Tag Archives: Liseberg

A week full of stuff

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Whoa, last time I updated was a week ago. Embarrassing! Sweden is definitely keeping me busy. I have been working like crazy the past 6 days, and when I haven’t been working I have spent time with Jesper. Lots have happened, for example I have been at Balderado two days last week and actually enjoyed it and realized that it isn’t too bad that every now and then. On Thursday I was there and finally got Balder! The week before they called me and asked if I wanted to work 1.5h earlier on Thursday so I could get an intro there. I had the intro in the morning before the park opened and climbed up to the top of it. The view was amazing, but it was high up and I was a bit scared. But I survived and got a cool selfie up there. The rest of that 9.5h day I had Balder for most of it. Only 30 minutes were spent at another attraction. But during that long day I got the intro, the check-up and the test. So now I have 9 attractions that I can work at. Cool! Most people only have 5.

Liseberg from Balder Balder is the big wooden rollercoaster.Selfie on top of BalderThe traditional selfie from the top of Balder.

The day after I was at Balderado again with the most chill day ever! But during that day, my boss called me while I was working and asked me if I wanted to work over time the day after, Saturday. So instead of working 11am-8pm, I would work 11am-11pm. I felt like I needed the extra money so I said yes. 12 hours was tough. I was up on Berget and it was an okay day. Very long, I was there from the opening of the park until closing. Crazy! But I survived. Those 3 extra hours gave me 100% OB (Uncomfortable Hours), so instead of 107 kr/h, I got 214.That’s more than 600kr for those 3 hours. Totally worth it!

Both my Sunday and Monday were both only 7-hour days, but I was so tired after 6 days and a week of 43 hours. I am still tired. But today has been busy with laundry and gift shopping for my second cousin’s babyshower on Saturday. The things I bought were so ridiculously cute that I honestly considered buying them for my future kids, haha! I also visited Jesper at work while he was on a break. We had ice cream together down in the harbor in the kinda nice weather.

Right, my Saturday was a very crazy day at work. The first crazy thing that happened was that one of the trains on Helix collided with a bird. The girl in the front seat was very upset when she came back to the station after the ride. There was a big splatter mark right next to her face and half the train had bird gore on it. We had to rinse the train off and it was super gross. I hope the bird died right away. It feel down  from the train, so no bird on the train.

The second thing was during my very last hour of the day when I was once again working at Helix (we move around and change attraction once every 30 or 60 minutes). This is actually very scary but from what I have heard, the boy is stable, even if he was seriously injured. So what happens is that I was working like normal and then I hear the operator say that we have to stop the attraction because someone is on the attraction area which is an extremely dangerous place to be. At first we thought it was a kid who jumped in there to pick something up that he dropped, but it turned out that he fell from a fence and fell 7-8m (23-26 feet) and landed in the area. So it was not an attraction-related injury. Very scary incident, and so real when I was there when it happened. I hope the 15-year old boy recovers soon and that other people will learn from this, do not climb on the fences around the attractions! This accident brought forth some evacuation practice for me though which was actually a good thing. I have never been part of an evacuation at Helix, so I am glad that I have experienced it and will now be more comfortable and confident next time it happens.

I have big plans for tomorrow as well. First I will sleep until I wake up, then I will do chill stuff for a while until I’m going to mom’s work to meet her there so we can go and buy a new phone for me. I love this one and don’t really want to buy another one, but the last week it has been a disaster. It discharges three times a day, and I haven’t been able to connect it to my computer. It is getting old so I guess it is time to say goodbye to the best phone I ever had, my Google Nexus 5. I hope HTC One M9 will be as good! I guess I could just pay 600kr and change the battery, but I would still buy a new phone within 6 months because it is getting closer to its 2-year birthday, and everyone knows phones don’t last much longer than that. I will sleep on it. It is a lot of money for an already old phone. But on the other hand, it is my beloved Nexus 5. But I love new phones… Aargh, dilemmas!

Chip and Stuff My fluffy cats! ❤Rainy at Liseberg This is how fun it is to work at Uppswinget when it is raining a lot!Änggårdsbergen Today I went for a walk with Axel up in Änggårdsbergen. It was beautiful!Änggårdsbergen ÄnggårdsbergenThis was such a beautiful scenery, but I got wrong focus. It was almost 9pm, the sun on its way down and it was so green beneath it. Sweden is very beautiful!

Evening swim

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Two very very long day at work are over and I can’t put words on how tired I am. 9.5h of work both days and now in the beginning those days completely killed my feet. They hurt so bad the last hour today I couldn’t stand up more than I really really had to. Today I also only had two breaks (usually during long days there are three) so I had one three-hour long period of just working without breaks. That was rough and also the longest we can work without breaks. I’m glad I only work 6 hours tomorrow.

Snapchat--2190016857145699440The weather has been amazing the past few days. That means sweaty at work, but it also means breaks out in the sun (while working at Balderado).

Yesterday I was at Balderado. I wasn’t too happy since it was a really long day. I have three attractions there so I spent a total of 4.5 hours on Spinnrock. Sure, it is a pretty nice one, but 4.5 hours is way way too long.

After work today Axel and Leo picked me up and we went to Rådasjön for a late night swim. We jumped in the water at 10 pm then went for a walk and got eaten by mosquitos. It was a fun evening, and now I am ridiculously tired and should probably go to bed so I am rested and prepared for my “Friday” tomorrow. Can’t wait for two days off!

Snapchat-9186518937329934293 10pm where we jumped in. Okay, I was the only one who jumped, the other two “badkrukor” slowly slowly walked in, haha.PANO_20150704_230400This panorama would have been better if I didn’t move the phone… This photo was taken at 11pm.

First day back at Liseberg

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First day at work was easy, but I am very tired anyway. Good thing I only had a 6-hour day with two hours of self-education on the attractions. I started at 4pm, spent the whole day before then on the balcony in the sun. The sky was spotless today, not a single cloud and it was warm and awesome. That’s how the Swedish summer should be!

First at work I had 90 minutes of self-education, which means that I walked around to the different  attractions up on Berget and try to remember how to operate them. It was so chill and everything came back very fast. Then an hour lunch and another 30 minutes of relearning. Then my day started for real. One hour at Lisebergshjulet, where there were no people and with the sun it was awesome. Then half an hour break, and then only two more hours on the day. One hour at Höjdskräcken, and the last one at Helix. I don’t understand why there weren’t any people in the park today. But it was nice. At Höjdskräcken were periods of time when no one was there so I just sat there and rolled my thumbs. Not as boring as it sounds, haha.

The day was over very quickly, and not even dark when I got out of work at 11pm. Not cold either. I love Sweden!

Liseberg one last time

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I had nothing on today’s schedule so I decided to go to Liseberg with my uncle and his girlfriend and two of her kids. We spent all the time in “Kaninlandet” which is the area for small kids. Her kids were one and three years old.  They were really cute and the three year-old started liking me directly. He dragged me to all the attractions and held my hand and stuff like that. Kids are so adorable. The one-year old were a bit mommy, but he had no problem exploring a rabbit house when mom and three year-old went on an attraction. I put him on a tiny slide several times as well and he had a great time.

There were a lot of people at Liseberg today though. It was hard getting through with the stroller.

Back home I prepared the vodka-infused watermelon I will serve tomorrow at the party and I’ve also eaten dinner. Korvstroganoff, leftovers from last night. Korvstroganoff is something I really missed last year so I made it for the last time this year last night. It is like beef stroganoff but with a special type of sausage we have here in Sweden called Falukorv. Swedes, don’t take falukorv for granted!!

I actually think I will go to bed now. I am really tired! Tomorrow will be a long day. Up a bit early to get into downtown to buy a birthday gift for Karin and then out to Lövsjön for a few hours of birthday party and relaxing. I can’t be there for too long though. I will need to get back home to take a shower before Andrea gets here at 6pm. And at that point we will prepare for the party and I guess the guests will arrive at 7pm at the earliest and most at 8:30-9pm. I am really excited about the party!!

Free

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With no work, no studies, no nothing, the energi just keeps flowing. It has been a very productive day and I have done so many things. This morning is so far away so the earliest I remember doing was going to downtown for some errands. First I bought a noteboook for my upcoming year abroad. I need somewhere to collect all my to-do lists, budgets and just things I want to write down linked to Cal Poly. I’ve already made a nice front page and written down a lot of things. For example, I did an approximative budget for the whole year. I already got my first (of three) payments from CSN. I got almost 52000 SEK today! I will also get my last paycheck and the holiday pay on September 15th and that will be quite a lot I guess. And in October-November I will get the scholarship from Chalmers for being a part of this exchange program. I didn’t put that in my calculations so without those incomes I will have around $350 each week after the rent is paid. Food is not part of the calculations, but I think I will have a pretty sweet life this year aswell. I will not shop as much, but travel and save. I have a big trip planned for Christmas.

After buying the notebook I went to Forex to exchange money. I had a lot of cash and got $350 cash. I hate cash, but I don’t know when I can have an American bank account up and running. The line was long, so I took a number and went to vote in the upcoming election. And when I was done it was just a couple of minutes until my turn. Perfect!

Right after that I went to the gynecologist to do more tests. I talked to the doctor before the tests and he told me what would happen if this showed some abnormal results as well and we decided how we would handle it. It took a while and several tests were done and I was told that the results wouldn’t be ready for another six weeks. But I was told that cell changes were visible through the microscope. Fuck! How severe they were couldn’t be told, but apparently there are three stages of cell changes. Stage 1 and 2 isn’t dangerous and they aren’t treated, just checked more frequently to see if it gets better or worse. And if I have those I will just get a new appointment as soon as I get home to Sweden again next year. Stage 3 on the other hand means that it needs to be treated pretty much right away. And if I have that, it will be a bit problematic. I will have two choices, either do it in the US and pay between 5000 and 10000 SEK for the surgery, or I can go home and do it for free. Both options suck. My insurance in the US won’t cover this kind of thing, I’ve already asked them. I should probably call them again.

I feel okay now about it. I will be going to California, but I will forget about it for six weeks and deal with the problem when it comes.

My next errand was emptying my locker at Liseberg. But when I got there Kläderiet was closed because they were in a meeting for the rest of the day. So typical! Now I need to go there tomorrow again. It’s a good thing I don’t have that much to do right now.

After that I went to 4-gott and bought a bag of candy, I felt that I needed it after the rough news earlier today. I did some grocery shopping too. But when I got home the gynecologist appointment was completely forgotten. By instinct I felt that I should log in to my Chalmers account and see if they had posted the result document for the structural engineering exam. And they had! When I saw the document my heart started racing. I didn’t want to wait and make myself more anxious, so I opened it and I passed!!! When I saw the grade 3 (3 is pass, 4 is more than pass, and 5 is the highest grade) my heart almost jumped out of my chest! I did it! I fucking did it!! No spare points, but that still counts. I am so relieved I can’t put words on it. I’ve tried four times over the past two years. This means that if all goes well next year I will have my bachelor degree of science in building and civil engineering in June next year. I am so happy!!

The day went on in that mood. When I am happy I am so productive. I did the budget, wrote a thorough packing list, made two Rainbow Loom bracelets (I removed the three Hawaii bracelets, they were getting worn out and I didn’t want them to get broken, so I thought I would remove them before that happened), I’ve planned some things for the party on Sunday (it will be epic), gone through all my papers I need next year and sorted them into different plastic folders. I’ve packed two bags with Chad’s things that he forgot and I’ve cooked dinner. And oh, what a dinner! I made hot spinach and artichoke dip with crispy bread. The dip was easy to make and it was so good! I bought a small baguett and was planning on making garlic bread and dip in the dip. But I didn’t have any garlic. Not even garlic powder so I had to improvise, but it turned out good. But I did forget about the bread in the oven and it was way harder than I was planning it to be. But it was good too and probably better like this.

Here’s the recipe if anyone wants to try:

Ingredients
1 cup (2,4dl) thawed, chopped frozen spinach
1,5 cups (3,5dl) chopped artichoke hearts
6 ounces (180ml) cream cheese
0.25 cups (0,5dl) sour cream
0.25 cups (0,5dl) mayonnaise
0.3 cups (0,7dl) grated parmesan
half a red bellpepper, sliced
salt and pepper

Directions
Boil spinach and artichoke in 1 cup of water until tender. Drain the water.
Heat cream cheese and grated parmesan in the microwave for 1 minute or until hot and soft.
Mix all the ingredients and serve it hot.

I didn’t follow the exact measurements and it turned out well anyway, so don’t be afraid of the weird measurements.

Spinach and artichoke dip

 

Yesterday  I had my last day at Liseberg. It was a bit sad. I said goodbye to all the attractions on Berget but not the people. We hung out at a bar at night and most of them are coming to my party on Sunday. It was a nice last day and I will be back next season. I look forward to having that to look forward to when I come home from Cali. Last time I didn’t have anything to look forward to when I came home.

Goodbye muffinsWhen you have your last day at work you’re supposed to bake (or buy) something and give to your colleagues. I got up extra early that morning and baked my chocolate muffins. They were as appreciated at Liseberg as they are at SCA :).

I think I need to go to bed now. I actually wanted to go to bed at 10pm, but I felt that I had too much to do. Like going through my purse and taking out everything I won’t need in California. I tried playing some RollerCoaster Tycoon but got bored right away. So many tiny things I want to do. Tomorrow I have an interview for Cultural Care and then I think I will read and prepare more for the party. In the evening I am scanning all my German school books so I don’t have to bring them to California when I am going through it all before my German class after Christmas. That’s German II and it was a year ago I took German I so I will need to rehearse.

Good night!!

10 days at Balderado

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I have now been at Balderado a total of 10 days. Today and yesterday were number nine and ten. I can honestly say that I was a bit dissapointed both yesterday and today when I found out that I was at that area when the supervisors told me last weekend that they were gonna try and put me at Berget my last few days because they understood how lonely and monotonous it is to only have three single-manned attractions. Yesterday they tried putting two people at Spinrock, but because someone went home during the day I had to be alone that last hour anyway. Today I had half an hour with someone at Spinrock but right when I was on my way to my last hour at Spinrock I was told that someone was closing it with me. Yay!! That made my day. Working with my colleagues makes Liseberg way more fun to work at. I know it is supposed to be about the guests, but we employees must have fun too and it is easier to have that when we are working together.

But tomorrow and on Sunday I will be at Berget, I have that confirmed. Yay! I can’t believe my last day is coming up in just a couple of days though. This summer was over way too soon. I feel exhausted and I need the time off, but I’ve had so much fun this summer. I am so lucky to have gotten a job at Liseberg, and at the attraction department. Lucky lucky me!

I think I need to go to bed now, I have 11 hours of work tomorrow to look forward to. But before that, I will watch the season premiere of Doctor Who. I have waited so long for this day to come!!

P.S. Two weeks until departure!! In exactly fourteen days I will have 30 minutes left in the air before landing in LA. D.S.

Lightning

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This evening has been retarted. Lightning across the sky every 20 seconds, no thunder though, that came later. The sky is being lit up all the time and with the thunder it is a bit scary. But lightning is beautiful! On the way home from work I actually caught a couple of lightning bolts on camera. My first photo and I got it. I tried for a while more on mom’s balcony but I only got the last millisecond of it, which was pretty cool too. After that I tried to study for a while but I didn’t understand the problem so I just quit halfway through the problem and will continue tomorrow. I am so exhausted from the last week.

It’s been a crazy week. I feel like it is time to make it official online. On Monday, August 18th, I broke up with Chad because of some reasons. I don’t want to go in to the details here because that’s no other person’s business. But everything bad between us has escalated so quickly and it has ended with him moving out very sudden and me living on mom’s couch for now. He hates me and I am trying not to think about him with my exam coming up on Wednesday. I need all my attention on that so I can pass this stupid thing.

I am very sad about what happened, I really am… But it was for the best for both of us.

I didn’t go in to work yesterday and today was really tough. I was at Berget and had a lot of different attractions instead of two or three at Balderado. For the first time ever I had to ”break” Höjdskräcken. And at lunch right before that I talked about how I had been on breaks on all the attractions on the mountain except Höjdskräcken (none at Balderado). A break is when the attraction is closed due to technical issues.

Mom picked me up from work and we drove to my place to pick up some more clothes and water my plants.

Now I will go to bed (=couch), watch the second half of a True Blood episode I started watching this morning. I hope I will be able to fall asleep with all this lightning and thunder going on outside! Because I have a long day of studying tomorrow…

Chip helping me to study Chip was keeping me company late last night when I was studying.Pink-blue sky at my placeA pink/blue sky outside my apartment. So beautiful! LightningMy first try at a lightning bolt photo! Success! LightningThis is the second best shot. This is at the very end of a lightning bolt. It was behind that cloud. Pretty cool.

Rabbit Party

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Last night was the seasons last rabbit party for us Lisebergers. And because of that I decided that I wanted to go.  Preparty right after work where I spent my 7th day of the season at Balderado. All the attractions I have there are single manned from now on, so I was all alone the whole day except for 1,5h in the middle where I was at Berget. I closed Kristallsalongen so I sat there for one hour, not doing much except eating candy and mentally preparing for the party. It was actually okay sitting there solving crosswords.

I changed into my beautiful Abercrombie dress, brushed my hair and then went will all the others to Hisingen where Victor lives. The preparty went by so fast. It was fun! And at 11:30 we went to Valand, the nightclub where the rabbit parties are. I could skip the line and paid 125 as cover and wardrobe and then I was in.The music was good, but I’m not much of a dancer. I spent most of the evening on the outdoor patio talking. It was nice! At 1am the Helix song went on and we were all inside dancing to it, but that was all the dancing I did. I talked to a lot of people and actually felt that I connected with a lot of them. Alcohol makes people honest and sharing.

I was there until it closed at 3am and then walked home. Took me 45 minutes.

Today I woke up at 10am, I didn’t feel bad at all, a little, but not much. Took a shower and then went to Kosmetisk Kirurgi to do an IPL treatment for hair removal under my arms. In total it was my 7th time I think and it is definitely working. Almost all of it is gone, but I still have a little left, so after this today I will go there once more after my year in California. Then I will probably be done, but I’m not sure all the hair will be gone forever. Anyway, it hurt really bad. I forgot how painful it is. At the end of the second armpit it hurt so much that I started wincing. Normally the burning pain is there for a millisecond, but after a while it hurt all the time. Not a nice feeling. I am still a bit sore, but it’s not too bad.

Today I also enrolled in the EDES 406 class. Open enrollment started today and I now have it on my schedule. So fucking awesome to have that done!  I also tried registering to the semester at Chalmers but I couldn’t since I’m not enrolled in any classes at Chalmers. But I need to be registered for CSN to see that I am doing some classes. I sent Chalmers an email and will probably get an answer tomorrow. I will call them otherwise. I was gonna call my landlord also to tell them my fridge is kinda broken. There is always a pool of water at the bottom of it. But I forgot. That’s for tomorrow.

After that I spent the afternoon studying and talking to mom. The problem I’ve been trying to solve for two days makes sense to me now. The mistake I made was that the ”d” in the formulas wasn’t the diameter which it normally is, but it was the distance from the top of the beam to the center of the rebars in the bottom. After I realized that I actually understood the problem. Yay! I love breakthroughs. Tomorrow I will start with wood again, and I might have time for another steel problem as well. But I have a feeling I won’t be in a study mood, but we’ll see.

In the evening anyway there is Berget’s crawfish party. I’ve been looking forward to it the whole summer, it’s gonna be legen… wait for it… dary!

Sangria and taco night

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I had such a lovely evening with my girls Andrea, Emma and Julia. We were at Andrea’s place eating tacos (and I thought them that it is possible to put pineapple in it) and drinking homemade sangrias. We talked about everything and nothing for several hours and later in the evening Andrea’s boyfriend and friend joined us. They told us they were having a blast. Two guys who could participate in girls’ talk was apparently fun.

Andrea had her last day of work today and on Saturday she is going to Greece for a week. After that we decided to have another girl’s night where we will go out after a typical girl’s preparty. I look forward to that!

Work today went on fast. I only had 6 hours of work. I had a couple of hours at Höjdskräcken, a couple at Helix and one hour at the end at Balderado. So far I’ve been at Balderado five full days, one half day and three hours spread out over three different days. I chose Ponnykarusellen and Kristallsalongen for my last hour. So awesome!

At my one break there were cookies and candy in the break room because three different people had their last day today. It is always a bit nice when people have their last day and put out cookies and stuff but it is also very sad. I am gonna bake chocolate muffins when I have my last day in two weeks.

10 hour day

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This morning when I got in to work I got a special assignment from one of my supervisors. I got ten minutes of extra pay for going around to all the attractions at Balderado handing out new schedules. It  was hard finding the right way to both Balder and Kållerado, but I managed. So my first few hours of the day, until lunch I was at Balderado, and after lunch I was at Berget. It was perfect with that combination on such a long day.

I have been extremely tired today. Five days in a row of working late and closing attractions is getting to me. And this day’s ending was even worse than the rest. I was at Helix and the OP forgot to tell me that I could go home at 11. Everyone else got off at 11:20. That meant that I missed my tram home and got home at midnight instead of half past eleven. That sucked. We also had to close down Helix very sudden because one of the mechanics called and told us to absolutely not send another train on the tracks. It was weird.

Now I need to go to bed. I have to get up early tomorrow, work until 6pm and then have a cozy taco evening with Emma and Andrea :). I really look forward to that!