Tag Archive for ‘Travel’

Copper Mare

Copper Mare

Another King of Sweden, Karl IX. He was king from 1604 to 1611. The statue has been there since 1904. The humor in Göteborg quickly name it “Kopparmärra”, the copper mare but the horse is in fact a stallion. The statue weighs 6 700 kilos and is 88% copper and 12% tin. Moving in to the picture with speed is one of the characteristic trams. Stay tuned for more of this city landmark.

Quit horsing around, ha de Gött!

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Storage Building

Storage Building

An old storage building by the waterfront at Kalvö. The technique for the foundation stones are not uncommon in this area. Scrap stone that didn’t split the way they should found use in the houses built. You got to be impressed by the craftsmanship to make it work. This is built directly on the flat rock so one can clearly see the foundation stones.

Even the odd can fit in, ha de Gött!

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Distorted

Distorted

It is not always easy to see clear. Like looking through a old glass window. When the eye can’t clearly identify things our brains gladly fills in the blanks.

This picture is taken through a window in Göteborg city’s oldest building, “Kronhuset”, and in the forefront it’s quite clear but…. What do You see?

See the light, ha de Gött!

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Three more

Three more

I promised in a comment to write about the three additional letters we have in the Swedish alphabet, so here it is. Yes it’s true we have three more letters after A to Z as in the English alphabet. Åå, Ää and Öö. Not to be show off’s, they have these with a different spelling, and pronunciation, in Danish and Norwegian also. Let’s just say it’s a Scandinavian thing.

Lets start with Å. A friend of mine tried to explain this in a London pub when we were young backpackers. “It’s an a with a prick on”, he said. Took a while to figure out why the men laughed and the girls blushed. Dot is in Swedish “prick”. It is pronounced as ooh. Even for native Swedish it’s sometimes difficult to know when to use O or Å.

Moving on to the A with two pricks on, Ä. Pronounced eah. If you have sheep close by listen to them, they go bäää. Use Google translate to listen. Just copy from this text and paste in Google translate. Very common use and a real struggle for all English speakers moving to Sweden.

So the last letter the O with two pricks on, Ö. This is actually also an entire word that translates to island. You just have to listen to this on Google. There is nothing even close in English that I can think of. I think this is a happy little letter. Used to drive my teacher crazy when I made a smiley of it.

Just remember that sometimes less is more, ha de Gött!

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City View

City View

Sometimes Forestry Ulle dress in civilian clothes and walk the city streets like a normal person. Last Friday was such an occasion. The city was Göteborg a two hour drive from the meadows of home.

You see “Stora Hamnkanalen” or “Main Harbor Canal” in the photo. City hall with the German Church behind on the right side. If some of my Dutch readers feel at home you’re probably not mistaken. City planners and engineers was hired to build the city and gave it the nickname “Little Amsterdam”. Later during the industrial revolution many British entrepreneurs found their luck here, so the nickname changed to “Little London” and that remains still today.

The city was founded in 1621 by the Swedish king Gustav II Adolf. With its strategic position as a wedge to the west and the North Sea between Norway and Denmark, it was built as a fortress. Surrounded by high walls and canals in a marshland with the river Göta Älv on one side. From there ships could unload goods to smaller boats that then was rowed in to the Hamnkanal.

You can often hear my catch phrase “ha de gött” in Göteborg when people leave a shop or a tram. Stay tuned for more pictures, ha de Gött!

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The Lighthouse

The Lighthouse

I finally got around to go out to the lighthouse with the boat. The weather was fairly calm so it was okay to go in my small boat. Unfortunately I was loosing light but I still got some nice pictures. Below is a picture of the same lighthouse in storm.

The lighthouse is called “Väcker” from the small island where it’s placed. It was built in 1939 to guide ships in an area with many dangerous shallow rocks and strong winds. Several waterways intersect here. In the past goods and fishing ships depended on this for navigation but today it’s more of a landmark, or sea mark.

Light up someones day, ha de Gött!

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Midsummer Eve

Midsummer Eve

Midsummer eve full of mystery

Midsummer eve pale night light

Midsummer eve flowers and bees

Midsummer eve family and friends

Midsummer eve herring and snaps

Midsummer eve children dance around

Midsummer eve stay up all night

Midsummer eve family and friends

The midsummer celebration is as special to us Swedes as others countries national day. I described this in last years midsummer blog post. Find it here. Ha de Gött!

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Thump

Thump

Somewhere in the limbo between sleep and awake he heard a loud, thump. The feeling that something was wrong brought him to fully awake. His wife was already out of bed, screaming, “he fell, he fell out of the bunk bed”. He looked to his side of the double bed. There his son laid on the floor, the concrete floor with only a thin, so thin, carpet. The silence sent shivers down his spine.

As his wife now rounded the bed and reached their eight year old son he could hear the boy’s first sobbing.A stone fell from his heart, alive, he was alive. Gently they started to examine him to see if there was any blood. Even if the fall was a two metre drop to the floor he missed the sharp edge of the bedside table, hair short. Now the boy was crying more and louder. A call to the resort emergency service, where no-one spoke anything but the local language.

Taxi to the local emergency room. Two stressed out parents trying to explain what had happened, to hospital staff that didn’t understand. Finally after several hours a nurse came that spoke some English and could translate. As the first pale morning light reached through the windows he was carrying his little boy through long corridors to the MRI machine. Three days in hospital instead of a fun weekend at the famous resort. It took some years before the family dared to go abroad for a holiday again.

True Story, ha de gött!

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Havstenssund

Havstenssund

I promised a while back to share a slide show from Havstenssund in Bohuslän, Sweden. A bit overdue here it is.

Havstenssund is a small community with only 150 inhabitants situated on the north tip of a peninsula, Tanumsnäs. It was first mentioned by the Norwegian King Sverre Sigurdsson in 1196. In the summertime the population tenfold and through the narrow strait a multitude of boats passes. Enjoy and ha de Gött!

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