This week-end was so great! It actually started a few weeks earlier for me as I was event leader together with Brenda. We were helping for the organisation of the from now on annual Bus Trip held by H&M aka Henrik and Male. In the beginning we were supposed to go to Uppsala or Karlskrona but ended up in Helsingborg instead!
On Friday evening, instead of getting ready for the trip and going to be early I was at Manu & David's place drinking glögg, not so smart but so much nicer. After that I packed my luggage around midnight as usual when I'm travelling.
Saturday morning, 7 o'clock in the morning, the alarm clock rings... mmh early! 8 I get to Ullevi, nice that I live so close. Not so nice that it's so cooooold! Thank God I took my gloves, my hat and big woollen scarf. Some of the Mexicans are late as usual but they are not the last. Jörgen who has lived all his life in Göteborg (when he's not travelling around the world) happened to take the wrong bus because guess what? they changed the line since he last took it seven years ago! Ahaha, he heard a about this one a few times during the week-end, let me tell you! ;-)
Soon we're on our way to Skååååne, or Scania in English and the sun is shining. Pringles, Spanish tortilla and pie for breakfast, yummy! We stopped in Halmstad for a technical pause and it was actually very near where I lived in 2002, the very famous and no less luxurious Fina Laxen hotel/hostel. Time went fast and soon it was time for Bingo! And the distribution of the first prices. Erik won the money, Jörgen cheated and Edith got lucky. Then we arrived in Höganäs, the first stop of the week-end. Höganäs is the name of a town but also of a ceramics company making very nice things.
They had an outlet store and some of us took advantage of the good prices to buy some christmas presents for their family or for themselves. I bought this lovely teapot for myself, had wanted for a loooong time and I'm soooo happy I finally have it! It's the one on the pic but in Turquoise. They have several colours and my collection is a mix of turquoise, light grey and black. Male & Henrik have the brown ones and the white ones, Tom & Malin have the blue ones, Brenda and Andreas as well. That's something that I like about these, that although we buy the same product by choosing and mixing different colours we make it personal.
After that we went to check in in the youth hostel, just outside Helsingborg and 500m from the sea. The weather was not really as in the picture but as it was around 4 o'clock and already getting dirk, it didn't matter any longer, hehe! After dropping the bags we headed to Fredriksdal for an open-air theater representation called Potta Långhaka, Potta longchin. The story is about a women taken for a witch. The twist is that the action is happening in several places in a kind of open-air museum and the audience is following the actors from scene to scene. Amazing! The downside was that it must have been close to zero degrees and two hours in the cold was very tough. In the end I thought "I don't give a shit about this witch, I want to go back to the bus!"
In the evening, all nice and dressed up we headed to the city center to have dinner on a boat. Except from Emanuela and Rebecca who are seasick and had to go to another place... But we catched ut after dinner to go to "La Cantina" which was supposed to be a mexican/latino place. The only mexican thing was the name and the big neon sign outside but it didn't matter. 26 people who want to party don't mind where they are, we took possession of a part of the dance floor and never left it.
Sunday morning, the alarmclock rings at 8, this is the weekend but no holidays... but that's for the good cause because we have another nice day ahead of us and Denmark in on the program. I am actually surprised that everyone is up on time, except the mexican student guys, hehe. Breakfast in the main building (seen on the pic up there) with the view on the sea, more or less like on the right, less the spring and flowers part. Very good breakfast by the way. =)
Brush your teeth, pack your bag and hop! in the bus, direction Deeeenmark! And Humlebæk where the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art is. From outside it's just a nice mansion but when you step in it's huuuuge and the park as well. Full of nice and interesting scluptures. Like the ones of the picture or the one of a pair of boobs for instance. More seriously, there were some great exhibitions like Lucian Freud, which I don't particularly like but I can't deny that he has talent. The one exhibition that I knew I would like and that I loved was the one about the photograph Richard Avedon. Only B&W pics from famous people as well as anonymous. All beautiful. And by the way, the land that you see in the distance is Sweden, that let you see how close the two countries are. Helsingborg - Helsingør is actually where Sweden and Denmark are closest.
After the museum, we went back to Sweden via the boat and the duty free shop where almost everyone bought some alcohol. Much cheaper that in Sweden! The funny thing is that you can buy the alcohol only in the Danish water and tobacco only in the Swedish water and given the crossing lasts only 20 min it means you have only 10 min to buy the alcohol which is why all the people are rushing like idiots then. Fun to watch: alcohol and chocolate, that's all they buy but they buy a lot! And on the way home we had another couple of more games and among other a great quiz prepared by Brenda where David surprised his wife Manu by killing the game and taking home all the prices. A very complete TV-culture and especially series indeed.
As usual, when having such a great time and escaping from my routine I have a bit of a hard time to come back to this precise routine and sometimes boring life. But it's fine, 'cause today I made some nice plans for this week-end and then, the following two are already booked with some friends visiting me. And the one after these, I will be in France and it will almost be Chriiiistmaaaas!
Anyway, looking forward to next year's edition and I'm wondering if we shouldn't even make a spring and an autumn edition... should submit the idea to H & M.
