A new blog
Hello. I am Olaf Schneider, a German jazz musician, web developer and photographer having been living in Northern Sweden since April 2010.
It’s September 2014 and I just started a new blog. The main focus will be the great outdoors in Northern Scandinavia: about travelling, landscape, nature, weather and being outside afoot, with skis or kayak, but probably there’ll be many other articles, too: about swedish culture, events, photography, cute kittens and other bits and pieces. And a lot of pictures because I love outdoor photography!
I hope you’ll enjoy way up north. I’m looking forward to your numerous comments.
Have fun!
/Olaf
For nordwärts readers: why another blog?
Some of you might already know me in person or my German blog nordwärts, where I wrote more than 800 articles and published more than 3500 photos You’ll may ask “Why another blog?”
1. The language
nordwärts is German. There’re many Swedes that can speak a bit of German and understand more than they would admit. But only few of them can read it quite fluently. So I thought about writing nordwärts in German and Swedish. But beside of the increased time exposure writing bilingual I got more and more contact to people that neither speak Swedish or German whether they are from Finland or Dubai. Therefore I decided to write in English. (Yes, I’ll definitely make many mistakes.)
2. The topics
Four and a half years ago my new life in Northern Sweden was all amazingly new and exotic to me: The first snow in October, the Swedish language and culture, the reindeers on the inland roads. But many things got quite normal now. Still I adore my life in Northern Sweden, but it’s not new to me longer. I started writing about playing music on nordwärts or other things that are not at all Sweden-related. Should I write a public diary for the rest of my life? Probably not. Therefore I decided to shift focus away from “my (not so) new life in Sweden” to other topics as mentioned above.
3. Change
I love change. That’s all me!
8 comments to “A new blog”
Annika 2014-09-23 00:00
At last!!! I just can’t wait to read about your trip, see the pictures, read all the comments….Enjoy the planning!
way-up-north 2014-09-23 07:33
Thank you, Annika. I started planning in my mind, I’ll write about it soon.
Annika 2014-09-23 08:22
And what´s wrong with cute kittens??? ;-)
way-up-north 2014-09-23 09:27
Nothing, Annika. As long as they don’t show up in every single blog.
Pia 2014-09-23 21:18
Great idea, Olaf!
You will gain a lot more readers now that they finally understand anything you write!
But I hope you will still warm my heart with pictures of snow and ice? ;-)
Lycka till med den nya bloggen!
Kram
Pia
way-up-north 2014-09-23 21:31
Of course, Pia, of course. I’m probably at least as snow addicted as you.
But I’m a bit sad as well because I underestimated the amount of non-english-speaking blog readers. Probably some of them won’t follow way-up-north.
Tack och kram,
/Olaf
Sonya | soschy on tour 2014-09-28 07:59
Finally! Congratulation for starting your new blog. I’m very curious how our writing style and your topic focus will change and develop. It’s also a good practise for me to write my comments in English and it is even easier than Swedish for me ;).
I’m a little bit jealous of your blog logo. Something I have on my list too. I just don’t like that you repeat your up-way-north in the claim both the wording and the colors. It’s just a recommendation to think about simplifying it, like “About being in the north”.
way-up-north 2014-09-28 08:15
I’m quite curios as well, Sonya. I guess the first think that will happen is that the posts get much shorter ;-) – at least in the beginning.
Are you planning to write in English, too, when you head to New-Zealand?
Thank you for the tipp with the headline. I guess I’ll change it. Maybe even the logo which in my option still looks a but too much like stock exchange. But no problem, the whole blog just started and definitely will develop in one or other direction. We’ll see.