Second day in Odessa

Posted on June 12, 2012 by jonas

Today we started off with proper preparations for a full day of touristing, i.e. a harty breakfast and a bath 🙂

After this start we organized Lars’ bus tickets to Kiev and left the luggage at the train station. Then we used the tram (0.15 euro cent per person) and taxi to go to Arcadia, an entertainment district by the see, 8 km outside the city. There are some great clubs in this area for those who are attracted to clubbing.

Tram no. 4 and a fair amount of walking, e.g. through an amusement park and via the football stadium where linkin park and Garbage were supposed to perform later tonight, took us back to the city.

Now we have been enjoying sushi and Greece-Czech Republic is on the telly. Later tonight we are planning to watch Poland-Russia close to the train station so we can go straight to the train to Kiev afterwards.

Posted in resor, semester | Tagged , | Leave a comment

First day in Odessa

Posted on June 12, 2012 by jonas

We arrived by train to Odessa on Monday morning and went straight to the hotel in order to leave our luggage before taking our first city walk.

The train trip worked out well even though it was initially a bit like a sauna since there is no climate control and get really warm in the sun. Night train trips are good in order to connect with locals and got a good chat with some people from Odessa.

The weather in Odessa was (and still is), as in Kharkiw, perfect, around 25 degrees and sunny, so we walked for a few hours until we went back to the hotel for some relaxing.

The buildings, streets, and parks of central Odessa is in general nice looking and more appealing than Kharkiw. There are more “sightseeing material” and there are also more tourists coming to Odessa.

In the evening we met Lars who is doing a small euro tour and arrived from Moldova the same day. We watched France-England and of course Ukraine-Sweden. We watched it in an outdoor restaurant in the city park and since our broadcast was lagging behind 2-3 seconds after the neighbour restaurant’s broadcast, we got very revealing tells from other people screaming before the goals etcetera. Well well, it was not one of Sweden’s better games and hopefully we can perform better on Friday against England.

At the moment we are having breakfast at the hotel and will do some more city exploring before taking the night train back to Kiev.

Posted in resor | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Zurich – Frankfurt – Kiev – Kharkiw

Posted on June 9, 2012 by jonas

Friday after work we went to Frankfurt and enjoyed the good service at Frankfurt Airport (same can of course be said about Munich Airport which has same high service level). As usual they provide decent coffee, good wireless network and newspapers (not only German newspapers but also English versions) but this time they could also offer football games from Euro 2012.

After this pit stop in Frankfurt, we continued to Kiev which was another two hours on the plane. In Kiev we took a bus to the train station, watched The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo on the iPad at the train station before taking the train to Kharkiw. We arrived to Kharkiw at 11 o’clock on Saturday and were met by an orchestra playing tunes from Soviet times. There were many people around the train station that were interested to see the fans coming to the city. On Saturday Denmark and Netherland (1-0) played in Kharkiw and we saw many Dutch people in the city but not so many Danish. In Kharkiw we were more interested to see the city but we saw the end of the game in a restaurant and was delighted to see that the Nordic people has started the tournament very well.

We are staying at a hostel a few kilometres from the city centre but a taxi ride from the centre of the city centre is only 4 euro, i.e. equal to a normal tram ticket in Zurich… In the morning we went by bus and that cost half a euro for both of us.

In the light of the transportation costs the hostel is fairly expensive. They try to earn some money during Euro 2012 and who can blaim them for that. They charge almost seven times the normal fare and 80 euro for both of us is comparable to normal Europen rates for hostels but the surroundings here does not resemble of a modern European city. The roads and houses in this part of the city are very poor excuses for roads and houses. It is of course possible to use the roads but the cars and buses often slow down to round a pot hole or drive very carefully over tram tracks etcetera. Speaking of trams, it is a wonder that the trams work considering how the tracks and the tram wagons look like. The people at ZVV maintaining the tram track network in Zurich would have nightmares for a long time if they took a closer look…

Posted in bil, bÄt, tÄg och flyg, resor, semester | Tagged | Leave a comment

Swiss landline phone number

Posted on June 2, 2012 by jonas

Since I live in Switzerland it could be appropriate to have a Swiss landline number, not only at work but only at home or wherever I am (since it is connected via our mobiles).

Sipcall.ch has a good offer where they offer landline numbers for free and only charge for outgoing calls. Since Android 3.2.2 there is native support in Android and for iOS there are good (and free) clients available and I have found the one from 3CS working well for me.

So, for those who wants to call, the landline number is +41325123044 and the sip address is sip:41325123044@free1.voipgateway.org.

My Swedish landline number (via Skype) is still +46317995551.

Other phone related blog entries.

Posted in elektronik, hus och hem | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Dan Söderström’s funeral in Anderstorp

Posted on May 26, 2012 by jonas

One of my best friends passed away very much too early on 4th of May after fighting ALS for three years. More than one thousand days of sorrow and also many good moments for Dan and his friends. The process and its implications are too complex for this blog post – they are too big for me to grasp and to get my head around. I might put my thoughts into words another day but certainly not at this point.

Yesterday many of Dan’s friends and relatives gathered to say goodbye in a worthy and emotional funeral in his hometown Anderstorp. I find it hard to write about it without getting very sad.

After the funeral I went back to Gothenburg with Gustav, Jenny, Tor, and Julia. In the evening i enjoyed Kubb and table tennis with my brother Joel. I was delighted to find out that I can still play decent table tennis – unbeaten for the whole evening 🙂

It is soon time for boarding in order to go home to my ladies in Adliswil and my two days in Sweden are over for now. My next planned trip to Sweden is in two months, then there are better reasons – a wedding instead of a funeral.

Posted in resor | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Freja family friend

Posted on May 22, 2012 by jonas

Yesterday evening we went to get Freja from her house outside MĂŒhlrĂŒti, outside Fischingen, outside Winterthur, outside ZĂŒrich. She is a 10 week old Sheltie girl and we met three weeks ago when we went to reserve her.

The trip back was not so enjoyable for Freja, she got car sick and puked, but now after only 24 hours at home, she has already settled down. She enjoys to relax in her bed but if it is possible she prefers to be close to us.

Freja has not yet learned that the toilet is outside but we are working on it and she is doing some progress. She seems to understand when we want her to go to her bed and sometimes she seems to understand that she is called Freja. The mirror in the living room is still a bit confusing to her and that is one of few things that can make her bark. Her usual behavior when something is a bit scaring is otherwise to find a secure place and sit down.

Tomorrow I will go to the “GemeindebĂŒro” to register myself as a dog owner. This means one needs to show a theory course certificate, that the dog has been registered with the national database and got a chip, and that one has a decent insurance. Dog owners have to pay a “dog tax” here in Switzerland and how much differs from canton to canton.

Today in the evening we took a first short walk with leash down to Sihl and it is soon time to go for one more short walk before sleep.

The photos are taken when Freja is 10 weeks and three days.

 

Posted in djur | Tagged | 4 Comments

Wireless audio sync with Android and iPhone

Posted on May 17, 2012 by jonas

In a wireless world it feels a bit awkward to plug a cable just to transfer some audio files to your mobile. I have found solutions that work for my phones running Android and iPhone.

I use my Macbook Air frequently enough to be reasonably satisfied with a solution that works on Mac. It is of course nice to be able to do it in Linux as well and then Syncness seems to be an option but I have not looked into it yet. Maybe later.

Apple has included wireless synch since iOS 5.0 and it works fine with iTunes. Regarding synching to the iPhone, I leave it like that. Since I have more music than I can cram into the iPhone, I manually choose which playlists to synch but that is convenient enough. No further investigation needed for my simple requirements…

For Android I took a look at Winamp’s solution and it works in a simular way after installing their client on a Mac or Windows computer. The Mac client is still a Beta release but it worked reliably so don’t hesitate to try it to see if it suit your needs.

For me the two solutions outlined above worked well enough in order to stop looking any further. Please enlighten me via the comment section if you have tried Winamp’s solution and found something you like better or if you have a well working sync solution in Linux.

Posted in datorer, elektronik, hÄrdvara | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Password management 2.0

Posted on May 13, 2012 by jonas

I have previously been managing too many pin codes etcetera via a desktop application, GPass (often run via SSH and X11-forwarding), but this solution has a few shortcomings. I would like to have a secure solution for mobile access via iOS and Android plus easy desktop access via Mac OS, Windows and Ubuntu.

After looking around I found that KeePass seems to be a reliable piece of software. It is open source and OSI certified and runs on all platforms I am intereted in. Since I am interested in having the credentials always in synch without any manual intervention I was thinking about having the credential database on my server accessible via SCP or similar but I found the solution to be very easy to solve with KeePass simply refering to the Dropbox workspace. Since Dropbox has clients to the interesting platforms there is no need to setup a solution which relies on my own infrastructure. KeePass also has good import/export capabilities so I did not have to re-type any credentials.

I have only tried the solution briefly but as far as I have seen it works well on all mentioned platforms and new credentials gets picked up automatically. I duplicated the solution to work for Tanya as well and then there should ideally be no geeky manual steps involved and it passed the test. Problem solved 🙂

Posted in datorsÀkerhet, elektronik | Tagged | Leave a comment

Weekend in Gothenburg and Zelgstrasse furnishing

Posted on April 23, 2012 by jonas

We spent the second weekend in April in Gothenburg and enjoyed meeting friends and relatives. My aunt Eva, who is a dentist, helped Tanya with a troublesome tooth and also invited us to FjĂ€rĂ„s for dinner on Sunday. Then we also had a chance to say hi to Peter’s and Anna’s two-week-old daughter Alva. The main events during the Gothenburg weekend was the visits at my friend Dan who is fighting an awful disease.

The furnishing project here at Zelgstrasse has been going on for a few weeks now and some things are done while some others are still ahead of us. Sofa, beds, office desks, kitchen table and chairs, and a sideboard for the living room are installed but the wardrobes are still in progress.

Posted in bil, bÄt, tÄg och flyg, hus och hem, resor | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Easter in Paris

Posted on April 14, 2012 by jonas

We went to Paris after work on Maundy Thursday by car. It was a smooth 7 hour drive without too overwhelming traffic and we arrived to our hotel (Hotel Brittany) in Montmartre before midnight.

I had not been to Paris for many years but Tanya was here less than two years ago. As planned, we also met with two friends from Moscow, Asia and Oleg, who were visiting Paris as well but had already been in the city for a few days when we arrived. Together we explored many streets, Tour Eiffel, some museums, picnics, and eventually the road back to Zurich. Paris is an excellent city for an extended weekend and even though the weather was not superb (mostly cloudy and approximately 10 degrees Celsius) it was still very much enjoyable.

Tanya did take a lot of pictures and I think we will put some of them in a web album in the gallery next week if time allows.

In Zurich our apartment is still a bit messy for the moment but at least there are now two proper beds. The wardrobes have also arrived but we still have do assemble them. A sofa for the living room is also on the todo list.

At the moment we are in Gothenburg and in an hour we will go and get one of Tanya’s teeth fixed. Apart from that we also have some more things on our agenda with involves catching up with friends and relatives but that has to wait until another blog post 🙂

Next weekend there are more good friends visiting us in Zurich so there are busy but fun times!

Posted in bil, bÄt, tÄg och flyg, fotografering, hus och hem, resor, semester | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment