Autumn in Göteborg

As everyone knows, time flies by. It’s already almost a month since I travelled back to Switzerland for the selection races for the World Cup final. A 5000m and a sprint in Lenzburg should decide who is going to run the final round in Prague. With those selection races, I run my last important race in 2018 and with them finish my season – what I didn’t know back then. After many hours in the deep Norwegian terrain, my legs had some trouble to switch to the hard, tartan underground and that could be seen quite well in my time over the 5k. As if this wouldn’t have been enough, I jumped over the second control at the sprint. Luckily, I realised it but with a loss of around one and a half minutes, my chances for a place in the Swiss delegation for the World Cup were gone. Happily, there was a quite good alternative program: The same weekend as the World Cup, 25manna  in Stockholm (the biggest club relay, with 25 people in one team) took place and I would have gotten the honour to run the 24^th leg for IFK Göteborg and a worthy season ending. Unfortunately, right after I came back to Gothenburg, I fell during a training and hurt my knee. After almost two weeks with only core strength training and much time spent trying to get a doctor’s appointment (not the easiest thing without a Swedish personal number – I can tell you!) I had to admit that I still wasn’t able to run and finish my season this way. Even if it had been much more fun to run, I had a great weekend in Stockholm, coaching my club mates, celebrating the victory of IFK Göteborg, meeting old friends and enjoying the beautiful autumnal city centre while doing some sightseeing the day after the relay. 

But not only in the orienteering part of lifetime flies by, also the daily life in Gothenburg goes on quite smoothly. The time I have to be present at the university is limited to a minimum and what we have to work on our own could also be more. And not only the attendance time, but also the workload is different to what I’m used to in Switzerland and also the way how students learn seems to be quite different. I can only tell from my personal experience but I attend a course where we first read texts and afterwards discuss our thoughts on the topic. For me, this leads to learning results that aren’t about facts or theories but more about critical thinking, sharing experiences (this makes it really interesting because the course is attended by exchange students from all over the world) and this develops my own position and values.

Maybe it’s just because I’m an exchange student and I can’t train as much as I would like to, but there is plenty of time for coffee, meeting friends, discovering the city, using my camera again after such a long time and just enjoying the moment – a lifestyle I could almost get used to. But only almost. Sometimes it would be nice to have a bit more structure because I think everyone knows the phenomena that the more time you have, the lazier you get. So, I’m looking very much forward to finally taking advantage of the great training opportunities Gothenburg offers.