nordiCHI – prelude

I got accepted as student volunteer at nordiCHI 2008. This is absolutely cool since I am living in Stockholm at the moment and so it is not very far from here. The venue of nordiCHI is Lund, which is in the south of Sweden near Denmark.

Today I got a mail, which contained a really nice piece of information: the SVs will stay at the Trainhostel in Lund. This seems to be a really cool place and I am definetly looking forward going to this conference!

So long… cheers

Café Södervegg

Another tip for all those, who like to spend a lot of time in cafés is the Café Sodervegg. This is also in Södermalm in a quiet little street. They sell basically vegan food (but you also get cow milk for your coffee), which is extremely tasty.

As often you get as much coffee as you want, once you bought one cup. Besides the free refill they offer fresh house made bread and vegan pesto.

All in all this is a “must go to” place.

Café String

Hej! I think it is time to begin a new category for blog posts: cafés, bars and clubs. So I want to share some experiences about some places that are absolutly worth to visit.

So the first café I want to tell you about is the Café String. It is located in Södermalm in the area, where all the little nice bars and cafés are. Well, what is so great about it that I want to tell you about it? Basically it is place with good prices, good coffee and wonderful Kanellbülas. In furniture is always changing, since everthing which is in the café is available and so the good furniture won’t be there for a long time.

On the weekends they offer a brunch buffet for about 65 SEK. I have not tried this yet but I can imagine that this defenetly worth it.

This café is absolutly a perfect place to spend a lot of time there since there is also WLAN available *hello geek!*

Visit their website!

Trip to Helsinki [Updated]

Hej hej. Going to Helsinki is always a good idea. However, it might be clever not to take one of these ferries, that depart from Stockholm. These are basically all swimming drinking halls, selling tax free alcohol. This sounds tempting but it is not since it not possible to drink as much alcohol as some Swedish and Finnish people do. Further the ride takes 16 hours.

Aside from those challenges one has to manage Helsinki seems to be a very nice place. We did not have much time there but the first impression was really good.

So I wish I would have stayed there for a couple of days – maybe as a couch surfer or so, just to get more insights in this city.

Soon I will add some pictures…

Tyresö National Park – Not a myth!

Okay okay – sometimes it takes a while but in the end everything turns out to be nice: there is a national park in Tyresö. It’s not this big, however it is a national park.

Actually we just wanted to go swimming and so we took the bus to Nyfors… got out there and went down the hill, always in the direction of the hill. After a few minutes we got to this little bridge to the other side of the lake. There was this huge sign that we are now in the national park.

So this defenetly another great bonus of Tyresö that there is so much nature around.

Panteon Rococo live in Stockholm

Last night Panteon Rococo turned the Söder Theater in Stockholm into the coolest place… This band is 100% convincing in terms of performance and show as well as fines Ska with a light flavor of Salsa. This was definitly one of the best concerts I have been at for a long time!

Opening a bank account in Sweden

In order to open a bank account in Sweden you normally need a Swedish “Personnummer”, which is a kind of a id number. However, the KTH has an agreement with the Nordea Bank that exchange students may open a bank account without having such a number. To open such an account makes sense since picking up cash at a bankomat kosts usually at least 5 Euro or 1%. Further, paying the rent for the dormitory room is possible via internet banking for free (but not from outside Sweden…).

All you need is:

• Your Letter-of-Acceptance
• The Tax-Form
• The Student-Account-Form

You can get these forms at the international office, which is on Valhallavägen.

…

Well, what can I say?

Trip to the archipelago of Stockholm

This Saturday I went on a trip to the archipelago of Stockholm with a bunch of other people. It a really good thing to do, to take a ferry to one of the little islands and to stay there for a while. On the way to Nambö, which is the island we visited, one can see lots of other Skären.

However, what I also experienced today, was that I will never earn money with organising jurneys or so… Some of the participants of this little excursion were actually not prepared for a couple of hours of nature, what resulted in very high pitched voices and some wet feet… chicks.

Kings of Convenience in Stockholm

Last night the band Kings of Convenience played at the UNG08 festival in Stockholm. It was nice to see them back on stage, playing some of their old songs.

The only poor thing about this concert was that ung08 (speak “young nool otta”) isn’t really a music festival but a everything else too. This means there are lots of activities besides the music, which gets pushed in the background… Additionally K.of.C. is not the type of band, which thrills the masses. So all in all it was not the perfect atmosphere for such an concert.

Anyway:

Another band that was playing ist Tendersouvenirs. I like their sound!