Surfin’ USA

Gold for Sweden !

Wow, what a match. This afternoon, together with some of my Swedish neighbours, I’ve watched the Olympic final in icehockey, Sweden vs. Finland. After a thrilling endgame Sweden prevailed 3:2 — you should have seen my neighbours…
In case you didn’t know, icehockey is (together with football) the most popular sport here in Sweden, so this is really a big thing for the people here. In fact Swedish athletes did very well in general — these have been the most successful Winter Olympics for Sweden ever! Hence everyone is quite happy at the moment, also because Norway really sucked this time and Sweden actually surpassed them in the medal ranking.

Patriotism

With the Winter Olympic Games in Italy taking place right now, it once more gets very obvious how patriotic and proud of their country everyone in Sweden is. Like most people here, my Swedish neighbours gather in front of the TV to cheer at their fellow countrymen whenever they find the time. Also, throughout the year, you see a lot of Swedish flags in people’s front yards and gardens and, for instance, people wearing shirts with references to their country (flags, logos etc.).
Obviously Sweden is a rather small country (population-wise), which I think promotes this attitude even more. On the other hand, however, Swedes are probably not especially patriotic compared to other countries. It’s rather that Germans suffer from a considerable lack of patriotism — or they are afraid to show it. Given the country’s role in the two world wars that’s probably understandable, nevertheless one wonders how long it will take for this to normalise again…

Some culture

This weekend I took it easy and went for some culture here in Gothenburg. On Friday three of my neighbours and I went to see the musical Kharmen at the Stadsteatern. Although it was in Swedish and esp. the singing was hard to understand for me, I still got most of the plot and enjoyed the music. After that we stayed at the theater’s bar where students of the local theater and musical school were performing several songs. They were really good and had chosen some fine songs, so together with the musical it was a very nice evening.

A little update on my thesis: After several days of struggling with making the random choices in some of my algorithms somehow ‘deterministic’ (due to the overall design of the program I work with) I think I managed to succeed for some initial parts at least. I will run some tests over the next few days to determine the impact of this…

Congratulations !

My very good friend Olli back in Germany is, as of this Sunday morning 9:05, the proud father of Klara! Congratulations to him and his girlfriend Saskia, Klara’s mother, I am very happy for you three!
Klara is 54 cm ‘tall’ and weighs enormous 4180 g. The actual birth was quite an act but everyone is fine and the two parents are the happiest people in the world.
Naturally Oliver has a lot of other things to take care of now (most importantly being with his family), so he asked me to put these two pictures of little Klara here on my website, which I gladly do. Isn’t she cute? (Update: Olli sent me two more pictures)

Saying goodbye is hard

This week four of my good friends packed their things in Sweden and set sail for their home countries: on Tuesday Jose started his trip to Mexico via France and Spain, on Thursday Andreas set out for Australia (via Singapore) and today, on Saturday, Aga and Julia are driving home to Poland. I wish all of them a safe trip and all the best for their future. Thanks for time in Gothenburg, guys, I hope we keep in touch!
So many good friends leaving in such short time makes me a little melancholic — but it also reminds me that I should get my act together and work hard to finish my own work up here…

More Oslo pictures

I managed to snatch copies of the pics some of Nadja’s friends took, so I thought I might post a little selection here. Thanks Berit and Dani!