartment is in the middle. Anyway, this is the “backyard” in the middle of the U. Beautiful morning! This picture was taken today, a little more than a year after I took this photo the first time. Main entrance to the school My room is done! It is very empty on the walls, so I am thinking about buying a big California Republic flag and put up over my desk. It would make the room less echo-y too.

Too little clothes!! Rachel came with three suitcases and tons of other things. It was nice though, some things for the kitchen. She is by the way moving in tomorrow. She just dropped things off today.