Blog or Facebook ?

Funny (sad?) how rarely I use the blog since I started using Facebook more and more. Still, blogs have a big value in themselves - perhaps time to start again...

Close to the end of my jogging run

I see this - always makes me happy

Sunny in Munich in January

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Sunny January day in Munich

When we got back from Jamaica last week, it was 30 degrees plus there and -14 here - now it is a bit nicer, as I sit outside in the sunshine reading.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Christmas in Sweden

Enjoying the holidays playing Guitar Hero !

Lovely Christmas in Sweden

OK - no snow for Christmas - but a bit of powder made it a "white" Christmas and we have had a wonderful time both at my parents place and then at Rickard & Marita's place.

Malin got Guitar Hero as a present - this has been enjoyed by all, we have hardly time to eat for all the playing of guitar, drums and singing.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Finished the New York Marathon

Wow - this was a very mental marathon, I hyped it up in my own mind - in the end it was a wonderful run and with so many people cheering me on along the route.

My final time was 5:47, not very fast but I reached my goal of finishing. I was on track for ca. 5 hours during the first half of the run, but then I could feel the legs stiffening up and my pace getting slower. The Queensborough Bridge (uphill) and 1st Avenue (mostly uphill) were slow, Bronx was OK but when I hit 5th Avenue at Mile 20-21 I felt some indications of cramp in the legs and made sure to just run slow and safe from there on, all the thinking on making a good time went out the window and I was too tired to even think of finishing times.

During the run, I had a Swedish flag on my chest - so many people cheered me on as "Go Sweden!" - what a wonderful city to run a marathon in.

And once home in Munich again, Monica threw a surprise party for me in the evening, friends came over and I could tell my story again and again - each time re-living it myself and remembering the people, the weather, the music bands, the finishing line !

Walking along the Isar

What a nice part of Munich !

TuneUp for all my iTunes songs - great tool

This software really helps cleaning up my iTunes MP3 songs, so that song name, artist, data and album cover all are correct.  Especially for the Apple-TV (where you "see" the music on a big screen), but also for the iPod and iPhone, it is really nice to see the album covers for all the songs.

Works very well, free for up to 500 songs to clean, so easy to test. As soon as I saw it worked, I paid the 20 USD for the unlimited version.

The joys of having a garden full of leaves

Attending press conferences at IFA

Most conferences interesting, Panasonic due to built-in Internet, Sony
with great products and Howard Stringer present

Sunny Saturday in Munich

Widgets

Playing around a bit, added "widgets" to the side of this page so everyone can see what crap music I like and get to enjoy my Web pictures integrated into the blog.

I am using last.fm as a music player more and more, sometimes the (inane) talk around music on commercial radio stations just bother me so much that I´d rather have music only, which last.fm does real well. Try it if you haven´t so far.

Slow learner

Finally cared enough to learn how to take a photo on my mobile phone, then email that to my blog. The first example of this is the orchid picture from last week.

Nicaragua pictures now up on the Web

Just being lazy for so long, plus that we have watched them constantly on our AppleTV, so that WE could enjoy them.

Still haven´t printed them on paper, but will also be done at one time or another.

Monica's fantastic orchid

The year 2007

Hello All !!

Here a Christmas letter in electronic form - snail-mail Christmas cards are so nice to receive (thank you to all who sent us cards) - but I hope this will reach friends more rapidly in all four corners of the world.

Our year 2007 started with champagne at a very nice wine bar in Luang Prabang, Laos, and a slow walk home to the hotel through deserted streets at 3am at truly a far-far-away place.

Laos was exactly so fantastic as we had imagined, one can imagine something like Thailand 30 years ago. But as it is landlocked, it was nice to also end the trip with a few days on the beaches of (what we didn´t know) the completely "swedeified" island Ko Lanta in Thailand.

Back in Munich, the bad snow year turned into great skiing around mid-February, so when my brother Klas came down for a ski weekend in St Anton we had a fantastic sunny ski day around Lech and Zürs (and we had someone to take our picture for us).

Some other weekends in Obergurgl and Kitzbuehl made this a good ski year, and we feel so lucky for living so close to the Alps.

Easter was spent in Dubrovnik, Montenegro and a short trip by car into Albania. Montenegro had been interesting to me since I read a book 30 years ago about a con artist calling himself "Count of Montenegro", so with Monica also very keen on travelling here the new Bond movie (which was set in Montenegro) made us say "Let´s go". Late evening flight to Sarajevo, 5am train ride to Mostar (pictured with the famous re-built bridge) and later on to Dubrovnik. Here we stayed for a few days, a gorgeous city by the sea and with lots of European history. Especially the first evening´s party was fun, Croatia had just won world championship gold in water polo (not the biggest sport in the world, but huge in this country), the main part of the team came from Dubrovnik so when the town´s famous sons came home that evening they were received with music, speeches and all bars full of people till late - really nice for us to experience.

We rented a car, which allowed us to explore (the very small) Montenegro, staying in Kotor but seeing more of the country, including the exciting trip into Albania (such nice people we absolutely plan to go back) and the beaches of Budva.

2007 is clearly one of the best years weather-wise we have had in Munich since moving here 18 years ago. Once back from Montenegro we had July temperatures in April, so we enjoyed Munich and surroundings the whole spring, with swimming in lakes and meeting friends in the biergartens.

Our summer cabin in Sweden is a constant project in renovation, with large improvements every year. This year the whole house including the "barn" was finished being renovated and painted, so now it is all red with white corners and with the great terrace and jetty as before.

And with the open fire next to the lake, perfect for the after-BBQ drink.

We celebrated midsummer eve in the cabin and had Stefan and Lotta plus Karin come in from Stockholm and Uppsala, plus (of course) the family from Filipstad.

We didn´t have the best of weather for our Swedish summer holidays this year, quite a lot of rain and wind, but still a great time and I make sure that the pictures we take (or post) are only of the sunny days, be it in Daglösen or on the boat in Stockholm.

We made several short weekend trips during the year: Nice (of course), Cesky Krumlov in the Czech Republic or hiking in Kaisertal.

Cesky Krumlov was great fun, a small quaint town with a meandering river and a very activity-oriented focus. We rented a raft, they drove us upstream in a car and we floated down the river for a couple of hours before arriving in town again.

Kaisertal is one of the last inhabited valleys in the Alps with no road connection to the outside.

They are opening a tunnel (for local people only) in 2008, but we still wanted to make sure to go hiking there before the tunnel opened.

Fantastic beach weekend in Nice in November - rare that it is so warm so late, but we made sure to enjoy it. The first day we went to the place on the beach we always go to - and "our" spot was taken by my childhood friend Nicke de Susini with family - the world is a small place!

Focus in this letter has been private fun and travel - but we both have to work in order to finance it all. Work life is both fun and succesful for the both of us. Monica enjoys the busy life at National Semi, with nice colleagues and interesting challenges. For me, this was the first full year of managing the Central Europe office for Strategy Analytics, a market research company in electronics, telecom and Internet. VERY much travel and external business meetings are starting to actually pay off, with new customers coming in the door and with even more potential for 2008.

So - on Saturday we are off to Nicaragua and Honduras for Christmas and New Year 2008. This will be the first 3-week holiday in a long time and we are both looking forward to the mix of Spanish colonial history, Pacific Ocean beaches, Maya ruins in Copan, Caribbean flair and scuba on the Honduras island of Roatan - and to just chill and with no emails for three weeks! We have booked the hotel for Christmas in Granada (http://www.patiodelmalinche.com/) and the rest of the trip will be planned as it happens.

All the best to you all, a Merry Christmas and a "Guten Rutsch ins 2008" and hope to see you soon,

Håkan and Monica

Juan-les-Pins in November

Dresden

A weekend in Cesky Krumlov

We spent a weekend in Cesky Krumlov, a beautiful small village in Czech Republic just north of Linz in Austria (and ca 2h south of Prague).

The picture is from a wedding we ran into as soon as we entered the town, the best men were all dressed as Elvis, incl the priest (see pics via link), who all drove in all motorcycles. What can you say... but a fun event, which we ran into at night as well as they had rented one of the better bars in town for the party.

We did some sightseeing, ate well and cheaply, had some Pilsner Urquell and Budweiser (the original is made 10 minutes away in Ceske Budovice, ie Budvar). Found a great cellar bar in the late evening for some serious mixed drinks at 4 euros each - very good price.

Next day we rented a canoe, they drove us upstream and we paddled slowly back for 2 hours, then lunch in Budvar, late pm coffee in Passau (ie back in Germany) and home by 8pm for a nice relaxing evening in our garden.