Barcelona: From warm summer to cold spring

Posted on Monday, 14 May 2018, 20:26 by Alexandra

Vacation is great, but going away after leaving an autoreply at work saying “with sunny regards” was cocky. Gothenburg has for the past week had the most amazing weather ever. It has been warmer than it usually is in the summer. Crazy and absolutely wonderful! I had hoped that it would be as nice once we arrived in Barcelona today. But I’ve been walking around in my jacket and was actually freezing at the end of the day. If my nails hadn’t been painted white, they most definitely would have been blue. Now I make it sound like it is almost winter. It is not. But it has been cloudy and a type of raw cold. Even if my phone said it was around 17C.

Me, my mom and her colleague (and the most important proofreader of my book) Helena arrived here this afternoon after a three hour flight. I slept most of it, super nice.

The apartment is on the top floor with two terraces. We can see the cucumber house really well on one side and the top of Sagrada Familia on the other. I love that all of SCA’s apartments are located in such good places. In Paris we could see the Eiffel Tower from the balcony. My mom works at SCA and they can rent apartments all over Europe and some in the US for a very reasonable price. A very sweet deal.

We haven’t planned too much this week, but I did plan to hang out at the beach for a couple of days. But that is not going to happen. Sad face!! I guess I will work on winning the step challenge at work instead.

After we got to the apartment we left pretty much straight away. We walked in the direction of the church and had lunch close by. We then walked around it, watched it until the cold wasn’t making it fun anymore, walked by a Mercadona grocery store and back to the apartment. It is 8pm and I am kinda ready for bed I think.

I apologize for not posting any pictures, and most likely won’t during this trip. But WordPress changed from being able to buy only storage upgrades to having to buy a Premium plan for way too much money. I can deal with $20 per year for an extra 10GB, but not $100. So I have moved all the blog posts and pictures from my two years in California to two archive blogs but that was not enough. I still have 1.3GB too much space used and until I have moved more blog posts and pictures I can’t upload a single picture. I will work on it. I will post them eventually.

UPDATE 2018-10-07!

Skiing in Luossavaara

Posted on Monday, 26 February 2018, 18:54 by Alexandra

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!

Icehotel in Kiruna

Posted on Friday, 23 February 2018, 23:18 by Alexandra

I am so upset that I can’t post pictures right now. I have so many amazing ones from today, and even from yesterday. I will just have to speed up my project of moving all my pictures from this blog to my archive blog.

It was a while ago now that I traveled. It must have been Rome in April last year. I have been wanting to go to northern Sweden for a long time now and since my cousin Malin moved here to go to the space high school in Kiruna (Rymdgymnasiet), I finally grabbed the opportunity, booked a flight and flew as north as I have ever been.

I took two days “off” work, flew in yesterday and will leave on Sunday.

The snow was there. Tons of snow were everywhere! -14C I think the pilot said. I thought it would be fine, because it is dry cold, but it was cold.

Airport was tiny, bus ride into the city center was cozy and I saw on the way in that the sun was on its way down. I thought that that meant that it would be dark very soon. But I was wrong. The sun was setting from 2pm and all the way until it actually went down at like 5pm perhaps? And it wasn’t even that dark afterward either. The white snow is making everything so light! It is nothing comapred to the grey darkness back home in Sweden…. sorry, back home in Gothenburg. It is hard to see this place as part of Sweden. It is so completely different. It is magical, it is white, it is cold and the air is full of shiny crystals when the sun is shining. I have definitely found some details to the environment in the area of Isidra in my book!

Yesterday we just walked around town, had dinner at Spis, a restaurant where Malin works (she works at the fika part of it, but same owner). Arctic Char was on my plate and it was delicous (Filet of arctic char wrapped in cabbage served with almond potato puré, shellfish sauce, root vegetable chips and roasted wheat).

The morning of today was spent at her school. The general director of the Swedish National Space Board was there to talk to the students. Super interesting to hear what they are doing. Then he participated in the class afterward which was astronaut knowledge. We looked at the Terrella they have (basically aurora borealis in a can). Malin was interviewed by SVT and it is now up on SVTplay here. 8:55 into the video, the news did a sequence on her high school. She is the cute astronaut and I am the muppet sitting next to her. Hahah! The video will only be available for another 7 days, but I have it downloaded. The article for it is here.

In the afternoon we took the bus to Jukkasjärvi and the Icehotel. I didn’t really know what to expect. I guess I thought it was a “boring” place, a building made out of ice and snow with basic beds and reindeer pelts to sleep on. I was once again surprised. Most of the rooms are individually designed by anyone who sends in their idea. The bst ones are picked out and later that same person creates the room during two weeks. Even the “basic” rooms were very beautiful with ice crystals on each side of the bed.

So, let me explain how this hotel works. In April each year, 2 ton blocks are removed from Torneälven, the big river up there from a farm they have right next to the place of the hotel. The remove snow from the ice during the whole winter to make the ice perfect. It is then stored in a big warehouse behind the hotel and can be stored for several years so the ice in the current hotel might not necccesarily be from last year, but it is definitely from Torneälv. They ship ice to ice bars in Stockholm for instance that goes under the same name. A few years ago they built a whole hotel down in South Africa for a car commercial that then gave the idea of building Icehotel 365, an icehotel that is open year round, right next to the one they build every year.

The Icehotel this year is called Icehotel 28 because it is the 28th hotel they have built. All of them are different and built up in October. The rooms are carved in November and it opens up for business in the end of November. It is then open until, was it March or April, or maybe even later?

Like I said in the beginning. The pictures are incredible, but only on my phone for now. They will be posted eventually!

UPDATE 2018-10-06!

WSP Management in Budapest day 3

Posted on Monday, 13 November 2017, 23:15 by Alexandra

The first thing I was greeted by when walking through the door at home, was Ramses of course. He always comes running to say hello when the door is opened. The second thing I was greeted by was Cleo sticking his head out the bedroom door hissing at me. I think I might have been gone for too long for Cleo’s liking. Then he got almost aggressive when he smelled me. Weird cat.

It has been another long day. All flight trips with a layover takes so much longer and is so exhausting. On the first flight from Budapest to Munich, I slept all the way through, even through the big turbulens that apparently happened. On the second though, I had a hard time falling asleep, even if I listened to my classical piano music list. Perhaps it was because all the rows in the back were occupied by WSP. I used the last 30 minutes to a little bit of writing. Why didn’t I think of that earlier?

In the morning today we had free time. It was spent shopping. I bought a very nice notebook at a Christmas fair, a refrigerator magnet and a pair of shoes. That was not the plan, but they kind of matched my scarf and I felt like I needed another pair of better quality shoes.

My calves are rock hard and hurt a lot! So many steps, only walking for three days. It will be great with four days of sitting in front of a computer working again, resting my legs a bit. My feet don’t hurt, but my calves.

It has been a great conference and many interesting discussions in the morning at the hotel. Many interesting things to see in Budapest, many fun things happened. But it has been tough. I really need my sleep and when I don’t get it, I quiet. I hope I haven’t seemed too boring because of it. Because I have had a great time and it was fun to get to know my coworkers outside of work.

Pictures are coming, not tonight, but my goal is to get them uploaded tomorrow afternoon/evening. Ägg-i-skägg-i-rää and goodnight!

26

Posted on Wednesday, 12 April 2017, 0:34 by Alexandra

Back in Sweden after a very long week. But it still was over so fast. I am now older than when I left (which I could have said even if it wasn’t my birthday today, but it is a cliché, and sometimes clichés are fun), but I don’t feel too much different.

The day started with a nice surprise at breakfast at the hotel in Rome. The personnel gave me a pastry with a candle in it and wished me a happy birthday! That was so sweet of them. The green juice is green apple juice, really tasty.

We packed, and then drove out to the beach in Ostia, we just picked the closest one, Mamma Mia Beach. It was not as warm today, only around 19C, and a bit windy, so no swimming in the ocean for me. But I felt the water, it was cold (it wouldn’t have been impossible to go in, but I preferred to sit in the warm sand and enjoying the sun rather than shivering in the wind). We were there for about 45 minutes and then we had to leave for the airport which was only 15 minutes away. We had lunch, did a little shopping, boarded the plane and flew home to cold Gothenburg.

It is nice to be home, but I miss the sun and the warmth. You would think that it would be warmer than 6C here now in April…

Mom picked us up at the airport, drove us home and we went shopping. Late dinner in front of the movie Trolls, consisting of entrecote, potato gratin and pepper sauce. No cake for dessert since they didn’t have any at the store, but some Easter candy and a Budapest pastry.

It honestly didn’t really feel like my birthday today, but it really hasn’t the past few ones either. Downsides of getting older, eh?

All the roads lead to Rome

Posted on Wednesday, 5 April 2017, 21:38 by Alexandra

I wouldn’t say that I am out of shape, but I am definitely out of shape when it comes to walking and standing up. It is out of season for Liseberg, so I am not used to this much walking. Today we reached 20,600 steps, crazy amount of steps!

So it wasn’t a bump free ride to go to Rome. Six hours before our flight took off last night, Jesper realized that his passport had expired a month earlier. He paid a huge amount of money to get a provisional passport (it is extremely pink!). The flight was more than half empty, I don’t think I have ever flown with that few people on board. It only took 2.5 hours, I finished Harry Potter and the Deahtly Hallows (amazing ending to the story, the review was not that well-written, I apolgize, I might change it someday when I am not as tired as I am now), slept a little bit and watched a thunderstorm over the Alps somewhere, really cool to see lightning from above the clouds.

Our second bump arose at the airport in Rome at 11pm when our pre-booked taxi driver didn’t show up. There was a miscommunication we learned this morning, they needed a reconfirmation from us that the price would change since our apartment was outside the city limits, but at the end of our confirmation email it also said that they were happy to have confirmed this with us. So we got to the apartment a little bit later than we planned, but it worked out very well anyway. There was a shuttle service at the airport with fixed prices 20 euro per person. Very friendly and helpful people.

The apartment is a little bit outside the city limits and very nice. There are two big balconies. One much bigger than the other one and the “small” one is bigger than most standard balconies in Sweden. Pretty great. Unfortunately, there are only singles bed, and I was afraid of falling down between them during the night.

Today we slept until 10am, went out to the grocery store (crazy store where the aisles wouldn’t fit more than one person, and there were also a ton of easter eggs, we couldn’t resist and bought one, it was basically just a big Kinder Egg, delicious and with a super big Star Wars toy inside) to buy breakfast, then had breakfast in the sun on the balcony. The whole day has been around 20C and a little bit cloudy. Perfect for walking around a big city. We left the apartment at 1pm approx, bought a week pass for the metro and buses and went to the city where our promenade started. We didn’t have any plans for today, just walk around, look at things, and plan for tomorrow, tonight instead. So we walked, and walked, and walked, and took lots of pictures. I actually only took 65. Jesper borrowed his dad’s professional camera and has taken most of the pictures.

I am honestly not sure what we photographed today, there are so many old and special buildings. I might write descriptions other days.

So here comes a bunch of pictures from today.

Ramses crawled inside one of our bags before leaving yesterday.

A quarter century!

Posted on Monday, 11 April 2016, 22:59 by Alexandra

So, 25 years ago I was born. Twenty-five years! It is a big number and definitely a milestone. It’s crazy, but I can’t do anything about it than thank everyone for their happy-birthday-wishes today. I had a wonderful day, it was the most beautiful spring day ever! Not a single cloud anywhere to be seen and it was warm in the sun. Sure, I guess it could have been any other day than a Monday and a school day, but it was still okay. I didn’t do much, went to class, went grocery shopping, cleaned the apartment, played a little on my new Wii U (that Jesper gave me yesterday) and waited for Jesper to come home from work. Soon after that mom came over and we made dinner; tacos. And for dessert; princess cake! Doesn’t matter how old I am, there should always be a princess cake, haha!

It’s been a long time ago since I updated, and not because not many fun things have happened, I just kinda lost my will to write. So here comes a bunch of photos from the last three months instead (sorry, but many of them are of the cats).

Ramses There was a period when the cats pooped shapes, here was a cat! Cleo is sit-sleeping. You can’t go to the bathroom alone. They removed the soles from my shoes not once, but twice!! They got a new active toy which they love, blinking balls on a rollercoaster. This is the cutest picture ever. I did not put them like this,they fell asleep like it! They always sleep along my legs or on them when I am sitting on the couch! Never alone. Even if they fight a lot, they still seem to like each other. Ramses is very chill! We had some very pretty sunset the past months. Semla mudpie Ramses the chill. St. Patricks Day. IMG_20160401_192251 Jesper and I went up to my cousins in Nynäshamn a week ago. We had a great time up there, played a lot of cards, walked around in the harbor, enjoyed their new hot tub with an ocean view and just hung out. IMG_20160403_112435 I got new toys for the cats, and it did not take long before one of them was in its natural habitat. Now it is completely gone! Cleo is such a beautiful cat! Rachel (for those who don’t know, to the right, and my former roommate in California) came here with her friend Elyse to visit for a few days. We went out to the archipelago and enjoyed the amazing Swedish spring on the west coast.

Here is a link to google maps where I uploaded a sphere picture taken at Öckerö after my 17-year old cousin told me about it, haha! (I am getting old):

Other than what I have taken pictures of, I am doing well in school. I am almost done with my first year in grad school, one more to go. Last quarter I took a class called Leadership & Communication and the home exam I wrote with another girl was super interesting: Why do people follow destructive leaders? We brought up Hitler and Trump as examples and it was the easiest finals week ever. I haven’t gotten the grade for it yet, but it should arrive very soon.Then we had three days in school and then two weeks off. I needed it, just relax for a bit. Today was the first day back after the break and on Wednesday we have a presentation. A few more weeks and then the summer is here and lots of work at Liseberg (where I actually start in two weeks already, but not full time until the last week of May).

I have also been reading, but haven’t finished anything new in a while since I am reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and it is long. The new ereader (Kobo GLO) is working perfectly!

I have also played a lot of beach volleyball and have already have many ups and downs. I hope I will have time to play this summer as well, even with lots of work at Liseberg (or maybe SKANSKA if they will contact me about my application I sent in a month ago).

I should probably go to bed now, I am not as young as I was yesterday and I have a lecture tomorrow at 9am. I can’t make any promises about more frequent posts, but I can almost say that the next one won’t take three months.

Kite Beach and a bad taxi driver

Posted on Wednesday, 20 January 2016, 23:27 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 travels. This full post can be found here.

Today was exactly yesterday, except that we stayed on the beach until sunset. It was warmer than yesterday, and not as windy. A really nice day. I also finished the 9th book in the Tales from Shadowhunter Academy series.

We then tried to find a cab, and the one we found turned out to be ridiculously expensive. We were going to Oasis Center because a few days ago it said that there was a Max Hamburger restaurant there, but when we got there it had closed down. Bummer. We spent 50 AED to go to a stupid shopping mall where they didn’t even have the thing we were looking for. So we bought some candy and donuts to have while watching a movie tonight. We got a taxi quickly at the mall, but that was a mistake. First of all, this guy was young, had an extreme lisp and we could not understand what he said with his accent. Then he didn’t know where we were going, had to put it in his phone GPS (no one here so far has used the GPS), and then he insulted me asking me if I was Jesper’s mom! And then he said it was a joke. Why would a taxi driver make a joke like that? And also I don’t think he was joking because later he asked if he had permission to speak something, and then said that he suggested me to dress in black to look younger. What an asshole!! Then he was in a car accident while we were in the car and had to stop right on the freeway. He drove into the car in front of us, nothing really happened but he told us he talked his way out of calling the police, and then he explained why. I think it was something about that he had to pay a huge fine because he was a taxi driver and also pay out of his own pocket if the car got damaged. He said we would get the ride for free because of this delay and that money wasn’t everything. After that he drove extremely recklessly, he was driving fast and very carelessly. He said he was 21 but his passport said 37 because you can’t be a taxi driver here unless you are 25. We left the taxi when we finally got to the hotel, he honked at us and asked us to pay. I was so angry at that point that I gave him a 20 instead of 30, and then borrowed the phone at the hotel to file a complaint. It took a while, but they took me seriously and I will learn what they did about it before January 31. Worst taxi experience ever.

Good thing we have another day tomorrow, I think I would hate this place if I left after tonight. Stupid fuckface!

Tomorrow anyway is our last day here and we are spending half the day at the beach and the other half on a desert safari. That will be fun. Too bad we won’t have time for Max before we leave. We might have time tomorrow between the beach and the safari, but we will have to see.

Dubai Mall, Burj Khalifa

Posted on Sunday, 17 January 2016, 23:50 by Alexandra

Ten hours at a mall, not sure if I want to do that again, but it was a fun day! We didn’t do too much shopping, but we bought a few things, a cork globe where we can pin where in the world we’ve been, a box of cool Arabic postcards, a shot glass from the top of Burj Khalifa, a thermos I can bring to school, a deck of cards all in gold, a fridge magnet, flip flops to Jesper, and a new shirt for me and I will get to why later.

We also got a couple of birthday presents for Jesper’s younger sister. We walked around for hours and hours, it is ridonculously big!! But I think we manage to at least go everywhere, even if we didn’t go into many stores. We had lunch in one of the food courts, Johnny Rockets, haha! When it comes to food, this trip is more American than Arabic.

At 6pm we had booked to go up to the top of Burj Khalifa. We got a briefing beforehand with tea and some snacks, went through security and then took the elevator up to the 125^th floor in only 60 seconds. That is pretty fast!! Then we took another elevator up to the highest floor people go to, 148, the floors up until 160 is only for telecommunication and maintenance and something. The whole tower is 828 meters high, but less at where we stood. I can honestly say that I didn’t feel any difference between the Eiffel Tower and Burj Khalifa, both are so high up that it feels unreal and that everything below is photoshoped. It was pretty cool up there though and we saw a little from the first fountain show of the day at 6pm (we got up to the top a little earlier than our reservation). We then saw the whole 6:30 show on the 125^th floor where we stopped for a bit.

After that we decided to watch the fountain from the ground so we watched the 7:30pm one after some restroom brakes and some of the shopping. We got a great spot, I filmed and took pictures and it was kinda exactly like the Bellagio Fountain in Las Vegas. I didn’t see it coming, but in the end of it, the water came right at us, there were no warning signs that we would get wet, so I wasn’t expecting it at all and was watching somewhere else when the shower hit me. Jesper saw it coming, backed away but didn’t tell me. I got soaked through! It was worse than SeaWorld… When we walked back to the mall I heard some Swedish people behind me say something about me being soaked, haha! We got the new shirt at Holister and then went to Cheesecake Factory to have dinner. It tasted kinda the same, but not really, or maybe my memory is piedestaling the food, or it’s different because this is Dubai, not California. I think I was too tired to eat as well, but we got the leftovers boxed up so we have dinner for another evening as well, yay. It was good!

Then we saw some really fancy pancy cars outside the mall, took a taxi and came back to the hotel at around 10pm. Tomorrow we have to get up a little bit earlier since we are going to Atlantis The Palm tomorrow and it opens at 10am and since we don’t want to waste spending time outside on the warmest day of the week (it will be around 27C tomorrow) and because we were inside all day today, we want to be there as early as possible.

This is Dubai Mall, crazy big!! In the lounge at the top we got served snacks and drinks. Level 125. A gold car. PANO_20160117_192719 IMG_20160117_203147 A Tesla!! A matte black Lamborghini.

First day in Dubai

Posted on Saturday, 16 January 2016, 22:41 by Alexandra

Being away from cold, work and stress in school is great. Today was supposed to be the coldest day this week with about 22 C. It will be a great week!

Yesterday we left Gothenburg at 7 am, spent 7 hours at the airport in Stockholm and then another (almost) seven hours on a pretty uncomfortable plane. I think the length of this flight is too short to require comfortableness. It was not very nice. But we had three seats all to ourselves so we could kinda lie down. We landed at 1 am local time, our taxi took us to the wrong Holiday Inn Express so we didn’t go to bed until 3am. Up again at 9 so we wouldn’t miss breakfast and then we got fooled by the hotel that gave us a taxi which took the long way to the beach so we had to pay about twice as much as it would have costed. Whatever!

We spent a few hours at the JBR beach, we both got burned. It was a nice beach, the water was warm, probably 23 C or something. But it was a bit windy so we only got in the water once and left around 4pm to have early dinner at Panda Express. I have to say, that Dubai is very international, all the fast food chains from California is here, and it doesn’t feel at all like an Arabic country (except for the Arabic letters everywhere). It feels like my second home, I like it. After dinner we walked around on JBR at the Walk which is a strip right next to the beach where tons of stores and restaurants. This place was pretty far away from where we live, definitely the touristy place of Dubai. We walked around a lot, bought some food to snack on tonight and then we found a nice taxi who took us to the hotel up north, kinda close to Burj Khalifa.

We are so tired, long day of traveling yesterday, and a lot of walking today, so now we will chill with a movie, fall asleep and prepare for a day at Dubai Mall tomorrow with Burj Khalifa afterwards.

You know you are in an Arabic country when camels are walking on the beach. JBR The Walk. Jumeirah. JBR The Beach. It’s too bad they are building so much out in the water, it ruins the sunset… A chrome Lamborghini. All the cars here are extremely fancy pancy, but this one was a little bit better. This is a very international city, so why not try stuff from other countries? This basil seed drink is from Thailand.