Trekking shoes - the big dilemma

I received a pair of these for my birthday. I have to go and change them to a bigger size, but then started to wonder if perhaps another kind would be better...

Many sites suggest to get a pair of hiking shoes - something in between the shoe I got and a real hiking boot. A colleague also suggested this - but of course, she thinks I am going to use them for hikes in the mountains :D

My N and my lovely friend Mims suggest the kind of shoe that I received, a pair of Asics Gel Moriko WP, as they are lighter to carry when not used, less warm, and probably I am not going to hike too much in difficult terrains anyway.

I am leaning towards choosing these Morikos, but would really appreciate advice!

When is it appropriate to inform them at work?

Continuing on the theme of 'only 5 months left WTF?', I would love some advice on when to inform my boss that I am leaving.

Originally - meaning months ago - I had decided to inform him about 5 months or so before leaving. Originally!! There is NO way that I am ready to inform him in the next week or two!

Legally, I have to inform the company 2 months before my last working day - hence by 30 June.

But I want to be nice and inform them, not the HR but my boss and colleagues, more in advance to allow them to find a replacement and to organise themselves, especially since I want to leave on 31 August, hence right in the middle of vacation months here.

I am also increasingly starting to feel like I'm living a lie at work. I have told all my friends about this trip, but none of my colleagues although I talk to them every day, lunch with them etc. I am starting to feel bad when we discuss future projects, when I come with ideas for new projects when I know I won't be here to implement them. Or when we discuss reporting deadlines in the fall, meetings and outings and other stuff - and all the time I am not telling them the truth. Plus they will all understand, once I do inform them, that I have planned this trip for months and that all this time I just did not bother informing them that I am leaving.

At the same time, I do not feel ready to inform my boss about this yet. I feel I want to finish a few more things first, prove myself a bit more, make sure I leave with a good impression. Plus, I do not want to risk that he gets so angry (not that he probably will, but the risk does exist) that he asks me to leave as per my 2 months notice period. This would not be good as I'm counting on the salary from the next 5 months to buff up my savings.

So when would be appropriate to tell them at work? By the end of April - hence 4 months in advance? By mid-May, once 2 out of 4 of my conferences for this spring are over - hence about 3.5 months in advance? Or???

What do you think?

D-day minus 5 months and a bit...

In a few days there are only 5 months left until I am planning to do my last working day, and about 5 months and a week until I'm planning to change my apartment for a backpack, my high heeled boots for trekking shoes, my 9-5 (or rather 9.30-7) working day for adventure, planning for conferences to planning for where to go next or preferably to 'no planning at all', a pay check to slowly - hopefully - eating through my savings.

5 months!!!!! How did this happen? I remember a morning that feels like it happened yesterday, when I calculated the time left and realised there was still more than 7 months to go. And 7 months sounded like loads of time! Now, there's only 5 months left - and somehow 5 months sound like a very short time indeed. I mean, 3 months have already passed since the birth of 2010 and what have I done in these 3 months??? Well, except for some cool days skiing, and a lot of days kind of working, the answer has to be: dodilidodili close to nothing!

But in the 5 months left before I leave, besides organise 4 conferences, prepare 2 publications of participants papers, budget and oversee the translation, editing and printing of 7 national context analysis papers, oversee the financial side of one of our external offices, prepare 2 financial and narrative reports, create project proposals and find funding for projects that I will not be here to implement (somehow now that I am soon to leave, I have loads of ideas that for once my boss is actually listened...), and prepare for handing over my projects to someone else (sort through 5 years of mail, papers, information on my personal drive etc).

Besides all that work related stuff, in these 5 months I also have to find time to do the following preparations for the trip:

- get a thousand and one vaccinations,
- find a backpack, well once I've decided what size and type I want - why do I feel that this might turn into a last minute buy?
- find the right shoes (trekking, sandals, a 'nice pair'),
- get visas,
- get e-banking,
- get a first-aid pack,
- chose clothes and stuff to bring,
- get a thousand small and not so small stuff (Swiss army knife, zip-lock bags, packing tubes, day pack, rain jacket, sports bra and underwear, earplugs, flash light, duct tape, journal, money bag, travel towel..... and so on),
- decide if I want to bring a computer, and if so, chose what model,
- find someone to rent out our apartment to (for a bizarre period - possibly 2 months sharing with N, 6 months by themselves, 4 months sharing with N),
- go through all my books, clothes, papers, shoes and other stuff and get rid of a big part (a third at least? ouch!!), packing up the rest (the plan is to store it all in our basement but it's not very big),
- find a good but not too expensive health and travel insurance,
- get flight tickets and decide what system to go by (RTW ticket, or single tickets or....)
- decide on what country to start from... (a small, kind of tiny, decision ;))
- decide on what country to meet N in...,
- choose the language school(s) (thinking about possibly doing 1 month intensive Spanish in one country, and then a second month in another country - hence allowing me visit, during weekends, and get to know at least 2 countries during the first 2 months),
- learn some Spanish before leaving (optional, but would be very good),
- etc, etc.

In addition I should also supposedly try to get rid of my arachnophobia before I leave!!? This came as a suggestion by a couple of friends who do not understand that to get rid of my impossible fear of spiders, I will most probably have to put myself under the obligation to have to touch a spider at some point, and probably a BIG spider - now why on earth would I want to put myself through that? I mean, going through therapy means a most definite obligation to touch spiders! Travelling through the areas I want to go to, means a possible risk of having to touch a spider... Hopefully a very tiny risk. A lot bigger risk will be to have a big spider in my hostel room - but the answer to that would be very simple - I would just have to move to another hostel! :D

And of course, I shall also try to enjoy spring, meet friends, travel for Easter, travel 4 times for work, travel for Ascension, and then in the summer, say goodbye to family, extended family and friends - meaning trips to Sweden, Slovenia and Portugal! Plus a wedding in Greece.

Hmmmm am I the only one that just got severely stressed?

Different cultures, different lives - ohhh so exciting

I didn't write that much about my trip to Beijing last year at the time. Funnily enough, although the reason I set up this blog originally was as a travel blog, I have ended up writing perhaps the least when travelling. There are so many things to see, to experience, to enjoy that the time feels too short often to find an internet access and submit an entry. And once back from the travels, often it feels a bit too late. So the blog has ended up less as a travel blog and more just a personal blog for my life in Geneva. Hopefully this will change the day I set out for my one-year long travel...

All this to lead into an entry about Beijing and Chinese people with more than a years delay. These thoughts are brought on by my dear boyfriend currently being in China for 2 weeks and hence writing and telling me about what he is experiencing on a daily basis. He loves it! Like I did! It is also brought on by the experience of some friends who happen to be travelling in China at the same time although they have been there a lot longer. They do not seem that happy. Actually in one of the last entries one of them, E, wrote that she hates it and that she cannot wait to leave. It seems that we experience things differently. What my lovely N and I seem to take as an interesting cultural difference, such as the constant attention one gets, E and M are taking differently. Perhaps it's because they have been there for more than a month now and it has worn them weary, perhaps it is just different ways of perceiving life.

For me Beijing was a great experience. I loved it so much that I wished someone would offer me a job there for a year or so to allow me to live there and really explore everything!

And I did not find the Chinese rude. When my mother and I walked down one of the main streets in Beijing, but one a little bit off the tourist paths where you hardly see any foreigners, people would stare and smile, children point and laugh. I took this as a positive thing. I understand them completely; we must have looked like aliens to them - both of us taller than many of the men, me very blond, my mum with white hair, fair skin, foreign - we look so different.

However, to tell a short story, not so many years ago, approx. 30, when my cousin then aged 5 moved to Paris with her family, she soon decided to wear a bonnet the whole year around as people wouldn't stop touching her very blond hair. This was hence the way Parisians behaved seeing a Swedish very blond child 30 years ago! For me therefore, it seems very logical that the Chinese stare when seeing European people 30 years later. And at least they are well behaved enough not to come up and touch our hair :D

As for the friendliness, we encountered it almost everywhere! From the taxi driver who couldn't understand our map (tip: get a map with Chinese characters on it as many people do not seem to be able to read a map but the taxi drives know what different streets are called) but tried his best to help us, even getting a police man to come with his map so that I could point out the right street there, to the hole in the wall restaurant in on of the Hutongs where the staff only spoke Chinese and the menu was in Chinese, but where they found someone they knew to come and help us order and we ended up having on of the best meals for hardly any money.

Sure there were some rude people around. And yes, we did walk out of one restaurant where we didn't really feel welcome. But people being rude to us happened perhaps twice in 8 days, while when in Paris in August this happened at least twice in 2 days! (Yes, Paris as the example again - it seems that I cannot get away from it ;)

I loved Beijing, and I am longing for the day I can go back and visit Beijing again and discovering some of the rest of the country! If you do go, try to enjoy the cultural differences as much as you can! That's the fun part of travelling to places far away from yours - people act differently than to home, life is different than to home and that's what's soooo amazing!

My boyfriend is from Portugal. Great, lovely, beautiful, warm, sunny place that we wish to go to every quite often. Half of the population in this city is also from Portugal. Flight companies now work on a the more the merrier for the company policy, if you're not among the first 2 or so buying a ticket on a specific date you'll pay a fortune. We did not win on the Euromillion.

Make the calculation - do you think we go to Portugal often?

I suggested we kill or at least injure enough some portuguese people so they can't make their flight, steal their tickets and pretend to be them (would for sure work as my Portuguse is just excellent...). N suggested that we maim some Swiss tourists instead. At this I laughed! There are no tourists going to Portugal over the weekend. How would they afford it? This is why the Portuguese economy isn't what it could be as only Portuguese people are crazy enough to pay the overrated prices to fly home, and then cannot afford to spend any money in the country but live off their mummy's great food. Swiss tourists go elsewhere to places where they can still afford an ice cream after having paid the flight. Hence the only one to profit, as always, is EasyJet.

How to feel at home in a new city

The website spotted by locals gives you tips from locals regarding where to eat, where to go out, what to do in several cities around Europe. I have checked out the restaurant tips for Geneva and 9 out of 10 are among restaurants I appreciate. So seems like a good site.

Slovenia here I come

A bit excited today about leaving for Slovenia in two days. Haven't seen my dad and little brother for a year and a half now - so about time too! And they've got a new dog - which of course I love to see. And my dad and I are planning to go skiing for at least a day which will be fun - think last time I skied with my dad and in Slovenia was about 16 years ago, so about time.

Part of the trip will be vacation, an extended weekend, and then I'll finish with 2 days of work in the beautiful capital Ljubljana - one of my favourite cities. Sometimes my job is good :)

travel tip - lisboa

If you go to Lisbon then you have to try out this restaurant where my love took me to lunch on Sunday (yes, by the way, we went to Lisbon for 3 days over the weekend and enjoyed a nice mostly sunny albeit cold time, some lovely moments with his family, on the beach and with lots of yummy food).

The place is called Faz Figura and we enjoyed some really great food there with a beautiful view over the river! They first brought in some kind of chorizo spread which was really yummy on bread. We then shared 2 entries - Pimentos Padron with mushroom paste on thin slices of toast - one of the tastiest entries for a very long time - and a kind of bread sausage (Rosti de Alheira de Mirandela) with apple and a small salad - not bad either.

For the main course, N. took black risotto, while I had the black pork in a balsamic and honey sauce with mashed potatoes with truffle - all to die for. I was basically sitting there with a stupid smile on my face every time I brought another forkful of food to my mouth. Perfect combined tastes and perfectly cooked. If I lived in Lisbon I would have to go back there at least once per month - always eating the same beautifully composed dish.

And in the summer sitting out on their terrace overlooking the river must be even better :)

Ps. We shared a pearcrumble with cinnamon icecream for dessert and this was the only disappointment - the ice cream was great, but the crumble no crumble and wihthout taste. Perhaps this will teach us to not ask for more after a 3 courses meal with wine.

travelling again...

I'm off travelling for another weekend and really looking forward to it since I'm going to see my sweet friend A who has moved to Barca for a year, and I love both her and Barca :))

At the same time, I must admit that I'm very pleased that my next weekend away, to Budapest that time, will be with my lovely boyfriend! I love travelling, love seeing new places and revisiting old ones. And I know that I'm privileged in that I can travel and see so many wonderful parts of the world. However, I'm also privileged to have met a wonderful man and being away from him all the time feels a bit sad, so just happy that I have a great trip ahead of me now and that the next one I get to share with my love.

And then a resting cocooning homey month all in Geneva in November, before going off again in December. The perfect time to make some more space in my drawers... ;)

ToT Groningen

My first training course where I went as a participant rather than as the organiser, was a train the trainer's course in Groningen, NL. It was nice to go, both because it means that my boss finally seems to take some interest in providing me with more experience and hence a chance of actually doing some more interesting work and to get somewhere at work, and because I was curious to be in receiving end again. On top of it, I was, as always, excited about seing a new place. Especially since Groningen is a city I would most probably never visit on my own choice. This is something I really like with my work - the fact that it has taken me to places like Skopje, Podgorica, Zagreb, Belgrade, Garmish-Partenkirchen and now Groningen - all places I would probably never think of going to on my own. Well, exception perhaps of Zagreb and Belgrade.

The ToT course went well. There were 11 participants and 2 trainers for a 2.5 days of extremely stuffed schedule, leaving me with a headache at the end which it took me more than 3 days to get rid off (and I hardly ever get headaches!). I learned a lot - both about training but also about myself. Before going I was quite worried about the first day when we had to hold presentations/trainings with the group - something I had never done before (outside of Uni) and which I wasn't that sure that I was able to do.... However, I realised after a few hours that 1) I did indeed manage to hold a training, and with people who some of them were quite experienced trainers already; 2) and that I did it quite well :))

It is always nice with a self-esteem boost :)

As already mentioned, I did manage to find some time on the second evening to walk around first in the city and then in an outdoor festival that was on that week in a park and where there was a mixture of organised concerts, spontaneous small ones, small theatre shows, different kinds of food and all other kind of happenings. I tried to local specilities, although I have forgotten the names now. The first is a kind of tiny pancakes that pop out of the wholes on the first picture - really yummy. The second was ordinary vanilla ice-cream served in a different way between two thin pieces of waffle - this ice-cream was pushed out of plastic tubes that reminded me of sausages... but it was nice was well. Or perhaps this was due to the sugar overload that night ;)

Local food stuff and happenings in pictures:














Other Groningen pics:

paris in...september

one always hear about paris in spring or in april - and i have already visited paris in april and yes, indeed it was very beautiful and romantic!!! now however i will have the opportunity to visit this great city in september and hope that it will be as lovely as in the spring! what do you think?

am so happy, as always when i'm planning to go somewhere else, to travel and see, smell, hear new places :)) bought my train ticket there a few days ago and managed to find a real good deal at 20 EUR one-way. have to go to paris in order to catch my flight to china and decided to start the china trip off with 2 days in the city of painters, writers and cherry flowers. a change also to meet and stay at my friend v's place. hmmm although 3 months from now, buying the ticket brought a big smile on my lips for the rest of the day :))

so september paris watch out!

Bye Geneva, here I come Belgrade...

hmmm perhaps that title sounds a bit too drastical... but indeed, am leaving Geneva this evening for a week in Belgrade. 1 day meeting, 3 days conference, and 2 days off (next weekend) staying at Sonja's place. I new city to add to my experience, a good time ahead of me with knew things to learn, young people of the conference to spend time with, and hopefully some visits of the town and perhaps even some shopping... I'm also hoping to bring along the beautiful sunny weather from here which should make the time there even better. Brought both sunglasses and an umbrella, that way i'm covered no matter what...

off to buy some swiss cheese and chocolate for my host. all packed already. more or less ready at work - probably lots of things left to do but cannot concentrate anymore so...

will write more about the experience once back. wow, i love to travel!!!! although i already miss my darling teddybear :)

I chose the sea...

it has been quite some time since i last wrote anything here, more than a month actually, reason being that i have been first too busy at work, then sick, and finally off on vacation and not wanting to use a computer in the heat more than for a few minutes at a time... however, forced by circumstances to stay two extra days at my father's place in slovenia and seeming that it is raining i thought it was time to fill in some missing information.

first however, why am i here? well, following on my father's notorious lateness we left portorož where he lives and i spent the last week an hour later than planned, meaning that we lost our extra hour of precaution. then the actual drive took about 20-30 minutes longer than what stated on viamichelin, and finally and worst when arriving at the right exit in venice there was a choice between two roads - one going to aeroporto and the other to some city we have never heard of and not the city where the right airport was supposed to be situated - hence we followed the signs to the "airport". only arriving at it did it say the name which was not the right. a lost 30 minutes, the exact time needed for me to arrive in time for my flight to stockholm so hence i missed it as they refused to let me through even though the airport was tiny and there were almost 30 minutes left to take-off grrrr. on top of that, the next flight is only tomorrow and it is fully booked as are all their flight out of venice until 1 august. so now, i'll have to go down there, an almost 3h drive one-way, tomorrow to wait and see if by chance someone does not turn up and then can fit me in.... so, not sure how i will get out of here nor when, and in the meantime, after having looked on all possible flight out of venice, milan etc and realised that no good options existed, i decided to try my chances on wednesday and enjoy my extra day at the beach - but for some reason the bad luck keeps following me and today, after a week of not one cloud, it is raining :((

oh, well, enough of the negativism- at least i got to see venice for the first time in my life. the plan was in fact to go there for a few hours during the day before hitting the airport, but then i chose the sea over the city and decided to go for a last swim in the most lovely water in the world. finally i guess i got both ;)


so, please keep your fingers crossed tomorrow that i get a seat on the plane to stockholm!

who are those people who would have dared?

do you think that those people exist who actually dare go up to a cute guy or girl and start talking to them? and i'm not talking about a situation when someone is drunk on the dance floor or in a bar, but rather in normal situations, normal circumstances, like ordering a coffee (well a smoothie in my case since i hate coffee, even the smell of it) at the airport after checking in, trying to kill some time while waiting for boarding and seeing a real good-looking man looking in your direction. are there actually people that would have gone up and started to talk with this guy? or even, chosen to sit down next to him? i was contemplating the latter option, but then it felt a bit too much and there were comfortable sofas a bit further away, so the best i did was sitting down in a place where though at a certain distance at least we were facing each other... and he looked a few times. and i looked a few times. and our eyes crossed several times and we even dared keeping the connection for a bit longer than usual once. but that's the best we managed. hmmm and what if that was the man of my dreams? would i have found out if i had actually been cool enough to start chatting with him? perhaps, i would have if the place had been more full and sitting down close by was one of the only options, but now i had plenty of seats to chose from and then sitting down next felt a bit to risky... stupid girl, the worst that could have happened would have been that he laughed in my face which would not have been very bad, and even that seems quite a stretch as people normally do not react that way. but then again, who knows, perhaps meeting someone at the airport leaving a city you are not even planning to come back to anytime soon and not even boarding the same plane might just have been a sign that it would have been way too complicated ;))

but still one has to wonder, who are those people who would have dared?

at least i got a few days in Budapest, luckily in a nice hotel since that is where i spent most of my time since this was a work trip including a day starting with a breakfast meeting at 8 a.m. and ending at 1 a.m. when i just couldn't take it anymore. but i had a nice lunch in the beautiful park next to the hotel (see pic), a walk from the hotel and through the city at night (see pic), and 3-4h on the last day, walking around seeing the castle, the parliament (way too big for the size of the country, reflecting hungary's history - see pic), one of the biggest markets, several bridges, the main shopping street (and no, i didn't actually shop for once, though i was very close to buying some shoes - as usual - however, the only thing i finally bought were some hungarian spices, ajvar and sausage miam).... and taking quite many photos and walking very fast in 36° heat and finally enjoying my day off after a catastrophic morning when nothing worked. And quite importantly, i got to the plane in time, i got back to geneva only one hour late, ensuring that i was here for the hen party that i was organising for the next day (when i actually managed to not hear my alarm but that's another story).

Barcelona in April - better late than ever

For my 30th birthday, my dear brother gave me one of the top gifts ever - a long weekend with him in Barcelona!!!! The reason why this was such a cool gift, was not only that I love Barca and was very pleased to go back there again, 7 years after the first time. The main reason why i loved this gift was that it meant that i would spend some quality time with my brother!!

Now, those that knew us when we grow up will remember that from the age of approx. 5/8 years old (and yes, he's the older one, even if some people have had the tendency to doubt this lately) we were like cats and dogs! Not only did we fight about anything and everything, we were also quite mean to each other, and no one ever knew better than him how to drive me crazy through teasing. I admit, we did have our good moments as well, and we did share some cool times on vacations in Slovenia and so on, but most of the time....cats&dogs, or should i say brother&sister. However, once Robert left for a year in the States, or actually, once he came back we started to change our cats&dogs relationship into something a bit more relaxed, and we slowly grew closer. In fact, the more years we have spent a part (him in the army, away studying elsewhere in Sweden, me in the States, and then in Geneva for the last 10 years), the closer we have become until my dear brother is now nagging me about when i'll be moving home again...

So, I was excited about meeting up with him in Barca and have some fun together in this cool city of Gaudi. And fun we did have, even though it was the only place in Europe were it was cold and rainy that weekend, we did have lots of fun and even managed to get some sun towards the end. Shopping, la segrada, bars, restaurants, the port, la rambla, a cool nightclub, Barca against Mallorca at Campo Nuevo with some 60'000 other people screaming, cheering, enjoying the match in the cold - the dream of my brother and yes, you were right, it was an incredible experience, just walking in to the stade, feeling the athmosphere, watching one of the best teams play in real, and sharing this with my brother who was pleased like a child! it was really really cool even if the match wasn't the best one (well at least barca won at the end), even for a non-football fan like me, it was still worth it !!!

So all that which Barca is well known for and....of course....what did you expect?... some disagreements ;) It would seem that spending 4 days together just the two of us was perhaps a bit long, at least to start with when we for the first time in years, perhaps forever had to spend that much time together. So yes, we got into some fights, we still know how to get to each other better than anyone else (we are siblings, what do you expect?, it's the law of nature ;), and we are both as obnoxious, knowing that we are right. But those moments passed, the sun came back up and my memory from Barca is that it's a real cool place and being there with my brother made it even better!

Tack lille storebror för en underbar present/helg!!! Du är bäst :)

.... And yes, we promised that we will make more trips together in the future, though perhaps the next time we even allow other people to come with us - so if interested.... ;)

More picture can be seen at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lna_la_fee_verte/