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obs!! I've beeing transfering my blog on another platform, you find me here:
The excitement is still at its top! I just want januari to come and i dream of going around i our new flat and make the laundry (washmachine in the appartment!!) and put some dishes in the dishwasher and oh, i am longing!!
For the rest, i have been sick last week,so no running at all but i felt ok when i went out yesterday and sunday.
Good news too: i did manage with the highest grade the 2 first exercices in the course i am reading on the side of my job. Only 8 left and the final exams and i am done! there are a lots to read but this is interesting. Actually, everyone shoudl read them, it is very helpfull even if you don't want to pretend to become a layer (which i am not doing!).
The automn is here,M is working hard and it's raining outside. What will we eat for dinner? i don't feel like cooking at all but not sure what i want to eat anyway. Maybe we will make the local economy run, with a pizza. Miam!
Pfuii, some reading left, have a nice evening everyone!
Oh my god! I almost can't believe it, but we made it! We went through the horrible week and soon, we will enjoy this nice view:
There are so mucht things to do until then, but i think we are really happy! I write i think because i am not really myself today. I am totally sick and my head works slowly. Whatever, this will be nice soon, our first own home for M and me :)
This is how it felt this morning when i read about the death of Kristian Gidlund, an almost 30 years old guy that went through a lot. It seems that he reached the heart of a lot of people through his texts in his blogg, his book and the radio speech he made this summer. He wrote with a wonderful poetry about hard things. His story is the one story of life: unfair.
I don't know him in any way but his words put back some old feelings in my head, the one that came to me 15 years ago when cancer made entry in our family. Unfair, that was how it felt then. Why should this word that only was on TV come and take our lifes over? For us, it turned out well, but for the unexperienced 16 years old that i was, it was a terrible kick in the ass. And you knwo what? It made me realize that if you don't take the chance to live by yourself so far you get the opportunity, no one will gave it to you. It's up to you to make what you want of your life and when you are like Kristian, glued in a bed without any power, it may feel really unfair.
The beautiful thing with his texts is that he did not focused on his own pain, but on things that we can change. We can make the world better, we can live our lives how we wish. We that stand on our two feet have so much more open doors that what we think. It's up to us to be nice to other people, to help, to be happy, to climb the Kilimanjaro, to learn spanish, to sleep a little more every morning, to quit your job, to paint a horse, to love with someone, to drink a good wine, to call a friend, to take a long run in the rain, to give some of your time to a homeless, to smile to people you meet without reason, to borrow tons of books at the library, to sing loud in your car, to travel to New York, to raise your kids with respect, to paddle the longest river of Europe, to feel asleep with a smile on your lips. This is up to us to focus on the things that matter. You will not get any sign when life will turn unfair, so make everything that you can to live how you want it.
Oh what i am longing to M. Oh what i want to take him in my arms and tell him i love him.
RIP Kristian and thank you for the reminder. Everything is still possible and i will do my best.
Hello my fellow readers!
i cannot understand why, but some of you are stil coming on here to see if there is something new, but i may dissapoint you every day... I promised to write a litle more about Berlin earlier but time flew and here we are: a poorly updated blog and the automn is here.
We have been working since a couple of weeks after our long vacations and i feel quite happy for a couple of things. For the first, i manage to wake up at 6 every morning. This may be peanut butter for a lots of you who maybe get up even earlier but before my vacations, it was almost impossible to put my body out of my bed, even with violence, before 7 or so. Now, i AM at work around 7, this makes a big difference!
M says that i am crazy who sleeps so little but here is my secrets: 1) i sleep deeply and good with him and 2) i've got a big motivation to be early in the morning at work. The motivation is that i can be early at home and it helps a lots for the project i have. I began to study law at university and it asks a lots of disciplin to make both. There is a looooot to read and even if it's (so far) not very complicated, it is a loooooots of new informations and to memorize it isn't a piece of cake. I need time and to reread things several times. I went out of school 10 years ago, so it is kind of a new habbit. So no lazy sleeping mornings here for me. Up around 8 on saturdays and sundays and studying is on the calender.
I also felt that i was in a good training period as well, so i try to get out and take a run very regurlarly, which i did pretty well, except the last week. I had a good excuse: i gave blod, as i do every 4th month and now i know that i have to be less ambitious after that, so i just rested. But tomorrow, run it will be and hoppefully on wednesday too. J and i planned a long run (maybe 20km) in three weeks, so i have to step up a little.
For the rest, i am trying to come back to my usual shape, the one before last xmas, meaning 5kg less. This is a very slow travel down, i tell you but i just hate the idea to make a hard diet and then to gain all the weight after a week. So i eat less but the same things, i drink less and i try to move my body more. I will succeed: theses dresses that are hanging in my closets will be on me soon again!
For the rest, M and i are trying to buy an appartment and it could be a big and long post for itself. I am beginning to become desesperate about it actually. This market is crazy in Sweden and not at all working as in France. There is no obligation to pay off your loan here, so people borrow money, a loooots of money, a way too much of money if you ask me. M and I have the strategy that we want to pay back off our loan before to retire, or at least close to this date and this gives us a pretty clear dead line. And with that a pretty clear amount of money we are ready to pay back every month. We are not looking for a very fancy place or something but we are not the only one to look at this kind of appartment, which would work for a little familly. So it works here ( i didn't want to write a post about it, but here i am!).
you see beautiful pictures of a lots of flats on the internet. The website hemnet.se is a goldmine for that. Choose your day one close to the end of the week, like thursday or friday and you will see a lots of nice things. It takes some times to learn how to read the pictures: everything looks nice, big, light and the flats most of the times look styled. And you think: "oh cheap, how cheap! we can buy this one and stil go to the restaurant every week and when i turn 40, we're done with the lawn!".
you dreamt of this flat during 10 or 11 nights and now it's time for you and your love to rush to the flat during the organised visits of it. you have to fight with maybe 30 other couples coming here with the same purpose: to find everything that is going wrong. If it's your first time, you will for sure find a lots of little things that could be changed, fixed or simply better but when you spend all your sundays since half a year back at going to visits, you make the round in like 5 minutes. You meet a real estate people and leave your phone number when you arrive in the flat and you hear how cool this flat is, with, quite often, some ridicoulous remarks of this person. Exampel: "you have a washmachine in the flat but there are two others in the basement for common use. They are very practical to wash your frotté". hum, ok, i would like to know how a washmachine can be more practical for frotté than for other clothes?! Well, you have to learn to translate real estate langage and believe me, swedish was more difficult to learn.
You had a bad night: you both thought that you would so much take your breakfast every morning on this balcony but you recounted the whole night how many couples were there. You even looked at this lady with the big belly meaning that another kid is on its way and you almost wanted to call her and tell her "you know, this flat will be a way too little for you". Or this 50 years old lady who just got divorced and has the money of half a house and wants to live downtown. Or this couple of 65 years old people, who wants to have a nice flat in town and have the whole cash of a house to put in a flat. You did not dream about the young single lady who just turned 22 because she won't have the 15% of the account. You know it and somehow, this is better to focus on the real problem: the other like you!
This is also time for visit number 2 of the same flat. We never have the time to make it and honestly, 10 minutes from the day before are enough. This is like "the second chance visit", for people who have a real life on sundays and others things to do than to fight with the eyes with a lots of other ones. They may have money, they may like the flat as well, but you will only know on the...
the circus continues. The real estate agent calls one by one all the numbers of his/her list and asks if someone wants to make an offer. You got a text message everytime someone is putting some more moeny in his/her dreams and your are becoming a little smaller with every sms. This is a very depressing part, because you stil have in the head you dream of the night number one, the one of the cheap and perfect flat.
You spend of course the whole night making speculations about the finances of people who made offer. You don't know any name, just just know that people 1 made an offer for so much money at this time of the day. Speculations, speculations, speculations... Did this person wait that much because she/he needed to rethink the max offer? or did she/he had a meeting durning the 2 hours of silence? or is this person simply out of the game? why is she/he willing to pay that much or money? is she/he desperate? homeless maybe?
You get new sms, showing offers from people that were just silent on the first day. It just makes you explode: why did they not show off their cards on the first day?!?! You try to be in the game, but somehow, there is always someone that wants the flat more than you. At least that want to pay more money than you for the flat. If everyone is thinking as M and i do, then i can tell you that the retirement age is close to 150 years old in sweden... The average period of remboursment of a loan is 130 years here. And you can see it in this speculation game.
You go to bed on day 14 pretty angry often.
you left the game and you get some sms from the other, who still are in and you wonder: why do people put so much money in a flat here!?!? this city is only Linköping, 140 000 inhabitants, no cultural events, no good buss communication, no big standard anywhere, no airport with communication other than to Amsterdam, not even close to Stockholm (takes 2 hours in train or car). I mean, Linköping is a assembly of houses in the middle of a field and you will have to pay 2 500 euros for a square meter of a flat, that needs to be fixed somehow. How comes?!
But you are lucky, because Day 15 for a flat is day 1 for another, and hop, you are again in the spiral!
This description is made only for one flat but you have to think that we go to 2 or 3 visits every sunday and that there are always as much people willing to buy the flats much more than we are. It doesn't matter how you look like, it's all about how much you can promise with a loan on the bank. I really don't get it and if i did not want to have my own home somehow, i would have let it down since a long time ago. this is totally crazy and that shows how people have no idea of their real ecnomical power (meaning weakness in this cas). How many people do live above what they should? how would they react if the rent who be 5% higher? This is unbelievable.
Well, i wanted to write a short article but i noticed that time flew again. This is raining, this is colder outside and M is on his way down to Småland, so i'd better shut this computer off and study.
Bye for this time!
hello again!
pfuii, three posts in three days, it's more than you expected, isn't it? I am about to tell you about The travel of the month: B E R L I N. we spent our last week of vacation there and honestly, i never get tired of this town. It was my fourth time there but the first for M, so we made the major attractions. I would like to say though that the city changed a lot since the last time i was there, and it was in winter 2010 if i remember well.
So we took the plane veeeery early last sunday. Juge by yourself: we saw the sun go up while driving bus to the airport. Veeery early.
But very early plane means very early in Berlin and this was cool. We couldn't check in before 15.00 but we left our bags and took a long walk in the city, like 10 km or so and saw the main attraction, like the brandenburger Tor, Unten den Linden, Checkpoint Charlie, Postdamer plats, the memorial, the Reichstag and staid at some coffee for the last hour of waiting. We were really deadtired, so we just wanted to check in and sleep some hours.
The hotel http://www.luise-berlin.com/ was very central and pretty cheap for the good quality. The disadvantage of a central hotel is that you could hear the train pass by, but it was nothing that disturbed us, neither me or M. Our room was quite simple: very high roof, white walls, light grey carpet and a big painting on the wall, expressing the lights of the cars in the street at night, wrote the artist.
The picture above is not very flattering but the room was cool. The bed was on a little stage, which made that you had your head at the same level as the window and could admire the street. Even if is was in the hotel was located in the centrum of Berlin, the activity of the street could look like that at its most active moment:
You get it: very quiet. And the view from the bed was like that:
Ok, so now you got it, you are for sure much calmer knowing how we were living. Good start for the rest of the story.
On sunday evening, after a nap, we went to a little restaurant that i knew from before, with a lots of german food and a very nice service. The sad thing is that this restaurant is so nice that it is in every guidebook about Berlin and it was no one talking german and eating there except the people working there. A bit boring if you ask me but the food, the price (cheap) and the atmosphere are worth it. Make a trip there if you are in Berlin. http://www.schwarzwaldstuben-berlin.com/
And i love the atmosphere in german bars. I could spend hours to observ the decoration:
On monday, we made an attempt to the musikinstrumentmuseum but it was closed. yes, monday... So we went to the museum der Dinge http://www.museumderdinge.de/ instead and had fun with the tastes from german administration.
Then, we ate in Kreuzberg, the place in and walked to east side gallery to watch the rests of the walls.
oh... sorry, but you will get some more tomorrow!
hello people!
as i promised, i will write some words about this 5 weeks long vacation for 2013. It has been very social, a little at home, a little away, with almost all the time sun and no mousquitos! pretty good if you ask me.
It began with some visits: my lovely cousine M and my lovely friend E that i haven't met in like 10 years. The visit of M was one week long and it gave us the opportunity to see a little more than the normal turistpath. We even were in south Sweden, on the origines of Ikea! It was the time of the footboll european cup for women and we also went to a game between France and England. A warm sunny evening, when we could go home, carrying our big french flag and singning "et un et deux et trois zero" a if it was 1998!
With E, it was much shorter and we focused on our area. It was raining as hell as well, showing the swedish summer way. But i can't really complain because we did not have a lots of rain this summer, in comparison to how it could be, so it was more than ok!
Some pics now, if i managed the download:
we also went and visited a lots of people, in Kisa, in Ljungby, on Öland, in Vettlanda and in Strängnäs. It was nice to spend time with people wthout being stressed by the time or something. we are not good at that during working time because both of us are travelling mych and M being away during the week makes that we want to spend time together on the week end. Plus that we are two lazy people and prefer to sleep until noon instead of going up early and fixing things.
i also have used this vacation to read a little. the life of Patrik Sjöberg, a highjump athlet that won a lot during the 80's and the 90's and tht has a reputation of a bad guy. Reading this book was interesting: a good way to knwo how it works behind the cameras and it is not all fine. good lecture. The second book was "den blå färgen" (i can't find the title in english, sorry) by Tracy Chevalier. Nice story but i got to read a lots of predjugees from american people toward french and sometime,s it was irritating me a little, but it wa really easy to read the book. I began to read a story of proust bt felt asleep after 3 pages. He has the power to make sentences that are half a page long and this is pretty boring. Call me easy mind if you want but proust is to me pretentious and not nice to read. I am right now in the middle of Madame Bovary and this is so much funnier. It's like full of gossip and funny. Sometimes, Flaubert forget what he was writting and needs some times to come back on track it is pretty funny to reread this book, without being forced to it, like we were at school sometimes like 20 years ago.
and i haven't post here since then! We have done a lots of things and i swear that i will tell you about it, i just wait a boring evening next week, when M is in Ljungby and me alone at home, with some mini depression because the automn is coming and i'd prefer not. So some days of patience and you will read a little :)
and by the way, i began my race toward the weight under 60kg. To my help, i found a program in a german running magasin, i will tell you more about it as well.
Have fun this week end!
hello people.
I am really bad at waiting, no matter what i'm waiting for, even bad things, like going to the dentist to get rid of a tooth. I am currently waiting for M to come back from Ljungby, as i usually do on wednesday. But today, it's thrusday, but wednesday at the same time. Luckily, tomorrow it is a real friday, and a big one like that: beginning of 5 weeks of vacations. If you sometimes wonder why i am living and staying in Sweden, it is for these kindof little things. Well, this is not a little thing actually, but it is really enjoyable and makes some long winter rainy days much more easier to survive, if only you can remember evening as tomorrow evening, when nothing will stop me from feeling free and without any bound. (does the little girl who cannot live without plan says...)
I was putting some order in the flat tonight, looking after a wedding invitation we received and instead of finding it, i found a big bill, from mister Eurocard with the amount of what we paid at the hotel on Gotland. No need to say that i was a little sad... i did not remember it. Well, that's not a reason why we should take down our consumption of bubbles, the one for tomorrow evening are already in the fridge.
Five weeks. I assume five weeks in Sweden. The first one is almost planned, with some nice visit and at the end of the second, we also get some nice visit. But except that, N:O:T:H:I:N:G. I have a lots of visions, like we walking in Norway, during nice shiny days, or we going to visit familly and friends in Sweden, or me going for a run every morning and coming back to make breakfast in bed to M, or me ready the tons of book that currently are on our nighttable, or me going for long walks in the wood to take tons of pictures. well, you see, ideas are here, but well... Let's pay this big bill first...
This was a view of Strasbourg and here you got a song from a band i recently discovered, thanks J:
Oh what for a week end... two days after i am stil totaly dead-tired! But it was so COOL!!!
Everything began with a flight-ticket that i booked on the wrong day. Lucky me, it was a day too early, so we got one day of France for "free" (if some hundred euros is free...) and we had to spend the night before the flight in Copenhaguen in order to be on time in the plane (which was cheaper than to book another low cost ticket on the right day). And it was good, because somehow, even an evening in Danmark, it feels already like vacations. So we came to the danish capital on tuesday evening, pretty tired but the even little week of work and we only got the energy to eat out and then to go to bed. Honestly, The city was looking as hell, as if every garbage was put upside down for fun or something.
On wednesday, we went to the airport and something funny happened. M was sitting somewhere, tired of walking with me in shops, so i was alone looking for some thing to buy and i heard my name called from the big speakers. My blood made just one round into my body and i thought "oh shit, i've done something worng!". Actually, what could be wrong? we already had passed the security control, we had like 1 good hour to the plane and knew where to go, so no big risks. But then, why me? I went to the information desk and there, they told me i lost my ID-card. For the record: i travelled with my swedish passport but took with me my french ID-card, because it's more practical in France. When we prepared ourselves for the security check, i took my passport off my bag and my ID-card felt on the floor without that i noticed anything. I was lucky to have the time to get back there and pick it up! That was for the exciting part. The rest of the travel is as always borring: waiting, waiting and stil waiting for something. All these hours are just waste of time.
We arrived in Switzerland around 15 and my little sister picked us up. She saved a nice part of the program for us: go and buy food! I was totally crazy: "let's take that, and that! and that!" and filled the basket with a lots of unhealthy things, but this is not very often i have the chance to eat them, so what the F... We went home to her place and had a nice evening the four of us together. Or maybe i have to say the five of us, with her boyfriend and the cat. Before to eat i had the privilege to work a little in her garden and oh, how i miss to be dirty because i am taking care of something in a garden...
These was the bubbles of the wednesday.
On thursday, we went to Strasbourg, with one of the best guide on the earth for this town and saw quite a lot of the city. Everyone was tired though, plus that we had to come back home in order to be on time at the restaurant.
As you can see, the weather was not super fine on thrusday, but it was perfect for siteseeing, not too warm. This cathedrale is big i tell you. And in it, there is a funny clock, here you got a pic of the mechanism, but if you have our way to Strasbourg, it really needs to be seen, and try to come when it's about to be a new hour.
At the restaurant in the evening, we almost had frog legs. Almost only. But we had bubbles: once as apéritig and once for free, given by the owner. Nice restaurant!
On friday, after little visit of the nice village of Phaffans, it was time for us to take the road to the week ends destination: Belfort. After a walk in the big city of Phaffans, we took the way to Les Eurockéennes and i swear, the place is wonderful. Even if i tried when was a teenager, i never was there before and i got totally charmed by the environment. Where the finger is pointing, you see the big scene. There are 4 of them, and a lake all around the place, which gave us wonderfull sunsets.
here a try to make a pic of the sunset:
On friday, the festival was already one day old, so there was no grass anymore. Luckily, we got beautiful weather during the whole week end and could sit everywhere almost, which wouldn't have been possible with a little rain. But you know, France in summer: no rain evaaar. At least nt when M is with me :)
I only knew two bands from the first day: lilly wood and the prick and the smashing pumkins. For the other concerts, i just followed with people, some of the 127 000 other visitors of the festival. I have to say that i was pretty dissapointed by the smashing. I was listening to them as a little girl during the 90's and the music they plaid now in Belfort was good, no surprises but Billy Corgan was totally feelingless. He almost did not say hello and it was sucking that they did not show a little more interest in their public actually.
We went home, me with tired feet and slept well on this friday night, with a feeling of being old but young at the same time.
We began the saturday with a Crémant breakfast and a nice lunch. The sun was high, a little wind, just enough to make us feel good and not too warm.
On saturday, we were all used to this festival, in dirty clothes and with our plastic glas from the day before. I have to admit that beer was not tasting that good, so i did not drink as much as i could have. This is also maybe a sign of getting older? i also have to confess that i had some problems to be in such a crowd actually. I surprised myself by looking for emergency exits in case of troubles. I don't know, maybe it's a consequence of having turned 30+.
As a general thought, i noticed that the guys were usually all in strange clothes and costumes and the girls had made an effort to look good but cool at the same time. I couldn't avoid to think of which kind of girl i would have been if i had made it when i was younger: the one being genuinly cool, with other all around, or the one trying to be cool but meaning nothing to the others. Would i also have tried to get some attention of a cool guy? I now looked at the guys i wouldn have found cool if i had been 15 again, and they seemed so young! They were walking for the first time, already maybe smoking some illegal thing and 2 hair on the breast. This is funny how the attraction change with the years, and this is perfect like that! I am very happy with my 35 years old M. If we would have been to the same festival 15 years ago, i let me dream that we would have fallen in love already by then.
A propos smoking illegal things, this is also a point where i found myself like an old lady. At every place i was looking at, there was someone rolling a thing or smoking one. I could observ different technics and stuff, but i always came to the same conclusion: give a seat to the old lady, she doesn't need more than that, the sun and some love.
Back to our sheaps: the music of the saturday: except Phoenix, i knew absolutely no band and the others of my company were not very motivated by one in particular, except Jackson and his computer band, so we just hung around. A propos Jackson, it was feeling like a new Jean-Michel Jarre, judge by yourself:
Once again, i was feeling old: my feet were dead by carrying me the whole day and i just wanted to lay down and sleep. The some km to the car were long to go i swear! But this was a wonderful feeling to walk in the night, with almost no public lights, to see all the stars, to hold the hand of M and having my favo sister and her bf around.
Phoneix was boring btw, we left quite soon after maybe 20 min or something.
On sunday, again a nice breakfast:
And then, ready for the biggest day of the festival: among others: Mass hysteria, Skunk Anansie, and last but the best: Blur. We also listened a little t some swedes: Graveyeard and M got some fun at Kvelertak. He told us thought that Neurosis would be boring and he was so right: they were taking themselves for like god who invented some notes and were playind about 3 notes per minutes. We went directly to Skunk Anansie at this time.
Sknunk Anansie was full of life, she even got a bath into the public and it was a lots of energy going out of her. OK, nothing to compare with Mass Hysteria, but they were playing at home and with an educated public. For them i was happy to follow their concert sitting in the grass and watching on a big screen, because i would have died in the crowd: braveheart and such things were on the program.
And then, Blur. At this time, i was 14 again, listening on and on to "the great escape" on the floor in the living room in Sauceray, with sun lights going through the window. They plaid everything and made me really happy to feel alive. Damon was even trying to speak french and a big difference with the ther big bands was that he was really talking to us. I don't know if i really felt like that, to be sent 16 years back in my life, if not more, when i was dreaming of having a boyfriend that would love me and sing with me "tender is the night, lying by your side" and so on. A dream came true, even if M was only making fun of them by singing like a tramsapa. but no matter, it was good. So good that i remembered that one "friend" stole me the CD of the Great escape and that i need to buy it again.
this was a bad picture of the beginning of the concert. Nice memories!
The day after, it was high time to get back home in Sweden and oh my, it was a looooong day. 10 hours from door to door and we had so little sleep that it was aweful. Well, to travel with plane is now for me the worth thing to do but well, i am not that rich in time to take the train back from France for a week end spent there.
We did have a good surprise at home: our strawberries from 2013 were ready to eat:
They were very good, thank you! and the advantage of a balcony is that there is no snail to eat them :)
OK, this was the week end in the big lines. Now, it's all about to reload the old battery and live on these pictures in my head until i get to meet Damon privatly!
Noight!
