It’s the beginning of November. That means this time of the year has arrived when the sky is so gray that the sun can barely brake through the clouds and fog. When my new raincoat suddenly is the most important item that I own. The watches are changed and the colorful leaves are fallen to the ground, reminding us of the awesome autumn that we had. It’s time: winter is coming.
But I’m definitely not ready for that.
Not only because I’m a bit scared of the Swedish winter; the darkness and the feeling that it will never end. It also means that my EVS is almost finished (in the end of this year) and I think that is super sad.
But for this blog entry I decided that I just escape these early-winter-thoughts by memorizing the awesome summer vacation that I had! 
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In July and August I had several weeks of vacation and it was just too great to not talk about it!
I was so happy that some friends and family from Germany were visiting me. That meant I could see them and explore Sweden the same time! I really wanted to see more of this beautiful country since I was already living here for quite a while and the weekends were only enough to do some short trips.
After weeks of planning it was finally time: My best friend was coming and we spend two weeks traveling all around southern Sweden. Our trip was super exciting because we did a lot of different things! We saw the cities Malmö and Stockholm, went to the beach, hiked, hitchhiked and camped in the lonely forests of Lidköping, kayaked surrounded by the beautiful nature of Dalsland, slept in a treehouse and ate smoked salmon in a small island north of Gothenburg (my personal highlight, the landscape is stunning!). On the way we visited friends who I met on the On-Arrival Training. Thanks Anton, Laura, Lisa and Hans for hosting us and this nice time we had together!
Not even a week later I did my next trip around Sweden and Denmark with another friend. We started in Copenhagen where my family picked us up by car and we stayed some days in Växjö and went to the IKEA museum in Älmhult. Then my sister, my friend and I continued by ourselves with a rented car. We also went to the west coast and then to Gothenburg, took the ferry to Skagen (Denmark) and finished again in Stockholm. Afterwards my sister stayed almost a week in Växjö and it was really nice to show her my every day life here and introduce her to my friends! And finally my family and I spend some days on Öland. I’m so happy that I could spend such a long time traveling around!
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So now back to the here and now. But from now on I will do it as the Swedes do to prevent the winter blues: Already starting to get into the mood Christmas
Pictures:
(1) map of all the places I’ve traveled to
(2)Malmö
(3) island Åstol
(4) wild camping in Lidköping
(5) biking in copenhagen
(6) Gothenburg with my sister
(7) Skagen (Denmark)
