London-ious

Ok here is the run down of the trip, you all been waiting for for.
There can be only one word to describe London: BEDLAM. (Scene of uproar and confusion, originally from the term, asylum)
True story, no wonder Samuel Johnson said: "When a man is tired of London he is tired of life..." It really is a great happening town, and the time we chose to visit just co-incided with a whole different level of experiences.
We landed on Saturday evening, a good night to experience the night-life. After checking into a hostel (which every young person HAS to stay in when travelling the world) we decided to check out the night life in nearby Greenwich.

Stumbling into a crowded pub, there is a band playing, about 7 members, blasting jazz/classical/instrumental versions of pop songs. Tell you what it was a great vibe. The lead triangle player seemed to have the greatest time showing off and playing like no one was watching.

Sunday was spent stumbling around the public transport. In my honest opinion, its a crap system they have. How are they ever going to simplify things for the Olympics in 2012. Here are two masters students in Tourism, blindly looking like tourists trying to find our ways around. Either we are bad students or the tube and train system is a pig trying to figure out in one day.

Besides from the transport, the Sunday was the 13th of November, the day of Remembrance(Poppy day). For a change, London was actually British for the day. a touching and heartfelt day whereby every recognised armed force personal has a right to march past the Cenotaph and everyone has a moment of silence. Highlights of the day; Seeing all the old timers in uniform, adorned in medals, all receiving a thankful nod from passer by's, random "thank you sir's" and general respect in the streets.

Oh, and I got to see the queen and some royalty...

One thing everyone needs to do in their life is make a trip to Cardiff, Wales, especially if you are a rugby fan. Small capital city (350 000 residents). Bug rugby focus. Old city with a HUGE modern rugby stadium at the centre. Its a hallowed experience to do the stadium tour. One day I vow to watch a  game there live.

Cardiff also has this mystical vibe to it. Maybe its the dragon all over on their flag, or the fact that it was a really misty day. But besides from the crazy language that looks like a bad hand in scrabble, it really is a fantastic city that one needs to visit in their life time.
BTW, a had a beer at the Yu Mochan Du ( Pronounced Yee Mo-ckan Zee), called a Cwrw Cymru...jawellnofine.

From Wales two days were spent with family, Si, Ally and their new offspring, Angus Erskin Sutherland Rankin. What a man he is. Always smiling, always happy and the absolute joy of his parents. Spending time with family is always a joy.

One of the main attractions of the trip was a little thing of watching a live game of Footy, at Wembly Stadium! Englad France, what-a-game! Cant ever support the english, frogs are not that much better, but because they are not the english I had to support them. Not too loudly mind you, England is known for hooliganism. Although, a very strange phenomena at English footy games, is that there is absolutely no alcohol allowed to be bought, consumed or spilled while watching the game. No food, no sweets, no chips, no drinks of any sort. Its get in, sit down, cheer and watch the footy. Strange but true.

And thats about all I have to say about that...

Borders mean bugger all

Dont think because you are in Africa and that I am in a first world developed country that things are always better.
Just a few things of the weeks thats been
There's been an outbreak of bacteria in the water in Östersund, thousands (read 20) of people have had been stricken with stomach ailments this last week. There is a plea to boil all our water, even for brushing teeth. Ja ok thanks.

The train service has been given a dunce award this week, after refusing to assist a disabled man off at his stop, so he had to travel to the last stop in the train line. This comes one week after I had a lovely 12 hour ride with the train service, which actually was a bus ride, not a train.

Temperatures have not risen about -7. This means that everything is frozen outside. It also means that bikes dont work to well. My bike for one disintegrated, it fell apart. Other peoples bikes have snapped chains, brakes fail due to being iced up. And most people have at least one story of falling off on ice.

On the other hand, things still work, Christmas comes early, its the first advent so there are lights, candles and decorations everywhere. The smell of glögg and spices fills most peoples places you visit and everywhere people are getting more cheery and actually respond to a friendly hello.

So just signing off from another average week...

To keep you relatively informed of the happenings

News in Östersund (In swedish)
News ÖP

Weather in Östersund
Click here

Web Camera's in Östersund
Click here

Day light savings and two decades back in fashion

Time for an update on a few things that have been going on in Östersund.

Firstly, the most notable thing that changes daily is the weather. On average, since August, the sun has been setting about 20 minutes a week earler. Some days it loses up to 6 minutes in time that it shines. Its the most bizarre sensation. the sun starts setting at 15h30 and by 16h30, its dark, and I mean DONKER! Makes you want to start cooking supper.
It also explains another aspect of fika. The midafternoon slump, and to fool yourself that you dont need to make supper at 4 PM, you have a fika, it works wonders.
But not so much for the waisteline!
To combat this lose of daylight, most European countries (and Namibia, strangely enough) introduces Daylight Savings Time. As from the 31st of October, all watches move back one hour. No its not a halloween prank, its serious.
So come Sunday morning, i set my alarm clock...wake up, get ready for church, and realise I am one hour ahead...DOH! I can almost assure you that I was not the only one who was an hour early.
When summer comes and I have to move it foreward an hour its going to be fun explaining that.
So, Sweden, who was GMT +2, is now GMT +1. Takes a bit of getting used to:)

And to coincide with the first Day Light Savings time, I have started a movement here, a fashion movement that is a few decades back in time, not one hour.
"Mo"-vember. Growing a Moustache for the Month of November, hence: MOVEMBER. Its actually an australian concept (trust them to come up with it), but its actually for a good cause. Check out www.za.movember.co.za for the laugh.
So a clean shaven look persists for this week and a moustache will follow suit, I will post a picture for sure.

So, a preview for the next post: LONDON BABY!!

Taste the wilderness

Bear Grills never made it to the Swedish wilderness...the skog or whatever you want to call it...so in lieu of his absence, I have come up with a few video clips to keep all the fans of Bear Grills happy till he makes something in Sweden...

Always need an adventurous pose

So the theme of today's episode "Taste of the wild". It basically involves some culinary delights that you need to survive in this barren place.
Location: Fröson Island, somewhere in the centre of Sweden, in a nature reserve.
Weather: 2 degree's, cloudy, snowing at some point.
Present: Uh..,the presenter, yours truly.
Mission: To waste a few hours of the day away and have a good time doing it.
Outcome: You decide...

Action pic...it was actually snowing at the time

It was an impromptu decision to go out hiking, was miles away to get too, mostly uphills, but was a great find.
Scene 1:

Familiarisation, getting your bearings right, working on the terrible accent, taking inventory of what you have (a stick and knife and you are set) and getting something to drink. Hydration is key.

Scene 2:

Scene 2 is actually finding water, making sure its safe to drink and utilising your survival techniques.
 
Scene 3 was eating what I had scavenged from the nearby environment.

The following image is the "going out" scene. It was supposed to be for a different travel program I want to create, but the lower half of my body was cut off in the self timed picture, so naturally I cant use it for "that" show...

This is the "going out" image

THE END


And now, is a scene from the next episode: What-a-lot-of-water

Åre awesome-ness

Great weekends are often never planned, leaving you open to any experience, having no expectations of whats to come, which means the chances of you having a mind blowing experience are very good. This first weekend in October was no exception.

After a hectic week at university, we decided as a group of friends to take time out. I had seen that Åre, the popular ski town (http://www.are360.com/en-gb.aspx) was having a autumn market this weekend. So we decided to check it out for a day. Student tickets were booked on the train and we decided to meet up on Saturday morning to go to Åre, departure time, 07h18, prefect.

I must just mention at this point, that we had also decided that Friday night we’d meet up, maybe watch a home movie, or just enjoy each other company as a group of friends. This happened, we ended up going out, having a great party and getting home at 02h30. Let me just say that when the alarm went off at 06h00 on Saturday, the realisation of what we had done to ourselves with 3 hours sleep was a grim reminder that this was going to be a long day. I wasn't the only one who felt this way, thankfully, and the train left with us all catching up on a brief hour of power.

Arriving in Åre, the drop in temperature was a great way to wake us up. We arrived a few hours before anything opens (everything opens at 11 in a small town), so a simple breakfast bought from ICA, a local supermarket has to suffice for the time being. We decided that the guys and girls would split up and we could explore and enjoy the market to our own wills. 

Åre is a stunning looking town, focussed on skiing, but trying hard to keep its self popular throughout the year. With a backdrop of mountains and a lake, it certainly wins a prize for a good looking town.

The market was a collection of traditional food, delicacies, sweets, hats, crafts, plants...blah blah you get the idea. There is only so much traditional spicy sausage, Elk heart and fresh bread you can eat in a day. Nonetheless, it was really good to just get out and enjoy the sights and sounds of the place. Lunch was traditional raggmunk, (potato pancakes, served with bacon and lingon).

With most of the town explored by lunch time, the girls suggested that we take the gondola (cable car) up to the top of the mountain, Åreskutan. Great  idea it turned out to be. The cable car is approximately 2.9kms long, goes up over 853meters in height to near the top of the mountain, which there remains 800 metres to climb to the very top, a height of 1420 metres. Once up, it was freezing! The temperature was probably 6 or 7 degree’s, but the wind was thumping, with wind chill, it was probably 2 or 3 degree’s.

The climb up started really slowly, there was snow up on the top, which was a great distraction to most of us up there. First snow in Sweden since arriving here...

Climbing over rocks, ice and snow is not a strong point for our two Asian friends, so the going started really slow. They eventually decided to walk back to the warmth of the station on the mountain, which left Kai, Sonia (a German girl which this was first time to hike a mountain) and myself to climb to the top of the Åreskutan.

In short, it was amazing. The view was incredible, the wind was whipping like mad, it was a feeling of total elation being on the top.

Once down, we enjoyed some more traditional food, ever tasty glass (ice cream) and just chilled out till the train arrived to take us back. Happy faces all around from a full day out...

Well back to routine this week, another test and more academia awaits...

Its been almost two weeks since my last post, its about time to update on whats been the buzz up in Norland. Things are really starting to settle down and routine's are forming. Its easy to get like that, so a good shaking up is always good for keeping things interesting.
Its finally great to have internet in the apartment, its taken ages for them to install the line, but now that its installed it really rockets, an average of 1Mb/s. (For those who, like me are not that familiar with tech speak, it means that its a pretty fast connection). This new addition really makes it easier to keep connected with family...and waste great time surfing the net and all other things associated with the internet.
University is in full swing, with normal classes happening twice a week, much much reading and preparing of work in the rest of the time. Already, we have two assessments due in this last week of September, with a written test the week after.
On top of this, Swedish language courses have also started, and I have decided to take two separate courses, both part time, to learn as much as possible, as fast as possible. :) Let see how it goes...
Autimn (Höst) has set in and temperatures are cooling quickly. Last night, the 25th of september we finally recorded the first frost (The huge lake nearby keeps things regulated to an extent, hence the late frost), with the night time average dipping to -0.7 degree's. The day time high's are also around 7 or 8. But the sun shines and when it does it makes it much much easier to handle.
This is really a great place to keep fit and be outdoors, and many many people here in Östersund take advantage of the outdoors. Once again, Östersund this year is hosting the Swedish Biathlon Championships in December, this is the kick ass sport of skiing and shooting...very very cool. And all over in the forests and off road tracks, people are practising on roller ski's till it snows...
And on that note of snow, I have finally seen the first snow's. The fjall's (mountain ranges) around here were covered in snow today on the run, its so beautiful, I will post a photo as soon as possible on this...
The 24th of September was National Braai Day in SA...it was one of the days that I really missed being back home. It was 7 degree's and raining here in Östersund, while in SA, people were in shortsleeves and having braai's...gosh I missed it tons.
So I celebrated, by making a Malay curry, drinking an SA wine and enjoying an eve with a few friends...wasnt the same, but in my heart I was with all you in SA...


So, all in all, autumn greetings from a cooling Norland...