First I went with Frida to her parents place on the countryside. We were there for over two weeks and also visited a friend at Gotland, a small island in front of the Swedish coast. Relaxing, reflecting, finally seeing this beautiful Swedish lake with a sunset.. And looking forward; where do we want to be together, and how, and what do we want to do? On Gotland I finally saw some real sea again! The Swedish coasts are nothing compared to the Netherlands, just rocky. Interesting to look at but not that much enjoyable as the Dutch ones. But at Gotland I got to experience it more. Gotland was strange, Sweden in small it is called. Flat in the south, cold in the north. And a lot of rocks :)

Then my brother Tijl came by and we went backpacking into the forests. As we both never did such a thing before we started carefully, but already within 24 hours we came back and repacked our backpacks :) Then it went better, but I now know I’m more a cyclist.. Canoing on the Swedish lakes with Tijl was fantastic. We went for a full day and slept on one of the islands. We also went to Stockholm, which was a bit strange.. and a lot of fun.

When Tijl went back to the Netherlands, the last week for me and Frida physically together started.. That was a lot harder one. With al the plans in our heads, it still wasn’t easy to cope with. I tried with a party on the last day, which helped a lot in making it a happy after-halfyear-party. Nonetheless, saying goodbye was almost horrible.

Then I traveled to Berlin. A nice trip on a train and ferry where I met a Japanese guy with which I later spent a day in Berlin with. Berlin was really nice. A good atmosphere, lots of bio shops and not such a busy center as for example Amsterdam.

After two days of Berlin I went on to France. There was a nice park in Lyon where I ate my lunch. And then the wonderful week in Rancy, France. I was there with a group from Mens en Spirit (Human and spirit) at La Ripe Blance. Also a lot of ‘down to earth’ stuff, which is really necessary for a spiritual heavy week :) I could reflect a lot on the last half year and life in general. I started a new company which I wanted to do already for some time, Frida helped me knowing that, and the France week helped me starting it. When I left there I knew I would just start. More on that later via the website and maybe the blog as well.

And then at last, the travel back to the Netherlands. Seeing the Eiffel tower in the distance as the train came past Paris and via a beautiful station of Antwerp. Having traveled a lot, I could finally write destination Alkmaar in my interrail log..

Two weekends ago I went to Stockholm, there was a Russian film festival where I went together with Maaike (’nr 2′, the one who stays in Stockholm) and Niklas (a Swede/Belgium guy she knew). We went to Closed Spaces, a bit weird film, expected though because I chose to see this movie because it was a bit weird :) And also pretty funny, and nice arty because it left us with the feeling not fully understanding it yet.. Now I read the website and the director’s comment it gets even better (read: try to see this, with subtitles :)):

The idea is that all origins of our psychological problems, our victories and defeats, all happiness and unhappiness are in our past, in the family. The key of all “doors” of adult life is in the childhood. It seems to be obvious, but on the verbal level this thesis does not make people act. Every psychological book contains the story that children repeat their parent’s mistakes. The model of their behaviour turns children into hostages. And it repeats from generation to generation. How is it possible to stop this repetition? Emotional influence that exists in films is in need. “Closed spaces” is about that. The film shows what key we have to choose and what door could be opened with it.

And last weekend I went for another hike along the Mälardalen lake. It was planned by the hiking club, but I went alone in the end. First I was somewhat later because I had another train and couldn’t reach them to ask to wait for me. But, as I found out yesterday, they went to another place anyway :) So I went with my map of the Eskilstuna commun (the county here) at which the part I was walking stretched for about 10cm.. I guess I didn’t really follow the normal path, but that didn’t made it any worse, I think it was way better actually. Mostly I just took some path. Paths here by the way are only paths because people or animals have walked there before, no path is made with wood, stones or seals, no marks along the path eighter.

The forests change pretty quick, at one point you only see long bare trees and then suddenly you’re in the middle of a green coniferous forest. It looks more beautiful than forests in the Netherlands, you can notice that the places here are visited by less people, nature still is a bit nature. Just listening to the birds and the water.

See some more photos in the hiking album.

First is Järnpojke (Järn = iron, pojke = boy). First of all because I think it was kind a cute :) He was meditating here all day for the people who worked in the iron mines.

The people that lived and worked next to this little statue took good care of Järnpojke. He always wore some clothes, a scarf or a jacket when it was really cold.

The guide told that the story goes that you’re blessed if you stroke his head, but she thought that was nonsense she immediately added. That was the reason his head was so shiny.

There were more of these kind of meditating statues in Stockholm, nice :)

When we entered the museum (Moderna Museet) we could choose for an audio tour, which I didn’t as I like watching more. But some others did so the lady explained how this worked.

There was this MP3-player-stick with infra-read. When you were in the museum there were several ‘dots’ next to art works. Here you could point the MP3-player to and it would start telling a story.

There weren’t any other controls, except for one; you could point the MP3-player down, to the ground, and it would stop the audio. This reminder me of an umbrella-controlled MP3-player I once saw. With different gestures, like opening (start) or closing (stop) the umbrella, turning (next song) and others you could control the music which was kind a neat. But that was just a concept back then, here they made a little start with an actual product :)

Further they had a quite advanced toilet system.

First of all the lock. They had an explanation (in Swedish) on how to use the handle to close the toilet.As you can see you have to move the handle up to close and down to open. From this explanation I pushed the handle upwards and let it go again. Went very well.

Then, luckily I was already ready and washing my hands, the door suddenly opened! Apparently it wasn’t locked.. After some testing it seemed that you had to move the handle up further and that it then would stay up. Too bad there was no second feedback if you did it well. No problem for Swedish speaking people though as I guess the text will explain this..

Further they had this very good ‘dyson airblade‘, no airplane, but a hand dryer. I first saw this in the museum for Beeld en Geluid (Video and Sound? Well the museum attached to the Dutch public media archives). You slide you’re hands through this and they are totaly dry afterwards, working very well. On the other hand, using a lot of power also I guess and it is no disaster to not completely dry your hands..

As a last thing they had a CCTV system in the toilets. Outside the toilets there was a TV and you could see the toilet room, the toilets, the urinates, etc. This gave a bit strange feeling as you walked in, but when inside this was explained using another work of art:

At the station I bought a Balder (a sandwich with the same name as my brother) as I didn’t had breadfast yet. Than the guides which would take us into the old part of the city came, almost excusing for the fog. When we started walking it was clear what she meant, you could hardly see any building which was further than 100m away :)

But this actually gave pretty nice views of the city. At some places it made me remember of Paris, for example this picture on the right, but also this square and this passage next to the train. Maybe all old cities look alike?

Often, we had to imagine the great view which we would have gotten if there hadn’t been such a heavy fog. But it also gave views for some great photo’s; such as the fairy tail castle on one of the bigger islands, also hosting a lot of museums; our own clothings collecting dew; and the photo below near the royal castle which got me interested on taking photo’s of the people of Stockholm.

Not all creatures in Stockholm are people though, they also have animals there, sitting on lanterns and by the river. And statues, but they’ll get their own story. As well as the interaction design in Stockholm :)

After lunch a we went with four people to the Moderna Museet. Where I finally saw Duchamp’s urinoir after talking about it so often in the Interaction Design lecutres! One artwork was about birth and time. Pictures of a rising belly with poems, one read:

One is born into time. And in time, introduced to language…
Or rather – One is born. And through language, introduced to time…
Perhaps even – One is born, in time, through language.

Further they had a nice tree. Really strange. It was like a tree, cut inside another tree. When I saw the bottom I thought that the outer tree was actually made of two parts.

But upon viewing the other side that was clearly not the case, this made the mystery even bigger.. There you could see how a tree’s branches are branches inside the tree too. Not that strange when you think of it, but that is it with these unconsiousness things, you never think of it.

Or wasn’t it the reality?

After the museum of Modern Art we went to the attached Architectural museum where they had some nice examples of how to build a city. Explaining and showing the different ways of housing and patterns to make the city accessible, explorable, interesting, efficient, quiet or cozy.

As the evening fell I went for some diner for which – after some search – I ended up in a standard Chinese restaurant. It was pretty hard to find something ‘local’, or maybe I was just in thew wrong neighborhood. But maybe you need to be a local – or have one with you – to find the better Swedish restaurants. Well, I want to go to Stockholm again for a few days, so than I’ll go to some more Stockholmish places :)

Stockholm at night