Westcoast :)

Hejhej :)

Well, a lot has happened since last week...but let's start from the beginning.
First of all - I passed my Digital Imaging Exam...! I'm so relieved, because I thought I had failed ...but thank god, I didn't - which is quite surprising, considering that 10 of 17 students failed...(as you can see, Exchange Students HAVE to study to pass an exam...).
What else happened...last Sunday we baked christmas cookies, which was really cool and fun - in the end we had 6 different kinds of cookies - all of them taste great. (both pictures (c) by Elisabeth).
However, on thursday we had a huge international dinner at the university - every nation (well, almost) prepared some typical dish and we - the Austrians - made an "Apfelstrudel" with Vanilla Cream. It was really cool to taste all the meals - my favourite was the swiss "Käsefundue" - finally something that reminded me of Vorarlberg ;)
Speaking of which - I'm really looking forward to going home over Christmas. The closer it gets, the more I think about all the things I miss (well, kind of). Small things, like eating Austrian sausages (I don't like swedish sausages...believe it or not, they taste totally different), seeing mountains (although I already know that I will be annoyed by them after 1 day). And of course to see my family and friends again :)
Let's not get too sentimental...I'd rather tell you about the amazing trip to the westcoast.

On Friday Harry, Claudia, Elisabeth, Lena and I drove to the Westcoast - once again we started at 7 o'clock and drove to Fjällbacka, which is a small town at the coast. Ingrid Bergman used to go there regularly (it was her favourite town), that's why the main square is named after her. (some random information...in case you ever have to know it). The weather wasn't that nice, so we had to imagine how lovely the town must be in summer. We climbed on a rocky hill where we had a great view to over the town, the sea and many archipelagos...
Afterwards we drove to Smögen, another small town on an archipelago. We stayed in a cosy Hostel, directly by the sea. We even went to the sauna (small red building on the pic), which was next to the hostel - and afterwards we (well, Harry and I) sprang into the swedish sea to get a refreshment ;). It was really cool (*lol* notice the wordplay ;) )...
The next day we went to Lysekil, which is located at the Gullmarsfjord. The town itself wasn't that impressive, but the Fjord was quite nice, in my opinion. We drove on to Håverud to watch the aqueduct. We saw some amazing pictures of it in a travel guide but when we came to the Bridge of the aqueduct, we weren't impressed at all. There was a small sign saying that they open the sluices once a day - for five minutes - and only during summer. So our timing was really bad... Nevertheless, it was nice seeing it - and I learned what an aqueduct is, because I had never heard of it before...
The trip to the wecstcoast was really beautiful - Smögen and Fjällbaka are the typical swedish postcard motives with the sea, archipelagos, narrow red houses,... If I ever have enough money, I'll buy a summer residence there ;)
As always - you can watch some pictures on Flickr.

Today (Sunday) we'll go to a small christmas market in Karlstad - I'm already looking forward to that.
Next weekend I'm heading to Stockholm (again) to see Rufus Wainwright live (finally :) ) and buy some christmas presents... On the 7th of december we go to Kiruna (in the far north) and 11 days later I'm heading home...time goes by so fast....

Bye
Manuel