pachyderms

I dream strange dreams these days:

Yesterday I travelled inside a huge building, with busses and tramways driving along the corridors and there were time tables too...

Today I dreamt I was on my way in a muddy landscape to meet a friend by the sea. I come to a little hill rising in front of me with hundreds of vultures sitting there or flying around it. They eat people who are hurt and bleeding and I see that some of the birds even miss a leg that the others have eaten. I'm not really scared, but I'm not crazy either, so I go back.

Suddenly I see two baby elephants lying in the mud and playing. I stop, amazed and happy, because I have never seen any elephants of course (and no vultures too...). Their mother appears and I know she's probably going to think that I want to harm her children, so I run away. As I turn around, one of the little elephants showers my back - I feel warm water running down my spine.

I consider that I could maybe calmly explain myself to the elephant-mother, so there's no need to run away. I don't really know what to tell her, but I simply want to be in their presence.

I meet her in a dingy bathroom (I think it is even in the house I travelled in yesterday?). Her eyelashes make the air on my right cheek swirl. I see her huge head next to me reflected in the mirror, the trunk gently swinging above the sink, the warm and wrinkly skin of her left shoulder close to mine. I don't dare to touch her and I don't think she would like it. We don't talk, we are just standing side by side.

And suddenly I am sitting in a train and I see the sundown on the northern sea through its dirty windows. I hold my face out the window. I know I'm going to meet my friend.

victor-Y!

There are these strange noises in my ears (*huiiishwhooompwhooomp*) and I think I'm hallucinating: letters and phrases swirling around me! I guess my brain is not really used to reading at a speed of some 250 pages per 5 hours - and I'm not talking about the easy-to-read literature you grab when you're waiting for the hairdresser to give you a makeover or the doctor to check you!
It's not very respectable yet I need to praise myself for today's work, otherwise I'll never get myself to do it again - although I really need to (tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and the day after the day after tomorrow, ...) Can you believe that all this reading is necessary to write a 5-pages-essay?

But at least my grey matter is stuffed with facts about this genius called Victor Sjöström (or Seastrom, as Americans have re-named him). Please, go and watch one of his movies because I don't have the time to. As far as I read Ingeborg Holm, The Phantom Carriage, Name the Man, He who gets slapped, and of course The Scarlet Letter, are totally recommendable (don't watch He who gets slapped, though, if you happen to be afraid of clowns). It's almost tragicomic that I could give you a detailled overview on Sjöströms achievements and his importance for the development of film as an independent art form without ever having seen any of his work.

But maybe I just discovered one of the beautiful side-effects of studying: one can talk a lot and still be a total ignorant.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that the films mentioned above are silent movies. But this is not an excuse to go past Victor Sjöström! Watch Bergman's Wild Strawberries instead (Sjöström plays the central character) - you'll love it. At least I did.

hello brain? anyone in there?

Tell me, is this a big pile of books?

It isn't. But it alarms me that I have it in my room since I'm here. Today I only returned the first book. After 2 months... Do I only imagine myself being a highspeed-reader?! What is going on here? (And I know that was a tremendously stupid question to ask)

I don't even have the excuse that the books are uninteresting, because they simply aren't. They are fascinating. This book I returned today was about Americanization in Sweden and it's one of the most intelligent ones I've read in the last 2 months. But my eyes stick to the printed letters, like glue...

Besides, I have some assignments/essays to hand in by next week and I still havent the faintest idea of the things I should write about. I think it has something to do with Ingmar Bergman and Viktor Sjöström... but I already forgot. I don't freak out, which I find utterly impressing! And again, it would be unnecessary and stupid to ask why this is so...

In addition to that, I'm having a hard time trying to get my brain to remind some strange-sounding words of a totally freaked-out language that my mouth refuses to pronounce properly.

It's a big mess.
I love it!

P.S. to Silvia: I still look like an alcoholic...

foooooood!

I spent Friday evening and Saturday afternoon preparing a lot of food for about 20 people. Dava came up with the idea to have a party and then I came up with the idea to cook dishes from Germany, Austria and France. So we had Styrian pumpkin soup, Bavarian Obatzda with a lot of bread, eggs and vegetables and finally French Mousse au Citron... We even had some delicious Tartiflette, thanks to Lolo... I just woke up and had a huge Sunday morning breakfast and I found that it makes me so utterly happy to cook for people (and even for myself) that I should do this more often...

I really enjoyed cooking for you, I'm happy that you liked it and that you had a good time! Thank you for coming, everybody!

More pictures here

1 liter of buttermilk, a load of lemon zest, even more sugar, 75 dl of cream and a lot of love -
it all fit in three stomachs!

cries and whispers

Another Bergman film today... Funny, I had done a lot of reading before actually watching it and there was a lot that was just as I had imagined and a lot that did not touch me the way I had expected. I guess that this film must be shocking for people who have never talked about death openly, nor reflected it frankly nor have experienced the death of a loved one.

The movie reminded me of my grandmother whom I think a lot of these past weeks. People often tell me that I look a lot like her, that I even move like her. It's true that I often had the impression of looking in a mirror when looking at old pictures of her. I inherited her restlessness, her eyes, her hair, her silhouette, her nails - but she never gave me the chance to get to know this person I'm appaerently so alike.

I saw her die and I don't think of that time as an especially dark or depressing one although it was all very moving. I remember being very curious about her state, especially about her thoughts. I wanted to know what it is like to face death, I did want to learn everything I could from her and I told her that more than once. She always refused. She always used to turn away, mute. Maybe she thought that I would be afraid of what she had to say? Or maybe it was all just too personal for her. I'm almost sure that my request forced her to think about what she didn't want to face.

Still it's the only thing I can't let go: that she refused my hand and didn't want to give me hers.

caught between two stools

Please compare the following two pictures:

Sweden, Skane, somewhere near Lomma

Somewhere in Austria

I met a girl from Nepal the other day at a party and the first thing that came to my mind was: "How does she deal with all these missing mountains???"

I was really curious how the south-Swedish landscape would affect my mental constitution. Until then I had always turned into a depressed and dull something (I wouldn't even have called myself human anymore) when I was in a place where I could see the horizon wherever I turned. So naturally, I'm quite surprised of myself being in a content state of mind since I'm here, neither down nor disgusted by the even land. On the contrary I can't stop boring my environment (and my readers) to death with my exalted statements about how much the vastness and openness here just wow me...

But then...

I had another look at the pictures my dad sent me the other day. I knew it would be dangerous, so I only threw a hasty glance the first time.

But I just took another close look at those pictures a few minutes ago.
Hew...

And now I can smell the comforting coolness of the woodlands (firs, pines, larches...), I see the pale blue outlines of hills and mountains against the horizon, the forests painted in gold, red, brown, yellow and green... I hear the creaking of wooden floors in old cottages and the ringing of cowbells, I feel the stones near the river where I like to sit and the grass of our municipal park, I taste the autumn breeze in grilled corncobs, Sturm (a beverage in between must and wine) and chestnuts, sitting in a wineyard... I hear my friends chatting and laughing in the garden or cooking with me in the kitchen (ok, I just lied - I would never let anyone get between me and the pans and pots). I see myself swimming in the Ossiachersee in the middle of the night, all alone and perfectly content, or standing on top of the Loser-mountain, or driving through snowcovered, dreamy Vienna sitting in the tram (with this horrible man's voice coming out of the loudspeakers - I love him!). I remember the many times I forgot everything around me during long walks with my camera. I even think of the stuffy lecture room I spent most of my last semester in with an affectionate smile on my face.

I know it's all stereotype...
I know, I know...

I'm not homesick at all.

I only know I'm gonna cry like a baby and kiss the earth when my feet touch Austrian ground again. And I love Sweden for giving me this insight!

opa! opa!

Following the magic scents in the enchanted Botanic Garden
***

Basically, you run into a lot of friends every day here in Lund just while walking from one library to the other. The other day I met Theo on his new purple bike, doing what he likes most here: getting lost in the city. So we fixed an appointment for today to get lost together.

It seems to me that this Greek guy has the gift of detecting the most enchanted places just by straying in the streets thinking some philosophical thoughts(needless to mention that he lives in a kind of gingerbread-house...). So after forgetting time in a charming antique shop run by an even more charming Swedish lady (who even fed my hungry hungry art-historian brain) we kind of stumbled on the old cemetary. This, my friends, is definitely the most beautiful place to be dead I have ever seen (right after the cemetary of Hallstatt). We basically just tumbled from one enchanted spot to the other - after the cemetary it was the huge Botanic Garden, which is stuffed with all sorts of trees and herbs and flowers from all over the world (I know this is the purpose of such a place...) and the most dazzling multitude of ethereal scents one could ever imagine.

It is now pretty clear that I'll absolutely have to go to Greece one day (ok, let me see, just after I have visited all these people from New Zealand, Germany, Russia and Spain...). I mean, just the fact that Greeks have one little word to express the whole range of human emotions wows me so deeply that I won't be able to think about anything else than this wise people for days. Listen, opa! is not only used to express your feelings of joy (e.g. while dancing), but also when you or someone else behave in a very clumsy way (like "oops!"), or again when you are attacked physically or verbally to put the person back in it's place.

It is fascinating how being abroad gives you the opportunity to discover both the foreign and mainly the own culture from a totally new point of view. I look at the notion of national identity in a completely new way now, and most of all, I like what I see.

Push the button to see more pictures...

Swedish antique shop

old cemetary

Botanic Garden

Autumn sun

facts, facts, facts II

Hermes got a fancy pair of shiny new boots to fly high...

1. Die Durchschnittstemperatur liegt bei 12°, die durchschnittliche Niederschlagsmenge liegt bei etwa einer Badewanne/qm alle 2-3 Tage, dazwischen überdurchschnittlich viel Sonnenschein. Die Sonne bereitet sich ab etwa 6 Uhr aufs Schlafengehen vor, dafür braucht sie durchschnittlich 2 Stunden und viele Farben. Ich gehe durchschnittlich 4 Stunden nach ihr ins Bett und erwache durchschnittlich um 8:30 (2 Stunden nach ihr). Ich gehe täglich etwa eine Stunde zu Fuß und drinke 2 l Wasser und eine Tasse Milchkaffee.
   
2. Die durchschnittliche Rad-Reparatur dauert 4 Werktage und kostet etwa 150 Kronen (16€).
3. Der durchschnittliche schwedische Autofahrer fährt durchschnittlich mit 40 km/h und bremst prophylaktisch etwa 10 Meter vor dem Zebrastreifen. Außerdem kann es auch gut sein, dass er mitten im Kreisverkehr stehen bleibt, um einen anderen Autofahrer hinein zu lassen. Ich weiß nicht, ob sie das System wirklich durchschaut haben, oder ob ich da etwas falsch verstehe?...
4. Schwedische Mädchen kennen keine Hemmungen, sich in der Öffentlichkeit ausgiebig und lange im Spiegel zu begutachten, weder allein noch im Rudel. Das ist ein nicht zu unterschätzender Unterhaltungsfaktor!
5. Es gibt hier sehr wenig frei herumlaufende Katzen. Warum? Die Schweden gehen mit ihren Katzen Gassi. Angeleint. Ja. Wirklich! Wirklich!!!
6. Schweden ist eine gigantomanische Kinderfabrik. Hier ist alles aufs Kinderkriegen ausgelegt. Super. Auf der Straße ist jede zehnte Frau sichtbar schwanger, die Dunkelziffer ist bestimmt wesentlich höher. Die Schweden scheinen Kinder regelrecht zu züchten. Ich habe einen Nachbarn, der 4 Söhne hat (ja Bnerd, es gibt noch einen Zwerg außer dem Großen und den Zwillingen!). Und sie sehen alle gleich aus. Es ist beängstigend.
   
7. Jede Bibliothek hat ihr eigenes System, was die Sortierung der Bücher betrifft. Was in der einen alphabetisch geregelt wird, geht in einer anderen nach einem mir schleierhaften, geheimnisvollen Sortier-Mechanismus vor sich, der zum Beispiel dazu führt, dass Bücher zum Thema "Ethnologie" in einem Regal mit dem Buchstaben "M", oder "Mz" untergebracht sind, usw. Ich brauche also jede Menge Intuition und einen scharfen Blick, um manche Bücher zu finden! Die durchschnittliche Menge der pro Woche zu lesenden Seiten beträgt 650. Tatsächlich bewältigt: etwa 400.
8. Durchschnittliches Lebensgefühl: SUPER!

*°*°*

1. The average temperature is 12° Celsius, the average rainfall is about a bathtub/sqm every 2 or 3 days. The sun prepares to go to bed at about 6 pm and it takes her 2 hours and a lot of colours. I go to sleep 4 hours after her and I usually wake up at 8:30 am (about 2 hours after her). I walk about 1 hour each day, I drink 2 liters of water and one cup of coffee.
2. Getting your bike fixed takes about 4 days and will cost you 150 Swedish Kronor.
3. The average Swede drives 25 miles/hour and starts to slow down 20 meters before the crosswalk. He may even halt when driving in the roundabout to let an other car in. Hm, I'm not sure if they don't get what this is about, or if I should re-think my expectations...
4. Swedish girls are not ashamed of closely examining their looks in public, wether it's alone or with their friends. This can be very entertaining (at least you can leave your books @ home when you go to a café...)
5. There are very few cats strolling around here in Sweden. The reason for this is that Swedish people prefer to take their cats for a walk. With collar and leash and everything, believe me. Believe me!
6. This country is one giant baby-factory. Everything is well-prepared for having millions and millions of children. Every 10th woman on the street has an enormous belly, I dare not think of the average number of yet invisible pregnancies! Maybe it is exceptional for a Swedish woman not to be pregnant? My neighbors have 4 boys who actually look the same, just if they had been produced in a plant - it's so scary...
7. Each library has a totally different sorting system. One may use the alphabetical sorting but that may not be the case at all in an other library. Sometimes I have to forget everything I ever learned about the alphabet or about sorting in general and have to use all my imaginative powers and female intuition to find a book. For example the books dealing with ethnology are placed in racks with the letters "M" or "Mz" in the main library. The average amount of pages I have to read each week is 650. I actually manage about 400.
8. Average feeling: GREAT!