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Marktplatz in Linköping
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Monthly Archives: August 2009
Norrköping Impressions
The good thing with holidays and having visitors is that one finally takes some pictures of ones surroundings.
A few of these I would like to share with you.
Motala Strömmen close to the old industrial area – Industrilandskapet.
The famous cacti – every year a “picture” is created with cacti. The themes are usually related to an anniversary. This year it is 400 years of Holmen Paper AB who have their seat in Norrköping.
Arbetetsmuseum – here with an exhibition about mopeds.
Himmelstalunds rock carvings from the bronze age (1800-500 b.Chr.)
“To all the lonely ones” – one of my favourites this summer. Graffiti in Industrilandskapet of Norrköping.
Business as usual
That’s the name of this cartoon from Dario Katz.
It came on the back of the latest Jayway brochure – to my mind a perfect summary of worklife versus holidays. 😉
Offline Comfort for Onliners
Like everyone in the Twitter-Community I suffered a bit from the outage yesterday. But well, there are other things to do, especially now in that great summer weather and especially when this happens close to home- time.
Anyway, this morning I found out via a Skype chat from last night between my colleagues, that there is special comfort available for these cases when Twitter, Facebook etc. go offline for whichever reason.
One can get pillows !!
This is great. So if one has one of these, one could place it right next to the keyboard, have a nap during the downtime and then continue browsing etc. once everything is up and running again. Or simply take it to bed and have some sweet “treams”.
Well, the colleagues didn’t test it (yet) and so didn’t I (yet) – but who knows, it is good to know where to get comfort from when one needs it, especially when there is nobody left to turn to in the real world as a result of too much time spent in front of the computer. Okay, that was a sarcastic comment.
Admittedly, the pillow-idea is great and they look quite cute…. and my birthday is coming up, too…… .
Bahamas Ministry of Tourism
When one travels to Bahamas one has to fill in quite a few details at the immigration desk. Including ones birthday. Once home again, one gets a few times per year some information from Bahamas Ministry of Tourism – of course only if one ticked the box that one wants to receive this information. Like I did.
This is what I got in my inbox today: an invite to stay on Bahamas during my birthday (which is coming up soon) at special hotel rates.
“How nice!” you might think. In general, yes, I would agree. But neither the Ministry of Tourism nor you know the story about my stay on Bahamas.
Together with my old colleagues at Vibrant Media (now Vibrant) I went there for three days in December 2007. All offices of Vibrant went there in order to have a big Christmas party and to finally meet each other after having spoken only on phone or in video conferences. An extremely generous offer of my old company at that time, definitely.
The party was great and so it was meeting everyone, talking to colleagues you work with as well as usually don’t work with.
So far so good.
We stayed in the posh Atlantis Resort where also parts of the Casino Royal James Bond movie took place. Excellent for hanging out, especially their unique waterworld and the beach, even if it is far too americanised for my liking. Almost everything is directed at American tourists in Bahamas, by the way.
Anyway, great stay, great party – but the days after the party were some of the worst in my live. I came down with a severe stomach bug the day after. So while everyone was out in the pools again, I managed to secure a deckchair in the shadow and kindly got provided regularly with camomile tea my room mate. Just so that I would be able to fly back to London that night. Which I managed, equipped with a good range of emergency paper bags, if you know what I mean.
What I really want to come to talk about is the way I got treated in Bahamas while being that sick. The hotel staff was most unhelpful, sending me on my shaky legs from one end of the resort to the other in search for a doctor or a nurse – both not being available at all in the end. The staff maybe thought I only had just a severe hangover… Great.
Next stop: airport when flying out. Again, super unfriendly staff. I got asked to empty the contents of my pockets into one of the plastic bins. In my situation, desperately trying to keep the contents of my stomach inside, I did not at first get what the lady looking at me in anger meant. When I finally did, I emptied everything into the bin – including quite a good range of used tissues. The face of the lady officer got even angrier when seeing that, but did not say anything. My face had by then a similar expression, meeting her eyes in the same way, while carrying the sweet feeling of the used-tissue-revenge inside. Well, she said everything, didn’t she? And treated not just me like the shit under her heels.
Anyway, I made it home. Never will I forget the trip on the Piccadilly line from Heathrow to Wood Green. And never will I forget the landing in Heathrow. You only know the forces that press onto your stomach while landing when not feeling well at all. Some of you might know what I am talking about. No accident there, though.
So all that special “Bahamian Service” makes that I never ever will go back to these Islands – even if you would pay me. And every email like the one above will make me think “yeah, right…”.
I really hope for them that they will improve in the future and not just concentrate on US-tourists, who often really do treat folks there arrogantly while waving with packs of dollars. And I guess this is why some people there are just giving it straight back with a no-care-attitude to other people.
Let’s hope the good peeps of both parts meet as well and may they share much more positive experiences.
Usually I am quite grateful for all kinds of experiences, cos you always learn from everything. But I definitely could have done without this one.
P.S.: Here is a picture from the very nice part of the trip – the big party with the Team and everyone being really smartly dressed and in a great mood:
…and here myself about 24hours later. 😉 Taken by my Swedish colleague by the way.
Summerholidays 2009
One entire month without a single blog post, tweet or dent. Other people are only announcing their summer-offline-phase but I was really living it. And I must say that I feel somehow very relaxed, no feeling that I missed out on something etc. .
So what on earth did I do during the last 4 weeks?
– Moving boxes and a few furniture up from the parents base camp in Germany into the new (gorgeous!) flat
– one day spent in all different kinds of “Baumarkt” that Norrköping has to offer (I have a pretty good knowledge now about prices and ranges at i.e. Bauhaus and K-Rauta)
– another day was spent at Linköping IKEA – resulting in buying one of these small espresso brewers for the oven, knowing which BILLY-combination we want (oak with glass doors so that we do not have to dedust all our books anymore)
– some days spent in (rainy) Grythyttan – on the only sunny day we had, we did not go motorcycling but mowed the lawn (boyfriend) and picked gooseberries and blackcurrant and made jam (me).
– Making jam! Funnily enough I gave away all my good empty jam glass collection to my mum and my sister, not knowing at that time that they would have come in handy at my end as well…. Murphy again. Thank goodness there is the mother-in-law’s collection that I was allowed to plunder.
My first jam ever was simple Blackcurrant one. Followed by a slightly more sophisticated Gooseberry jam with 10 year old Whiskey from the Isle of Jura in Scotland. The next jam was with Blackcurrant again, this time with Grappa that ripened in Madeira barrels (in other words: the expensive Grappa, not the one that one can also use to clean motorcycle parts). Comment of the boyfriend when coming into the kitchen after I poured the Grappa into the jam: “It smells quite strong when the berries get cooked”. I told him later that 4cl of his favourite Grappa went in there and caused the smell. Since he loves jam he didn’t seem to mind. Luckily.
The next range was Redcurrant jam with Black Seal Rum from Bermuda, and yesterday was the last shift for this year. Gooseberries again, with Cassis this time. Quite decent as well, if one can judge it by the taste of the fresh and still warm jam.
Making jam is quite job-intensive, especially cleaning the (bloody!!) berries, but also very satisfying when the results are unexpectedly good. So I will do it again. Next year.
Anyway – now it is back to work and normal life again. That means retraining the late-breakfast-stomach to normal eating times, less jam cooking (but maybe sewing curtains instead, yay) – and surely taking part in all the exciting things “cooking” at work 🙂
– Motorcycling – last but not least! As previously said, there is a certain shortcoming in that this summer, though, mainly due to work with the new flat. But – we managed to watch the 44th Classic Race on Sviesta which was great as usual. One can see motorcycles from the 30’s in action – the ones you otherwise only see in Motala’s Motormuseum, which we also visited when my sister and her husband were over for a week.
We also met Kjelle from the Guzzi club on the way from Grythyttan to Norrköping. Together with three other club members (including Il Presidente Nicke) he is now on the way down to Mandello Del Lario, the hometown of all Guzzis. Needless to stress that I envy them???!!! Right now they are in Prague – and a really great diary they have. I just don’t know why on earth they chose Bloggagratis.se over WordPress.com… But never mind.
So – what have you done during summer?
There is by the way a nice saying “A weekend would not be a weekend if it would not be spent doing something totally pointless.” I reckon that applies to a certain degree to holidays as well, doesn’t it?
So far so good!
May I just say….
Enjoy the summer. It is as always far too short!
Update – a picture from a beautiful afternoon in Stegeborg, a place with quite some history.
Wha'ever! 