After having a nice new years dinner at Mikael and Nettan’s Bec and I started our busy schedule. We left the next morning with my family to go and visit my brother and his family. After about 2h in the car we arrived at their house outside of Helsingborg. After opening some late Christmas presents with Leo (their 2,5 year old son) as the driving force we had a nice afternoon there before going in to the city for dinner. The next day we took advantage of the snow and constructed an Igloo (snow house) with a little ski slope at the back, another winter activity of the list for Bec. Then we headed home and the next morning it was of to our summer house on Öland.

I’ve never been there in winter before and there were quite a lot of snow so we had to start by shoveling the snow of the driveway. Once in the house the two main tasks was to get the water and the heating going. We have an open fire place and a wood fired heater so after a few hours the temperature had crept up from around 0′C to a more comfortable 18′C, the water was a bit trickier. Because of the cold the water had frozen in the pipes but after boiling some water from melted snow and pored over the pipes we finally got it going late that night.

We spend the next day driving around the island and around 3pm just before the sun sets Bec and I went for a walk to a famous pottery shop to get some exercise and have a look around. Before we headed home again on Thursday we went in to Kalmar and looked at the old castle and an interesting display about an old shipwreck “Kronan” that sunk outside of Öland in 1676.

My quick visit to Australia is over and I’m back in Sweden with four stiches in my right foot as a souvenir. The trip went ok but Finnair doesn’t hold the same high standards as Malaysian unfortunately, no personal tv-screen and pretty ordinary food. It had been snowing in Sweden during the night so this is how it looked when I got home this morning.

After 30 hours on planes I’m now on the other side of the globe again and have swapped -3′C against +25′C and Sun

A little bit tired but not too bad actually and it’s great to see Bec and all my friends over here again.

—- update 18.10 —

I traveled with Malaysia Airlines and it was probably the best flight Sweden-Australia I’ve had. The legroom between the seats where really good and the in-seat entertainment system (our own little TV in front of you) was very good. Between Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur I had 11 channels to choose from that showed movies and TV shows and on the plane to Melbourne I had “video-on-demand” which meant that I could choose between maybe 30 movies and lots of TV programs and look at them any time I wanted. The food was ok, just your regular airplane food (but they did give you ice-cream as a little snack between meals)

Bec’s is doing a late shift at the hospital tonight, we had a nice sleep in this morning though and went to the beach a little while but it was VERY windy so we didn’t stay long and the surf was crap. This afternoon I went to Swell (the cafe I worked at earlier) to visit and I’ve also fixed up the vegetable garden and our tomato plants. Now I’m starting to feel pretty tired but I’ll have to try and stay up a bit longer to get into the right time frame.

I’M GOING TO AUSTRALIA!!!

On Monday 21/11 I’ll take a flight to Melbourne and stay for a week with Bec

It feels a litle bit weird as we weren’t supposed to se each onter till christmas, but at the same time its VERY exciting. The reason that I’m going down now and for such a short time is that about six months ago Me and Bec had planned to apply for a different visa and that I would stay until the end of November. Because of this I bought a return ticke starting in Melbourne on the 28th November. Because of different circumstances I hag to go home earlier and I thought that ‘ok I paid for a return ticket but I just have to juse the return flight from Sweden to Australia’. Unfortunately return tickets are seen as one trip so if I don’t get on the plane in Melbourne in November they cancel my ticket and I cant fly to melbourne in January. Basicly this ment that I had to buy a new ticket either to travel now and start on my previously booked ticket or travel later and lose my ticket. This way at least I get to see Bec and my friends for a week and move some stuff over to Australia.

The trip to Berlin went fine but wasn’t very exciting, 24h on the bus and 9h there. I arrived in Berlin before 06.00 on Monday morning so it was still dark. It was quite interesting walking around in the city with almost no other people around. I got into a shopping mall around 7.30 but no shops were open yet, quite a different experience to walk around window shopping when the whole mall is more or less empty. When I got to the Australian embassy the meeting went very quickly. All the paperwork I provided was fine and we only have to add a few things and I´ll get the visa. Since it was raining in Berlin it wasn´t too exciting being there and I was also pretty tired after not having a very good sleep on the bus so I caught an earlier bus and got home to Gothenburg 03.00 Tuesday morning. Luckily my dad was nice and picked me up at the bus stop. Today Bec found out that she got accepted to the Alfred hospital for her Grad year, it was her first choice so now we only have to hope that she can get a spot in her preferred ward.

Just a few more our to go. Have had enough of Vienna and travelling for this time. It’s a nice city if you’re into old buildings, classical music and antiques though…

Travelling across the globe isn’t the most fun you can have. The flight from Melbourne to Vienna via Singapore was very boring. I had nothing to talk to about with the lady I was sitting next to and my short excitement when I saw which movies they where showing dissapeared quickly when I realized that they for some reason had another schedule with only 4 movies which isn’t too much when you spend 18h on the plane, well at least I managed to have a good 4h sleep, whoohoo! Vienna is really hot today for this time of year (around 30′C). I’ve walked and walked and walked around the city, taken photos of old buildings, went on busses, trams and trains and even taken a guided tour of the opera house. I’m now trying to kill some time at an internet cafe but there’s still over two hours untill I have to cacht the train back to the airport and I really just want to go to bed and snuggle with Bec that I’m missing a lot. It wasn’t as bad as I thought to say goodbye this time mainly since we know that we are committed to each other and that we have a set date (19 dec) for when Bec is coming to Sweden. It will still be really hard to apart for over three months again and probably even harder for Bec since she’s still at the same place doing the same thing but I’m gone. I get to go home and see all my friends and family, start a new job and other exciting things at least. O well with the help of Skype and vSkype we can talk to and see each other over the internet at least, but it will be so much better when all the visa problems are over.

We finally made it to Sydney, it was a very foggy morning in Melbourne so instead of leaving at 08.00 the plane got delayed till 13.00 and once here it’s raining. We really like it anyway and tomorrow we are renting a car to have a better look around

We’re back from Newcastle. We had a really nice couple of days but the city wasn’t really what we was hoping for. In mine and Bec’s opinion Newcastle had some very good things and some very bad. Basicly the area itself with lush forests and nice sandy beaches is great, unfortunately the city isn’t, if we had to describe it in one word it would be “dodgy”. Newcastle have a lot of industries but that doesn’t matter to much since they are located north of the city. As we travelled on the airport bus into the city we thought it seemed pretty nice, but as we saw more and more of the central parts of the city we started to change our minds. Troughout the city there’s a lot of blocked up shops covered vith grafitti, and the general perception of it wasn’t one of a happy friendly place. The same has to be said of the people you saw on the streets, there where quite a few homeless and “unhealthy” looking people. I’m not someone who needs hip and cool people around me but it gave the place a certain vibe which made you feel a bit uneasy. There wasn’t much to do at night so the main thing seemed to be driving around town and doing burnouts and stuff. As you have probably already figured out we are not moving to Newcastle, even if the hospital seemed nice. We are now planning a trip to check out Sydney’s north east part.