Although my aim with the exhibition was purely a brand building exercise for me, I did manage to sell a third of the photographs on the opening day. The rest are still on sale till the end of the exhibition on the 28th of August. The photographs cost 200kr each, but as with 3 other clients, enlargements are available on request. View my contact details.

I have also now published the entire exhibition online, for those who were not able to make it to the opening, and for those who cannot make it to Gothenburg before the end of the exhibition on the 28th of August. View exhibition online.

As always, you're welcome to leave some comments.

Until next time...

Taken in my garden

After a while of bird watching we drove down to the beach promenade where we walked around a bit through the storm and then continued up to the fortress where we had a yummy dinner.

On Sunday it was raining cats and dogs, so that we basically spent the day on the couch looking at vacation pictures and taking it easy. In the evening we went to our favourite Greek restaurant. I could really get a clip card for their Swordfish and vanilla pannacotta. So so yummy. Monday night was spent at home and yesterday it was already time to say good bye. Until Christmas. Which seems very far away... :-(

To not think about it too much and get other things on my mind after having dropped Mom and Dad off at the airport, we met up with Huamei and Anders in town to watch some concerts at the city fair. They were not bad, but it was raining quite much, so that the atmosphere wasn't that great either. But keeping busy is definitely a good thing. Today we started organizing our wedding party that we are having on August 30. This meant basically calling around for table and plate rental etc., checking stores for table decoration, finding a good caterer to make us a carriibean style buffet and ordering a big coconut -lime cream cake. We should be basically all set and just have to take care of drinks. It's a bit sad that some of my friends from Germany can't make it :-(, but I'm so happy that Gill and Carl and David and Chris will be coming over from England!

Tomorrow and on Friday we'll have kick-off days at work, which means that we'll have to make fools of ourselves with some funny games at the amusement park Liseberg tomorrow night. In the weekend Jörgens brother will be visiting and on Saturday we will also help Huamei and Anders move to their new house. So it's a busy time right now, which is good, I guess.

So we just played the Way Out West festival in Gothenburg and I'm sitting here drenched in sweat trying to push back my adrenaline level. I'm should be out of bed and off to work in about 3 hours. Yay.

Thanks to everyone who came out tonight, it was a true blast. I never believe in what we do, I hate our live set as soon as the first note starts to play but tonight I guess we proved me wrong. A room full of people singing along to an R Kelly bootleg doesn't lie. Special thanks of course to Kristoffer who wouldn't shut up about the dancefloor bloodbath he hadhe was planning. Though I guess it mostly the lager speaking.

Right, Brian Eno seems to do the trick. He always does. Off to dream land.

Afterwards we had dinner in the garden again and sat out and chatted over some glasses of wine for really long. On Saturday morning we packed the car and drove up to Värmland to visit the in-laws ;-) It was also the first time we met them after having gotten married. We had a nice moose and chantarelle lunch and afterwards sat out on their porch for a bit. In the early evening we drove out to lake Vänern to take a little walk along the shore before our dinner at a seafood restaurant in the old lighthouse. We had a wonderful classical Swedish three course meal and really enjoyed the evening. On Sunday morning we took a little stroll along the river though the center of Säffle and then had lunch at Jörgens parents' house.

Afterwards we started our trip back home but this time on smaller and more curvy roads. First we stopped at the Håverud aqueduct, a site with a crossing of a railroad bridge, a road bridge and an aqueduct.

After having checked out the place for an hour or so we continued our trip South and then stopped again in Uddevalla to take a walk along the new beach boardwalk.

All along we were really lucky with the weather as the showers mostly hit while we were in the car. Monday though was a totally rainy day. Actually so rainy that record amounts of august rainfall were registered in the Gothenburg area. Jörgen and I went to work and my parents spent a lazy day at home. Tuesday marked my Moms birthday which is why we had an extended breakfast and early time off work. We had coffee and cake in the afternoon and then drove out to the coast to have dinner at a cosy seafood restaurant on the island of Hönö.

The restaurant Tullhuset offers an awesome view over the archipelago and some of the most yummy seafood dishes I ever had! My parents enjoyed it so much, they want to go back there this weekend ;-) By the end of our meal all the clouds had gone and we finished the wonderful day off with viewing a beautiful sunset over the cliffs of the archipelago.

A stairway somewhere near the entrance to the botanical garden here in Gothenburg. It looks kind of mysterious and romantic, a nice place to get married but the guests would probably have to stand during the whole ceremony :P .

Klassiker dedikeret til Delirium Café: "Fylla har skylda" med Falsk/Mathiesen

For et navn, for en logo og for et sted!  Vi snublet over den lyserøde elefant på vores tur i Göteborg. Vi var ikke specielt tørstige efter øl, efter en hård aften dagen før. Men med et sådant navn, skal man jo ind å tjekke stedet!  Det tog kun nogle interessante øl og whiskey’s  og man var igen flyvende. Gårsdagen var glemt. Akkurat efter opskriften!

Lokalet er lyst med lyse treborde, en Prag stemning, en balkon i med hvidt stakit og en stor brændeovn.  Der er flotte ølskilte på væggen, samt der er en god stemning i lokalet.  Lidt humor er det plads til.  Man bliver hurtig vandt til at man i Sverige skal bestille en Stor Stärk.  Her står et skilt som siger ”ântligen en stor stärk” hvor man kan bestille en øl på 3 liter.

De har 39 sorter fadøl, samt 2000 flaskeøl og et fantastisk udvalg af whiskey.  Man får et stort ringbind med menu over alle mærker.  Det tager et par øl bare at komme igennem menuen :-)  Da vi var der om sommeren, var der nogle øl som var ”på semester”, så  det er nogle udsolgt til enhver tid.   Øllene kommer fra 70 lande, og man kan virkelig finde nogle interessante der.  Det er hovedfokus på belgiske øl.  Man kan også få noget at spise.

Er man i Göteborg er det absolut at anbefale!

Du kan få bødt dit deliruim på Kronhusg. 2

Dagens Normism:
"What's up, Norm?"
"Corners of my mouth, Coach."

Udover dette er der tæpper på gulvene, der figurerer og billeder på hylder og vægge.  Der er forskellige tapeter på de forskellige vægge.  I et hjørne er der et lille chambre separee hvor man kan underholde sin kære.  Det er et sted man tager venner med og man kan hygge sig som om man er hjemme
Har faktisk aldrig set et hyggeligere kælderbar!  Denne skal opleves!

Meget tæt på 5 gardiner...

Klassiker dedikeret til stedet:  Va de du, jesus – med Åge Aleksandersen

Dagens Normism:
"How about a beer, Norm?"
"Hey I'm high on life, Coach. Of course, beer is my life." 

Hyggelig betjening og tilpas hyggelig sted, men sammenlignet med de irske falder den lidt igennem.

32 for en stor stärk.

Dagens Normism:
"How's life treating you, Norm?"
"Like it caught me sleeping with its' wife."

A nice view over the lake, not as good as the previous one since there are no reflections in the water because the sun wasn't setting this time. The lake (Smörvattnet) is located in the northeast of Gothenburg, it's pretty easy to get there by bus but when you arrive then you'll have a looong nice walk before you reach your final destination. It's worth it, trust me ;) .

Today was the day before the BIG day, Ana's birthday is coming up tomorrow but we celebrated it early! We had a nice dinner at a cute greek restaurant that turned out to be run by iranians (!) and then we decided to walk over to the Botanical Gardens here in Gothenburg, that turned out to be a huge mistake.

At first the scenery was amazing and we were walking along and taking photographs like the one above until we reached a steel door, curiosity got to us and we opened the door and kept on walking. Pretty soon we realized that we no longer were in the park but that we were in the freaking dark woods! We start looking for someone to ask for directions but they all were either on a bike or running really fast, all hope was almost lost and we were starting to get scared when Ana decided to pick up a long stick so we could defend ourselves against the scary monsters.

Just as she picked up the stick a couple ran past us and she called out to them with the stick in her hand and amazingly this time they actually stopped and told us the way out of the freaking woods. I want to end this entry by saying that "Violence or a slight sign of violence solves pretty much everything".

So, June 25th, 2:07pm, my train arrived at "Göteborg Centralstation" and Cecilia met me at the platform. After a quick "Hello make-out",  we made our way to her place utilizing the fucked-up traimrail system Gothenburg has got. They're not good enough to build a subway, so they shove around some 12 tram lines above ground instead.

Once there, we did nothing for the rest of that day except taking it easy, as we were both tired and had missed each other so much we couldn't get our minds onto planning stuff. The day after looked the same, but it was June 26th, our 3-month anniversary, and we celebrated that by.. well, no we didn't really celebrate it.

June 27th, though, we went checking the festival "Metaltown 2008" held in Gothenburg. Guess who were playing at the time? Bullet for my Valentine was. Since I had no idea they were to be there, I was hugely surprised but we still left kind of quickly. Later that night, I found out that Sabaton had played the same stage some 5 hours earlier and that bugged me a lot. I'll still see Sabaton live in October here in Stockholm though, thank God.

Sometime during that weekend, we watched The Mist on the theatre (What a horrible ending to that movie eh? It sucked) and went to some zoo-like Central Park-wannabe thing called Slottsskogen (transl. The Castle Forest). I didn't see no castles though, hah.

Tuesday, July 1st I believe.. Helena and Angelica came to Gothenburg as well, but they stayed with Helena's cousins, an hour's ride with bus and tram from us. We decided to meet up in town every day for doing what we felt like that particular day, yes.. Tuesday, we simply met up and ate at Burger King, then left them on their own.. Ah well!

Wednesday took us to the biggest amusement park in all of Sweden; Liseberg. It had quite some largeish roller-coasters, like Kanonen (transl. The Canon) and Balder (some Norse mythology crap), which is a wooden rollercoaster. Fairly impressive one as well. I managed to waste $15 on trying to win a huge block of chocolate. No fortune..

Thursday, we all went swimming at Saltholmen (transl. The Salt Islet) and it was a boring and annoyingly hot day over-all..

Friday, July 4th, Independence Day, was full of action though. Bruce Springsteen was playing the Ullevi Stadium and I didn't go to the concert since we were going to the movies once more, this time to see Narnia, the 2nd movie with Prince Caspian and stuff. Fairly good, sure. After this, we went back to our places, Helena and Angelica with Helena's cousins, and me at Cecilia's mother's place with Cecilia. That night proved odd, as Cecilia couldn't get rid of a horrible feeling (she's had it before and, trust me, don't ignore her when she does since it's likely something bad really has happened) but it seems like all was fine. We decided we'd stay up watching a movie instead, so we saw Riddick. Boring, we didn't finish watching it. Instead, we went to bed and.. Haha, after some fun there, we decided we'd try to sleep.

Saturday July 5th, I went back home.. Earlier the same day, though, we bought some hot dogs and some disposable grill thing. We managed to burn a hole in the most magnificent lawn I have ever seen. Had they caught us, we would have probably been arrested for vandalism or something. We escaped though, luckily! I went home with a high-speed train, a $137 ticket and a 3-hour trip. Yuck. I don't want to be here, I want to be with Cecilia. I have never missed someone this much, nor have I ever loved somebody like this..

Missus Magoo

This is the song. There are no visuals. I'm very sorry this happened. This and a lot of other stuff.

Rainbow Ride

Last year, 2007, René proposed to Anna - Also at the opening cermony!

To see the clip of the wedding, click here -> http://gptv.gp.se/player/play/51046

Anna and René, I wish you all luck in the future!

Efter en snabb incheckning med övriga fyrtioo passagerare, (all business class på detta tror jag) det var dags att ta en rad med säten för mig själv (samma med Oliver) och snarast ta bort var fullständig, det var dags att fånga upp på en del sömn. En timme och en halv senare var vi som flyger över de små svenska öar om förhållningssätt till Göteborg. (Eller Göteborg i svenska)

Vi landade på isig landningsbana och hade en snabb exit ur flygplatsen. Återigen försökte jag få en stämpel i passet kontroll, men den vackra damen inte har inte någon utanför den. Jag har också märkt att varje gång jag kommer till Sverige, (trots detta bara är min andra resa till landet av älg) att passkontrollen är alltid kontrolleras av mina damer och alltid har några av de bästa leenden i världen. Det är en trevlig välkommen till ABBA-land.

Oliver hittade transport utanför bussen för att ta oss in i centrala Göteborg. De accepterade engelska eftersom det inte fanns någon valutaväxling platser på flygplatsen (och detta var ex-militärbas) och inga bankomater. Jag trodde att Göteborg City Airport var den viktigaste flygplatsen, men jag hade fel. Det finns en annan flygplats strax söder om Sveriges andra stad.

Bussen resa kostar £ 8 och han accepterade English Pound Stirling sedlar och gav oss ändra tillbaka i svenska kronor. Det är runt 13.5SEK till Pound.

12km senare, genom åkrar och en industrialiserade regionen i staden kom vi fram till de centrala busstationen som ansluter till de centrala järnvägsstationen. Vi hittade ut vår information för buss resan senare (som jag lägger nu gick mycket fel, jag kommer att förklara mer senare i denna dagbok) och gick på vår promenad runt staden. Göteborg city är mycket modernt byggd, med gammaldags svenskt byggda byggnader och busstationen och det största köpcentret var mycket modern, tydlig, rymliga och väl utformade. Denna byggnad var inte en IKEA design. ?

Pris för varor här är dyr men lyckligtvis Jag lyckades komma undan med några souvenirer. Öl var dyrt, så Oliver fick reda tillbaka på flygplatsen. Jag kom undan med några älg's gulliga leksaker och några mer väl-på-märken för min Backpacker's väska. Vi lyckades få tag på en McDonald's drink men vi tog ingen mat så vi visste detta skulle bli dyrt. Så Oliver fört oss ett paket lunch för oss båda. Vi försökte budget denna dag så mycket vi kunde.

Göteborg har en vacker gammal stad att promenera och det var bra att göra det på vintern solsken i temperaturer på ca -1. Hamnen var ok, och riverside walks (som vi gjorde inte mycket) är ett måste. Göteborg är egentligen inte en turist stad, mer som Frankfurt, ett företag och finansiellt centrum. Om vi hade ensam, och om det var varmare, en tur runt öarna skulle vara en stor sak att göra.

Efter ett tag, vi ledas tillbaka till busstationen. Det var 13:30. Informationen monter berättade för mig att nästa buss till flygplatsen skulle vara 13:55. Fair enough. Efter väntar runt och nu närmar sig 14:05, ingen buss hittades. Runt 14:15 hittade vi en svensk kvinna som arbetade på busstationen, och berättade för oss (efter att ha tittat på tidtabellen) att denna buss endast köras på en lördag.

Jag hade lite off ett go i henne (och jag tror hon inte vill det, inte en svensk sak!) Som vi hade 30 minuter tills incheckning stänger för vår flygning tillbaka till London. Hon berättade för oss att fånga en taxi. Så, efter att fånga en taxi, betalar föraren 375SEK (ca £ 45), och försöker överleva från öppna plånboken kirurgi, vi checkat in och ut i terminalen nötkreatur byggnad för att fånga vårt flyg hem.

Tillbaka vid passkontrollen, samma två flickor från samma dag. Jag gick till henne och frågade "Jag vet att det är andra gången jag frågade dig idag, men kan jag få en stämpel du?"

"Nej" sa hon "Jag kan inte, Europeiska unionens regler är jag rädd"

"Åh, åka på. Jag vet det. Jag kommer tillbaka och jag köper du en drink om du stämpla mitt pass! "

Hon skrattade och sa "nej"

"Oh fortsätta, ok då, jag komma tillbaka och ta dig till middag om du stämpla mitt pass!"

Hon skrattade mycket. Hennes kollega är alarmerande. Hon gillade detta och hade det största svenska leende jag någonsin sett. Jag gav upp, vet att jag inte kommer att få en stämpel. Vi sa adjö och gick ombord på flyget tillbaka till London.

]]> http://linapina.wordpress.com/?p=3 Fri, 04 Jul 2008 06:39:09 +0000 linapina http://linapina.wordpress.com/?p=3 "Så, här är vi, i Sverige. Nyligen flytta, rörigt hus, men åtminstone vi gör framsteg."Välkommen tillbaka, säger vissa. "Välkommen hem, säger andra.

Men det har inte känner så. De hus som redan känns som hemma, det område som känns som hem. And it is our home. Och det är vårt hem. Men vi är inte "tillbaka" och vi är inte "åka hem". Åtminstone den inte känner för det.

Visst, Göteborg (eller att vara specifik, Kungsbacka), där vi nu bor, var inte vårt hem i första hand. But Sweden was. Men Sverige var. Men åtminstone Caroline (min syster) och jag har varit utomlands för länge för att det känns som om det är vårt hemland.

Så vad är vårt hemland då? Finland? Nej Danmark? Nej Caroline känner sig mest hemma i Danmark, men jag tror inte att hon anser att det är "hemma" i den bemärkelsen. Jag gillade Danmarks mest samtidigt som lever där, men sedan tre år har gått sedan dess har landet glidit ifrån mig. Och Finland aldrig riktigt vädjade till mig i första hand.

Kort sagt, jag tror inte jag har ett hemland i det mentala sätt. När heja till laget, det finns inga tydliga val. När jag frågade om det känns bra att komma tillbaka till Sverige, jag vet inte vad de ska svara.

Både på gott och ont, jag tror Sverige kommer att växa till mig, though.Jag är troligt att tillbringa flera år innan det blir relevant att flytta till ett annat land än en gång.

Men, vad innebär det land frågan när allt du behöver är vänner och familj, något som jag redan har här, och jag är sannolikt att få fler av (hänvisar till den tidigare snarare än senare) i framtiden. Kungsbacka och Göteborg är en av de bästa och jag är säker på att jag ska tycka om det här. Men är det verkligen där jag har alltid haft mitt hjärta?"

Vet inte vem det är skrivet av, för vem? Livsöden är spännande.

right now, i’m having hard times thinking of moving back there one day – even to settle down for real, with children and all that. i decided to put down some pros and cons with moving back there one day – and who knows – i might have a good laugh one day reading this post and realizing how wrong i was…

pro

• for the price of a 65 sqm apartment in central Gothenburg one can get one of the nicest houses in my hometown
• almost everything is cheaper here, not only living
• the nature is all around you
• it’s a nice place for kids to grow up
• if my parents still live there – they could help out watching future children

con

• not any really good restaurants (besides some 20 pizza places)
• the pulse is perhaps ”too laid-back” – feels like nothing really happens there
• when your up for a swim - there is no water/lake/sea nearby
• only a handful of stores worth visiting for a shopping tour
• you have to go to gothenburg or stockholm to get access to good concerts

summary
that’s all reasons i can come up with right now. in fact, there are just as many pros as cons in that list. i’m not sure how to analyze that, but i’m sure that for now, one weekend now and then, visiting my folks, is enough.

i have heard so many people telling me ”you should never say never when talking about moving back to your hometown”. whenever i hear those words, i assure them, i don’t say never – but it’s in deed a distant thought thinking of moving back to my hometown. every time i come back there, to visit my parents, i realize that barely nothing has changed since last time. i meet the same people on the main square on saturday mornings and the shopping takes less than one hour. in short, it does not really get me started.

just about to arrive in gothenburg, my new hometown...