2010.05.01 - Vanda and Peter

Visitors, new job and biking

This week was pretty mad! Not in a bad sense, but loads of things happened which made it a pretty good 7 days.

Monday I was offered a new job within the Lauritzen group, which I accepted. This means that we will return to Korea in about a month and a half from now. For those of you who thinks that this is Paula's worst nightmare, I can tell you that she has done a complete 180 and is now really really looking forward to going back. I guess that the return to Sweden has in some ways been a bit of an eye opener ... financial crisis and the unemployment as high as it is. We will spend 11 months in Korea, building 4 big bulk carriers in Busan (2) and in Ulsan (2). So it should be about 4-5 months in Busan and half a year more in Ulsan. It really isn't very long time but we thought that the job description made the move worthwhile.

Paula and Ana Ruth were in Copenhagen anyway, so of course we had to go celebrate our new prospects! So we met up and headed for Charlie's bar for a nice special beer before continuing to Tivoli. On the way there we were approached by a Honduran woman, Amparo and her husband, Sam. She was thrilled to hear somebody speaking Spanish and Ana Ruth soon took her under her wings. Seeing that I have a Tivoli Gold card which apart from free access to Tivoli allows me to bring 5 guests with me, I asked them if they wouldn't join us on our outing.

Tivoli looked nice with some of the first spring flowers. Paula won the Horse race but for once we didn't win anything in the Grand Prix (a postman on bicycle is cycling round and round with a box of chocolate in his basket. If he stops at your number, you win the chocolate ... a low-tech roulette). Later Sam and Amparo invited us for a beer and a snack by the Tivoli lake, where we stayed until driven away by the rain.

Wednesday we played badminton with Tom and Noelia as usual. Thursday my move to Lauritzen Bulkers was made public, so I didn't have to be careful with what I said. Friday was a public holiday in Denmark, so no work ! JUBIII. Vanda and Peter traveled all the way from Jutland to see us and arrived in the late afternoon. We haven't seen them for a while and so now the family had grown with one more person - lovely Gabriela!

Saturday we walked around Malmö with the kids. Jonathan is so full of energy that we had to try and spend some of it even though the weather wasn't really that great. At least it was cold and windy at Västra Hamnen...

In the evening Tom and Noelia dropped in for burritos and good company. It is really funny to listen to Paula and Vanda when they are chatting away. They have invented their own language which is a mix of English, Spanish, Portuguese and Danish - often in the same sentence! Noelia felt right at home in that company, throwing in a bit of Swedish into the muddle !

Sunday morning Vanda and Peter packed the Volvo again and headed back West. We had a really good time with them - very well-behaved kids!!

One hour later my friend Jakob rolled in from Copenhagen in his bike gear. We had a date with a forest and started rolling out of town. None of us have been riding much over the last half year ... which was very evident (even with the wind in our back). But we made it all the 20 kilometers out to the forest and even had enough energy for an hour and a half in the woods. It is really nice to ride there - shame it isn't allowed to ride on many of the trails. But seeing that we don't speak Swedish, we couldn't be blamed, right ??!! When it was time to head back home, we stopped for a coke at the forest café before battling the wind. I don't know what they put in the cokes here in Sweden, but I can't be sugar! Something that drags out the energy from our bodies instead.... we hadn't been back on our bikes for half a minute before our legs seized up, our lungs turned inside out and our butts .... well - you can imagine the pain, right ?! We were well and truly spent! It was a very long 15 kilometers home in a strong head wind and only the thought of the sushi that was waiting for us kept us in the game !!