Just some illustrations of the idea.

A lot of work still needs to be done.

Finally had to face the truth that my diploma wouldnt be finished before the summer break.

Might as well, but I'm starting to think that I've drifted to far in to the technical details rather than the theoretical parts that really interested me.

Problem is that the concept makes or breaks due to the technical stuff..

I'm currently trying to solve how I can winch up a lot of rope, without having a traditional spool, and use more of a sail-boat technique. Only issue is that this spool feeds atleast 6 meters of rope per second.

So what am I trying to solve with the important mechanics?

- Non-captive spool. The one they use today takes up a lot of volume.

- Self tailing automatic winch. This winch has to pull 6 meters of rope per second and the drivers focus is on the rider, not tailing and managing the rope.

- The rope is approximately 4-6 millimetres thick. How will it clinch the rope and still release it at the given point?

- Prevent override of the rope. Would come to an immediate halt and ruin the ride.

Heres some sketches and stuff, how it could work.

Just a small update.

Finished a mini weekend project last night/morning.

It was a lifestyle shoe for an NBA player, who is sponsored by Nike. Found it more interesting than the other competition about his next in-game shoe.

Couldnt really nail the design before the deadline, but i will make adjustments to it to make it fit better with the concept/idea. I was practicing on a couple of other things though, like doing the render a lot quicker, so i could push the design phase a bit more. But there is a lot of fine tuning left on this for me. First of all i need to start earlier.. Im getting old and need more sleep during the nights obviously.

Here is the result.

I haven't updated in a while, I know. It's because I havent had to much to write about except my trip to berlin for the Bread&Butter expo.

And I wont write about that now either actually :)

Mainly because it was pretty a disappointing experience.

This page will now slowly begin to transform in to the original intention of the site.

A homepage for my ongoing schoolprojects, personal projects etc.

Last week I participated in a shoedesign competition over at a site called http://www.projectbluefoot.com

The brief was to design the new Jordan 25, for the 25th anniversary of the Jordan Brand. I started doing some research after work in the middle of the week, with the deadline being set to the 25 of July. It was a good idea to actually start that late, because it put some pressure on me to work efficiently and smart.

I know that it did pose some flaws in the end result, fx my sketchideation page of the presentation looks terrible. But I did learn something from it which was the intention.

Anyway, here is the result.

Ill upload the entire entry when I get home. Can't upload files to my ftp from here..

Now I get to write what I have been waiting for a couple of months.

It is finally over!

One of the worst weeks of my life is finally over.. Still can’t believe it.

Yesterday we had our final presentation in front of the course examinator and the schools head professor. It was a very long time since I was so nervous before a presentation. I literally had to take a deep breath before beginning. I hadn’t had the time to practice the presentation, so I had to wing it. Prior to the presentation we found out that we would only have 5 minutes to present in, instead of the 10 minutes we were told two weeks ago. Oh yeah, did i mention that we overslept? We came home from school 6.40 on Tuesday morning, planning to get two hours of sleep, and then head back.

Neither me or Erik heard our alarm-clocks, and at 10.30 one of our classmates called me. “oh man, guys, where are you?!!”

Couldn’t do much more than just throw on our clothes and head off. Fortunately our teacher Bernd Stelzer, did not have any problem with it. He probably knew how much we have been working lately, considering we got our models last friday.

We have been working non stop to finish our scale models, and we actually made it. We even managed to build a “scene” for them to be displayed on, I would have never guessed that.

I can’t really say that I am too pleased with my project. I still believe it’s a great concept, but I do not think it reached the potential it has.

Well, here it is!

After the presentations, everyone were realllllly exhausted, however, a guy in the class had his birthday, so we combined his celebration with the ending of the semester and went to a really nice restaurant called Aioli on top of Schlossberg. Then I went home and got some well deserved 14 hours of sleep..

I do feel very guilty for neglecting my family as much as I have the latest couple of weeks, and especially Isabelle, but I hope you understand..

I’ve still not found a spot for my internship, just got a couple of negative replies where most already have interns, or aren’t taking in any this spring. Not sure how honest these replies are, but it doesn’t really matter. Analysing it too much would just lower my confidence, so i’m trying not to.

So what is next? Im staying in Graz until the 15h approximately, then I will meet up with my parents in Kirchbergl and go skiing for a week. After that its off to Sweden again! I will spend some time with my austrian friends, and go to visit Phil in Vienna. Really looking forward to the weeks to come.. I need to get a bit bored.

Will update a bit more often again.

Until then, auf wiedersehen!

Shit has been going down. A lot of things around me has been going to my disadvantage.

The Rapid prototype machine broke down, and I have been delayed 3 days in my modelbuilding process. Well see how far I get before presentation, but I will most probably finish it after the semester is over.

Otherwise, my computer has been acting up a lot. I cant start my windows partition, and this tuesday, the mail-application crashed and erased all my E-mails. On top of this, Husqvarna decided that they weren't going to have any interns this spring, which sucked for me, since I was really hoping to be able to go there the coming semester. So right now I'm working my ass of on the project whilst looking for places to intern. Oh well, it's not the end of the world, but is sucks ass anyway.

Enough complaining..

Wiedersehen!

Sorry guys, I havent had the time to update this site at all.

Anyway, heres a quick update.

It was great to get home during christmas, but it was also kind of spoiled by all the work I had to do. However, there was not motivation to work at home so I just felt stressed the entire holiday, thinking about all the stuff i DIDN'T do.. :) So I basically fell in to a evil circle.

We had a very calm christmas though. On the 23rd all relatives visited us as usual, the 24th me and my family just celebrated christmas together. Very cosy. I did have time to run some errands during the break, and also went to copenhagen with Hasse and a couple of other guys to go practice with reballs. On new years eve, me and Isabelle stayed at home, ordering pizza, watching some TV and the fireworks. Anyway, all the schoolwork floating around in my subconcious made me really short fused, and I do apologise to my entire family for being somewhat bitchy. Sorry...

I thought it would be really awfull to go back to Austria but it was not as bad as I thought. I just wanted to go there and finish the bloody project and go home. So on the 4th of january I left for Graz. My friend David picked me up at the airport in Vienna (oh my god, thank you). This was pretty sweet, and it made me feel a lot better to going there.

Anyway, since then I have been in school constantly. I have been in school practically every waken hour, mainly working on the 3D-model. The model will be printed with a 3D-printer, and made in to a scale 1:1 model. Many details has had to be worked out during this process. Can't say that im very pleased with the aestethics, but I am still pretty happy about the concept. Keep your fingers crossed that I Finish the models entirely before presentation, which is on the 27th.

Big version!

Until then (cus I will not update before that), Auf wiedersehen!

Small update this time.

School has continued to slaughter my time. Since friday we have continued working on the Exhibition project, and today we had the final presentation to the Museum intendent.

Last couple of days we have been in school approximately 15-16 hours a day. Going there at 9-10 am and going home at 5 pm. No complaining, just facts. We did relly try hard to improve all the things that the teachers think we lacked in the last presentation.

So Erik has been doing alot of rendering, whilst I and Thomas worked on the presentation and the layout of the first concept. We actually thought we would be done with the presentation early evening on tuesday night, but guess again. 3 hours of sleep was not nearly enough, but we managed to get up and go to school for the presentations.

This time around we also got to present as the last group.

The perfomance went better than the last time, but still not good enough. However, the teacher was very impressed by the illustrations, the concepts, the idea etc etc. The only thing he thought that we could have done better was to be more enthusiastic and confident about our concepts. I totally understand this comment, and know that it is something I have to work on. However, this was the first time a teacher actually told me, which reveals a bit about the teacher (Bernd Stelzer) and the ones we have at home in Lund...

I want to show you some images we had in todays presentation, so that you can compare them to the ones from the last update.

This was the project where we had to change the most. Mainly the layout of the stairs and podium of the wagon.

This is a rendering where we photoshoped in a couple of images and made them look like projections. This was crucial to explain the mood and function of the concept.

Just a close up to explain further how the visitor is integrated in to the exhibition.

The Museum intendent did not give any specific feedback, so either she really liked it or really disliked it. Because our presentation was the only one where she did not have alot of questions.

We were all really satisfied afterwards, obviously..

Today we also had the german test that was postponed from last Thursday until Monday, where I scored 26 out of 28 points. This was a nice bonus on a day like this.. Afterwards me and Erik grabbed a Durüm Kebab, since we realized that we hadn't had food for 25 hours. Almost a bit embarresing, but since we had a big lunch yesterday, we never felt hungry in the evening and continued to work instead. So it is not as bad as it sounds.

In aproximately 5 minutes, I will perform a double saltkov without a splash straight in to my pillow. No plans for neither tomorrow or the rest of the week. But you know me, Ill probobly spend it in school or in bed. Might be the latter because it feels like im going to get some kind of flu. My throat aches alot so im just waiting for it to hit me in the back of the head and knock me out cold.

Sad thing is that the latest couple of years, I have dreaded to get sick during the schooldays, and always hoped that I would get it during vacational periods or in the weekend. This is just pathetic, I do not want to become a work-o-holic. Which I never will be because Im way to lazy. Wish me luck fighting the bacterias!

Auf wiedersehen.

(no spellcheck or proofreading tonight. Takes to long, sorry)

Yes, its true! After working almost none-stop since sunday, we finally had our presentations. It's a shame that I didn't really get all the stuff done, but im pretty glad that I had as much to show as I did. Think I got 2 hours of sleep the night before the presentation. I always to get some shut-eye. This is because of a presentation a couple of years ago, in front of the head of design at TetraPak. That specific presentation, was horrible! I had been working day and night, with slim to no sleep at all. After my presentation, he asked me if I had problems with the English language, a language that I've known fluently since I really young. But sadly, today my plan failed. I lost words, and stuttered alot, however, I think they got the essence of my project anyway.

Afterwards, we listened to all the other projects, which is really tiresome to follow for a couple of hours when you only understand 30% of what they are saying.

Anyhow, my project is a portable, retractable band saw. It has an oscillating blade, which is supposed to give a similar effect as the battery driven Gillette Mach5 razor. I have noticed, as I always do when I assemble presentations, that I do not have enough useful sketches. I have mainly just made small sketches to make it easier for me to imagine the solution, and not to explain to others how it works. So until next wednesday I will focus on smart sketching. I will try to sketch the technical details of my project, as well as practicing the distrubution and layout of the paper sheets themselves.

Here are some photoshop renderings of my project. Do mind that it may or may not look like this at all in the end. This is just a representation of form, depth and different parts of the product.

As you see, my name for the project is "elo". I chose this because of the first three letters in the word 'elongation'. I thought that these letters have similar shapes and forms as my product, and I was in a bit of a timecrisis. I also want each letter to have another specific meaning. Like "ELO, Electric Lengthening Operation-device", however, I haven't found suitable words yet, so if YOU have any ideas, don't hesitate to write them in the comments section!

Heres a picture of the schools workstation where I have hooked up my MB pro the last couple of days. It has a 21" wacom tablet screen (which means that you sketch directly on the screen with a "mouse"-pencil). They cost aproximately 3000 euros, and this school have atleast 15! Wouldnt mind one of those babys at home.

I also have to start making my portfolio this week, to be able to apply for internships this spring semester. Right now I am thinking about Husqvarna, Puma, Adidas, Propeller, Ergonomidesign, Peak performance and POC. I'm not to keen to go abroad, but I think I might have to just endure it if I get a good oppurtunity. Problem is that I know it's just as straining for Isabelle as it is for me. All I know right now is that I really want to do my internship at a company that makes sport products. No genre in particular, but I wouldnt mind something more extreme sport oriented.

My mood has become better since Sunday, when my family returned to Sweden. Ofcourse I still miss them alot, but life goes on, and I have a lot of work to do. Both me and Erik mainly just sit in front of our desks and work or just sketch with an occasional movie or paintball.

Found more pics from the weekend on my cellphone.

A picture from one of the dinners we had in the winebago. It's my father, Bengt-Göran, together with my mother, Hanne.

I actually had my 10th schnitzel last weekend at the buschenschank in Riegersburg. Sadly it made me a bit ill. So as of now im just trying to stay away from those. Too much french fries and other oily stuff on the plate.

On another note. Today I got told that I was in one of the local newspapers!

Seems like one of the pictures from the last time we played in Vienna wound up in the news. Hooray!

Gaze upon that that hollywood smile!

Now I will go enjoy another Corona, that I think I deserve after these last days.

Auf wiedersehen!

So its been more than a week since i updated the page, and more than a month since I got to Austria! Time is actually moving pretty fast down here. I suppose it is because I have loads of stuff to do. Actually I cant find enough time to work as much as I should on the project. I feel like I am already a bit behind the rest, however, this weekend I'll put extra much effort in to this! Promise!

This last weekend I went to Vienna with the PBA guys to play the last leg of a season series. We only had two games that decided the final ranking, and we managed to win them both. Felt really good, everyone played well, and since a couple of guys was sick or just couldn't make it, Brian Ravanel was playing with us. Fun times, great weather and great company. Thanks to everybody David, Martin, Vienna United, Wolfgang, Brian, Minu, Philip, Flo and Klix!

Courtesy of Roman Schlosser

Later in the evening, Me , Florian, Klix and Philipp went out to get something to eat before we were supposed to go party. Ofcourse I had a wienerschnitzel, at a restaurant called Centimeter. Also we got a '1 meter' of beer, and some schnaps.

This ofcourse means - Wienerschnitzels since arrival: 9!

I am saving my 10th for a place called, 3 golden kuglen (3 golden spheres) which is rumoured to serve huge schnitzel at sweet prices.. hell yeah!

After the restaurant, we went home, and the to a friend of Philipp who had a pre-party. We got some beer, and were there for about 30 minutes. Everybody was going to a place where there was a quadruple-celebration. It was in a nightclub rented for the evening due to, one graduation, one moving away, one birthday and the fourth I forgot. The music was hideous, but the company was really fun. So we ofcourse, stayed in the bar. :D

Came home to the apartment at 4 in the morning. Crashed on a matress, on which I woke up on 8 hours later. Not too hungover actually. Breakfest at McD, no news there I guess. Got a ride to the trainstation by my new german friends. I have been recomended to buy a rebate-card (vorteilkarte) because you get half price off on all traintickets. Sadly, I messed up..

The card costs 20 euros, if you are under 26.. I asked at first, but couldn't really understand what he said, so I just went and got some photos from the photobooth and started filling out the forms for the card. I bought a ticket to graz and the card, and he asked for 117 Euros!!! It was to late to change my mind, so my budget for the weekend was ruined. I guess I am going to Vienna atleast 3 more times so I get my moneys worth. Right..

The trainride was awful, crowded, warm and tedious. After 2.5 hours on that train I was finally "home". Decided to take a walk home insted of waiting for the tram. So I tried a local delicacy called 'Maroni'. It is roasted chestnuts. Usually It's enjoyed together with Sturm, some kind of unfinished carbonated wine.

Not the best thing I've ever eaten, but I'll pass my final judgement after I've tried it with Sturm (or glühwein).

This thursday, my parents and ISABELLE!! are coming to visit for the weekend. I have just booked a spot for them on the local camping. God, I hope its nice. I have also put together a slightly too long list of stuff I want them to bring. Think I will have to be eeextra nice to them this week :) I also need to work twice as hard on the project and all the other schoolstuff this week. Really want to spend as much time as I possibly can with them. Can't even explain how much I'm looking forward towards this, mein Got!

This weekend my classmate Niklas, who was here last year, and his girlfriend Martina will be visiting Graz. Hopefully I will be able to meet them, and have a beer. Speaking of which, I have totally found my favorite beer, It's called Edelweiss Weissbier. Try it sometime!

It seems as spambots have found their way to this page, so I will probobly turn of the comment function, because this news-script doesn't seem to have any spamfilter, but that's a later problem. Right now I have to get to bed, because tomorrow we are have groupwork about some guy called Lucas de Groth. It's for a presentation in the Graphic Design course, which I'm participating in. Pretty difficult course, since they only speak german, and it's a pretty theoretical/philosophical subject. I'm trying but it won't be easy. My secret plan is to harass the tutor to make him help me with the Portfolio I have to do to be able to apply for internships this spring semester. Lets see if it works.

Until next time, buh bye!

PS. I hate Austrian mosquitos, I'll tell you more next time. DS

Finally, things are starting to get into place, and I have found some routines. Small things like when to go to the grocery store, breakfest etc. I have almost completed my school schedule, which means that it will get a lot easier to plan my days.

Yesterday I had a meeting with one of the faculty members and finalized my study plan, which means I'm pretty much settled with which courses I want to study. It also means that I will be able to get the scholarship money for the exchange studies! As of now I'm also starting to get a hint of how much i spend, when and why.. Last couple of weeks I've felt like a piggy bank vs an army of hammers. VISA must be happy I suppose.

On the downside, I think I have some kind of inflammation in the muscles on the backside of my thighs. First noticed it a couple of weeks ago when I played paintball. I thought it was some kind of cramp, but now It hurts almost all the time, which is kind of wearing me down. Especially after a long nights sleep or when I have been working alot at a desk. Theres no pain at all when the muscle have been working and get warm, just a mere stroll for a couple of minutes does the trick. Anyhow it is very tiresome..

The project is progressing, and at this minute I am sitting in the studio, waiting for a one-on-one meeting with the teacher. We are supposed to discuss which ideas and themes that are the most interesting. The direction of my project is leaning towards a quick and slightly aggressve way to open canned food. Alot more work to do before anything is determined.

I will probobly be going to Vienna this weekend for a small X-ball tournament with PBA-Factory. Hopefully my legs won't be a problem if I warm up thoroughly before every game. Time will tell. Atleast looking forward to see a part of vienna!

I'll try to update soon, and with some pics of supermegainteresting stuff.

Today I took another big step towards the big 3-0. Times passes quickly when you're busy right?

The latest couple of days have been interesting though, we actually started school for real now, and I've been going to some different classes with the 3rd and 7th semester students. One course I'm really looking forward to is CAID Advanced, an Autodesk Studiotools class (3D rendering program) with a teacher who seems really nice and motivated. This is probobly the only teacher that doesn't have a problem with having the lectures in English.

We also had a the initial meeting with the teacher who is running the 3rd semester project. Also a very inspirational and motivated person, who seems to have a lot to offer. The project brief/assignment was to make a cutting device (pretty standard task I guess), which is supposed to have different appearances when it is on and off. I think the workload will be pretty heavy, but I did not expect anything less..

On the downside, the students here in Graz seem pretty hard to get to know. They aren't very talkative, which probobly is because they don't really like to speak English, and my German is limited to standard phrases, or a severe butchering of their grammar and such. Hopefully they will defrost sometime in the near future.

This friday, me and Erik went to IKEA (again) to get some more necessitys like food containers, towels, MEATBALLS etc. Im starting to appreciate IKEA more and more everytime I go there, feels like hoooome. Afterwards, I got picked up by the David (Teamcaptain of pba factory) and went to the hall for some PB-practice. Apparently the field owner Johannes, is making a some kind of promotional film, so we got to pose for photos and they were filming us while we were playing. Cool but akward. Afterwards, me, david, Brian, and Micheal went to an irish pub, for what I thought would be a couple of beers and then going home for some sleep. Boy was I wrong..

It all ended up with us going to tree-monkeys, after alot of beer at the irish pub. David and Micheal decided to get a bottle of vodka at the club accompanied by some Red Bull, all this followed by yet another bottle of vodka to really finish me and Brian off. The night ended at about 4PM when I was dropped of by the taxi at my studenthome where crawled in to the apartment (not really, but it felt like it). Conclusion: Im getting to old for these things!

Woke up at 9PM because the phone was ringing. My Parents was calling to congratulate me on my birthday, and so did Isabelle!<3 It was really nice to hear their voices again, and ofcourse a bit sad. Always hard to celebrate things like this without your family. I slept for another hour, then I went to the city to get a new pair of jogging shoes. Found a pair of Asics for 40 euors (hoooray). After some breakfest alone at a Cafe, David and Brian picked me up for and we went to practice with Vienna United. All three of us was in terrible condition. Today was also the opening for the MAXS-store, so they had some opening discounts so alot of people showed up.

The filming for the movie continued today, and me and Brian got interviewed. Don't ask me why, because I have no idea why they wanted me in it. Im really not looking forward to seeing it, because I was SO tired during the interview, plus the fact that they wanted us so play videogames (greg hastings pro paintball) whilst answering all the questions, making it even harder..

Training went awful today, but I suppose I kind of deserved it after yesterday. After playing a couple of hours we grabbed some food at the gokart-restaurant (Thanks once again for the schnitzel Brian!). Afterwards we had a couple of more hours of training, and then we packed our stuff and went socializing with the others.

Thank you Johannes!

My plans for sunday includes sleeping, sleeping, sleeping, schoolwork, sleeping and maybe some laundry time (Not likely though). I want to thank everybody for making a pretty unusual birthday really fun. Vielen dank!

Wienerschnitzels since arrival: 4

This weekend I went to a 3-man tournament with my friends from PBA-factory. It was the season final of the OPBL (paintball-liga.at) just outside of Graz, in a town called Oberdorf. Martin picked me up at 6.45, then we went to get some breakfest at a Cafe. Thirty minutes later we arrived at the site, belonging to Paintball-Paradise.

Saturday went awful before lunch, we lost 3 games, and I felt a bit ill. I dont know if it was lack of sleep or a lousy breakfest, probobly a combination. I got a plate of bolognése at lunch and then after the break, we started playing really well. We went through to the finals, but lost the deciding game against a team called Zupano, which meant we would end up in second place. We were satisfied considering the lousy games we had before lunch.

After the price ceremony, I got home, made some fried eggs with meat and cottage cheese and went to sleep early, because I was guestplaying with a team called United Inc, and they had to place well because the ranking was important.

Met up with my friends from PBA 6.45 PM, and came to the site 7.15. The guys from the team were really friendly, one of the actually works as a chief chef and nutrition advisor(i think) for the swiss ski-team. Today everything went great from the start. We won all games but 2 in the prelims. I got to play snake today, which was alot of fun, until they started to pinpointing me of the break, so after 7-8 games , I had trouble getting to my starting bunker. In the finals, we won against a Slovakian team called vipers, after this we lost against Paradise Connection ( the home team) and won against destroyers which meant that we finished in first place!

Felt really nice to step up to the podium, but I've kind of realised, that it is not the same to win as a guestplayer, as with your regular team. I suppose it is because you have shared blood sweat and tears with eachother in the same way. But it's always nice to win none the less!

Courtesy of Michael Skolnik from Vienna united for the pictures!

Did not take long to fall asleep Sunday evening..

Monday meant first day of school! Was there at 9 PM to meet one of the teachers and to ask about which courses I was supposed to take. Erik is studying with the 7th semester students, and went on a Excursion to Ingelstadt, because their project was in collaboration with Audi, where they had their design HQ.

I myself went downtown to find a new schoolbag, and to try to find a place to fill my laundrycard with money. I still have loads of dirty laundry so I suppose you can guess which of the plans that succeded.

At 14 AM we had our first German language course, and It seems that my grammar was so lousy that I was put in the beginners group. A little bit bummed about the class, because the level was extremely low. Hopefully the difficulty level increases swiftly, otherwise I will probobly have to study more on my own, instead of going to class.

After this me and Tanja ( a Finnish exchange student) went to Hoefer to buy some grocerys. It's like LIDL but cheaper. Still haven't found a good grocery store. Seems like I have to go to several different ones to get everything I need. No Willys here.. (boho)

Then at 17.30 there was a class called APC (Austrian people and Culture), which is a 2 point course. It was actually really interesting, because until now I thought Austrian culture was really similar to Sweden. I have noticed a couple of differences, but hopefully I will get alot more insight now.

Right now I am in the studio at school (some new pics in the Gallery). I have met a couple of the 3rd semester students that I will be studying with, and been to a Cafe with them to have some coffe. I do not really know what will happened in the afternoon, because the class they have is called Visual communication, and it will be held in german, so i will probobly go talk to the 1st semester students and see whats on their schedule. I really need to find out which courses that are worth taking and then try to puzzle my own schedule together.

Oh yeah, did you notice how this page seems to get wider and wider everytime i post something new? need to figure out a good system..

So since last time, I've got alot of paperwork done for example the apartment contract and a "meldzetteln", which means that they now officially know that Im in the country.

Other than that, yesterday I signed up for the german intensive course, which to my surprise is a ECTS course. So I will get 5 universitypoints for just studying german! After this me and Erik went to buy some art supplies, and after this to get something to eat at an awesome bar/cafe.

I met a brittish friend in the stairway who told me there was a party in our cellar, and invited us upstairs for some warmup beers. Well, so after beeing at his place for a couple of hours with the Finns and Brits, we went to the cellar, and holy moly, It was totally packed with students!

After this, me and the other exchangestudents went to the same Irish bar as usual, and later to a kebap restaurant which was a pitstop before the nightclub district. After listening to some Kareoke at a club called Tree Monkeys, me and Erik went home, and fell asleep at about 4.30 AM, and slept until 13 PM..

Today (Thursday), both of us were mighty tired, so we just took it slow. We went to BILLA to get som grocerys etc. Found real bread (austrians seems to eat mainly supersweet toast bread) and cottage cheese. At 17 Martin (who plays in the team I practice with) picked me up outside the studenthome, and I was finally on my way to see the huge indoor paintball arena they have down here. Schweet!

It was SO nice!

A huge arena with recball, speedball and reball field. There was also a Gokart track just next to the Field, which made quite alot of noise.

The practice session consists of:

- Warmup - running around the field a couple of laps, pushups, situps, crunches.

- Drills - today we did some 2on2, Running and gunning, mainly running and shooting drills today.

- Games - 5on5 for a couple of matches.

Then we cleaned the field, and did the warmup excersizes again, with an additional excersize we call "idioten" in Sweden. It's when you run back and forth across the field, touching lines.

And boy am I out of shape! I decided to go buy runningshoes some day soon and start running up and down the stairs of Schlossberg. The guys from the team take REALLY well care of me, which I am so thankfull for. On saturday we will go to a 3-man competition in a nearby village. Hopefully I can play better this time..

I put up a Gallery on http://gallery.iddqd.se so you can see some additional pics and not just the ones i put up on this page.

The orientation programme for incoming exchange students started yesterday, so we got to meet alot of the other foreigners and get some help with all the paperwork that is required. We also took a German placement test to determine our language skills, so that we end up in a suitable class. Feels kind of odd when I have'nt taken a german test since 2001.. So it will be really interesting to see where I end up. (probobly the beginners class)

After this we went to a pub/restaurant close by the school. It was some kind of latino bar, and I guess it was'nt all that fun, but I got to talk with some students from Finland, which we later went together with to another bar. Some south American, Brittish, Finnish students and two Swedes sitting in a bar, most of us were really tired to one by one started to drop off and go home. Me and Erik went came home at about 2 AM and crashed in to bed, just to get up at 9 AM to go to school in order to learn the system with schedules, e-mail, Wlan etc. Afterwards we went to the Swedish embassy, aka IKEA, to buy some necessities which include:

- Bed Sheets

- Towels

- Extension chords

- Dinner, Meatballs

When going home, me and Erik picked up a sixpack of beer and snacks, and to my surprise, Austrias technologic advancement and extensive studyprogrammes made alot more sense.

I can now confirm that Austria is aproximately twice as far ahead Sweden in the field of culinary science.

Behold, the salty stick of the future!!

We also went to look for some new schoolbags, and found a 3 story surf&snow shop calle 'Blue Tomato'. Prices are almost the same as at home, so I think i will just have to wait until I find something I really like. Other than that I need to acquire a pair of jogging shoes and most definately a new CAMERA..

Until then, the cellphone will have to make due.

Wienerschnitzels since arrival: 2