Finally it was time to leave my little cottage in the woods and the three attention seeking feline tenants. When signing up for the locum placement well before Christmas, I didn’t want to commit myself for more than a month to start with, just in case that the Nordic experience might not have turned out …
Author Archives: The Blue Vet
Fika
As alarming as this might sound especially to the Germanic ear, this is a very Swedish institution, the foreign traveler is introduced to shortly upon his/he arrival and this Nordic custom is one which even in our clinic in Falun is frequently enjoyed and which had its fixed place in the daily routine. No, it …
No Money !…
Ok, ok……it is not quite as bad as it sounds, but it is absolutely true. At least when we are talking about cash: I don’t have a single Swedish Kronar in my pocket and this is the case since my arrival in Sweden a month ago. I don’t even know how the local currency looks …
Cabin life in Darlana
This morning I woke up by being “head butted”….. Something that came along with the job in Falun was the opportunity to stay in a 17th century log cottage on the farm of Anna – one of my colleagues – and her husband. What I had not been told, was that there were three other …
Morning Run through “Lock Down” Oxford
Today I like to take you on an early morning run through “Lock Down” Oxford on a Sunday morning after – thankfully – a quiet night on call. It won’t be a fast run, because we will stop frequently to take a look at some well known historic sights, but also at some less obvious …
Falu Djursjukhus
The first “thing” greeting me, when walking into my new (temporary) place of work, was a horse……..to be precise, a pretty large red one, made of paper mache. It was the centre piece of the communal area of the hospital, where I had my introductory meeting with Jessica, one of the senior vets, who is …
Falun or the start of the Swedish chapter
“Why not work in Sweden ? You don’t even need to speak the language, as most of our clients and all of our staff are speaking English !” I noticed this advert in the Vet Record last summer just after my return from Canada and it appealed to me right away: not only had I …
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Grounded
I assume it was just a matter of time that this had to happen….. Chasing my trusted Bavarian carriage through the length and breadth of Central Europe, there was finally an error message I just couldn’t ignore: the left rear tire was losing pressure and a visit at a garage in Wilhelmshaven on the German …
Learning from the best…
Christmas had come early for me this year when I decided to treat myself to a cross country skiing altitude training camp with Peter Schlickenrieder, an Olympic champion and the current coach of the German national team. Most of my friends know that this is probably my favourite form of exercise and that the lack …
Solitude
While writing these lines, I am the only guest in a very spartan hotel, which had seen better days, on a windswept mountain pass at nearly 2000 m above sea level in the Italian Alps. The radiator in my small room was struggling to produce an ambient temperature last night, so that I had to …
The Blue Vet Diary 