DS1502 - Swedish 1, Elementary Level

Swedish was my last course i did at KTH. I always wanted to learn another language beside english and therefore it was really good to have this opportunity during my exchangen semester. maybe i am far away from speaking fluently but still i do have a little bit more knowledge than before and hopefully i´ll not forget all of my new language skill.

BB2160 - Structure biology

So, there are just a few days left before going back home, so i´ll try to finish my blog soon.
another course i took is called structure biology and beside of theory about secondary structure, protein-dna interactions and protein x-ray for instance, we also did a laboratory course. during this course we got familiar with a 3D program (KiNG - KinemagesNextGeneration) for looking at 3D models (also known as *.pdb files) and electron density maps. that was really fun and also the literature work i did together with kathy about "the structure of a plant photosystem I supercomplex at 3.4 Å resolution" was fun and was marked with "very good!" from our professor ;-)
this model shows the photosystem I complex with its connecting four ight harvesting chains. the light harvesting chains are located at the bottom of the supercomplex and consist of Lhca1 (beige), Lhca4 (brown), Lhca2 (magenta) and Lhca3 (blue) in a half-moon shaped formation.

valborg i uppsala

one boat of the racing
lots of people watching the boats chrushing into pieces
uppsala cathedral; the biggest/highest one in sweden
later in the park
bbq with stefan, laura and kathi
after the party/picknick

family visit

having a picknick on sandhamm(mum, berni, omi and hilla)bernhard sitting on the horse alfonso in junibacken, the astrid lindgren museum in stockholm
bernhard and my grandmum

easter break - riga, tallinn, helsinki

during the easter break we (kathi and her friends from austria tina, simone and babsi, and andreas and daniel from the kth) did a trip to the baltics. first we took the overnight ferry to riga, the capitol city of latvia. riga is a very nice city which has a beautiful city center with lots of small streets and churches. but it is also worth to go a little bit ouside of the town. then you can see the other side of riga; old and rotten buildings and people which are very poor and live a hard life with hardly beeing recognised by the leading class.


only daniel, andreas and me went further to the next capital city, tallinn of estonia. tallinn is much bigger and livelier than riga. you can find many more tourists and more shops. but youcan also find medieval parts of the city, like the old city walls and defending towers.

the last city i´ve visited was helsinki, the capital of helsinki.
at the seafortress suomelinna

AK1210 - swedish society, culture and industry in a historical perspective

this is another course i am participating in. it is divided into 3 main themes:
* politics, culture and society
* science, technology and industry
* swedish architecture and city planning

for each of this sections there are two or three lectures and additional to that they show us a film or we make an excursion to a museum or to a specific part of the city.
we also have to work in small seminar groups and discuss about one given question regarding to those three topics.
a multiple choice test is also done.

so far we´ve been in the nobel museum, the national museum of science and history and we did a tour around the main campus. next time we are walking through the city center, gamla stan, as well as through a suburb of stockholm named alby or through vällingby.
another excursion will lead us to skansen which is a outdoor museum.

election

this weekend there are local elections in my homecounty, lower austria. therefore i received my ballo paper, but i had to build up my own polling booth all by myself. but for me as an politically interessted and dutifully person that was no problem.

utö

last week one of my austrian friends visited me for a couple of days. i tried to show him stockholm and the crazy stockholm nightlife as well as some nice places outside of town.
on a rainy day on grinda (die insel hatte auf alle fälle einen passenden namen für das wetter *gg*)
the old harbour of vaxholm
here, on utö, we had much better weather while we (nina, smutty, alois and i) were walking around.
yeah,... that´s smutty
nina, smutty and alois

livemusic in a small bar named klubb kingkong. can you see all of the 13 members of the band?

jukkasjärvi

some pictures from the icehotel. there we met two german students who are also studying in stockholm, laura and nina.



and this is how it looks outside of jukkasjärvi (on this day we had -only- neg. 15°C / + 5°F, which is way too warm for this time)
the main road of jukkasjärvi.

borlänge, lappland, narvik

in the last weeks i did some trips to various parts of sweden. borlänge and falun, lappland (kiruna, jukkasjärvi and narvik on the nowegian side) and some more islands in the east of stockholm (runmarö, grinda, utö);marie, julia and kathi in a small cafe in borlänge. we also went to the lake siljan, to the towns mora, where we did a dog sledge tour, and falun, with the falun mine which is a unesco heritage and further to sälen, a skiing area.

in lappland, in the very north of sweden we visited the icehotel in jukkasjärvi, we did a 2 days tour with another dog sledge and stayed overnight at a traditional sami hut and did a one day trip to norway, to narvik.
at the camp where we stayed overnight
this was the place where we got our trinking water
on the way into the sunset with our dog sledge
this is sara, a girl i met on kho tao in the south of thailand where i did my diving course a couple of months ago. she and some other friends are from kiruna and it was very nice to see her again. unfortunatley i could not meet the other girls (elin and ida), because they are still travelling.

during the train journey to narvik we passed the border to norway and saw a fjord just some 300meters beneath the railroad. the weather was not the best during this day, so we could not see so far to the lofotes but still we could slightly see them.

BB2170 - Drug Development

one of my chosen courses at the KTH is drug development. it describes the discovery and development of new drugs, shows different methods of getting the desired characteristics. another part of the lecture is ADME (absoption, distribution, metabolism and elimination) of drugs and different drug classes.
Every lession there is another lecturer who is expert in one of these topics. so far we had some lecturers from companys (affibody, astrazeneca, biovitrum), as well as professors from the other universities in stockholm (karolinska institutet, kth).
furthermore there are 3 study visits (affibody, sgc and medivir) and we are supposed to write an own report about one chosen drug. This project contains following areas:disease, target and molecular mechanism, structure, synthesis, metabolism/toxicology, IPR, formulation and marketing.
the drug i choose is avastin, which is a drug used against late lung and late colorectal cancer. so if you are interessted in more detailed informations on this drug, i am half a expert so far*gg*

with all these different techniques which are used in this lecture it is much more than just a normal lecture with a professor and his/her .ppt files. here the people at the university are much more motivated and interessted to get us to know and to learn about a specific topic in the field of biotechnology. (compared to some lectures and professors at my homeuniversity)
this picture shows the five different stages of colonrectal cancer. from stage 0, a small polyph to stage IV, a big cancer tissue with own bloodvessels and metastases spread out to other parts and organs in the body.

stockholm

in the last swedish lession i learned: jag tänka dricka en flask rödvin på tisdag!
but thats not all we are doing here. almost everyday we have got lectures at the university and -should- start with learning swedish and write our papers we need for the other lectures.
beside of that we have time for doing some old fashioned city sightseeing.
visiting all those touristic sights feels usually for me like beeing a tourist, but not this time. it feels more like this is my hometown where i live. so stockholm is quite familiar to me, yet.


looks like an atomic bomb but its just the lovley sunset behind the old town - gamla stan - in the city center.

inside of gamla stan - stortorget; this is also the square, where the nobel museum is located
the 1628, during the mermaid cruise, sunken warship - VASA of the king gustav II adolf.
in 1961 the ship was lifted to the surface, cleaned and restaurated and is now a museum.
next to the vasa museum there is the aquaria vattenmuseet, the aquarium of stockholm. they have some riff and leopard sharks as well as some poisonous coloured frogs and some other fishes.
here´s a black-yellow "nemo" clownfish

first weekend - first trip to the sea

with the intention to got to the sea we started to go east by bus and ended luckily on a ferry to a small island named SANDHAMN.
on this island a lot of swedens are spending theyr weekend with bathing in the sea. today we only saw 5 people. so, there are not so much activities but a walk around the island was the best thing to do.
tomorrow i ve got my first swedish lession - lycka till mig.