Raiding, rumble and refreshening

After I threw my pillow at the window in order to get rid of the sadistic pigeons (read yesterday’s post) I got up and prepared breakfast. Today Jackie and I planned to go to IKEA to get some stuff for her room and for common parts of the apartment. I’ve decided to wait until my parents get here to see what space i got left after bringing my stuff from back home.

Still, after almost 4 hours of IKEA raiding for epic loot, resulting in two trolleys brimful of stuff, it didn’t exceed 5600CZK. We settled some colour schemes for the bathroom and the kitchen as well for ourselves. I’ll go with a white/black and wooden look with forest green dots.

If everything goes as planned we’ll have a beach/ocean theme in the kitchen. Making plans for the flat is really funny – even though it’s also exhausting, I barely ate anything yesterday because of all the running around.

Jeanine’s furniture that she bought yesterday was delivered to the flat and she, her mum and her boyfriend did a lot of building – only to find out that one piece of the bed was missing which meant that Jeanine had to sleep on the floor for one more night.

But with a little piece of furniture the apartment starts to feel alive. It’s not just an empty shell anymore, a great empty shell as it is, but yet, comfy and a bit more inviting.

Now I’ll go to bed while Jeanine is still fixing with her stuff and Jackie is watching a movie also trying to sleep. I moved my madras into my room and with only my suitcase hand luggage it sure looks gigantic.

Space, spice and sirens!

I woke up pretty early on my blow up madras after a night of rather good sleep. After all this is the first time I sleep in the busy part of a big city – I’ll explain more down below.

Yesterday’s flight went surprisingly good, our flight Captain Linda took us both up and down safety. Flying with City Airlines was pretty much more convenient due to the fact that that’s the only company that have a direct flight from Gothenburg to Prague. I paid 1200SEK which is fairly good – “fairly” because I could’ve got the ticket for 800SEK if I’d booked it a month earlier.

I arrived at 2:20pm and went to grab my suitcase. Then I was about 10 minutes late and knew that Jackie was supposed to arrive at 2:00pm. Even if I was late Jackie’s flight got delayed almost 20 minutes and we found ourselves randomly looking at each other while we grabbed our luggage – now that saved us a ring.

We got into town to try to locate Jeanine who was waiting at a hotel, pretty close to the apartment, together with her mom and dad. They planned to go on a shopping spree at IKEA right away but first off we had to meet Jiri, our broker, at the office for contract signing and payments. So after a minor discussion we took a cab there, which was the right decision to make, both because the rain was pouring down on us and it only cost 136CZK which is approximately equal to 54SEK, hence our surprised faces when we saw the recite and Jeanine was planning on giving the cab driver a 2000CZK bill.

After almost 2 hours at the office – and for crying out loud don’t ask what took them so long, most of the time we just sat waiting for papers (I guess the copy machine, computers AND the printer was slow as hell) we finally signed the contract and handed over the first rent deposition of 36 360CZK. Quite a lot you might say, and yes indeed, counting up that amount in cash was rather odd, still this covered the first half month, the next rent as well as the so called “safety deposit” that we’ll get back in the end of the contract.

Jeanine went to IKEA to meet up with her parents while Jackie and I fetched the keys to the flat and took the tram there. After too long of a tram ride, due to heavy afternoon traffic and major construction work, we finally got off at what I thought was the right stop. By now we were starving and stopped on the way, by writing “on the way” take in consideration that Jackie thought we were lost and my awesome navigation powers brought us to a noodle bar, to have some noodles.

We also stopped to get some beer, for the take away noodles, and entered the flat. Gosh it’s empty – almost creepily empty. With no chairs to sit on we just crashed down on the floor in the kitchen, exhausted and starving, and began to eat the delicious but oh-so-hot-and-throat-burning noodles.

The rest of that evening we just sat there waiting for Jeanine to get back, drinking a couple of beer, chatting and listening to music – which echoed pretty sweet in the hollow acoustics of the empty flat.

Once Jeanine got back we began to clean the floor, the toilet and the bathroom from the construction dust left after the renovation. Then we crashed down, watched Grown Ups and went to “bed”.

Lipova 18 isn’t the best place for an untrained “city-sleeper” like me. The street outside is a pretty small one, but oh so busy. Since it’s just next to the biggest hospital complex of Prague the ambulances and emergency vehicles are dashing by at the street below and they haven’t exactly turned their sirens on silent mode. I guess we’ll get used to that and I must say that it’s kind of a good reminder of where I am and what I am about to do in the future as well contributes to the atmosphere of this neighbourhood (though, if people would get sick once every hour instead of once every tenth minute I’d sleep a lot better tomorrow).

And yeah, speaking of sleeping distractions, there’s two pigeons cultivating the art of bird intercourse right outside the window, smashing their nibs and wingtips at the glass 7:40am...

Emigration

Today's the day. The day I spread my wings and lift off the ground. Wish I could take all of you with me, but hey, missing people and missing habits just makes them more wonderful once they return.

"Wherever we've travelled in this great land of ours, we've found that people everywhere are about 90% water" - David Letterman

Cleaning up and packing my stuff

The one way flight to Prague is just around the corner so today I began to pack my stuff.

The limit of 20 kilos + regular size hand baggage makes things a bit difficult but thanks to my parents, who's coming down by car next week, I'll be able to bring almost everything. They're going to bring my wardrobe, some basic furnitures and my electronics as well as tools for setting up the apartment.
  In order to survive in a completely empty flat the first week I'll bring a blow up madras, a set of clothes - you know, the necessary gear - thou, I bet we'll go on a shopping spree right away.

Yesterday's night out at Henriksberg in Gothenburg, where 047 played live, was amazing! Good friends all over the place, great music and rather interesting conversations just made my last party night in Sweden (at least for a while) worth a spot in the memory box.

I also just found out that Sam Tsui and Kurt Schneider just released (a downloadable) mashup of song. I usually don't listen to stuff like this but with Tsui doing the vocals, it can't be bad... Check it out:

A Breif Summary

Now where shall I begin...
A lot happened since the last time I wrote so let’s just begin in a chronological manner, shall we?

Right after I passed the test in Stockholm and got accepted to the first faculty of Charles University in Prague we had a major graduation party. We celebrated all night long and the day after that, with a head heavier than one of the great rocks of the Stonehenge, I began my trip back home to my parents house.
One good thing often brings a bad thing with it – so it seems. Me and Caroline decided to walk separated paths. The fact of me leaving and spending so much time away finally wore us down. Sad as it is, we get along really well and in this very instant as I write this summary I’m actually travelling to her place in Finspång to see her before I leave Sweden.
With that said I can continue with the story. The (new) Harbour Captain down at the docks wanted me to work for yet another summer and I gladly accepted. I spent a great deal of time there but with all the perks, such as meeting new people, speaking both English and German as well as being out in the sun all day long, the time summer seems to fly by in an instant.
Simultaneously along with work, sunbathing, scuba diving, cold beer, BBQ and jet ski madness, I slowly began to plan the autumn and the continuation of my upcoming adventure – and believe me – there are a great number of things needed to be sorted out. Of course you can just leave things to chance and hope the problems get solved once they appear but hey, that’s not how I do things.
I believe that being properly prepared and thoroughly “self-scheduled” saves you a great deal of effort, stress and energy as well as time and money. I, Jackie and Jeanine already had plans to move in together in Prague.

Jackie and her fiancé Kristian was about to make a Eurotrip through Germany, Czech Republic and Poland with a planned stop in Prague. I booked a flight to Prague via Frankfurt in order to join them and look for apartments. During the first day, alone as I was waiting for Jackie and Kristian, I roamed the streets of Prague and was absolutely amazed by the old buildings with its facades and gargoyles as well as its radiation of almost ancient atmosphere. Just take a look at this building that in fact is the Centre of Gynaecology of the 1st Faculty.

Here's a bunch of other photos I took. Enjoy!

Worth mentioning is that this was my first visit in Prague and after some trouble I managed to get a pretty good grip of the city map. The public transportations are also really smooth, the tram runs at all time and with short intervals.
The trip lasted for about a week, unfortunately Jeanine was busy working back home in Oslo, but with her assurance and belief in us finding the right place to live we managed to find a flat – and not just any flat – probably the best flat in Prague. Cheers to that!

Our criteria were absolute; three separate bedrooms, good location to the school and centre along with a nice and comfy first impression.

Of the ten apartments we found at the Czech website homesweethome[dot]cz we were shown four different apartments around Prague that was available by a broker, that in fact was a really nice chap. Saying the others weren’t available is a lie, it seemed as if the landlords and landladies of some of the apartments, which would suit us really good, had bad experiences with students in the past hence the low number of flats “available” for us.

The one we decided to rent was a really bright and spacious flat close to 100sqm. It was recently completely renovated and the layout was really great – maybe not fantastic by itself – but rather so, compared with the other apartments we were shown.

The rent is 18000CZK which is pretty close to 7800SEK. Divided among the three of us we’ll pay a monthly rent of 2800SEK each which I guess is really good for a flat this spacious.
Though, it’s unfurnished, compared to the other apartments that we looked at, the location of this one is just splendid. It’s actually on the same street as the University reception. Since it’s so close to other areas such as the campus, the gym and even the centre of old Prague we can save a lot of time that we otherwise had to spend on the go. Instead that precious time can be used for studying.

I really do believe that this is going to be quite an adventure – an adventure that I’m looking forward to accomplish, so make sure to stay tuned...

Graduation Party!

The first goal accomplished(!!!)

In order to deliver the good news I have to begin by elucidate the past two weeks. After Sagi sadly left us to study on our own until the exam we really stepped it up. He left us with a big booklet of old entrance exams in all subjects. While looking through the booklet I found myself puzzled over how easy some of the exams were. The latest Charles University Exam, however, was not that easy. To be honest I found it very hard, not considering knowledge, but rather how the test was built. It was a lot of statistics, graphs and tables that had to be read and I found it very time consuming. Even the biology part seemed to be more mathematics than anything else. While we did it I got really mad and didn’t want to concentrate at solving the problems. Come to think of it I guess I just got scared.

The two weeks of complimentary lessons were just enough to fill our need of guidance. We studied real hard the first week and when we only had one weekend left until the exam we began to fill rather saturated. I packed my belongings and said farewell to the family I’ve been staying with to move to Jackie and Jeanine’s apartment in the city. It really saved me a lot of time and energy and I don’t miss going by bus for two hours every day.




To sum it up we read a lot, quizzed and went through the old exams over and over. “Questions tend to repeat themselves...” Moshe said twice before he left.
Anxiety and nervousness set a seed in us for the last days and I don’t think that I’ve ever felt so tranquil and stressed out at the same time for such a long time. I tried to calm my senses and get rid of the latent imploding feeling in my stomach that spread every time someone mentioned the exam or anything about it.
The last two days were the worst. All I could think of was to get the exam over with.
When the day finally arrived I felt completely the opposite – I started to doubt myself and wondered if I needed more time to prepare. I slept very well the night before felt thoroughly rested when I woke up. We had a kickass breakfast and went to school to fight the very final battle.

The dean from Charles arrived in a grey suit, smiling when he entered the classroom. We took our seats and got the exams. Two hours later we were all done and were told to wait for the personal interview with the dean. The limit of passing was 65% which, for the Charles Exam type, is a pretty difficult border. The exam is a multiple choice exam where more than one statement might be correct. The tricky part is that if you mark a statement that is incorrect it will erase respectively one point from a correct statement. The total score of one question can not drop below zero which made guessing possible but not recommended since you might lose the whole question. The test consisted of 45 questions with the total score of 320.

The break until the personal interviews was like waiting for your final judgement, as if your whole life was at stake. After two hellish hours we finally went back to the office where we were called in one at a time. I didn’t think that waiting could be so cruel. I got called in as person number three from the end. Moshe met me in the door and told me: “You passed the exam - this is not going to be an oral exam but rather an interview, congratulations...”

I entered the room and took a seat in front of the dean. After a short introduction he asked me about my interest in medicine, hobbies and work experience. It was a delightful conversation without any extravagances. The professor gave me the letter of admittance to the 1st Faculty of Medicine, Prague, and wished me good luck.

I'm going to Charles and I'm now officially a Med Student (!!!)

It took a while for it to really settle...

The way of Physics

This week we got introduced to a new teacher.
His name is Segi and he is for sure the best teacher I've ever had, and most probably the best I'll ever have(!).

We're doing physics the whole week and one of the first things he taught us was his way of dealing with physics questions:

1) Cut the bullshit, keep it simple and stupid
2) Write the data
3) Convert the units
4) Feel artistic and D-R-A-W
5) Find the relevant equations
6) Play the equation-puzzle game
7) Do the math

Wow, I really admire him for making physics so much fun...