The last few weeks I’ve noticed that I look differently at the trip to school, at doing shopping, at walking in the city. I finally start to see this as normal. Before it was still my study abroad. Now this way to school has become my way to school, this city became my city. I feel at home, I think.

On the right is a part of that life. On my way to school the air was on fire. Oh, btw, another fire that was part of the life here, was Valborg. The Swedish helgdagar (holiday) on the 30th of April.

From one of the first books about intercultural interactions:

Strangeness is no longer a temporary condition to be overcome, but a way of life.
Harman

How is it in Japan?

On days that it actually snows the snowplows can be seen in front of my apartment three times a day.

Actually, the snow is not everywhere.. In the city they have a heating system for the sidewalks. Sometimes in the city you tend to forget that there is actually a lot of snow. You get reminded of that when the heating system is absent.. resulting in interesting pictures :)

In above video, due to numerous requests in Dutch – I hear you Maaike :) – I tell about how the Swedes don’t like winter or the snow that much as I do. They don’t like to go out when it is cold or snowing. So I have to go to other people for meetings, they won’t come to me. Not that I mind that, I like the snow :)

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

Eskilstuna is a nice small city, the same size as Alkmaar, but with two third of the people. Lots of parks.You see litter (the bedding material for cats) on the streets everywhere, to stop you from slipping away on the ice. Oh, and they love red neon lights here.

I’ve joined Nikki in his apartment as the appointment I had with the rental unit didn’t work out, so I’ll have to wait until Monday (måndag) untill I have access to my apartment (Jong MenS: I drew Lady Lobelie afterwards). The apartment looks pretty good – from the outside anyway. We’ve done some shopping, I still have to find a good place for ecological and vegetarian food.

Saturday (Lördag) we went to Västerås, somewhat larger than Eskilstuna. More something like Nijmegen, again, with about two third of its population. First to the IKEA of course :) Afterwards we went to the student reception at Mälardalen in Västerås. The school building is very nice, with a lot of wood and nice lanterns, also made of wood. A show of their image as a environmentally consciousness university?

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This Sunday (söndag) was an easy day, we’re planing to go to the university (with a card from another student) to do some internet work (Jong MenS: I drew Lazuli for this day).

I did some shopping and had another walk through the city. I tried to get a bike. But although almost every shop is open on Sunday, the bike shop wasn’t. We’ll try it next week.

Then we got a household from Nikki to get us inside the university. I did some online IKEA shopping, checked my school scheme, and got to blog my first posts from Sweden.