Mattias

I came back from a week in Sweden about two weeks ago. Three jobs were really promising and I took another week to consider what to do with my life. Yesterday I accepted a consulting position in Göteborg! I have a good feeling about the company and the tasks I will be given, but I'm still nervous... Today is my last day at work, the new job doesn't start until march - so after two months of intermission a new life begins.  But it was top priority not to have to build up everything from zero, so coming back to Göteborg feels great. I have an apartment and good friends there so in the end I'm coming home, not just moving around again.

It's a lot right now, as you'd put it in Swedish. Things are happening just a little too fast for me at the moment - companies have been calling, some that sound really interesting. They even called from Porsche! But at some point in the process I realized that I was wasting my time - even if I actually would get the job. At the moment, I don't want to be in Germany or anywhere else but in Sweden, I just want to be home for a while, be it Göteborg or be it Stockholm.

At the same time, it's clear that Nadja will be staying with her parents for a while. We never really separated without a plan before - well, the plan is to think out a better plan. But since Nadja's priority is to relax and to be with her family, and mine to work in Sweden and be close to my family and friends, it's the only solution.

It's a bit two-sided for me: I can plan for me, and me only, just like before Spain, but I'll stop living with a very, very nice girl and I'll miss her like crazy.

Nadja handed in her thesis work last wednesday. I had the following two days off, so we rented a car and made a little road trip to Austria. I'll post a few pictures later... We had so much fun!! Checking out Salzburg, visiting her friend Florian in Innsbruck, eating fantastic food... Visiting that cool castle in Bavaria that looks like a Disney castle (Neuschwanstein). Or actually, it's the other way around: it's supposed to be the castle that inspired Disney.

Mmm Austrian food: Forget Italy and France, in Austria you have the best from Germany, Italy and Hungaria all in one culture, it must be tried to be appreciated. Also, it's hunting season so you get deer and stuff. Schnurr schnurr (cat's purring sound in German).

The future: still no clue. We said we'll start talking about it now that she's done. I applied for about a dozen jobs without success. I mainly applied for jobs in Gothenburg, although I sent a few to Stockholm, one to Australia (!) and one to Germany (Porsche... Schnurr schnurr).

But the aim is Gothenburg. It's just too much nice people there to not go back. The sad thing is of course that I don't know what Nadja will do...

Hey! I hope one or two of my former little group of visitors still have found their way here. I haven't been writing lately, but would like to make up for it here and now!

Firstly, the images were taken on a "Via Ferrata", iron road, in the Glarner alps. The blond guy, Simon, is a colleague of mine, and Klaus his friend from college.

So what's been going on in Switzerland? Well, my contract has been prolonged to the end of December. After that I'm most likely going home to Sweden - Nadja, however, does not know what to do. She will probably go back to school, in worst case we will have to separate. I'd hate to see it happen, it's really been a blast living with her.

I'm slowly getting better at climbing, trying to go once or twice a week - it' s a climbing fever in the office right now, almost all the young people have started or taken it up again, so it's never a problem finding a partner! It's sooo much fun...

Anyway, this means that 2008 probably will be spent in Sweden. It remains to find a city, a job, an idea of what I'd like to do :P To be continued...

Thank you Anna for your frequent visits! :) I don't know if it's because of the beautiful pictures or because bög-Peab gives you so much to do that you need breaks all the time ;)

Here my work load has tripled (it was pretty relaxed until now, that is) and things are getting interesant! Yersterday was cool, I went on my own to Zürich to visit a milling plant and check out how the prototypes they build are networked.

So that's a perfect time to take vacation :D on sunday Nadja and I are going to Stuttgart to visit her family, then to Stockholm where we'll see parts of my family, and then we're off to Smâland to the Grufman summer residence :) Wheeee! Can't wait!!!

Waaah, back in the alps!!! Well, the "vor-alps" at least. Nadja and I joined som old friends from Uzwil, who had arranged a little expedition up on Zuestollen, the middle one of the seven aligned peaks that draw the northern border of the east-Swiss alps. (They can be seen as a "dragon back" in the third and fourth photo under the chapter "Äntligen Säntis" in January on this blog).

It was adventurous. The hike is not really difficult but we made some beginner's mistakes like bringing fat-rich food instead of carbonhydrates, and much too little water. We were on the way down and still had 1000 vertical metres (about 3000 feet) to go when we ran out of water. It was a crazy warm day and we had no shadows so it was really straining... At the same time, a girl in the company had a crazy fear of heights so the process was really slow...

We met the cow together with her friends on about 1000 metres above the sea. The were extremely calm and happy, this one came up to Nadja to lick salt from her skin... Hahaha!

It's weird but I could do that hike without any problems with my knees, but I can't seem to run 50 metres without getting pain :P 

Thanx for the supporting comment Malin :) We'll see how much longer I can confuse people with horseshoe maps before they realise that I can't solve practical problems... Or horseshoe map problems, by the way :D

I guess I'm getting a first glance at everyday life rythm now... I feel at home both in the apartment and in the office now, although both places face some changes soon. I'm learning a lot at both places too :)

I've signed up for a mini-triathlon in team, I'll be running and two coworkers will do the skating and biking. I was so excited about taking up running again that I managed to hurt my knees the very first training run... :P They seem to have some sort of infection now.

Yesterday was a bad day, I was really down... I had this feeling that I screwed up at work, that I missed the possibility for a permanent position and that we'll face money problem in october... The whole job situation stressed me a lot. Then today my boss called me to his office and asked how I would feel about a permanent contract. Haha, weird how things work! He didn't promise me anything but the conversation was enough for taking that thought off my mind.

Nadja had her birthday yesterday. She had invited a bunch of friends over, we had cooked like crazy and made a nice buffé. It was really fun meeting more of her friends from the area, we also managed to get the apartment in decent condition so that was a great feeling.

It got a bit late and of course Ray, my "Mitfahrgelegenheit" (something like carpooling) partner, wanted to to extra early today... I managed to get up at a quarter to six and now I'm at the office, dreading the day ahead of me :P But yesterday was fun :D

Interesting stuff at work. Yesterday I witnessed something that could be described as an opinion avalanche. In the beginning of a meeting a guy demonstrated a simple fact about something that had been misinterpreted for years (literally), and at the end of the meeting he had changed everyones view on a critical aspect of the project. It was fascinating because the truth wasn't as much in his demostration as in the mind of the project members - all he did was sending off the tiniest, but correct, little rock to change the landscape forever. What scares me was the precision, it wasn't by accident but neatly planned. He wasn't even there, I had to deliver the message...