—-loving it and looking forward to it…..

Well its been a little more than a week here in Sweden, and I’m already in love with this place! yes, everyone does warn me about the coming winter, but hey, such beautiful summers need to be balanced out somewhere. Coming from a tropical country, India I look forward for the snowy winters.

The first two days here were more of settling down and cooling off after all the extra work done on the last few days back home. Raghu arrived on 22nd of august and since then we have been exploring the city, since then my love for this place is ever increasing!

Some highlights as to why I have started loving this place:

Visuals: First view of rocky islands (archipelago) from up in the sky was sufficient to make me start loving this place. Since then every visual of the city is as beautiful as the next. The light here is perfect for the camera, neither is it Very hard nor soft. The contrasts are brilliant on and off the camera. But yes, I do miss the golden hour. Yet, the beautiful sceneries compensate for it all.

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 Nature lovers! Being a nature lover I am attracted to the importance given to nature in this part of the world, It definitely draws more respect from me.

Parks: This place is filled with parks, or atleast the area where I live in. The parks here are huge, and very well maintained. The parks within them have quite a number of small ponds, animals, eateries and sometimes schools. We had been to the botanical gardens here in the city, and the variety of plants and flowers is a treasure chest for photographers like me, coupled with the terrain it was just exotic.

Pedestrian first seems to be the traffic motto here, any person on a motor vehicle stops to allow you to pass first, which for me has still not sunk in and I tend to wait and let him pass before crossing the road.

Walk-ways: We have been exploring the city on foot, this has its own advantages as we find places inaccessible by public transport. This has been one of the best things we have done-for the kind of sceneries encountered were breathtaking. This wouldn’t be possible if not for something which made me love this place even more “No boundaries”. I have walked around schools, govt buildings, hospitals, apartment regions and so on, and so far never found any barricades stopping me from accessing these areas. Giving us the advantage of cutting short a long trip by main road into taking smaller avenues with twists turns and some amazing scenes to our destinations.

Apart from these, the work-family balance I have noticed in the past couple of days added to my own experience during my work at NSN makes me respect this place a lot more. Another thing I have experienced here is a second hand market, (I shall dedicate a blog on my cultural experience here in Göteborg soon) and how the summers add to the culture of this place.

Things I look forward to here:

Of course, my studies/work: The very reason I am here. With all the ideas still cluttered in my head waiting to burst out, I eagerly wait for what awaits ahead.

The winter, everyones talking about: Talk to people about the wonderful weather and the only reply you get “Wait till you taste the winter”. And here I am waiting to experience 6 months of no sun and just cold(Guess, will help me perfect night photography !!!)

The NothernLights!!!! Something I have been wanting to see ever since I got my hand a camera!Hopefully sometime in these 2 years, atleast one picture of the northern lights from my camera.