Tales of Butter: Visby

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The day of the apocalypse

Looking at our apartment, you would think we have had one hell of a party.... actually we're just cleaning and packing and preparing to move to Stockholm in a few days.

How come it always looks much worse when you're in the middle of cleaning compared to how it was before? My conclusion is that cleaning is bad. Don't do it!

Is this now a running blog?

Maybe it is! My last post around two months ago was about running and ducks, and now I'll be writing about... running!

There are a lot of other things that have been going on though besides running. Primarily thesis-writing, but also a bit of vacation, vector drawing and animation. But more about that in another post!

I wanted to show you a few photos from my running route, as Visby is probably one of the best places to run around in. At least it's a step up from the nice scenery of factories that we got in Denmark!

The harbor that is filled with boats now that it's summer.

Oldest tower in town, it was finished during 13th century.

Pretty nice road for running, with a constant lovely breeze from the ocean.

Welcome to the swedish beach! Together with the lovely
breeze, there's also the nice smell of seaweed.

The ocean plus sunset provides some rather dramatic scenery at times.

Looking back at Visby. See that tiny silo way back? That's the same silo
as in the harbor picture at the top.

I usually run on the inside of the wall on the way back. It's pretty impressive.

Stone goats that can be found everywhere in Visby.
Also inside of the wall and stuff in the background.

This was taken during another day, but I usually pass these houses on the
way home. Also note the roses, it's not called the Island of Roses for nothing!

Visby before the tourist season

Visby is quite different in the early spring, compared how it is during the summer.
The harbor that is now completely empty will be full with boats and people eating
ice-cream and enjoying the sun. But if you don't want to share Visby with a
bazillion tourists, March/April or September is a perfect time to come visit.
Hope you enjoy this little photo journey!

This is a nightclub that's open during the day (Kallis). During July hundreds of
people will be here dancing (and the poor students studying summer courses get to
hear people partying all day long haha... makes you wish you were partying too)
It's only open during the summer though.

The "Beach". Well, it's Sweden after all, you have to expect rocks and mud!
Just waiting for the trees to start blooming and this place will be really nice.

The Almedalen Park (Almedalsparken). I love the silhouettes of the old houses
and church ruins!

While there aren't many people around, there's plenty of birds...
They seem to be having a party. :)

This is the major square in town, with the biggest ruin of Visby in the background
(S:t Karin Ruins). This is how it looks as soon as the tourists leave for the summer,
and they always clean it up just in time for the tourist season to begin...
At least this time they're making the square look really nice with completely
new flooring and design!

This alley houses two of the city's nightclubs - The Monk Cellar (the the left)
and the Gute Cellar (the white house to the right).
At the end of the alley is a game studio my old teachers started up!

Finishing off with this photo - the main street for pedestrians to get up and
down the hill. It's eerily quiet now, but in a couple of months...
I can't wait to come back to Visby!!

Kalles Kaviar

The Journey so far

I'd like to take a moment to recap the journey so far. I know a lot of people have been confused about where I've actually been travelling, and where I'm going, so this is the moment to catch up!

January 8th

Me and three classmates left the safety of our little island, and ventured to the amazing Budapest! Here we got to have a lot of various lectures and also get to know each other. It turned out the a large part of the group were from Sweden (and thus we invented the "Swedish Panel" who disapproves if you speak swedish...)

We also created a game in a week. This was both a huge success and a huge failure... a lot of problem arose, and we were able to discuss them in detail and how to avoid creating the same situation in the future. I think that project will help us a lot in the near future, when we start to work on the main project. However we never got a finished game, so we failed in that sense. Still we learned a lot!

January 22nd

Two weeks later we had booked a mini bus to take the whole group to Ludwigsburg. It was a 10 hour ride packed with bags and people, but we were happy when we finally arrived in Germany.

There we enjoyed a week of workshops with Jörg Ihle at the Filmakademie. We focused mostly on the creation of storyworlds (the universe which will spawn into different products). We did this in various ways, one day we would be completely free to do whatever we wanted. The next day we would work from an image in small groups, and then let another group create products from our idea.

January 28th

This day marked the return to Sweden and Visby. We made an epic 18-hour journey with a train, two flights, two busses and finally a ferry. And when we finally reached home, we were very tempted to go back to Germany straight away... they didn't have loads of snow and -12 Celsius. Brrrrrr.

It's still pretty though. This is just outside the school!

I have mostly spent this time reflecting on what I've learned so far, and whether I have it in me to continue (as it is very stressful to travel around and spend all day long working). I actually had to visit the dentist because of the stress, I'd been grinding my teeth so much in my sleep I could barely eat anything, haha....

I also baked. A lot. Enjoy these samples!

February 8th

The journey to come... instead of going to Cologne, we're going straight to Copenhagen where we will spend the rest these 6 months. We've gotten to see some images of the work spaces, and it looks amaaaaazing... there will be a lot of photos once I get there.

We're staying there for two weeks until the next study break at home. Those two weeks are planned to be spent on learning pipelines and working on a benchmark (basically, creating stuff that will show how we want the finished product to look). I'm hoping it's gonna be a lot of fun!

10 hours ago...

10 hours ago we entered a taxi to the train station in Ludwigsburg. Now we're just about to eat the first real meal of the day in Stockholm. Hello Sweden!

We still have a bit to go though, at 00:20 we'll set foot in Visby. (for the ones wondering what the hell we will be doing for 8 hours, we have to travel to a harbour and then go on a ferry for 3 hours)

Then I can finally say "Hello home!"