In Sweden, christmas has just begun. For more than 4 mio. people in Sweden, christmas starts at 3 pm by watching Kalle Anka (Donald Duck) on TV. Afterwards they have julbord - a kind of christmas buffet - for dinner. The Christmas Mass is traditionally very early next morning.

I wish you a merry christmas and happy holidays!

"The world's greatest living filmmaker" (Time Magazine) is dead. According to the Swedish news agency TT, citing his daughter Eva, Ingmar Bergman died peacefully in his house on the island Fårö in the Baltic Sea. His older works showed a great fear of death, but in recent years he called death "a very wise arrangement". Ingmar Bergman was 89 years old.

It's less than 10 months ago that I myself saw him for the first and the last time in the Filmhuset in Stockholm. He was in the crowd of a cinema event, talking with some people around him. In the filminstitute it was said that he was quite open for students to talk with them about his life and his works. A pity, he already went of. But how nice for him the way he went of - no reason to be afraid.

Obitury in Upsala Nya Tidning

For five days, I was back to Stockholm. Now I'm on my way back to Trier. Sitting on the train, seeing the green Eifel countryside out of the window, my Stockholm trip seems already a bit like a surreal dream to me. On my first evening in Solna (Tuesday), I meet many of the former Solna people - partly thanks to the SAS-strike in Sweden. While I was trying to arrive mentally in Stockholm, they were playing a strange viking game. Finally, we went to the lake to have a camp-fire. Wednesday and Thursday were quite calm. I was a bit suffering from the cold I'd caught in Holland and had to manage things at the university. However, I also saw Hjördis again at the Strindbergs Museum. On Friday, I had a small game and film night with Christina and Julia - very pleasant. Saturday was a great mixture of Smaka på Stockholm, Kulturhuset, Djurgården and finally a very last view from Södermalm over Slussen and Gamla Stan. Katarinahissen and the small gates up from Katarinavägen belong definitely to my favorite places in Stockholm. On Sunday, I woke up from singing vikings next to my cabin at about 4 am - it was already bright day since 3 am, so I didn't sleep again until I reached the bus to Skavsta airport. It was so nice to get a glimpse of the city in May and see so many people again.

Special thanks to Flo for hosting me the first night, Luís for hosting my luggage in the last five months, and Hjördis for showing me parts of Djurgården I'd never seen before! Hope we'll see each other soon.

I will be back to Stockholm from May, 29th to June, 3rd. Heja Sverige! :) Vi ses! Jag glädjer mig så jättemycket över er!