Jani Bizjak

Yesterday I went for a walk around Björkskatan (district where I live now). The walking/cycling tracks are really nicely maintained and there are a lot of them, through the forests, near the sea, through town, everywhere. I finished the walk near university (yes I still don’t have internet) and found something between pond and lake full of (baby) ducks; a great setting for photos.



Later I managed to set up my Swedish phone number and with a nice surprise, I got a (bonus) 500MB of data for free. I paid 100SEK for fill up card, and got for (it says) 800 SEK worth of mobile data, it’s really handy now that I don’t have internet at home yet. Although the amount of data provided is not enough for normal web browsing, it’s enough to check e-mails and some chat over Skype. Oh yes, and they have 4G coverage everywhere (in the middle of forest, although this middle of forest is in the centre of town :)).

Today I had a long day. I started at 11’o clock, and went to the landlord to ask for translation of one paper and to fill in complaint about fire alarm and window. Fire alarm was buzzing all the time, they told me to change the batteries (I knew that, but wanted to get away without having to buy new ones; sadly this plan didn’t work). The window is causing more problems, it’s almost impossible to close and trust me, here you want to close windows in the evenings. Lastly I asked about the internet and they gave me phone number of ISP support.

After that I walk to the centre of the town to pay rent at the bank. The main street was surprisingly crowded, I didn’t expect so much people there. Shortly after I found a bank and went it. When I asked if I can pay the bills I was in for a shock, I would have to be a member of the bank in order to pay the bill, so I went on a search for another bank. I found a small bank / currency exchange thing, where I was told I could pay the rent. After waiting in line for quite some time I was finally able to pay 2 bills (rent for 2 months) and I was in for a real shock next, the fee was 50 SEK (around 6€) for each bill (I changed bank in Slovenia to get 10 cents cheaper fees per bills…). Guess I’ll try to pay rent over Slovenian banks from now on.

After paying rent I went for a bit of sight-seeing through centre of Lulea. The main street is very nice, full of shops, restaurants and hotels. There are very few traffic lights in the town and even where they are, people just go over the street even if there’s a red light on. Maybe there is some rule that you can cross if there is no traffic, I’ll have to check this one out. On my way home I took some pictures and found few people swimming in the sea. What the heck, I was wearing jeans and long warm shirt and was still a bit cold, and they were swimming? Well at least when the girl was going in she was screaming so it must have been cold.

When I came home I decided I should call ISP support line to try to get my internet going. After 15 minutes of explaining the problem (and spelling my name 8 times), we determined that it’s not possible for me to register on some form because I don’t have Swedish security number. They said that they will forward my problem to the IT that is configuring internet in/for Lulebo (landlord) apartments. Hopefully I’ll be able to connect before end of the week.

After few steps I realize just how cold it was. It looks like the train had heating turned on, so I was only wearing shorts and t-shirt, later I learned that it was 8 degrees, at 7 AM on 9th of August 2013. I think I can safely say, that I haven’t been anywhere near this cold in the middle of the summer yet.

I was supposed to meet with Fredrik (he is taking care of Erasmus students arrival up here) at 9 AM at the university, so I figured out I could just walk up there rather than sit in that cold. In retrospect this was one of the stupidest ideas I had in a long time. I had 2 suitcases and one bag with me, total of 50kg. As I later learned the distance from train station to university is around 6km. At first the walk went easily but after midway my hands really started to hurt. One suitcase has some weird wheel-handle thing so I was basically carrying it all the way instead of dragging it on wheels. The walk went very slowly after midway as I had to exchange places of suitcases, to rest the arm that was carrying the weird one. To top it off my hands began to sweat so the handles began to slip away every few meters. As a result of this, I’ve arrived to university shortly before 9 AM, with no feelings in my arms (part from heavy lifting, part from cold). Now it is 1 day later, and my arms and shoulders still hurt.

Shortly after my arrival at university Fredrik had come. He handed me some contracts to sign, keys to the apartment and gave me basic information that I’ll need while I’m staying up here. After that he got me a cab and I was on my way to Väderleden 11, my new home for the next 5 months.

After unpacking I went to sleep and I really needed it, I don’t think I slept for more than 5 hours in the past 2 days. After that I noticed that I have no internet connection (Fredrik warned me that it’s possible that my account for internet is not set up yet) so I decided to make a walk to the university and to possibly take some photos on the way.



I’ve arrived to the university at around 9 PM. I was surprised to see how many people were still walking around campus. Shortly after I found a table with benches where I was still in range of university’s Wi-Fi. As I was sitting there I noticed that there were really a lot of mosquitos flying around and trying (some actually succeeded) some Slovenian blood. I left for home at around 10.30 PM with still enough light so that street lights needn’t be turned on.



This was one of the reasons I was so excited to come up here in the middle of summer. There is light from around 3 AM to around 11 PM and then the sky never goes completely black, but turns red at horizon. My room is facing north, so I was able to look at red horizon through all the night (not that I was able to, I was so tired I fell asleep in minutes, but I had my alarm set every hour to check the sky). It was interesting to see how the brightest part of the sky slowly moved from west to north and to east again. In Slovenia we are used to the sunset on the west and then teleport of sun to the east in the morning. It’s too bad I couldn’t arrived a month earlier, back then there was no night at all, but still I have experienced the longest lasting day of my life.

After landing at ARN airport, I found small trolley for baggage and began to explore the place. Airport is quite big, you need around 20-30minutes to walk from one side to another (on the same floor) and there are 3 floors in total. Airport features lots of shops and restaurants.

Throughout whole airport there was available Wi-Fi, the bigger challenge was to find electricity socket. Luckily there was some kind of waiting area just above train station with comfortable couches, electricity sockets and great view on the runway.



The airport was the first opportunity to spend some SEK (Swedish krona). Among restaurants there was a McDonalds, it’s prices were approximately 2 times higher than in Slovenia, sadly I’ll have to learn that this is true for all service here in Sweden. Standard menu (burger, fries, drink) costs around 70-90 SEK (around 10€), while large drink costs 20 SEK (2.3€).

Around 6’o clock I went down to the train station, which is located below airport and forms (if I remember correctly) the longest tunnel in Sweden (2km or something). Train station is small and only has two platforms with few benches to sit on. Sadly my train was delayed for 20 minutes, which is insane since this is the 3rd stop on the route Stockholm-Lulea.



The train ride from Stockholm to Lulea lasts around 12 hours. Because of this I chose the sleepers wagon, with 6 cosy bunk beds. After finding my room I thankfully learned that I’ll only be sharing it with 1 person (instead of 5). The guy I was sharing room with was from Algeria and was working in Sweden. He said that he was regular traveller with this train, so he knew how to prepare bunk beds (in the day time they are folded, so people can sit rather than lie). After talking for a bit with this guy (I never learned his name), I went and prepared for sleep. What really surprised me was the toilet, it was actually nicer than in Venice airport and to no comparison to Slovenian “hole in the floor” toilets on trains.
The room was equipped with electricity sockets, which was really nice as I was finally able to watch Scarface before I went to sleep.





Even if I was really tired I barely slept. When the train went in to a curve, it slightly moved me from one to other side of the bed. The train was electrical, so it was very quiet, but still wagons (and people from other rooms) were making quite a lot of noise. I woke up at around 5 am, with sun quite high on the sky. I went to the corridor in front of rooms, to watch landscape from there (there were really big windows in this corridor). Scenery was beautiful with lots of lakes and the trees were everywhere.



At 7 am I disembark the train, I have arrived to Lulea.

After few intense weeks of preparations at school and home, the day has come, I’m leaving for 5 months for Lulea, Sweden.



Since I’m studying computer science I’ve decided to create my own blog, where I’ll keep some sort of public diary of life in the north. Sadly I didn’t have time to finish the blog, before I left. I had to wait for 3 weeks to get some stupid signature in my index, or I couldn’t leave, needless to say, I got signature 5 days before I left, after bribing the gate keeper to call me when professor arrived. Anyway at the moment the blog has basic functionality, but still looks ugly. I will try to continue working on it while I’ll be in Sweden.

Back to the trip, I’m currently flying somewhere over Germany with Norwegian and yes, we have internet on the plane, although it’s slow, but still better than nothing. The flight is calm, sadly there are clouds all over the sky so I can’t see any land. Pity I was really looking forward to seeing some EU from the sky.
I left home today at around 5.30 AM with my parents and Veronika. Saying goodbye was a bit more emotional than I expected, I guess I’ll really going to miss my folks, but hey, if everything goes as planned Veronika is going to come and visit me soon.



The flight will take approximately 2.5h, we’ll land at Stockholm ARN from where I’ll leave with train at 6.30pm to Lulea. I’m still not sure how it’ll survive 12h on the train, hopefully no one will try to mug me while I'll be sleeping. And hopefully there will be Wi-Fi on the airport, otherwise I don’t know what I’ll do for 6 hours.

So much for now, I’ll try to upload one photo for test in this post, although I don’t have high hopes with this internet.


Talk to you soon,
JB