Tag Archives: Hultsfred
She was a small town girl
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Posted on Wednesday November 28 2012, 9:43 pm in Me Myself & I | Tags: | Archive

It’s been nearly two years since I moved back to Västerås after six and a half years in Hultsfred. The move was the best thing I at that time in my life had done in years. During my years in Hultsfred I built up a intense hatred for the town I lived in. I loathed living there. For me who coming from a city of more than 100 000 inhabitants before it was a shock ending up in a population 5000 town. It lacked everything but gossip. In a town where everyone knew everyone it was not unusual hearing a rumour about yourself spread by someone you didn’t even know.

I’ve never regretted moving back to Västerås. Not once. In fact I hated Hultsfred so much that it took me a very long time to even be able to look back on my time there and remember the good times. Because of course there were good times. And friendship. Me and my friends, all equally bored with the small town life did have a lot of fun. In our boredom we did some crazy shit. And I got the chance to visit a real rock festival, five years in a row. I’ve seen some of my faovurite bands live at the Hultfred festival and had some great times there. I also grew up during the Hultsfred years. I moved out of my parents house into my very first home of my own. My pretty blue apartment where I held so many parties. My pretty blue apartment which always will hold a special place in my heart.

What I’m trying to say with this post is that I’ve come to a point where I can look back at my time in Hultsfred and not only remember the bad times. That life feels distant now and with that distance I’ve come to look upon those years with more nuance. It wasn’t all bad. The town in itself sucked big time but I had wonderful friends and we had a lot of fun.

Me during one of my parties back in 2006. Crazy weird as usual. :D
angelica

Loving city life
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Posted on Wednesday November 2 2011, 4:39 pm in Yada Yada | Tags: , , | Archive

Every day I’m reminded of how lucky I am to live in a big city. I’d prefer not living close to the highway but when I look out through the window and see the cars passing by I’m reminded of the fact that there is a highway there because I live in the fifth biggest city in Sweden. When I shop at the convenience store which is open until 9 PM every day I’m also reminded of how lucky I am to live here. In Hultsfred the grocery store closed at 4 PM on Sundays. There’s one thing in particular which makes me feel truly blessed to live here. The shopping! I love how I can spend hours going from store to store and yet be far, far, far from having gone to all of them. I love that everything I can possibly need I can find in the city I live in. Not at all like Hultsfred. There I had to rely on internet shopping and going to “nearby” (one hour by car isn’t that near imo) cities once in a while. Being able to go to different pubs and not just hang at the same place every time I want to party is also fantastic. Here you can actually do a pub crawl.

I love Västerås. I can go on and on about the advantages of city life. Moving back here is truly the best thing I’ve done in a very long time. I’m so much happier here than I was in Hultsfred. It’s not just the city in itself but also the new life I’m living, the people I’ve met, the things I’ve done and do.

Middle of the summer update
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Posted on Monday July 4 2011, 1:14 am in Yada Yada | Tags: , , | Archive

lol apparently I’m down to an average of 38 unique visitors a day. That’s what I get for not blogging and not keeping in touch with my regular visitors.

I’m on a study break at the moment. Not sure for how long. I need to figure out what exactly to study. Decide on a program which will give me an actual degree rather than taking a course here and there. So all courses I’ve taken but one have been related to web design but it’s time to decide on a actual web design program. Before I can do that I need a break though. For at least six months but more likely for at least a year.

Right now I’m not studying and not working which is leaving me dirt poor but at least free to do whatever I want this summer. Since I’ve recently returned to the big (107 000 inhabitants big) city of Västerås after a nearly 7 year long exile in the small (5000 inhabitants small) town of Hultsfred not having money isn’t a problem. Hey, I live in a city again! I’m quite all right with not being able to afford taking a trip somewhere this summer because I’m not in a desperate need to escape the place I live in any more! There’s quite a lot to do here which doesn’t cost anything. The city festival just ended, didn’t cost anything. This week the world’s largest classical car show with something like 50 000 visitors takes place here. Doesn’t cost anything either! It’s like a huge rock festival but with cruising instead of concerts. One big party for three days. There’s a second city festival taking place in August as well. These are the three big events I’m attending this summer. Besides those there are lots of other things to do as well. Just going to the pub on a Saturday night is an adventure since there are more than one pub to go to. What a luxury! Hultsfred had two pubs, of which one was rarely open. Västerås has lots of pubs and night clubs to choose from. So far I’ve been to six of them. Then there’s of course the beautiful parks, the walk along the small river, lake Mälaren and a whole city to re-explore. I’ve lived here for five months now but there’s still many place left to re-discover. So, no money, not that big a problem this year. Of course I hate being poor. Of course I want more money. But I manage better without it than I would have done in Hultsfred. There’s so much more to do and see here and I don’t long to be somewhere else every single day.

Wow, this actually turned into a real blog entry! And I who thought I’d just write a quick update telling you all I’m well and still busy. Well, I am well and still busy. Laters!

Away
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Posted on Saturday June 4 2011, 12:57 am in Me Myself & I, Photos | Tags: , , , , , | Archive

Sorry, no blogging for another couple of days. First my sister came to visit and now I’m in Hultsfred visiting my family. I’ll be going home Monday so expect a real blog entry some time after that.

Except for geocaching with my sister this is basically what I’m doing. Enjoying the sun in my parents garden.

me

New year, new beginning
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Posted on Saturday January 1 2011, 3:34 am in Yada Yada | Tags: | Archive

It’s a new year and for me a new beginning considering I’m moving in just a months time. I’m really leaving this place. The place where I grew up for real, got my first apartment, got my first job, started my university studies, went to my first rock festival, made friends, fooled around, partied too much, had fun, lived. I moved here when I was twenty-one and I’m leaving when I’m twenty-seven but this will be the place I think of when I think of my twenties. Most of those years were spent here. I won’t miss this town but I will cherish some of the memories of the time I’ve spent here. I’ll especially always remember my apartment. My very first home of my own. That’s the one thing about Hultsfred which I will miss, a lot.

Life, you know.
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Posted on Wednesday December 29 2010, 9:20 am in Yada Yada | Tags: , , , | Archive

I’m trying to grasp the fact that I’m with my twenty-seven years and five months now am older than Kurt Cobain ever became and older than Richey Edwards was when he disappeared. These two have both had a great impact on my life and who I am, mainly Kurt Cobain since it was thanks to Nirvana I discovered alternative music. Them being this important to me makes the fact that I’m now older than they became feel very weird. How can I be older than they are? I who look up to them so much. How can I ever be anything more than they are, further than they are?

I used to think twenty-seven was the perfect age to die. Not that I wanted to die at that age myself but I thought that it sounded like a good age to go. Not too young and definitely not too old. Nowadays I think twenty-seven is way, way, waaaay too young a age to die. You see things differently when you’re there yourself and realize how little you have done with your life during your twenty-seven years on earth.

Saying that I’m twenty-seven years old sounds weird to me. It sound so old. I have come to see myself as an adult and I’m ok with being the age I am but it still sounds old. How did I get here? Next year I’ll be twenty-eight and from there it’s not far to thirty. Where did my twenties go? What did I do with them?

I’m thinking a lot about age, adulthood and life in general right now because I feel like I’m at a breaking point. I began university studies this year, soon I’ll be moving, I’m getting older, I have a new brighter outlook on life. I see my life in phases. Phase 1 childhood in Kalix, phase 2 high school in Västerås, phase 3 adulthood in Hultsfred and now I’ve kind of begun phase 4 with going back to school and soon when I move phase 3 will definitely be over.

And I’m thinking about life. What I’m doing with it. Where I’m going. How not to take it so much for granted. I don’t want to wonder what I did with my late twenties in five years time, like I wonder what I did with my early twenties.

I’m moving!
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Posted on Friday December 10 2010, 11:51 pm in Yada Yada | Tags: , | Archive

I’m usually in a pretty good mood but today my mood isn’t just good. Today I’m beyond happy. I’m so excited. I want to sing and dance and scream “YEEEEEES!”. Why is that? Because I’ll be leaving this hell hole of a small town in less than three months time!

I’ve lived in Hultsfred for six years and never liked it here. But on February 1 I’ll be moving! Before me and my family moved to Hultsfred we lived in Sweden’s fifth biggest town; Västerås, which is located about an hour from Stockholm. I really want to live in Stockholm but it’s impossible to find an apartment there unless you’ve been in the queue for about three years so I’ve beeen looking for one in Västerås as well since I liked living there. And today I got one!

My family are also sick of Hultsfred so they’ll also move to Västerås. My dad will move on February 1 just like me because he’ll begin his new job that date. The rest of the family will stay behind until they’ve sold the house.

All of this is so fucking great because: 1. I’m getting out of Hultsfred. 2. My family will move to Västerås too so I’ll still live close to them. 3. I lived in Västerås for five years between 99-04 so I already know people there and it won’t be like when I moved here and didn’t know anybody.

I’m, happy, happy, happy!

The different acts of my life
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Posted on Wednesday September 15 2010, 5:06 pm in Yada Yada | Tags: , | Archive

sverigekartaWhen I think back on my life I think of it in different periods, very different and clearly separated from each other. I see my life so far as a four act show, each act set in different locations.

Act 1 takes place between 1983-1988. During these early days of my life I live in three different towns but I only vaguely remember the last one.

Act 2 takes place between 1988-1999 in a village in the northern Sweden. This time of my life is what I think back on as my childhood. Of course my childhood actually started as soon as I was born but I still see these years as my childhood years, mostly because I don’t have a lot of memories from before 1988. Perhaps a better description would be my school years – high school excluded – since I started kindergarten in 1989 and left junior high in 1999.

Act 3 takes place between 1999-2004 in Västerås which is a big city near Stockholm in the southern part of Sweden. This period of time is what I consider to be my teenage years. I was already sixteen in 1999 so some of my teenage years did take place earlier than this but it wasn’t until 1999 that I actually started living the life a teenager in many ways. During this time there were a lot of firsts and I did all those things teenagers do while they’re growing up. This is also where I went to and graduated from high school and became a legal adult in 2001.

Act 4 started in 2004 and is still going on, in the small town of Hultsfred, even further south. I see this as the time of my adult life. I might have been a legal adult in 2001 but I wasn’t living the life of a grown up until I got here. Here is where I moved out of my parents house to my own apartment, got my first job and then started my higher education. This is where I grew up for real, not just on paper.

What will act five bring? I have no idea. All I know is that it won’t start until I leave Hultsfred since I clearly build the different acts of my life around moving and where I live. That’s because moving over big distances like I have means that I’ve left everything I knew behind each time I’ve relocated. It’s been brand new beginnings and starting all over both when I moved to Västerås and then from there to Hultsfred.

Do you look upon your life in this way, in different acts?

A day of sorrow in Hultsfred
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Posted on Wednesday June 30 2010, 8:02 pm in Yada Yada | Tags: , | Archive

Yesterday was a day of great sorrow in my home town and today isn’t much better. The Hultsfred festival that’s been arranged here for twenty-four years has been cancelled due to not enough tickets being sold this year. Three years ago this was the biggest rock festival in Sweden with more than 30 000 tickets sold but after two years of only around 20 000 tickets sold and this years only 5000 they cancel the festival. After loosing money for two years they found it impossible to arrange a festival that would mean loss of money for the third year in a row and yesterday declared their bankruptcy.

An era of music, fun and party in Hultsfred has come to a end. This is sad for everyone who visited the festival but especially for us who live here. Hultsfred is a small town with only 5000 inhabitants and the festival was pretty much the only thing going on here. This is what Hultsfred is known for. This was what was good about living in this town. This was the thing you looked forward to every year. But no more.

There’s a Facebook group called “Vi som åker till Hultsfred ändå!” (We who are going to Hultsfred anyway!) though. It’s a group for people who are planning to come here to camp and party anyway, even though there’s no festival. I’m obviously a member of the group and I’m looking forward to participating in some kind of party during this weekend and next week. Like I said, no festival is especially sad for us who live here so it’s wonderful that people are still coming here. It would have been horrible with a week of absolutely nothing going on when there was supposed to have been a big festival taking place. Of course this will be nothing like what the festival would have been but at least it’s something. A last hurrah.

To those who made the festival possible: Thank you for the five wonderful years of festival fun I was lucky to be a part of. I will miss it a lot.