Rainhat – the band

New things and sad things

Agh, the last couple of weeks have been crazy. Where to start…

I am now living in Malmö. It’s the third biggest city in Sweden, situated in the southern end of the country. Copenhagen, Denmark is about 30 minutes away by train, and from there you can fly to the rest of the world. I like Malmö, I lived here when I was in college. It feels great to be back in a city where there’s actually something to do and where you don’t have to take the car out as soon as you need some bread or milk. Bergeforsen is nice and quiet, but stay there for long without a car and you start going crazy.

I’m renting an apartment second hand from a friend. It’s a pretty nice apartment, within walking distance of pretty much everything. It’s 75 square meters in size and has 3 rooms plus a kitchen. The colors of the walls are a bit funky, but oh well. I had a bunch of furniture already, so we rented a trailer and dragged it all with us. It was quite the drive. 1006 km, it took us about 14 hours to get here. After a good night’s sleep, we hit IKEA and a few second hand stores and got whatever furniture we were missing, so now we’re pretty much set. I could do with another bookcase, though. One can never have too many of those, it seems…

So, new city, new apartment, new life. Things to do and see, and people to meet. I’m going back to college in January to get a degree in teaching. I’m going to look for places to do shows as well, there should be a few more opportunities here than back home. My class schedule doesn’t look too massive, so I’m going to look for a guitar teacher and get some more lessons. Maybe some singing lessons too, if I have the time for it.

I received some bad news as well. My dear grandfather passed away just before Christmas. Although it was not entirely unexpected – his health had been pretty bad for a while – it definitely put a damper on the holidays.

Much of my creativity and skills at woodworking and building things I owe to my grandfather. I used to watch him and my uncle build things in their enormous workshop when I was a little kid. They built all kinds of things; pendulum clock cabinets, furniture, even a row boat. It inspired me to try building things myself. Whenever I had an idea for something, he would always find me the tools and the materials I needed, teach me how to use them and help me build the strangest things. I didn’t get to meet him very often in the last years, as I was working and living too far away, but I did go see him in August this year. I’m very happy I did. The last time I visited was I think about four or five years before that. He was a great man, my grandfather. I’m really going to miss him.