I love May!!

Why? Cause there are so many days off! ;-) Last weekend we had 4 days off and I went to Göteborg already on Wed noon. OK, first I went to visit my homeplant in Vårgårda and eventually I was in GBG around 6 PM but still...
It was really nice to spend so many days over there. I managed to meet all friends, walk around the city and just enjoy it.
Quite lucky with the weather as well. It only rained a bit twice!
On Thu I went with Tania and Petra to Botaniska (together with many other people) - beautiful to see all trees, bushes and flowers blooming!
Here a Mummin from flowers for you:







After the walk, Tania and I decided to make a dinner with dessert - she made a rhubarb (?) pie. Yummi!!!!! However, visually it wasn't really like it should be:



In the evening we went to the movies and saw a French movie made in the West coast in Sweden!!! The movie wasn't soooo great but the pictures and landscape definitely!

Friday I managed to have fika with Calle, then some shopping and then dinner with Dan and Leif. Nice! On Saturday I also managed to meet Jenny and later on we had grill at Dan's place. Good to be with friends!!

This weekend is again a long one - Monday is off!!! Miguel came from Mexico due to some issues at work and it is great to have him here. Hopefully there will be some going-out activity during the weekend. Looking forward!

I don't get it...

I was never a "schlager" person. Eurovision Song Contest is not my thing either. But don't get me wrong, I saw some of them loooong time ago. So after some years break I figured out why not watching it this year. So Handan and Alex and I got pizza, had some wine and grapes and sat in front of Handan's big plasma tv :-) So the thing started. Wow! A hysterical presenters (was he American or just had the accent???) were just the beginning. I've never heard the Swedish contribution and the song was ok but somehow didn't feel like a song for ESC...Anyway, the songs were either depressing and super serious or totally crazy with disco-kitch-"glitter"-hysteri touch.
So we started to have some favorites - mostly the performers who had some oriental (or national) influences. Portugal was cool, Armenia, Azerbaijan (ok he lives in Sve right?), Turkey, but I must say even the song (maybe not the people on the stage) from Germany was good. So we had our favorites and got surprised whe when we heard all the votes. OK, we didn't get so shocked by countries giving votes to their neighbors (sooooo typical ESC procedure!!!!) but still Norway??? Was it so good and catchy??? Well, the song was nice and ok but I don't really get why it won...
Oh well.
I saw this year's ESC. It won't be again next year ;-)

Now rainy Sunday in HH. Usch! Need to get those rubber boots I've been planning to buy for the past 5 years or so...

Valborg - 1st May weekend

Oooohhh! It was so great to have a long weekend!!!
We started on Thursday evening with a dinner at Sandra's & Hans'. Sandra made so-called Käsespätzle - kind of pasta with tons of cheese and salad with pumpkin oil. We had some wine and later on we played Uno for a few hours. Girls against boys. And we won!!! :-) Hahaha it was fun to see Alex and Hans angry!

On Friday Alex and I went to Laboe - close to Kiel. A kind of summer spot at the coast. Very nice actually! There were so many people sunbathing, eating ice cream, fish sandwiches (I had one - mums!), etc.
Alex made a "tribute" to Russians in Egypt - dawaj krakadil! ;-)










Friday evening we met with Johan and Jenny (and little Amanda) and Dennis & Aga in Othmarsen. We had dinner at Block House - sitting outside since it was so nice and warm. Later on we got tiramisu at another restaurant and went to J&J place for some tea.

Saturday was kind of like every other Saturday.. gym, a bit of cleaning, then some grocery shopping. There was Osterstrasse fest this weekend with the kitch selling, live music, beer gardens, sausage, crepes, lotteries, etc etc. We met again Jenny and Johan and walked around. Then Guillem joined us with Nadia (they are back after 3 months spening in Barcelona!!). It was great to see him again!!







Then in the evening Alex went with Guillem to watch Barca game and I stayed at home and watched a dvd.

Sunday was rainy!!!! :-( (good for nature ;-) ).
We went for coffee and then biked to see Edgar Degas' exhibition at the Art Museum in HH. It was very nice, especially all the ballerinas sketches and paintings.
Now I'm inspired again for painting. But I guess it will take some time for me to do the "kick-off" ;-)

Again goodbye

This time we said Bye to a colleague from Japan. Hiroko was in our plant only 5 months but still it is weird we have to organize some "good-bye"-get-together. We went for a dinner in Little Italy close to our place. Nice. The evening was nice and warm so we sat outside.
On the picture from the right: Sandra, Dennis, Kazuhiro, Alex, Hiroko, me, Handan.


The last week was really nice. Christer visited us last Fri until Sun, then we had one colleague from work staying at our place 2 nights. Oh yeah! - we got a big inflatable comfortable matrace!!! So now all of you can come and have a king size bed in the guest room!!! (ok the guest room has a touch of a storage room but still! ;-)

Finally got sumer tyres in my car!!!! Whoohoo!

Friday tomorrow. It is supposed to be 23 degrees and sun during the weekend! Yuppi!!! Looking forward!

Easter in Poland and summer in Hamburg

We spent Easter holidays in Poland. I decided to show Alex my home town and Tri-city so we left already on Wednesday to Gdynia. On the way to Gdynia we stopped at Gosia's place (my study-time friend) in Lebork.
Thursday was planned for Gdansk and Sopot. We went with my dad to Gdansk quite early and walked around the Old Town. As you can see yourselves it looked quite nice, huh? (ok despite some rain maybe).










We have visited Solidarity Museum and went the Gdansk Shipyard gate. Nice, but as usually a bit touching...
Later on we had super cheap lunch with my dad and then went to Sopot.
We went to Molo of course. The weather got really nice so it was great just to have a bit of summer feeling in Sopot.





One funny twisted house on the walking street in Sopot.


We got back home in the evening and after having a dinner we went with Filip out into some bars in Gdynia. We met Filip's friends, had some beers and shots and had a bit of hangover the day after ;-)



We went to Gdynia to some cafes at the beach. As you can see the weather was still perfect so we spent some hours with coffee in the sun.








We had some fresh pressed juices in Gdynia. Super healthy!



On Saturday we drove to my grandmom's place. I drove my Bubbla, with Alex and Filip as passengers.
Easter was all about eating, taking care of our old dogs, having walks in the park and taking it easy.
This is our blessed food from the church (typical Polish tradition).


And me being a kid again ;-)


It was really nice to have some days off. Trip back went fine and the same evening we met Txell and Thomas (our friends who moved back to Spain but visited Thomas' parents in HH).
Now we still enjoy summer weather and looking forward to the weekend. Christer will visit us!

Some while ago

I've realized that I don't update this blog so often. But one thing is that not so much is happening nowadays or I simply don't have energy or motivation.
But OK, a little bit has happened since I wrote here last time. Not this past weekend but the weekend before I went to Göteborg. It was great being there and spending some time with la familja and other friends. I also worked in Vårgårda and had some talks about the future. We'll see...
It was good to have a bit more than just a weekend in Götet and more time to do stuff.
This past weekend we celebrated Cyril's birthday and he had his good-bye party as well. Another friend has left...
It is fun to work abroad and meet many cool people who become your friends but then everybody is leaving and this is sad. Part of this life I guess... Anyway the good thing is that Cyril will work in Germany and promised to visit us quite often.
Well at least he has time to do it until the end of June. Afterwards noone knows where he can visit us.
We helped him with packing stuff and moving to some storage room. I got a flashback of my last years in Götet - when I had all my things in the storage room... It was hard.

Next week is already Easter!! Time is passing by so fast!! I think I'll take Wednesday off so we can drive to Gdynia and later on to my grandma and family. Looking forward to some days in Gdynia.

But still one week to go. Hope the sleeping habits will be back. Time change to summer time is still hurting ;-)

Århus

During the weekend we went to Århus. Filip was there together with some friends and we decided to meet them. The drive is only 3,5 hrs so not too bad. We met with Filip and Olivier on Fri evening, ate a bit and had some drinks. All of us agreed that in Denmark drinks don't have so much alcohol... And so much more expensive than Germany!!! I have already forgotten that...
Anyway, we just had a "soft" evening to spare the energy for Saturday.
On Sat we did some shopping, went around the town and didn't do anything too demanding.

Here, the three amigos waiting for me to get out of a Danish design shop :-)



We saw a duck couple trying to get to one restaurant. While we were convincing them not to get there since they may become a dinner, one waiter came out and told us that this is normal. Those ducks just come everyday to get some food! Since, the restaurant is at the channel they don't have a long way for dinner :-)



After 1 hr power nap we went out to eat and to have some drinks. There is this quite cool bar called Fidel's - opposite from our hotel so we spent some time over there. We met some other international guys from Filip's company and for once talks around the table weren't about seatbelts, but wind turbines :-)

We stayed out quite long and this morning I had to get up really early to meet with Ulrika (my one year roommate from the US times) and her family. It's been more than 5 years since we met last time!! We had brunch together and talked a lot about updates. Later on Filip and Olivier joined us, we had a walk and drove back home in the afternoon.
The weekend was nice, too bad no spring weather in Århus. Contrary to HH ;-)