The light burns!

Spring has certainly sprung in Stockholm! The photo was taken a couple of days ago at 10pm, and earlier this week I was woken up by daylight at 3am. I'm now making use of both blinds and curtains to block the light out.
Of course I remember similar things happening during the summer in Turku, but I don't remember it being quite so dramatic. Someone mentioned to me that Turku is on the edge of another time zone, I'm not sure if that makes any difference. I remember last summer when I visited Stockholm seeing the sun rise at 3am, and next week will be a year since that trip, so maybe I shouldn't be quite so astounded by it. But when I was here in September the daylight hours were shorter, and now I've seen the transition from winter when it was very dark for most of the day.
Unfortunately the change in light levels has disturbed my sleeping patterns a bit, and other people have also mentioned having trouble sleeping this week. Thankfully I now seem to be getting back to normal.
Due to the arrival of spring I've noticed more and more how the wildlife in Stockholm seems completely unfazed by the presence of humans. It's so normal to walk straight past small birds, getting very close to them, and they don't even seem to notice. In the winter I saw the occasional wild rabbit running around, but recently I've been seeing a lot, and although they are slightly more nervous than birds they also seem quite undisturbed by the presence of humans. In fact, I went to the park last Sunday with some friends for a drawing session, and there were quite a few rabbits running around. It was a beautiful warm day so the park was quite busy, but they were running around past groups of people with no care at all. I also saw a very sweet little boy chasing after a rabbit for quite some time - the rabbit could run much faster than he could.
This is quite alien to me as I'm used to being in London - I've seen a much bigger variety of birds here, and the rabbits are certainly new for me. In London you get the odd fox, and sometimes the soul destroying sound of foxes having sex, but that's pretty much it. I think the rabbits are nicer than the foxes anyway.

Successful Valborg weekend

I've really enjoyed the bank holiday weekend. Even though I had Friday off work it doesn't stop me being a bit jealous of everyone in England having tomorrow off whilst I have to go back to work. I've mentioned previously how I struggle to balance everything in my life, and I think it's especially difficult in a new country when there's much more to take in. I'm really happy that this weekend I've been able to get lots of creative stuff done. It really frustrates me when I can't get on with the work I need to do. Exhibiting is less of a priority for me right now, I'm more concerned with actually producing work, so I'm really happy that there's been plenty of time for that this weekend.
On Friday I finally finished a piece of work that I've been doing for a while, and it was so satisfying to get it done. Then today I attended a meeting of a drawing group where we played some drawing games and worked on our own pieces. It wasn't quite what I was expecting - people who had an art education and who worked at this professionally were in the minority - but it was enjoyable.

The image shows a game I particularly enjoyed where everyone wrote a word in their language - except I had to go for Finnish as the other three languages I speak were all spoken within the group - we then chose a piece of paper at random and worked from that. I was quite lucky as I chose a Swedish word that I'm not familiar with - skorstensrök - so I also learned a new Swedish word today. It actually means chimney smoke, but the sound of it made me think of scars and rocks, so I drew something intended to look like a jagged and and scarred rock or cliff. By coincidence it also turned out to look quite smoky. It was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, and I have a similar event coming up in a few weeks with a slightly different target audience, so I'm looking forward to that.

Aside from these activities this weekend has been pleasant. I went out with my friends on Friday night and had some well deserved drinks after the stress I've had this week. It also became quite clear that spring has arrived in Stockholm - I woke up at 5am this morning to find that it was daylight, but somehow I doubt this'll make it any easier to get up for work in the mornings. And lastly, this evening I was chatting to my landlord, who is currently living in Spain, and I mentioned to him the huge fees I get charged by my bank when I pay my rent to him. He was shocked, and told me that for transfers between EU countries it is not allowed to charge more than you'd be charged for transfers within one country. He told me that he doesn't get charged for transferring between his Swedish and Spanish bank accounts. I understand that a small part of the fees I pay are for currency conversion, but this really is a small part of the fee, and I have certainly never paid fees to transfer money to different banks within the UK. I googled this, and found the EU website, which says exactly the same as he did. He suggested I take this up with my bank and I certainly intend to, even if I have to do it in person when I'm on holiday. I'm not going to assume that the bank will do anything about this, but it's certainly worth looking into further.

I don't want to spoil my good mood with worrying, so to end on a happy note, here's a picture of me and my lovely international family on Friday night. The family that dances around like drunken morons together stays together.