summer parties

It's sad to say it, but it is noticeable... the days are getting shorter here in Göteborg. I was told that you can really notice the difference in the length of the days in Scandinavia. Actually, that statement is only half true. I didn't really notice at all when the days were getting longer. Going the other way, however, it's a whole new kettle of fish. When days get shorter, it is very, very noticeable.

And for those readers who have no idea what a whole new kettle of fish is. It's an Australian expression meaning it's a different scenario. Where does it come from? I don't know, and don't care. Just accept and continue.

Now what can I do you for? (another Aussie expression). Oh yes, with the ending of summer, it's time for a couple of parties. First up I organised an "Aussie" party at my apartment. What makes a party Aussie? Buggered if I know. Usually it's just a lot of booze and loud music.

What would you do to make a party seem like an Aussie party to mixed group of Europeans? This is what I came up with:

1. The host (i.e. me) wears a wife beater, shorts and thongs.
2. Have vegemite on hand for the guests to enjoy.
3. Play AC/DC and Midnight Oil albums all night long.
4. Have footy (proper footy :) on TV.
5. Have a footy on hand to demonstrate with.
6. Provide a fridge full of beer (especially VB).
7. Serve fairy bread.
8. Have a few stubbie holders, including a novelty bikini girl stubbie holder.
9. Serve ANZAC biscuits.
10. Have the party go on long enough and loud enough for it to be shutdown by the "authorities".

Note: in Sweden, the police don't call a close to parties. Rather the building management hirers leather clad, pierced, biker types to tell you to shut up shop. Sweden's not always as pleasant as it seems. No worries, we moved to a club down the street for more good times.

The Aussie party weekend, I also had a mate from uni over at my place, Graham. He's also working in Sweden for a couple of months - but over in Karlskrona, a smallish town on the other side of the country.

We spent the weekend with some Spanish colleagues and their mates who were visiting from Madrid. From canoeing on the lake, to playing frisbee golf, it was an outdoors weekend for the rest of the time.

Frisbee golf is fun... walking around a forest, throwing frisbees... and possibly, also, drinking beer.

Okay, that was the Aussie weekend. A couple of weekends later, it was time for a Swedish weekend.

At some stage in Sweden's history, it was against the law to catch crayfish over summer. At the end of summer, the ban would be lifted, and then the crayfish population would suffer the brunt of a pent up demand for tasty crays. It's not the law any more, but the tradition of an end of summer crayfish party lives on.

Olly, a mate from work, kindly offered to take me down to Skåne, where a mate of his has a farm in the small town of Sjöbo. Perfect for a loud and crazy crayfish party.

These things typically kick off mid-afternoon with some silly games. Split into teams of 6, this allowed everyone to mingle. Competitions included: a dash to the back of the paddock and back - chained to a partner; nailing nails into a plank of wood in the least number of strokes; throwing a hefty lump of metal as far as possible; popping balloons tied to ankles; and drinking some truly awful homebrewed liquor.

Formalities out of the way, it was time for dinner. Crayfish eating isn't for the squeamish.

Step 1: break tail from head.
Step 2: lift up shell, eat brain.
Optional step: celebrate if you were lucky enough to get a pregnant cray with "caviar".
Step 3: crack tail shell, dig out meat, eat.
Step 4: Repeat.

All along the way, keep the liquor flowing. The aquavit limbers up the vocal chords for some Swedish drinking songs. The host, Mikael, needs to be praised for his foresight. He provided song sheets for those who don't know Swedish drinking songs; or who may have forgotten the words due to aquavit consumption... or both.

Of course this all lays the foundations for a decent party lasting well into the evening. Could this be a tradition that I could import into Australia? I hope so!

sunny bergen

Bergen is Norway's second biggest city. Which actually means, it's Norway's biggest country town! It's located on the Western side of the country, deep in fjord territory. The city is surrounded by seven mountains. This is good for tourists as it's very easy to get a good view of the town.

This photo was taken from Fløyen, the easiest of the seven mountains to access. It has a funicular, a kind of tram on a cable, that takes you up the mountain at a 45° angle. Of course... it is Swiss built.

Three hundred meters above a city, on a beautiful mountain, you'd expect it to be nice and peaceful. Not so actually. Bergen has a big reputation for it's music scene, and sure enough I could hear plenty of noise from the city. There were two marching bands battling for attention; one somewhere beyond the left hand side of the photo, one somewhere near the right hand side. Smack bang in the middle of the photo, in the harbour, a jazz band were playing on a boat. Combined with the noise of boats coming and going in the harbour it was quite a cacophony.

The Norwegians have a few sly jokes at the Swedes expensive, as discovered when buying lunch that day. As I rummaged through my wallet for Norwegian krona, I muttered something about having Swedish krona mixed in there too. "That's too bad" said the barmen, "they're worthless these days". The Swedish krona used to be stronger than both the Danish and Norwegian krona, but it's not the case any more. It's annoying though, as Norway is expensive! This local brew cost around $12 Aussie! Damn!

Again, you can see I was pretty lucky with the weather I had on this trip. Bergen is even further north than Oslo. The sun set around 11pm, and it was dusk until well after midnight.

Since it was a Saturday night, and Bergen had a reputation for music, I decided to have a look at whatever bands were playing at Garage. Equivalent in Bergen to the Corner Hotel in Melbourne. That's what I had decided. What actually happened though, was I walked out of my hostel and headed down a cobble stoned street. Just around the corner there's bar that looks like it's someone's living room. Turns out it is.

Cafe Sanaa is a small bar, in a living room of a house. Hungry at the time, the owner told me I could simply look at the menu from next door - a Vietnamese restaurant - and order it to the bar! Nice. We then started to chat, how long had the bar been open? Only 9 months. What band is playing tonight? My husband and his jazz band. It was time to change my plans.

I stayed for a few pints, and then a few more.

pong on berlin

Berlin has a crazy bar called Dr. Pong. Combining drinking with competitive sport. Awesome.

Basically everyone is in at the start, and you keep rotating around the table hitting one ball at a time until there are only 2 left. They then play out a game.

Does anyone think that the guy in the dark jacket and white shirt in the video looks like Roger Federer?

next stop: københavn

Next stop on my long weekend was Copenhagen. It was a bit gloomy when I arrived in town, and as I read the hotel guide book to the city I began to worry. It had a list of common phrases in English, with the Danish translations, such as:

Excuse me, which way is ___? Undskyld, hvad vej ligger ___?
and
How much does this cost? Hvor meget koster den her?

... but that wasn't what worried me... it was this phrase that worried me:

Does it EVER stop raining here?? Holder det NOGENSINDE op med at regne her??

Yup, even the emphasis was included in the guide book. "Meh" I thought, "how bad could it be?", and so I continued on my merry way to grab some brunch. I have no qualms about recommending BarBar Bar for brunch either, the food was excellent. By the time I'd finished brunch however, it had begun to spit with rain. "Nevermind" I thought, "it'll just be a passing shower", and so I set off on a four hour self-guided walking tour. This is me at the half way mark, just before giving up:

Cold. Wet. Slightly miserable.

Consulting some more guides I decided to go back to my hotel, grab a change of clothes, and head indoors to some of the museums around town.

On my way back I passed some May Day protests, they seemed to be tame enough, but given the police presence, complete with protective head gear for the constables, I wasn't sticking around to find out. Trekking further towards the hotel I walked down a street that the Danes claim to be one of the longest outdoor shopping strips in Europe. That's fine... except when it's raining! BYO umbrella!

The Danes are masters of modern design. The Danish Design Centre provides some museum-esque exhibits of the history of Danish design, as well as an exhibition space for some of the latest pieces. Danish and Scandinavian design, whilst being modern, also tends to include a lot of wood. To force modern-ness on such a natural material they developed methods of steaming, bending and moulding wood.

It seems that the Danish design ethic is to be functional, aesthetically pleasing, and without ornamentation. From a computer-science view of the world, I like that this usually means that the objects have Affordance: that is, how the object looks, implicitly suggests how to use it. Sometimes, however, the objects were slightly abstract:

Looking at this jug reminded me of something... The beer is cheaper in Denmark than in Sweden! Time to head to a bar for a few brews.

Not content with only modern product design, I visited the Arken Museum of Modern Art. It's well worth the visit. Most of the pieces in the museum were created after 1990. Frustratingly they don't allow cameras inside. Some of the pieces in the museum were definitely worth a picture or two. I could describe them, but they really are visual things, so I wont.

The museum itself looks like a ship anchored to the nearby lake. Here's a view from the front:

That concluded my short, and somewhat soggy trip to Copenhagen. Two and a half days of long weekend still ahead of me, it was back to the airport, to fly to Berlin.

a new year, a new continent

Europe? Yep. Sweden? Yup, for 6 months. A thank-you is first up. Thanks for work for sending me here (although, I still have to work ;-) but also in being flexible in allowing me to stick around until March so I could attend Lawrence and Michelle's wedding - which was an excellent event. Many best wishes for the future Lo and Shell.

Now I'm in Göteborg (Gothenburg), Sweden, which is approximately 15,000km from Melbourne. The furthest I've been from Australia to date! Realistically its about as far as I can go from Australia without coming back around the other-side of the globe! So, a new continent to visit: Europe.

Taking off from Melbourne I was apprehensive... I had an aisle seat! From my experience on Melbourne-Sydney flights, aisle seats were bad, as the food trolleys hit your arms and legs if they stuck out a little bit. Turns out that's just a Qantas thing, and I didn't get hit at all.

With a 25 hour trip ahead of me I planned to sleep, and sleep a lot. I didn't end up sleeping as much as I thought, maybe only half of the trip. I spent most of the rest of the time writing a document for my family describing how to fix the home network if a server or two died while I'm away!. Thrilling stuff. Gladly I had a business-class flight from Bangkok to København (Copenhagen). As we took off from Bangkok the pilot announced there were snow storms in København at the moment, but "these should clear up by the time we get there". These snow storms have not disappointed. It's been cold and snowy ever since! From København to Göteborg it's only 30 minutes by plane. We were shuffled onto a small-ish McDonald-Douglas MD-81 where the only difference between a business-class and economy-class seat was that you got a croissant for breakfast. We even had to walk across a frozen tarmac to get the flight. Before take-off the plane had to have its' wings de-iced by a special de-icing truck.

Now I'm going to get all fancy and multi-media-ish and have a video in the blog:

That's the landing at Göteborg. It looked very, very cool coming in over the snow. I also was able to take a few photos from the air of what might be considered to be a typical Swedish rural scene:

The snow is amazing. Being an Aussie, I haven't seen snow like this in a city before! Only on mountains and stuff. Of course the locals are ready for spring and are a bit annoyed with this cold snap - they'd already put their coats away for the season. Shops have also put away their winter stock (or sold out), which is a bit frustrating, I was hoping to buy some cold-weather gear here.

Due to the length of my stay I'm staying in a furnished apartment. It's very nice, and the location is great. It's located near the centre of town (approximately CBD to Carlton type distance in Melbourne terms). Göteborg has a wonderful public transport system including an extensive tram network. The town is small enough that there are no suburban trains, just buses and trams. I've got the choice of 5 different tram routes to catch to my place, and even more bus routes. My apartment is on the top story (the 5th) of the building and has a great view down towards a church:

As I'm writing this it's Good Friday holiday here and it's snowing again for the first time since arriving. The view up to the church looks a bit different when covered in snow.

This long weekend I'm heading to Rīga, Latvia, with a few other engineers from Melbourne. The engineers aren't in Göteborg, but I contacted them as I knew they were in Sweden and they already had this trip planned. It should be excellent. The entire centre of Rīga has been world heritage listed by UNESCO as the best example of Art Nouveau architecture. There's also cheap booze :-)

Sweden has a reputation for expensive booze. Now I'm not sure if the Australian dollar is unusually strong against the Swedish Krona, but really the prices are almost comparable to Australia. A pint in the pub on my first night in town was pricey at $10-ish dollars (but then in Melbourne it's not unusual to pay $8 these days). The bottle store was better $24ish for 12 bottles of beer. That's better pricing than Australia where a 6-pack is usually $15. Sweden has a tightly controlled alcohol market. The only way you can buy heavy beer, wine, or spirits is through a government owned chain of outlets called Systembolaget. The government says that "the monopoly is to lower the consumption and the damage alcohol does on the public health". Personally I think this is just crap, they run like a post offices: closing at 6pm on weekdays, 2pm on Saturdays, and not even opening on Sundays. Sure it might lower consumption but now they have to beef-up their customs operations to catch alcohol smugglers!

Anyway, it's Easter time, and sure these days you might be forgiven for thinking that Jesus was fluffy bunny that broke all biological rules to pop out a chocolate egg before being resurrected for a another public holiday (that makes sense right? :-) but here in Sweden, it's even more confusing. It still has little to do with Christian beliefs (*phew*). Children dress as witches because in Sweden witches flew off on broomsticks to dance with the devil at Blåkulla around this time of year. Nice eh? So now we have witches, broomsticks, chocolate, bunnies, eggs. But wait, there's more: they also add a liberal dose of brightly coloured feathers and cook heaps of marzipan. Yum Yum.

Did someone say Easter is a time for sober reflection? Not around me they didn't. *grin*

Oh yeah, better chalk up beer number 1 in the Swedish leg of the beer challenge. Well there was another one, but the photo didn't turn out well. I'll just have to drink that one again. Good times.

sydney take #2

I'm back on the road (or rather... in the sky). This past week I've been in Sydney again. This time the trip is a bit longer - at least until the end of next week. Unfortunately some of the equipment I need to use has been playing up, so the project is a bit behind. Hence Sydney might be graced with my presence even longer than expected!

Work this time around is out at Parramatta, but the hotel I'm staying in is in the CBD. So I've been catching the train out to work. The nice thing is there are plenty of express trains; strangely though the express trains don't seem to go as fast as express trains in Melbourne. (Nothing beats a 280km/h train trip in Japan though!)

Once back in Sydney, I couldn't resist heading back to Captain Torres for another batch of pan-fried flounder : ) This time I tried some Portuguese beers, which were very nice. For the home-brew enthusiasts the Portuguese beer even had the original gravity listed on the back label. (Gravity is the measure of the density of unfermented beer). My phone is fixed now, so I've uploaded photo's of various beers for the beer competition, such as the one below:

Wednesday night I had the worst Thai meal ever! I was wandering around the city looking for dinner, and found a place that looked good. What should have alerted me to the fact that it wasn't good at all, was the large bain-marie at the back of the restaurant. When I asked for the menu I was told there is none, you just pick your meal out from the bain-marie. Suspiciously all the meals were in take away containers... Being naïve I thought maybe this was just for take-away customers, so I asked for the Pad Thai. The waitress opened a take away container of Pad Thai and emptied it on to a plate for me. It was the worst tasting meal ever!! I gave up after a couple of mouthfuls, and went back to the hotel.

The French Open is on at the moment, and even better the hotel has "Fox Sports 2" in every room. Fox Sports has 24 hour coverage of the open : ) There is also a "sports" bar in the hotel, with a couple of big TV screens. After my Thai horror dinner, I retired to the sports bar to have a better meal, a local beer, and to watch Marat Safin bomb out of the open in the second round.

Tomorrow I'll head to The Rocks and Circular Quay and check out the famous sights (and pubs) of Sydney.

eating locally

Despite not being overseas, I emulated an overseas trip this week by eating at not one, not two, but three Spanish restaurants. It turned out I was staying in the "Spanish Quarter" of Sydney. All three of these restaurants were within 50 metres of my hotel! If I was staying longer, I believe there were more just around the corner too.

Monday night: Don Quixote. A huge meal! Roast suckling pig - awesome stuff. A clear path to my heart via my stomach. This was a traditional meal from the Madrid region in the middle of Spain. It was followed up with a "Spanish Coffee", which was a strong espresso with some kind of liquor and cream.

Tuesday night: My non-Spanish night. Counter meal at a pub with Mark. Tandoori Pizza - a dish of confused origins!!

Wednesday night: Miro Tapas Bar. I thought I might have a few dishes, but after two I was full! Firstly, fried white bait, followed by chilli mushrooms. They served some beer from Barcelona called Estrella Damm; it was really nice. I had to consume two : )

Thursday night: Captain Torres. Named after Torres who was the first European to sail thought the straits between PNG & Australia - hence Torres Straits. Anyway, this was a restaurant upstairs and tapas bar downstairs. I was going to have tapas again, and sat at the bar. The barman however convinced me to have a meal at the bar, he told me the fried flounder was way better than the baby octopus that was on my mind. I suspect he was right too, the flounder was excellent! This place also served Spanish beers. I didn't recognise (and can't remember now anyway) the towns in which they were brewed. First I had an Ambar, which could be the brand, or the type of brew - it did taste like an amber ale. The second one was Estrella Cerveza Especial, which wasn't as good as Esrtella Damm from the previous night.

Hence this caps off my week of Spanish culinary delights. Work went well too! We were able to finish 2 days ahead of schedule, even after fixing a few problems along the way. My phone died during some testing which is annoying. I took some photos of beers for the beer challenge, but now they are stuck on my broken phone. *grumbles*

I've started mapping my travels on travellerspoint.com/member_map.cfm. It's not too interesting yet, but it'll grow!

hanoian beer

Let me introduce the Peter Hall challenge: when someone is travelling they should take a photo of the local beer of the place travelled to. This challenge was given to Graham when he travelled around Europe in the summer just past. The challenge was then expanded to include any trip made by any of us for the rest of our lives!! (or until we grow bored of it).

Hence I must post some photos of the local Hanoian beers. Let me introduce Bia Hà Nội:

The Vietnamese word bia means beer, and is pronounced in the same way. This particular can of Bia Hà Nội was being consumed by me while I was attempting to figure out how to get free Internet in the hotel.

The second beer to introduce is Halida. I've been informed that this beer is a joint-venture between the Vietnamese and the Danish. My suspicion is there is some government regulation on foreign companies starting up here as most foreign investments are joint ventures. Another example is the hotel I'm staying in is a joint-venture between the South Koreans and the Vietnamese. Anyway, back to the beer, here is a photo of me and a can of Halida on my trip to Halong Bay.

Another beer I've been sampling has been 333 Export, which is from Ho Chi Minh City, so not strictly a local beer. This is a annoying beer to order until you learn the Vietnamese word for three is ba. Hence you order a ba ba ba. Alternatively I had some success asking for the "beer from the south".

It's amusing to note some of the bad translations into English that are around. One restaurant was attempting to sell "crap meat" instead of crab meat, and another was advertising on a big neon sign that they served "cooktails"! I didn't realise that cooks were a special breed of human; humans with tails!? : )

You can't escape Nestlé anywhere on this planet, and Hanoi is no exception. At least they sell Aussie Milo though!