in deutsch, Gedanken

Das Auslandsjahr bringt mich viel zum Nachdenken. 1500km von Zuhause fange ich plötzlich an darüber nachzudenken, was ich mit meinem Leben anfangen will und große Entscheidungen zu treffen. Weit weg vom Alltag und mit einem komplett neuem Lifestyle beginne ich darüber nachzudenken, was ich gerne besser machen würde, wenn ich zurück nach Deutschland komme. Begreife, wie privilegiert ich bin, beginne dankbar zu sein, für Sachen, die früher selbstverständlich waren.

Gestern habe ich ein Sudoku gemacht, ich glaube ich werde super langweilig, aber dafür mache ich auch wieder ganz andere komplett neue Sachen, die seltsam erscheinen, sage Ja zu allem. Entweder es ist überraschend gut oder es ist scheiße und dann habe ich später wenigstens eine Geschichte zu erzählen. Von dem Moment als ich Kalles Kaviar gegessen habe zum Beispiel oder andere awkward situations, als ich to do someone statt to be at someone's place auf schwedisch gesagt habe. (Jaja, die Präpositionen. An euch Austauschschüler sagt niemand jag är på NAME seid, niemals :D )Ich bin kein Fan von Kalles Kaviar aber:" At least I tried." :)

Außerdem habe ich wieder entdeckt, was mir mal wichtig war, mich interessiert hat. Habe bemerkt, dass ich eine überzeugte Feministin bin, es mir wichtig ist, gegen Fremdenfeindichkeit vorzugehen, dass Psychologie wirklich ist,was ich später machen will und auch dass ich Sudokus mag. So bescheuert das klingt.

everyday life ( and autumnholidays)

Hey
I want to tell you about my everyday life here in Sweden. For me it's nothing special anymore, obviously,but it's the thing I get the most questions most about, so I decided to do a blogpost about it.

School starts 8:30 for me everyday. Except for monday. On monday, it's 10:25. So I usually get up at 6:30, get ready and eat breakfast, then I take the bus at 7:30 to Uppsala. I have two or three lessons before lunch, which I eat at about 12am. We have to walk 10 minutes through the city to get to "matsalen", the cafeteria. The lunch is free, as I might have already mentioned a few times. Then we go back to school and have a few more lessons. My swedish is going okay, I guess. There are people that I talk only swedish with, like my little hostbrother Aaron and most classmates. But there are also people, that I only talk english with, like most friends and exchange students. To my hostfamily I speak both, swedish and english. Same with my teachers. But I write most of my tests in english at the moment, like psychology and sociology. That might be a little too hard in swedish, at the moment. Beside that I also wrote an english test- in english obviously, a french test- in french, and an italian test- in italian and swedish. It is quite a lot to study for, but my teachers are super sweet and supportive, so it's fine.
My school ends at 4pm two times a week, at 5pm once, at 2pm once,  and at 18:15 on mondays, because I have an extra swedish course in my school after my usual lessons with 10 other exchange students. After that, we often have fika together in my favorite café, vox.
I do parkour and gymnastics on wednesday. Also I sometimes go to a church youth group with my older hostbrother David. I started painting, though I have never been a big fan of art, but it's very fun though. I meet up with Noemi (hungarian exchange student) and a friend which is in her class once a week in vox café's atelier and we spend one or two hours painting, talking and having fika. Last week, I found out that the school has a gym. It's not open yet but it will open soon, so David (my older hostbrother) and me bought a gym card. Also I go dancing with Noemi. I'm considering to join the scouts, because it seems like a fun thing to do, but I don't know if I have time for this.
After school I take the bus home and eat dinner with my host family.

On the weekends, we often do things with the family, like visiting relatives (most of them live in beautiful Darlana), going on short trips, or going other places, like museums, the swimming pool or eating out. Chinese food mostly. And sometimes we stay at home the whole weekend, so everyone rests a little, I meet up with friends and watch netflix a lot. We watch many movies together as a family, also on weekdays.


Today is saturday and we had one week of autumnholiday. I had a few days, where I did nothing but resting, but I also met friends, went to the swimming pool with my family, went to the naturhistorisk museet with them and had a good time.

By the way, I don't know if I will write my blog in german and swedish, or english. It's good for practising swedish, but I can't really express myself and tell everything I want to tell. I think I'll just change, and do it however I want to. Plus, it takes such a long time!

The chaos in my head with a these languages is not so bad anymore. German and english are the languages I think with. I also started thinking in swedish sometimes, which is pretty cool, but maybe 1% of my thoughts. Writing or speaking french or italian is pure torture for my brain still. The swedish word is always the frst thing that comes to my mind, when I tell my brain to think in another language than german or english. And then I think of the french or italian word. So my french is far from being fluent! When I wrote an essay in french, I even forgot the french word for today and couldn't find it until the essay was over. But it does not matter anyway, because my french class is very bad, they ony speak swedish, not a single french word. I can't blame them, all they do is watching easy movies in french with subtitles and writing essays. They never get to speak the language. The teacher speaks 50% french, 50% swedish during the lessons. It took me a while to figure that out, I can't exactly tell if he's speaking swedish or french, because the languages are about at the same level for me.

I'm gonna eat breakfast now, and then read a book for my english class, later I will go to the recycling station with my hostfather, probably. Maybe I will tell you about it, if it's not exactly like the german recycling stations. They say it's a big thing here, you go there sometimes on saturdays and you meet many neighbours or friends there. But as I think of it now, it does not seem to be any different from Germany. Well anyway, I hope you have a good day.

At the grandparents

Hallo. Ich bin wieder zurueck. Die letzte Zeit war stressig. Deswegen habe ich mich nicht gemeldet. Ich haeb viele Arbeiten geschrieben und bin generell viel unterwegs. Am Wochenende haben wir die Grosseltern väterlicherseits besucht. Und die Tante mit ihrer Familie. Sie leben auf einem Bauernhof, der sehr sehr schwedisch aussieht. Und in dem Ort gibt es viele Seen. Ich habe viel fotografiert. Vor allem die Haustiere. Am Sonntag hatten wir ein Treffen mit anderen Gastfamilien und Austauschschuelern. Es war sehr lustig, finde ich. Ich habe viele neue Ideen bekommen. Wir hatten fika und habe ueber die Zeit in Schweden gesprochen.

Hej. Jag är tillbaka. Den senasten tiden var jätte jobbigt. Så ni har inte hörd från mig. Jag har skrivad mångo prov och jag är alltid väldigt upptaget. På helgen har vi träffad farfar och farmor i Dalarna. Och faster med sin familj. De bor i en stor bondgård i Dalarna som ser ut jätte svenskt. JAg ahr fotograferad mycekt. Framför allt husdjuren :)
I söndag hade vi ett möte med andra värdfamiljer och uttbytestudenter. Det var jätte kul, tycker jag. Jag   Vi har ätit fika och pratade om tiden i Sverige.

Prince Daniel in my school and Northern Lights

07.10.2015

Today I saw Prince Daniel. He was at our school. With 3 other people. Doing a presentationsbout entrepreneurship (how to build and run companies basically). Why did he came to MY school? Because it's kinda fancy. It's a great school and many people want to go there. And a few of the nobel laureats went to the school. And the guy who invented skype. He was also there today . We had to stand when the prince entered. That was weird for everyone. Because in Sweden everyone is equal. And you never stand up when the teacher enters the room or something. But he didn't had much to say, it was mostly the skype-guy who talked. It was quite interesting I think, but I couldn't understand everything.

After training, it was about 22:15, my hostfather, bigger hostbrother and me drove home and I started to see the northern lights. We stopped the car, got out of it and looked at it. It was so impressing. It was the first time for all of us to see northern lights. We drove home, put on some warmer clothes and drove around to find a place where it's completely dark without any disturbing lights. Because in our village there were too many streetlights. It was only my hostfather, my hostsister and me.  On the way, I saw a shooting star and made a wish :) I have only seen 2 or 3 shooting stars in my whole life.  We found a field, there were two rabbits that I could see and I don't see many rabbits in wildlife usually. So that was quite cool too.  We watched the northern lights and the stars for a while. It was very beautiful. The northern lights were not so strong as you know them from pictures but though it was so cool to see how quick they moved

What you expect

 What it looked like in the village next to vattholma

How we saw it

. Sadly I didn't bring my camera to Sweden. That was a bad decision because in 6-7 weeks that I'm here now, I have already seen so many beautiful things that I don't want to forget about. Today we spoke about the northern lights and people told me that you can't see them in Uppsala. Or once in 10 years. I am so lucky!

It was very cold, so we drove home. At home my hostfather told us about his time in the military. Because at an earlier time you had to go to the military education. But now you don't. It was the same thing in germany. But these storys are not so fun. Hearing how they had to sleep outside when it was very cold, or in a tent when it was -35°C outside is more interesting.

How can one be so lucky? Crazy how much great things happened today. I'm very happy to be here and to experience all these nice things, that I wouldn't experience in Germany. 

Culture: Swedish food

Hey again. I thought this post was lost, I wrote it this week and then I shut down my computer without thinking. But here it is:

When it comes to food, Sweden and Germany is very different.

Here are some things that I think are remarkable:

Milk:
Swede's drink a lot of milk with their food. In my school cafeteria there are 2 kinds of drinks that you can choose between. Water and milk. In my previous swedish school, there was another kind of drink. It's saft. And there's such a strange way of opening the milk package. It's so conplicated. I can't describe it because I can't open it either. But every Swede can. I really need to learn it to be swedish. 

Saft:
Saft is basically syrup with water. Swede's drink it a lot. It's very good. You can have it in different flavors, such as: Pear, orange, elderflower...
(Swede's like to have pear flavour in their drinks. They also have normal water with a little pear flavour in it. My hostmother loves it very much ;) )

time of the meals
Swede's eat early. Lunch between 11 and 12 o'clock. Dinner between 6pm and 7pm.
3 o'clock is Fikatime!

FIKA:
It's what german would call "Kaffee und Kuchen", something like teatime in England. In the classical way, It's drinking coffee and eating cake, or some bakery stuff. But now every snack you have together with someone is a fika. Fika is a meal that is about having a nice chat with someone

kanelbullar
It does not look as good as it tastes. But when I had my first kanelbullar, It was stunning. There's a special way to eat it. From the outside to the inside, in circles. Because in the middle there's the most cinnamon. 

Princesstarta

I just had it once, but it's very good :)

coffee
You can get coffee wherever and whenever you want to It's quite cheap in the most places. Swede's drink a lot of coffee and start drinking coffee at an early age.

Tack for maten.
You always say thank you for the food to the person who cooked. I think that is a nice gesture and I wish we'd do that in Germany more often.

swedish culture particularities

Sorry for my abscence. Obviously, I'm not good at blogging regulary. But today I have some funny things that deal with swedish culture for you.

Sverige biten [swedish piece/bite]:
When Swede's eat, cake for exmple (but it's the same with every kind of food), nobody takes the last piece. If you really want it, you'd take half of it. And the next person takes the half of the half until it's ridiculously small. Then you stop. Because nobody dares to take the last piece. This phenomenum is called "Sverige biten".

Dansk:
Sweden has been in war with Denmark for 300 years. Calling someone dansk is an insult.

Russen kommer
My favorite one. It means: the russian is coming. It's not the russians but just one particular russian. Like one russian is threatening enough :D Like the rest of the world, Sweden is afraid of Russia. Although they know, that Russia does not mean to attack them. Because nobody wants to attack peaceful Sweden. But the uneasy feeling, the distrust stays. In germany we have that phrase: "the russians are coming", although not everybody of you might know about it because we never use it.

Does not really fit here, but I laugh so hard everytime I see this video:
http://9gag.com/gag/aw74Mpx/omg-putin-shinzo-abe-prime-minister-of-japan
how the japanese prime minister is running and gets so excited about meeting Putin, his great idol :D  I could look at this for hours :D

Eurovision Song Contest
It's a big thing here. Sweden is always high ranked. Last year they won again. If you wonder how they finance it here's the answer: They have pre contests in Sweden in which they choose who will sing this year. It's 6 weeks. And almost every Swede's watch it. And often they're ashamed of doing this, but they still do.

Nordfront:
A word that I as a german better never say. It's like the swedish NPD.
 Generally I have to say, that Germany has no bad reputation here. And they like Angela Merkel very much, for her refugee politics. They know much about german history, german politics, politics in other countrys and their history as well. Do I know a single swedish politician? Ehm, I don't think so. :(

Refugees:
In one of my previous posts, I said that I think Swede's are not really trying to integrate the refugees and foreigners. I don't want to generalize. Because generalizing is something you should not do, when talking about this issue, But many swedish people, (I would say the majority) want to have refugees in Sweden. Because they know, that over the long run, they're good for Sweden. Because of the decreasing birth rate for example. And for the taxes. This week there was a show on TV where famous swedish artists sang and you could spend money. And so many people did. That makes me happy again.
But there's another side, like for every topic. look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSI166wWDII
Fortunately, not too many people think like this old lady with her strange views.

Birthday.
Swedish teenagers have a special way of celebrating someone's birthday. They decorate the person's locker in school. And then they sing. Very nice :)

Tolerance
Swede's are very tolerant. Outing is no problem here. You may be homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, or whatever. They don't care. They tolerate you the way you are. Cool thing. I wished it was lke that in Germany even more.

Health
They live very healthy. I don't see many people smoking. And they don't drink much alcohol either. Many people go to the gym. From the age of 16 to 80. And they often go by bike. Uppsala is the city of the bikers. You really need to be careful when walking around so no bike runs you over.


It's late in the night and I can't think of more particularities in the swedish culture right now. As I already told you, I changed school. It's been 2 weeks now on my new school and I'm very happy that I changed school. That I was brave enough to make the change although I had to start at the bottom again. The people in my new class and school are so nice and more open-minded. I dare to speak swedish, right now. I almost only speak swedish with them. But I have to study very much. That means a lot of translation work. But I'm fine with that.
The first snow fell in Kiruna on thursday. That means that we have snow in 2-3 weeks too. Probably. Who knows. We'll see. I could be more excited for snow. I don't have warm enough clothes yet. But it'll be alright. Maybe. Everybody warns me about winter and says that everyone gets very depressed. 6 more months.....
Anyway. Right now the weather is super good and I enjoy the autumn. Today I didn't even need my jacket.

It's almost half past two in the night so I better go to sleep. I hope you enjoyed the post. And sorry again for not writing. I have so many things to tell you, but no time to write all of it down. And there are so many differencies that I'd like to tell you about, that sometimes, I don't know where to start.


Good night

Franziska