Day 2

We got to visit some other places in Helsingborg, the most interesting being the St Marie Church and the Rämlosa water spring (I guess is the most popular bottled water in Sweden).

St. Marie Church

Somewhere at Helsingborg LOL 

They even have a tropical beach... Palm trees included only in summer LOL

Rämlosa water directly from the source :)

Rämlosa water running down the creek at Rämlosa park

 After this we headed down to Trelleborg (around 95 Km less than 1h drive). Not much to see here, but this we were expecting. Now is just to take the ferry to Travemunde and continue our trip.

Trelleborg tower in the "centrum"

The maps of our trip for today and during night :)

Since we are leaving Sweden, and "breaking on through to the other side" of the baltic...

Day 1: Arrived to Helsingborg (travel time: 9h45 - 15h15)

Magnificent day...sunny most of the time. Sunny weather really makes Sweden stand out. Beautiful colors at this time of the year (late September) during our trip.

At a park (stop over for lunch) 1

The park was at Gränna

Behind the tree the lake Vättern

The driving was quite relaxed as the roads were most of the time incredibly empty.

Main swedish highway (E4) on a sunday morning LOL

Arriving at Helsingborg we found that the hotel was perfectly located in the main street (Stortorget) with a nice view of the old Helsingborg fortress/castle...

Helsingborg castle and behind the Kärnan tower

We will go to the top of the tower tomorrow, however the view already from the top of the stairs was nice (overlooking the main street)

View of Stortorget (far away one can see Denmark, on the right corner)

Anyway we did not walked that much today since we were quite tired from a hard week and the driving. It seems though that the city as some nice churches which we will try to visit.

G.A. church by night

Tomorrow's itinerary includes traveling to Trelleborg where we will catch the ferry to Germany, and actually leave Sweden behind... sniff sniff

The music for today... "This is the last time..." well we certainly hope is not the last time in Sweden, but anyway it fits the moment

T-11h15min

Almost, almost...

The apartment is clean and ready to take in "new life".

Everything is packed and most loaded in the car (the amount of stuff the we managed to fit in in such small luggage space was amazing, it was like building a jigsaw puzzle, all thanks to Claudia's amazing organizational skills ;)

Fully loaded :P

Yesterday I said goodbye to my lab. We were all together for last time at the famous KFC "fika" room (Kroniskt Fika Centrum LOL :P as it is called for fun)

Cake&Ice Cream for the goodbye

Memories start flowing now abundantly. It is actually kind of hard to leave... now that we are so close to do it. Anyway this philosophical thinking will for sure be done even in more detail alter on when we settle in Portugal and start the "adaptation" process all over again.

Now for the trip itself... something really to look forward.

The first leg: Stockholm - Helsingborg (557Km). Overnight stay at Helsingborg planned.

OK. So we will update once we are there.

The music for today... "Time better not stop" interesting music (I posted in facebook sometime ago) with a portuguese composer/music and video made in Sweden. Appropriate since we also must keep moving cause time really does not stop... ;)

T-58h
Preparations, cleaning, packing, storing, sending more 2x20Kg boxes to Portugal...
Meanwhile only today I finished the last experiments in the lab. Claudia has said goodbye to her former lab colleagues and friends.
Ufff... we are exhausted and not even started the big journey... I guess the excitement of the travel will give us the most needed boost of energy.

 Tomorrow is the big goodbye for me in the lab. Been there since I was 24 years old ("a little kid I was" LOL and to prove it:

Lab "embryo" :P

Birthday party in the lab (2005)

And as another piece of history...these years concluded in this:

Claudia's PhD defense

My PhD defense

Just remembered another thing we will miss... the famous Korv stand (sausage in bread "street food style") which are especially yummi in the winter eheh 

At the famous NK Korv stand (in January)

Ok the music of today (and since today I really started to feel that goodbye to Stockholm is approaching...check carefully at 0:13s...the bus says on top Sverige Television...LOL appropriate)

T-110h:

Today just some random thoughts. I guess most of the people that have been moving from place to place already know this:
1- You always have more stuff than you think at home;
2- Most of that stuff is useless;
3- Sorting out what is useful takes a looonng time;
So basically these have been some boring days just sorting, packing and throwing away stuff.

As you can see by the picture the house looks like a gipsy market LOL. We are still figuring out how to fit the stuff that we want in the car (...we are not taking all of what is shown in the photos of course :P, most stuff is going to be given away)

Stuff...

And more stuff... LOL

One box with 20Kg stuff as already been sent to Portugal today by regular mail. And yes, we finally figured out that regular mail is probably one of the cheapest option to send packages from Sweden to Portugal (unless you have some good contacts with truck drivers... problem is... there are not so many trucks doing deliveries directly from Sweden to Portugal).

Lets hope this box arrives safely to destination... :P

So, in the end, a 20Kg box by regular mail costed us 895SEK (which is around 98.5 euros). If you pack such a box like this, is good to have bubble wrap and try to pack stuff so that it does not move at all inside the box. It is well known how post offices treat packages... It will be interesting to see in which condition the box will arrive LOL.

In the next days we wil be starting to clean the apartment... another "exhilarating" job (sarcasm!!!!).

In conclusion, this is the well known "not so fun" part of moving to another place... however the reward is soon coming :)

So, todays song... a bit of a good old frenetic music to help on cleaning and packing shores :)

T-135hours;

Nothing much to report today...besides being a crap day in Stockholm. 15°C, windy and raining all day. In a way it just makes our return to Portugal more enjoyable since weather situation is much, much different than what we have experienced here. Basically at the moment it is a race towards winter with average temperatures getting pretty quickly close to 10°C and soon enough 5°C... besides that, the chances for the first snow to appear by late October are normally high.

So, although the summer days here are something of beauty, we were not really fond of spending another winter season here (enough is enough :P 

Since I started to talk about the weather, here are some pictures that "talk" about the difference between deep winter season and summer days in Stockholm...

Summer:

 This one was taken close to our apartment (there is a lake just 500meters away) at around 23h30 in the night... :)

 One can actually find "beach" sites around Stockholm which can become crowded with people on the weekends.

 Walking by the lakes in the summer is quite nice :)

These piq-nics or barbecues is what it's all about in the summer. Do them late in the evening, bring your  single-use disposable barbecue set, some wine bottles and you're good to go. In a clear day the sun/daylight will be your friend until 00h (during midsummer it does not actually get completely dark)

Winter:

Winter weekend activity... go out to one of the lakes and take your dog to a walk on top of the frozen surface (if it is sunny you can actually learn to ignore the -5/-10°C)

 On my way to work...no comments!!

 Me...walking/standing on top of lake Mälaren (with no dog though...). On the floor one can see the tracks made by all the people passing by.

Remember the green trees in the spring/summer...here they are in the winter. Actually I have to say that they are also quite beautiful like this.

So this is a glimpse of what we are leaving behind... we enjoyed it very very much actually... but it is time to move on :)

Now for the music of the day... and although we are not taking a motorbike... LOL :P

The long awaited trip back home (to Portugal), after 7 years almost 8 years (actually) in Stockholm, Sweden,... is getting near!!
Both to enjoy some vacation and maybe even have some inspirational / reflective time before we arrive home, Cláudia and me decided to do a 2 weeks (more or less!) road-trip all the way from Sweden (Stockholm) to Portugal (Guarda, Coimbra; these will be the cities which will "harbor" us initially in Portugal).

These years (around 6 years for Cláudia and 8 years for me), as expected, were filled with new experiences and both happy and less happy events. The highlights of all this time has, however, definitely been our marriage (in 2010) and the conclusion of our Ph.D's (in 2011).

Anyway... we will have time to ramble about our reflections regarding the time in sweden later on. For now, this blog will be the journal of our "way back" (which will be starting, if everything goes as planned, this coming sunday morning - 24/09/2011 - ).
We are both eager for this trip (finally some vacation / relaxation time which we are both in great need after a tough year!!) and starting to feel, I must admit, a bit of the nostalgia coming our way.

Below is our preliminary route... according to google maps it is going to be 4285Km. Quite a ride :)
We will post the detailed routes once we have them done and confirmed :P

See you soon...
We will also try to link to a music video depending on the mood or the moment of the trip... for now I leave you with this one...

Cláudia&Pedro