Bruce in Blekinge

Return to Oz

2007-03-07T09:22:00.000+01:00

And so at long last, it was time for me to make my way home. Since my flight from Copenhagen was at 6:25am on Saturday, I had to get the train from Gothenburg on Friday evening. The journey took just under four hours, and was fairly uneventful. The train passed through places like Falkenberg and Landskrona, where L's brother lives. Once the train reached Malmö, I was in very familiar territory. It was then just a short trip over the Öresund to Denmark and Kastrup. I also remember the recorded voiceover lady's voice changing as soon as we were going over the Öresund...it was now Danish...and it sounded so harsh and even more unintelligible compared to what I had been used to hearing for the previous six months.
It was around 8:30pm and I was starving for some dinner, so I returned to my customary eating venue at CPH - Burger King. I hadn't had fast food for so long, so it tasted extra good. Since I had to wake up at around 4am, I went in search of a quiet place in the airport where I could settle in for the night. But alas, the large room of seats where I had joined so many other transit sleepers and battled against the ride-on sweepers back in August had disappeared. It had been replaced by a "security upgrade" area and was inacessible. I then went to the place where I slept over in August, near the staircase, but that spot had already been snapped up by someone and it wasn't even 10pm! I found a chair at a table next to a cafe and put my head down to rest. Not five minutes later, I was booted out. Some family was kicking me out because they wanted to sleep there. Thank goodness I'm not a homeless person as I'd never survive. So, the only place left to sleep was the cold, hard floor. I found a spot near some of the check-in counters, curled up and rested my head on my suitcase.
Something woke me at around 1am. Maybe I was just that uncomfortable. Maybe I was having nightmares about the return of those ride-on sweepers. Anyway, I looked up at the check-in counters in front of me and I noticed something strange. The Danes don't seem to like the number 13. Every other number was there, but they jumped straight from 12 to 14, as you can see in this photo:

I tried to go back to sleep, but didn't succeed very well. Eventually, my mobile phone alarm went off a little after 4am and it was time to get up. There was no way I wanted to miss my flight, so I hurried to a "departures" computer screen. I waited...and waited. Eventually at 4:25am some details appeared - go to the other terminal. How annoying. I had to go back through all the "security upgrade" stuff. Upon arrival at the long check-in hall, I realised there would already be many people in front of me in the line. I had guessed the wrong terminal overnight and that put me at a disadvantage. The hall was long, but not very deep - only about 15 metres. I was already having to start at the back wall. The line did not seem to be moving very fast at all. Time ticked by. 5am...5:30am...6am...I still hadn't checked in, and the plane was meant to leave at 6:25am!
A notice on the monitors showed that the departure time had been moved back to after 7am. Thank goodness this flight had been moved forward three hours before I left Australia, otherwise I would have been marooned yet again at an airport, a habit I was becoming quite good at. I also managed to pick up that their check-in computer system had gone down. That was the reason for the delay. Everyone in line seemed to be pushing past me. And indeed, this was true. I ended up being one of the last few people to check in, even though I had been in line almost from the beginning. On this occasion, it turned out to be an advantage. Since the departure time for the plane was rapidly approaching, they decided to send one of the flight attendants with us to fast-track us through security. The security situation really had got out of hand, with queues running along the top floor the entire length of the check-in hall. The reason for the queuing was all the extra security measures: you had to strip off to almost nothing...and remember, people are wearing lots of clothes because it's Denmark and it's one day after the winter solstice. There was also the whole "no liquids" thing to deal with, meaning everything had to go in separate clear plastic bags or it was confiscated. But as I said, we were allowed to jump to the head of the queue with the flight attendant.
Since I was flying KLM, I had to go through Amsterdam, a place I'd never been. It was only a short flight, about an hour, but it really was memorable. I so wish that I had been able to take a photo on the plane. The sunrise was THE most magnificent I had ever seen. At least I still have the memory of it. It was like this kind of time-delay rainbow. It started out black, then a layer of purple was added, then blue, etc, until finally red and gold. Absolutely beautiful.

And so I had arrived in the land of the "magic brownies". The airport was very packed since it was the day before Xmas Eve. Seeing the large crowds, even though I still had quite a bit of time before my next flight, I decided to line up to go through passport control straight away anyway. I took this photo of one of the bars in the airport while waiting in line.The man who processed me was surprisingly very kind and talkative despite the huge lines. He wanted to know whether I would make it home in time for Xmas. I said I would, if I made the connection OK.
Here are a couple of photos I took while at Schiphol airport. This first one is of one of the KLM planes. I remember going past a casino inside the airport. I also stopped at a cafe for a hot dog...but no magic brownies or mushrooms or whatever crazy stuff they have there. There were also some souvenir shops (mainly involving clogs) in the terminal, so I bought some as last-minute Xmas gift ideas. One of the most puzzling signs I saw in the airport was on a travelator, one of those conveyor belt things that you get on to speed up your travel along straight stretches in an airport. I'm assuming it's a "don't litter" kind of deal, but the use of "sweet" makes me think of the movie "Dude, Where's My Car?". Can't seem to find a translation into English of sweet as a Dutch word. Maybe someone had too many magic brownies?

The rest of the journey home passed without major incident. Check-in for the flight to Kuala Lumpur was incredibly slow however, due to the liquids security delays again. The flight landed in KL on Sunday morning, I think around 6am. This time, I did not try the drinking water, after my dislike of it on my way over to Sweden. Instead, I sat down and watched some movie about little league baseball.

It was back on a plane around 9am. I was at the front of one of the sections, so I didn't get a video screen on the back of the chair in front of me - you had to pull it up on a pole from under your chair. I was embarrassed that I fell asleep on the flight and I think I missed one of the snacks. Oh well, I guess I needed sleep rather than sugar. It was around 35 degrees when we touched down in Perth, a real difference from the 3 degrees at Bergåsa of three days beforehand. Clearing customs was slow (as always) but thankfully my luggage made it the whole way with me this time.

Here ends the journey. I apologise for taking so long to finish it, but there was a lot to cover and I hope it was worth the wait. I want to say a big thankyou to everyone who made my trip possible, and to all the people I met whilst away, whose names have been abbreviated in this blog. You know who you are.

Tack så mycket!

Goat-burg Part Three: Liseberg

2007-03-02T08:10:00.000+01:00

To begin with, here are a final few shots taken from within Universeum but of views outside. Firstly, here is a tram making its way along Södra Vägen. Behind the buildings a little way lies Chalmers Tekniska Högskola. Here are a couple of skyscrapers, Göteborg-style. There's a Christmas tree at the base.
I still had a small amount of time before I had to get back to the hotel to pick up my luggage. So, I thought I'd have a quick look around the main streets. Heading north on Skånegatan and then turning right onto Valhallagatan, there is a park/bush area on the left. I walked through it for a while and discovered that through the fence one could see across Mölndalsån (the river) to an old church. Here it is.
I had also wanted to see Liseberg, the amusement park, but that would only look better the darker the sky became. So I headed back south slowly. On the way, I went past the Scandinavium. It's a very big indoor arena, and named quite appropriately, being in Scandinavia and all. Of course, there is now the obligatory McDonalds restaurant there, as you can see from this photo.

Turning left just before reaching the Universeum again, I came to the magnificent entrance of Liseberg. From what I've seen, it sounds a little like Dreamworld, and was apparently the venue for one of the last few dates on The Bachelor: Rome. Liseberg is mainly open during the summer months in the middle of the year, but since 2000 they have also been open for the Christmas season. This is usually at night (not all that hard to do, given when the sun sets) so that the Christmas lights are easily seen. I was going past on the second last day of the season. The sign says that it is open from 3-10pm.

Just beyond that archway, there is a small stream and waterfall with some funky blue lighting.
Beyond that, you have the main entrance area. This is quite a big space, because they have to deal with a lot of people queuing up. Even though it's not quite sunset yet, you can see that they have turned on the lights on this tree.
Here's the main entrance structure. This was as close as I could get, due to the large mass of people waiting to get in - it was about 3pm. The "colours" of Liseberg are apparently green and pink, hence the rabbit logo appears mainly in those two colours. Here's a rough translation of the sign:

Liseberg

Open today 3-10pm

Small stage at 4 and 6pm: Mrs Lise's Wind (or Attic, I'm not sure)

Ice track at 7pm: The Hijacker, Rabbits and Spooky Events

7pm: Dance around the Christmas tree

Welcome along!

I hung around outside (yes, I know, I'm a loiterer) the entrance for as long as I could before I definitely had to return to the hotel. I was waiting, because the darker the sky, the brighter the lights of Liseberg would appear. Here's my best effort of the Christmas tree near the entrance and the tower behind.
Turning to depart, I took this photo of Svenska Mässan, the Swedish exhibition centre, as well as the rectangular prism arrangements of lights on the power poles all the way along Skånegatan.

I travelled along that road heading north, but turned around one to view the lights of Liseberg for one last time. Here you can see both the tower and the pretty lights of the Scandinavium at left.

I continued along between the Gamla and Nya (Old and New) Ullevi sportgrounds, then turned left just before the river. It was then a short walk back to the hotel. Just near Central Station is the Post Office. Here is the magnificent 'tree' of lights in front of it, complete with red lights in the windows.

I was a little upset at the hotel's baggage holding protocol. There were not really any security/identification measures in place. When I left my luggage there in the morning, I just checked out and said I'd like them to hold my luggage until the afternoon. They pointed me in the direction of the door to the holding room. I walked in, left my suitcase and walked out. No tokens, paperwork, staff watching or supervising me, etc. Nothing. Upon my return in the afternoon, all I had to do was say that I would like to pick up my luggage. They said that I should just walk in to the room and take it. No identification required. Basically anyone off the street could have walked in and taken anyone's luggage. Thankfully, my luggage was still there. I grabbed it and headed to the train station. I was about to begin my journey home.

Goat-burg Part Two: Universeum

2007-02-21T05:31:00.000+01:00

My main goal for the day was to get to a place called the Universeum. Armed with my hotel map, I continued along Nya Allén. Unfortunately, I missed my turnoff and ended up heading too far west. Instead of doubling back, I thought I'd take the next turn. That way I would see more of Gothenburg. I made a left at Södra Vägen and walked along past the exercise ovals. It was all terribly busy. It was not level of population density that I had been used to for the past six months. Eventually I reached the huge roundabout/traffic chaos at Korsvägen. There were cars and pedestrians going everywhere. So confusing. This photo was taken just south of there. You can see the towering spire of what I would find out later is part of Liseberg at the top, and the Universeum is at the lower right.And so I had arrived. I didn't really know what to expect of it, I had just seen it on one of the Gothenburg tourist websites as something good to do if you're in the city. I would describe it as a cross between Scitech and AQWA. It cost 135SEK (something like AU$24) to enter at the time I went. Their website is www.universeum.se if you are interested in having a look. They even have lockers (on two floors!) for hire. Since it was much warmer inside than outside, I used a locker to store my excess clothes. Once I had worked out where the actual entry to the main part of the Universeum was, I used my entry pass to access these cool lifts. They actually travel diagonally, along the side of the building. They take you from the entry floor up to the Water's Way (Vattnets Väg) exhibit. It's about all the different sorts of water environments (and the life in them) around Sweden. The exhibit is not flat. It starts up very high and progresses downwards. This was done presumably to imitate the mountainous areas in the north of Sweden and the flatter parts in the south. Here is a view looking down on the exhibit from the top part, where you can learn about the Sami people and their eight seasons a year of reindeer herding.

And now some of the animal life you can see in the tanks. I think these are trout, but I'm not sure.
This little guy is a guzzler. His first name starts with G, but I can't recall it. Apparently he has something wrong with him and there are signs saying not to disturb him. He spends most of the time asleep. He can't swim properly.
How's this for a luminous fish!

Here's a lobster...
...and a crab.
Here's a bright pink sea urchin. This was in a tiny display in the mezzanine area. This had a touchpool, as well as some small exhibits about forests, fish and sharks. Coming off this area was the Deadly Snakes exhibit. There was a sign saying no flash photography, so I didn't take any in there. The snakes were all good at camouflage, because most I was not able to see (either that or they had been taken out of their enclosures).
The other exit from the mezzanine area leads to the rainforest exhibition. It was so humid in there! It was so misty, but the place was teeming with life. I found a little bird right near the entrance and tried to take a photo of it. If you look REALLY carefully, you can see it. It is hard to see because it was coloured green so it blends in with the plants, and also it was so foggy that my camera lens fogged up.

I didn't really know how to deal with the moisture on the lens. I just wiped it off. But unfortunately I didn't manage to get all of it, as you can see from this photo of an eel. There's still some fogginess in the centre of the lens.

The universeum has a family of monkeys in there. The other thing you notice a lot of are the butterflies. Sadly, I was not able to get a photo of the tops of their wings - they are such a brilliant blue - but they just would not stay still long enough for me to wipe the lens and take the photo. Here is the underside of the wing, though.

This one's just of the greenery in the rainforest.

On the lowest floor, there is this bizarre bird. I'm not sure where its other leg is, if it has one. The huge toes on the foot are designed so displace the bird's weight over a large surface area, so it is less likely to make the leaves it stands on collapse into the water below.

This is a photo of terrible quality, but it's of a turtle climbing through its lunch plate of lettuce.

The other side of the Universeum is the "Scitech" side. There were many interactive exhibits the Swedish instructions of which I could understand simply because I had seen similar ones at Scitech. One of the exhibits in the central staircase did catch my eye though. It was designed to show how positive whole numbers (besides 1) are either prime, or can be written as the product of two or more primes. They used a different colour to represent each prime. In this photo, you can see for instance that 71, 73, 79 and 83 are prime. Also, 2 is blue and 3 is yellow, so 72 = 2x2x2x3x3. The rainforest exhibit is in the background.

Later, I discovered where the Universeum makes most of its money - in the shop and the cafe. The prices were very high. I bought two of the cheapest things, which were a plastic keyring-type-thing and a pencil, for the equivalent of about AU$5.50. It was very easy to spend hours and hours there. It was getting late and I had a train to catch soon, so I left and started heading north towards the hotel again. More photos of this walk back will be in my next post.

Goat-burg Part One: Leaving Ronneby

2007-02-16T06:59:00.000+01:00

After getting all of my office stuff tidied up on Wednesday 20th, and cleaning the apartment well into the hours of the following morning, on Thursday 21st I had my rent inspection and I was free to go. Here I am just about to depart with five layers of clothing on.

I walked into the centrum for the last time, dragging my suitcase behind me. It was considerably lighter than when I arrived, because I had organised to send a big box (11kg) of stuff home beforehand for 500SEK. I stopped at the turistbyrå (tourist bureau) for a couple of souvenirs. Then I walked along Strandgatan to the resecentrum to catch the bus to Bergåsa, which is just before Karlskrona. Unfortunately, I did not plan my day well at all. I arrived at the station at midday, and the Kust Till Kust train I had the ticket for was not due until 4:50pm. There really is not much to do in the town of Bergåsa, particularly when dragging a suitcase around. I did however manage to get a photo of the cemetery, since it's right next to the train station.
Apart from a visit to a deli to buy lunch, I spent the next five hours huddled up as much as I could at the open-air train station. It was 3 degrees at midday. If anything, I think it would have gotten colder as the afternoon progressed. It was definitely NOT a fun experience.

It was thus with great delight that I saw the train approach. You can read more about the train service at www.kusttillkust.se and there's also a map of their network. I was happy that I could say I'd been to Växjö (pronounced something like Veckwhir) because I think it's a cool name. The many Christmas lights impressed me as I passed through each town. They were in general a lot fancier than Ronneby's, because they were larger places.

Eventually, around 9pm I arrived at Gothenburg's central train station. The English name for the second largest city in Sweden is Gothenburg, while it is Göteborg in Svenska. It's moderately difficult to pronounce...something like Jerteboy is what I heard most. I have also heard it referred to as Goatburg. Anyway, after I disembarked from the train, I walked in the general direction of my hotel. I knew it was only about a block from the station. Travelling through the square near the station, I found the light displays so impressive that I wanted to take a photo...a photo I never ended up taking. As I was getting my camera out, I was approached by a beggar. Great! Been in the city all of two minutes and I'm already being hassled for money. I made up a story about having only Australian money and gave him the slip. I hurried off in search of my hotel so I wouldn't be confronted again. Fortunately it was not far away at all. Here you can see the sign for it - the Scandic Europa. In the lower right corner you can see one of the lit up trees. The blue lights looked really funky.

And here's my room. It was pretty good because it cost under $100 Australian a night. The bed was SOOO comfy. My major complaint was that I was unable to get the shower working. It was one of those contraptions where it's a bath, unless you do some special move on it and only then does it become a shower. Well I couldn't work out what that special move was. And the bath plug wouldn't fit in the hole! In the end I had a "shower" by using the water coming out of the bath tap. Best I could do in the situation.
The next morning, I set out to explore Gothenburg. I had obtained a map from the hotel. I walked eastwards on Slussgatan. Here is the Central Station seen from the south side of the river (Fattighusån).
The river seemed to use an elaborate system of lochs. There's also a tram in the background. This reminded me of Melbourne.

Walking south on Nya Allén, I found this statue of an engineer. Unfortunately, I didn't record his name anywhere.

My aim was to get to the Universeum. This will be the subject of my next entry, as there are too many photos just for one post.

Last Bus to Karlskrona

2007-02-15T08:21:00.000+01:00

On my last Friday in Blekinge, we had the Christmas party for all of BTH. This was a massive undertaking, since there were three campuses (Karlshamn, Ronneby and Karlskrona) from which staff and students were travelling. They even put on a bus for us. Thankfully, a few of the PhD students from my department were still around (many people take leave early so they can head home for Christmas) so I had someone to talk to on the bus and at the party.
As far as the location was concerned, I don't exactly remember the name. It was a hotel-type place in the centre of Karlskrona, and it started with M, something like Military. The building was at the eastern end of Stortorget (the Big Square). It was a very cold day, and we were glad when we could go inside. Although we had to wait around for ages before being seated, the sheer volume of people kept us warm.
Our tables were up one flight of stairs, and there were at least three big rooms for us. Seating was at very long tables, like the one shown in this photo.There was quite a variety of food, mainly fish (this was Sweden, after all). However I think they under-catered as I did not get full at all. I remember they had Julmust, which is a drink you have at Christmas time, with a slight resemblance to cola. I didn't see any glögg though. I first tried glögg on December 1st I think. It's a type of mulled wine, and a Swedish tradition. In my opinion, it was great, and the name is so appropriate, because it sounds like you have heaps and heaps of it.
Due to the lack of food, I think a lot of people finished earlier than some people were expecting. They therefore left the party early to have a look around Karlskrona. We were about to leave too, but I decided I was going to wait around, just in case they had any more food up their sleeves. My hunch was correct. Eventually dessert arrived. It was rice pudding and coffee. Here's a photo of it.

Despite all this eating, the bus for our return to Ronneby was still going to be some time away. So, TSj and I decided to have a look around the parts of Karlskrona in easy walking distance from Stortorget...after all, we didn't want to miss the bus and be stuck 25km from home! Here are a few photos I took whilst strolling.

This one is of Fredrikskyrka (Fredrik's Church) in Stortorget. Rådhuset is in the background.

Here is a tower thing. I'm not sure what it's for, because we didn't go up to it. Karlskrona is a fairly heavily fortified city, because it's a naval base and holds a strategic location, quite near to the southeasternmost point of Sweden.

This is some kind of churchy-clock type thing.
Finally, here is a fountain on one of the main streets. The subject is appropriately a fish.

The bus ride back to Ronneby was just before sunset. I remember talking with TSj about how much PhD students earn in Sweden. It's really quite a lot by Australian standards, since they have a teaching component as well.
Although Karlskrona is much smaller than Australian capitals, the difference between it and Ronneby was tangible. There are so many more choices for things. It would be a nice place to go if you wanted to move to the country, but not TOO country.

REaDy to Party

2007-02-13T10:44:00.000+01:00

Tuesday 12th December (the night before Lucia) was the time for the department Christmas party. It was organised by four of the new PhD students in the department. It was held at Röda Längan (Long Red House), the same venue as B's party some five months beforehand. There was however no lazy evening between a BBQ and the river. It was too cold and dark for that.
Here is a photo of the Xmas lights on a tree near the volleyball court, just near Röda Längan. It is a little distorted due to the 'night' setting of my camera.
The meal was Thai food. An interesting choice, but quite yummy. I managed to get a photo of the table decorations. Everything was red and green. There were a few of these flowers (sorry I don't remember the name!) which fitted in perfectly.

The evening ended a bit before midnight with some lively discussion from IC about policy differences between Sweden and the USA. Thankfully, some of these were held in English, although many were not and I just had to stare into space until I heard someone speaking English.

The Final Cycling Trip

2007-02-06T10:41:00.000+01:00

Alas, I had come to the last of my Sunday cycling trips. My final Sunday in Sweden was spent packing, so I did not go cycling on that day. The person motivating this ultimate trip's location was T, who had mentioned the beaches near Millegarne as a great place to visit. Millegarne is located southeast of Ronneby, further than Aspan and Sandvik.
Here, then, is Ronnebyån as seen from the bridge near BTH. There is another photo in a previous post, where I show the same view in Autumn. In December however, the trees on the banks of the river are bare.

This semi-creepy scene is at a T-junction. To get there, take Heabyvägen southeast from Ronneby, then turn southwards at its termination as if you were heading to Aspan, but instead of turning west again to go to Aspan, continue on the road south. I do not use a name for the road because I cannot find one on any of the maps I have. After you go past the turnoff for St. Oxlaby, the T-junction is the next one on the right. The two pillars were interesting, however I decided to continue on the main road to the left.
These next few photos highlight why I went to the left. It allows you to go along the eastern shore of Bredasund (Broad Sound). This is a lovely calm and open lake located near the town of Korsanäs. I recall it ended up being a king of 'leapfrog' between myself and an elderly man on another bike. We would keep overtaking each other. I would stop to take photographs, and he would stop to talk to another of the people he knew passing by. I saw a kind of rest area and dismounted my bike to take some photos. Here's one which is of the biggest bird-watching platform (alternatively, insert other use for wooden structure here. Bird-watching is the best explanation that has yet been forwarded to me) which I ever saw.
This one is of a white bird (swan?) just taking off as I think I may have startled it.
I even summoned the courage to climb up to the bird-watching platform. This is a slightly more aerial view of Bredasund from up there.
On the way back to where I had parked my bike, I found this patch of mushrooms.
As I said, Bredasund is near the town of Korsanäs (somthing like Cross Isthmus). Here's the 'you are now entering...' sign. I am informed that the orange poles are for when it snows, so that the plow driver knows where the edge of the road is.
If you keep following the main road south, you eventually reach a junction where you can take Västra Köpevägen to the left, which goes to Köpe. Alternatively, going south past the road will lead you into the Bering Sea. I, on the other hand, again kept to the main road and turned right. This road leads to the town of Millegarne. This is a view from near the junction in a southwest direction. Note the sunshine and lack of snow which is somewhat atypical for winter.
I continued cycling west as far as I could go. Eventually I reached yet another T-junction. To the left (south) was Gö, the shortest name for a place I had ever heard. To the right (north) was Gökalv. Gö has about 25 houses, most of which could be seen from the T-junction. On the other hand, Gökalv could not be seen from the junction. It only contains about 6 houses and having "calf" in the village name seemed pretty cool. So, I headed for Gökalv. In the end, I never made it all the the way to the village on the coast. My attention was diverted by a small parking lot just short of the village. There was a sign, saying there was a gravefield 1km away. In my usual tradition of finding the "dead centre" of places, I decided to check it out. Below is a view of the bay near the parking lot. I actually slipped over on the wet rocks near here whilst I was exploring. That's one good thing about places with very small populations - there's hardly any chance someone will see you and laugh at you if you fall over!
Being just a week and a half away from the winter soltice, I needed to move quickly if I was going to find this gravefield and still have time to cycle the 25km or so home before it got dark. I worked out that the "signs" for the path to the gravefield were orange spots of paint on sticks in the ground. This confused me at first, and I ended up going the wrong way because I followed them to another start-point rather than the finish-point of the gravefield.

After negotiating my way around several trees that had fallen over blocking the path, I eventually made it to this gate.

The signs say "animals grazing" and "welcome to Nötanabben". You can see one of the guiding orange markers behind the slanting gate. Here is another of the information signs which I had become familiar with. I give a copy of the English text:

"The grave-field at Nötanabben contains some 90 visible prehistoric remains: stone ships, four-sided and round stone-settings as well as barrows and upright stones. There are also a cairn and a triangular grave. This type of grave-field is characteristic of parts of southern Sweden during the Late Iron Age (700-1050 AD).

During this period the dead were usually cremated along with some personal belongings, such as a knife, a distaff whorl, a brooch, some beads and the like. Five of the graves have been excavated. The finds are kept at Blekinge Museum, Karlskrona".

And now some photos taken at Nötanabben. Firstly, the sun disappearing behind the trees.
This would be the cairn mentioned in the information sign.
This is another spooky image for me. The stone at right looks very mummy-like in my opinion.
Here is another view of Ronneby Hamn. It's similar to the ones from Aspan and Sandvik, since Gökalv is located a few kilometres southwest of those towns.
It being 2:45pm at that stage, I was starting to panic as sunset would follow in under 45 minutes and I was a long way from home. I cycled back the same way I had come, to avoid getting lost. On the way back I did have time to grab a photo of the sign for Millegarne which I had forgotten to do on the way westward.

Here is another view of the coast at Millegarne as sunset approaches.

I was yet again fairly well situated in terms of getting sunset photos. These two were taken near the turnoff to Aspan.

Finally, this purple sky view was taken looking east on Fornanäsvägen, in the Ronneby suburb of Påtorp. I made it home just as it got dark. In the end, it was not of great consequence, since I knew the area (southern part of Ronneby) well as I had been cycling home from work in the dark for several months.

This however brought my Sunday cycling trips to a close, which was sad.

Mr Nippier

2007-02-05T06:42:00.000+01:00

I continued to be surprised by the Hemglass industry. I arrived back at my apartment after work on the 8th of December to hear the familiar "doo-be-doo-be-doo" melody enticing people to come out and buy icecream even though the temperatures were approaching zero degrees. Here's a photo of the truck in the darkness.

I guess other people weren't expecting a visit from the icecream van either - the van had to come to an abrupt halt because there was a car parked on the road in front of the apartment block, right in the path of the van. Thankfully, the endless "doo-be-doo-be-doo"s finally caught the attention of the car owner, who moved the car so that the van could bring its cold treats to more people in the area.

Advent-ure

2007-02-02T08:29:00.000+01:00

The first Sunday in Advent was rather overcast, and I did not feel like cycling great distances. Besides, I needed to buy some food. Therefore, I decided to go into the centrum in the afternoon. There were plenty of people about getting their Xmas shopping done at the stores and markets which were open at a time when for most of the year they would have been closed.
Here is the Christmas tree at the large roundabout near the Stads Hus. Even though it is not completely dark yet, you can see the lights on the tree.

Here comes the Ronneby Skolorkester marching down Strandgatan in their festive hats.
Below is the main Christmas tree in the town square. I had been trying to photograph it on previous evenings, but it did not have its lights on then, and it was simply too dark to see on my camera. The tree is surrounded by some markets specially set up for Christmas shopping. There is a crane in the background, but I'm not sure whether it had anything to do with the Christmas tree or not.
Continuing on, in the northwestern corner of the centrum, just near the river, is Mor Oliviagården. It's a place I had been meaning to have a look at for months, but had never gotten around to visiting. There are some small bushes just to the left of the view in this photo.
Another sight I had not yet managed to see was the flowing waterfall behind Mor Oliviagården. A had told me about it in September I think, on one of the trips to the candy store. However, it was night time and it was not flowing then. Here it is in all its glory as it rushes amongst the buildings towards the bridge on which I am standing to take this photo.

And finally, here are the Christmas lights of Ronneby. Note in particular the heart-shaped light decorations, fitting in with the heart logo of Ronneby. IMHO these were prettier than Karlskrona's effort. Another feature to note, which is semi-difficult to discern in this photo, is the trail of tiny candles burning on the sides of all the main roads. Even though it was cold and dark, the lights made it feel a bit cosier.

Time to Partay

2007-02-01T06:29:00.000+01:00

On December 2nd, U and M had a party at their house, which is not far from BTH. The party was designed to be an early Christmas party, since they were flying to Australia less than a week later and it would be the last weekend of the year they would be in Ronneby. It was also my half-birthday, another excuse for festivities. Below are a few snaps I took. The night was fairly incident-free, though I did meet someone who had been a Swedish exchange student at my workplace in Australia when I started here four years ago. Small world!
Here are A, MS and MN on the couch. It seems jeans were the order of the evening.

This photo features S, JS and T.
Later in the evening, M, S, T, A and MS turned up the heat on the dancefloor.

'Tis the Season

2007-01-30T11:32:00.000+01:00

As I've mentioned on several occasions, Sweden gets very dark towards the end of the year, and particularly in December. It is therefore comforting that there are some traditions which try to restore a bit of light and warmth around Christmas, or Jul. For the whole month, we were allowed to turn on the electric light settings featuring seven candles. Mine had been sitting on my windowsill for the whole time I was at BTH, and at last I could turn it on. But wouldn't you know it, mine didn't work. Fortunately, there were some spares (there is not someone in every office) and so I was given a replacement. Here is what it looked like from inside my office. I took the photo at night for best effect.
This isn't just limited to BTH. People everywhere were placing candles and stars in their windows. My camera has pretty bad night vision, however this next photo illustrates my point. It is a photo taken of one of the apartment blocks at Hjorthöjden. All that my camera could pick up were the lights in the windows. Another tradition I got into was that of the Advent calendar. I was on a budget, so I bought a cheap one (10SEK, about $1.80AU) at Maxi. Here it is in the photo below. Each day I would come home from work and open one of the little perforated squares to find a different chocolate underneath. I must admit though that I had to cheat towards the end and open more than one a day, since I was leaving on December 21st and the last day of Swedish Advent calendars is always the 24th. No sense in wasting perfectly good chocolate!

Karlskrona Revisited

2007-01-29T06:55:00.000+01:00

On the last day of November, my supervisor surprised me by announcing that he would be having a meeting with all of his students together in Karlskrona. The main campus of BTH is located there, and it is about 25km east of Ronneby. The meeting was more a "getting to know you" type rather than anything technical, although it lasted longer than it was meant to. It finished around 3:45pm. Here is a view of the main buildings of Campus Gräsvik at approximately that time. It is after sunset. A tradeoff for travelling all the way to Karlskrona was that we could all have the rest of the afternoon off to see some of the sights of the town. Karlskrona has a tremendous naval history. We learned that when we went to the Marinmuseum (Marine Museum). It's a two-storey building situated on the coast of a small island named Stumholmen, in the east part of Karlskrona. The building was only opened in 1997, so it's very modern. The following are some of the photos I took inside the museum. I apologise that some are very dark, mainly due to it being after sunset even before we arrived.
Here is an old hand-drawn map of the Swedish coast.
This image depicts some boat models. And this one is a very intricate cross-section of a ship. This image may be difficult to make out, but it shows a lot of different weapons (rifles, mainly) that were used on the ships.
Indeed a lot of the exhibits concern defence and warfare. This exhibit was a model of a battle between Sweden and Russia.
At the far end of the museum, there is a large atrium with many large ornate carvings mounted on the transparent walls. These are what were attached to the front of Swedish ships of the past. Four of them are shown in the image below.
A lot of the upper floor exhibits are dedicated to submarines. This is a view inside the walk-through model. Submarines have such confined spaces. I recall bashing my head a couple of times as I walked through under some of the archways. This is another ship model on the upper floor, just near the front entrance.

I was lucky enough to pop into the shop and grab a few souvenirs as Xmas presents for my family. Another drawcard of the museum is that there is actually a third storey, located below the ground floor. Here, you can look out of the windows and see the water and sea floor, while learning about how scientists do research below the waves on small information panels, thankfully most of which are in Swedish and English.

It was then time for the museum to close, and for us to depart. Here is a view of the front entrance of the museum. You may just be able to make out the golden star lights in the windows. Tomorrow was the first of December, and the beginning of the Xmas lights season. But, in keeping with the Swedish tradition of starting things on the evening beforehand, the Xmas lights were being turned on on November 30th.

On our way to Taverna Santorini for dinner (the same place G had his farewell dinner), I managed to take these photos of the Xmas lights of Karlskrona.

They certainly provide a welcome type of escape from the long-lasting darkness at this time of year.

What the fog is up with this weather?

2007-01-24T08:27:00.000+01:00

November 28th 2006 would have to be, without doubt, THE foggiest day I have ever experienced. Previous posts about the fog pale in comparison to that Tuesday. I knew things were going to be bad weather-wise from the time I got up. Here's the view from my bedroom window, taken around dawn. Visibility was indeed minimal.
After managing to cycle in to BTH without being hit by anything that had been hiding in the dense fog, here is the view that greeted me from my office window. The bare trees on the hill that had been a constant reminder of the impending arrival of winter could now not be seen. They had been blanketed. Here is another view, this time from the window of the lunch room. And no, those odd circular lights in grid formation in the sky are not flying saucers. They are simply a reflection of the lights on the ceiling of the lunch room. This is the view from the western end of the kitchen, towards the river. Again please excuse the unwanted reflections. But it certainly is a very grey day.
Here is a better view...well at least one with less reflections, the amount you can see of the outside is probably about the same. The trees bordering the river are almost completely lost in the fog.

Vistas via Vieryd

2007-01-15T08:47:00.000+01:00

By this stage of my visit, I was running out of new places to go. I mentioned this to A, and she asked whether I had been to a place called Trolleboda. I said I had not, and asked her where it was located. It's a small village a bit to the west of Spjälkö. So the next Sunday at midday, I set out. I decided I wanted to see some more of the places to the west of Ronneby, on the way to Bräkne-Hoby, but not that far (since that would take a long time to reach). Instead, I retraced the path I took the time I went to Spjälkö, as far as Svedala. Here is a photo from that general area, complete with vapour trail from a plane. I like these cloud formations. It is amazing how low the sun appears in the sky as the winter solstice approaches. This photo was taken a little after 1pm.
Instead of heading south towards Saxemara as I had done on a past occasion, I continued west. Eventually, I came to a fork in the road. I could take the bitumen road Hjälmserydsvägen, or the dirt track Guttamålavägen. I decided on the latter. It was very quiet, very isolated. Here is a photo I took of some of the trees as the track wound off into the distance on the right.
And here's another from the same area, but looking more up at the clouds.
As I stumbled out onto Askebodavägen, which was a bitumen road, at the village of Guttamåla, I felt I was in the heart of farm country. Again, I had a choice. I could head south and head straight for Trolleboda, or continue west. I chose west. Eventually, I reached the continuation of Hjälmserydsvägen. Just after this point, there is a small bridge across Vierydsån, the river which flows out of Nässjön, the lake to which I had just been the week before. Here is a picture as it gathers speed flowing under the bridge at a place called Krokskvarn.
As the river widens on its way south, it becomes more placid. Here it is as seen from the southern end of Hjälmserydsvägen.
Eventually, the river meets the (Bering) Sea, or at least a long bay named Vierydfjorden. Here is a view looking south along the fjord. It was very cold and cloudy, but I was glad I had made it as far as I had. It would have been about 2pm to give you an idea of the time.Here is another view, taken from slightly to the east. The sun was bright enough to poke through some of the branches of the bare trees.
I then had to make my way home again, after pausing briefly for lunch. Just east of the fjord is the town of Vieryd. Here's the blue and white entrance sign. And you guessed it, the road home was called Vierydsvägen.
I wanted to have a squiz at a few of the coastal villages on the way home. The first of these that I came to was Bökevik (something like Rummage Bay). The blue sign below says (my translation) Bökevik's Fishing Village. You are welcome to walk here. Cars are directed to the marked parking spots.
Here is a view from the very end of Bökeviksvägen, complete with fishing boat.
There are many jetties here. The purpose of this photo was actually to get a picture of a white swan, but I did not zoom in far enough.
The next village to the east is Skönevik. Here's the sign. It's the village just north of Trolleboda.
And so on to Trolleboda itself. It's a fair hike southwards from Vierydsvägen. I went past a farm on the way with a delightful little pony with its mum, but there were farmers around so I didn't want to offend them by stopping to take a photo. Anyway, here's one of the jetties when you get down to the coast.
Some of the bare trees near the jetties. It's still a popular spot even in November, as there were a lot of cars parked near here.
An overturned picnic table on Lindaslättsvägen, prompting memories of a long-ago summer.The village between Skönevik (something like Beautiful Bay) and Spjälkö is Dragsnäs, which means something like Lure's Isthmus. The view below is from Vierydsvägen at a point where it gets very close to the water. In the distance, on the left side of the small passage of water, is Dragsnäsudde, which is the headland. There are only a couple of houses there.
I finally cycled back through the now-familiar towns of Spjälkö and Saxemara, then northwards home to Ronneby. The birds on Härstorpssjön seemed to be congregating in groups (maybe it was time for their town meeting, where they would discuss why the days were so short at the moment?), so I took a photo of one such group as the sun set.

Next is Nässjön

2007-01-05T06:21:00.000+01:00

The following weekend, I decided to reattempt making it to Nässjön. It is perhaps the biggest lake in the area. Translated, its name means Isthmus Lake. You'll see why if you can look at a satellite image. It is located at approximately 56.23ºN, 15.19ºE. It is almost V-shaped, with a big land mass splitting it just about in half. Unfortunately, I can't find any maps with many street names in this area. A general description of the route will have to suffice.
After the unfruitful journey the previous weekend, I decided I was going to attempt this one on foot. I set out northward through the western suburbs of Ronneby, past the industrial area and onto Karlshamnsvägen. This hiking took quite a while, as there is no path, and most of the time I was walking in ditches. About 2 km north of the E22, there is a turn-off for Bräkne-Hoby. I turned left. Here is a view from that road back towards Ronneby. You can see how cloudy it was getting - it was after all coming to the end of Autumn.

This westward-heading road seemed to go on for ages. There were a few bridge-like objects constructed where the land fell away sharply on either side of the road. There were also no streetlights. This meant I needed to keep moving. After a while, I reached a T-junction. Continuing along, I would have eventually reached Bräkne-Hoby. But it would be dark by the time I reached it. Therefore, I turned southward, along the road to Kättorp and Nässjön. Here is a photo taken along that lengthy and winding road. I remember feeling particularly lonely there, as there was no traffic, and not really any noise to speak of.
Eventually, I reached some farming properties which were near the lake. Here is one of the fields which had recently been dug up. A tiny house is visible in the background.
A large majority of the farm houses I saw in Sweden seemed to be painted red. I'm not sure why. Anyway, here is one flanked by two very large and bare trees. The smell at this point was almost unbearable. I was starting to think it was a manure factory.I hurried along quickly to escape the smell, around a corner and up over a hill. And then I saw it. I had arrived at Nässjön. Unfortunately, there were fences everywhere so I could not get very close to the water. In this photo, the main part of the background is the isthmus itself, dotted with trees.
This one is of the western branch of the lake, with some of the isthmus in the background.
Hidden in this photo are a boat and a jetty. I wonder what fish one could catch in the lake?

More of the lake, with some interesting tree branches in the foreground.

This is the southernmost point of Nässjön, looking westward.

The following is the result of my efforts to put together a panorama of the lake. You can see that there are many trees there, and the grass is very green.

I then had a quick bite to eat and headed home quickly before the light completely faded.

Riding Along to Långasjön

2006-12-16T23:49:00.000+01:00

The next trip was meant to be to a lake named Nässjön. Unfortunately I didn't make it that far. You'll see why later in this post.
I travelled along Härstorpsvägen until I reached the T-junction north of Harstorpssjön. This is the view to the north. Guess who's in the lower right corner? This is the view south to Harstorpssjön.
I followed the winding trail for quite a while. There were a couple of streetsigns but I don't remember the names. Here is a tree that looks like a Christmas Tree to me. I'm not sure what type it actually is.
This area of Ronneby is still mainly forest. Here is another large pile of logs, ready to be transported somewhere. Coming to another T-junction and taking the left branch to its conclusion, I reached Långasjön (Long Lake). It's named for obvious reasons. It's very long and thin. There was another one of those wooden structures with a ladder, although this one was slightly different as there was plastic with two holes in it covering one side. This is Långasjön as seen from its northern tip.

From there, the plan was to reach Nässjön, which is north of the E22. According to my map, the only way to get there was to basically ride back to the northeast corner of town and head further north and west. From my map, it appeared that some of the roads passed under the E22, just like at Skärsjön. Upon reaching those locations in person however, I realised that they did not. Instead, they ran along the southern edge of the E22. I was stuck. All I could do was make it to Karlshamnsvägen. I stopped in at the ÖoB and purchased a couple of items. I still had a small amount of time left before sunset, so I made the short ride north to Kallinge. Here is a view of some of the industrial area.

And in this photo you can just make out the spire at Kallinge Kyrka.

Centrum Sights

2006-12-15T00:32:00.000+01:00

Here are a few images from Ronneby. A few odds and ends left over from various photo journeys. Here's the new water tower as seen from up on the hill at Hjorthöjden. This is the pond complete with statues on the corner of Strandgatan and Gångbrogatan. It's full of dried leaves rather than water. This is the town square, looking up towards the churchHere's the church itself. In this photo it's having some work done on it. However it is finished now at time of writing and the scaffolding is gone.

Skär am I going now?

2006-12-14T00:40:00.000+01:00

There was a place I had been wanting to get to for many weeks. It was a big blue area on the map between Ronneby and Kallinge. Its name was Skärsjön. I am translating this as Rocky Lake. This is another of the incredible powers of the letter S in Swedish. To give you an idea of how this is pronounced, it's something like Where-whurn, hence the title of this post.
Anyway, I had been to Kallinge and other areas a few times, but had never made it to this lake. I decided to fix that by going there especially. There were no paths or roads around it, so I decided to go on foot. I headed north from the centrum along Kallingevägen for a bit. I remember hearing a different sound from the cars as they zoomed by. This was because people were changing over to their winter tyres, which make a slightly more metallic sound on the road.
Here is a photo of some of the industrial area of Ronneby taken from Kallingevägen under a mix of cloud and sun.The only road to Skärsjön is the one under the E22. This is reached from the suburb of Kalleberga Hallar. This is a photo of the underpass.The lake is actually a public fishing area. Here is the noticeboard there. I think it talks about needing a fishing license to fish there and when you can fish.
This is the main jetty at the lake. I tried to put together a panorama shot, but it didn't quite work, due to the flat gate structure being photographed from different angles.
Yes the water was blue, but a lot of the surroundings of the lake were brown and orange, due to all of the fallen leaves. There was some green though, like these mosses.

And here is a wider shot of a large log by the edge of the lake.

My aim was to circumnavigate the lake. There were bits of trail here and there, but in some places it was difficult to get through. Most of the northern end had a fairly visible path though, and some great places to get a nice photo. Here are some examples. Note particularly the reflections of the sky in the surface of the water.

Traversing the eastern side of the lake was much more difficult. There were lots of pokey branches everywhere and I could not find a clear path. Here's a view from that side.

This is a broken old jetty.

And another one in slightly better condition.

The sun was starting to set already, so I had to hurry. Here is a small bridge located in the southeast part of the lake surroundings. The existence of the bridge made me realise that there probably was a walking track somewhere around the lake.

And here it was. I had seen red markings on some of the trees as I went around, just like this one.

This was to guide people safely all the way around the lake. A shame I only realised this almost at the end of the journey. The path actually goes up along the barrier of the E22. I followed it along and then back down to the underpass, and then back home to Hjorthöjden.

Treechange

2006-12-11T16:52:00.000+01:00

Here's another example of the changing conditions here. In late October, I took a photo of this tree on Esplanaden. Although there were some leaves on the ground, there are still many left in the tree.

I came back to the same tree just two weeks later, and it was completely bare.

This is the inescapable march towards winter.

Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

2006-12-09T12:59:00.000+01:00

On the 1st of November, I am proud to report that we had snow! Although it didn't really count - it was just a few snowflakes. Here are a couple of photos I took from my office window.
Look for the little white dots mainly visible near the top of this photo.

Here, you can see the flakes that have piled up at the bottom of this row of trees.

We have not as yet had snow since then. The temperature has been a fairly constant 8 degrees or so. It's becoming doubtful as to whether any more will fall by the time I leave.

More Autumn Pics

2006-12-09T12:27:00.000+01:00

Here are some more photos of trees in Autumn taken around BTH.
This is BTH and the Soft Center with its big red Octagon as seen from Angelskogsvägen.

This is a view out of the kitchen at BTH towards the river and Brunnsparken. Again note the orange, yellow and brown colours. This is basically the same view, except seen from outside on the ground. This is a photo of Ronnebyån itself, with many branches still full of leaves hanging over the water. By contrast, at time of writing, these trees are completely bare. And finally, here are some trees in Brunnsparken.

Höst on the way to BTH

2006-12-08T23:49:00.000+01:00

One of my first posts was about cycling to BTH during summer. At that time, I indicated I hoped to remake the journey with my camera later in the year. Well, here are the results - some images of autumn, or höst as it is known here.
The western end of Utmarksvägen. Note the orange and yellow of the leaves.

The eastern end, looking down towards Vidablick.

The path through Brunnsparken. Note the leaves that have fallen, collecting on the path.

The T-junction in Brunnsparken. Plenty more fallen leaves.

This one is taken just near the duckponds and Wiener Caféet, just west of BTH. There are many different leaf colours visible.

A Little More Than A Stone's Throw Away

2006-12-04T23:47:00.000+01:00

The next journey was probably the longest of my time here. I had read online that there was an ancient ruin located in Blekinge called the Björketorp (which I'm translating as Birchcroft) stone. I was hooked and made it my mission to find it. The details I could find online were sketchy at best. One source said it was near Yxnarum and Listerby. I had been to both of those towns a few weeks before, but I had not seen any big stones. It seemed that people writing on the internet wanted to keep its location a secret. I even downloaded a runestones database in an attempt to gain more clues. I could find a picture of the ruin, but no directions as to how to find it. Eventually I found one page saying that it was about 500m along a road heading to Tving (I love that name!) from the E22 highway. Well that was close enough for me. Armed with that information, I set out to find it.
To get there, I was going to have to go back to the place where I went the wrong way along Gärestads Bygata a few weeks before.
Here are some of the trees which had turned bare with Autumn in full swing at the Hamnvägen crossing in eastern Ronneby. Here are the trees viewed from Pilfinksvägen. I had taken a similar photo on the Yxnarum journey. You may be able to see that the trees are barer and less green in this photo. Upon reaching the spot where I had turned around the previous time, this time I pressed on. I followed Gärestads Bygata around, and then turned at Hamrabacksvägen. Just before this road passed under the E22, I passed a man with a large rifle. He was out shooting something. First rifle I'd seen in Sweden. Just on the other side of the underpass, there was a guy in a tractor doing some major work on this field.
From there, I took Edestadsvägen on my journey northeast. The roads up here were quite deserted in comparison to Gärestadsvägen, which I was thankful for. Here are some of the green fields
and here is a whole lot of hay.
Eventually I reached the western entrance of Edestad, complete with a familiar blue sign.
A few internet sites had mentioned the church at Edestad. Well, this is it. The cemetery is off to the right. The thing which most caught my eye, however, was this structure on the other side of the road, opposite the church. It only seemed to have one small entrance, and although it was quite tall, it didn't look like it could hold very much. If anyone has information on what it is, I would be most grateful.
Here is another view of it, from further back.
Eventually, I reached Tvingvägen, but quite a distance north of where the Björketorp stone would be. Turning left, and heading north, I came across this brilliant specimen on the side of the road. It almost looks like one from the Smurfs.
A little further on, I saw this information booth. It says Hjortsberga gravfält (something like Deer's Rock gravefield). It's part of something called Johannishusåsen (Johannishus Ridge), a huge nature reserve. This was one of its many attractions.
Strangely enough, there was another of those pointed wooden structures nearby.
Here it is from a different angle. It's quite near to the railway crossing.
Here are some of the very sparsely placed trees. And here is Hjortsberga church, again just opposite the pointy wooden structure.
Continuing along, I came to the town of Johannishus. It would be in the list of the ten largest towns in Ronneby Kommun, but it is much smaller than Kallinge. It was fairly quiet, but I did meet some horses along the side of Listerbyvägen. One at the front even has a cute blanky on. Unfortunately, I think I caught the one at the back at an inconvenient moment.
Johannishus is large enough to qualify for its own ICA store. I sat at the bus stop outside of it and ate my pre-packed lunch. Well, I had seen Johannishus. It was time to find the Björketorp stone. And I needed to hurry, as it was the first day of non-daylight savings, so I had an hour less of afternoon sun.
Here's the "you are now leaving Johannishus" sign, and the sign for the almost nonexistent village of Djurtorp (Animal Croft) in the background. Animal is right. Here is a cat, chasing something just by the side of Johannishusvägen. I tried to reach Tvingvägen again from the E22. However, there is no bike lane on the north side of the road, so I had to find another way. The road I ended up taking is not named on Google or Eniro maps, so I can't give you a name. It was more of a trail than a road, running behind a few barns. I did however see yet another one of these structures. They resemble an umpire's chair in a tennis match. I've seen a few around in different places, but I don't know what their purpose is. Again, if anyone has info, please let me know as it has been puzzling me. Eventually I made it to Tvingvägen, but I believed I was still too far north. So I headed south towards the E22. I found a sign pointing to Björketorp, so I knew I was close to the target. I however made the stupid move of following the sign. It points to the town, not the stone.After riding around on the bumpy roads there for a while, seeing sights such as this one of something being covered by a huge sheet weighted down by tyres, I realised I was in the wrong place. So, I yet again returned to Tvingvägen and headed further south. Eventually, success! Here's the information booth for the Björketorp stone, with a handy box full of brochures.
Here's an information sign about the stone and the surrounding ruins.
And now, ROCKS!
The main attraction is a set of three menhirs. Only one of them is marked with writings, from around 700AD. There are numerous translations of its meaning, but most say it is a curse. There are legends of a man who tried to move the stones as they were preventing him from farming that area. He was apparently subsequently stuck dead by lightning. Believe it...or not.
Thisis the one with writing, on the side which has the most writing. And a closeup of the writing.
Here is the only writing on the other side of that stone. Here are all three stones.
Here's me in front of the one with writing. Just near the set of three, there is this line of smaller stones.
A view of the area from a distance.
Another one of me.
In addition, there is this set of seven stones arranged neatly in a circle formation just to the east of the other stones.
And here you may just be able to make out the three menhirs in the distance, as seen from the circle of seven.
My last stop before heading home again back the same way I had come was the "Ishällen" or Ice Slab. However I'm not sure why it's called that. It's about 100m north of the Björketorp stone, and is a huge, fairly flat rock in the middle of the forest. Here is a closeup of some of the plant life growing in the puddles on the slab.
And finally, this is one side of the slab, looking back toward Tvingvägen.

News flash

2006-12-04T23:27:00.000+01:00

Breaking current news...I was at work this afternoon and I thought I smelled smoke. I couldn't work out what it was. I thought my computer might have been overheating from all the simulations I was running, but it felt okay. I then dismissed it as my senses overreacting and didn't pay it any more attention.
Then as I left work tonight, it hit me what had happened. There were fire engines and police and even an ambulance. Some roads were blocked off. The Wiener Caféet had experienced a fire. The emergency services looked to have it under control, but smoke, the same smoke I smelled in my office was still billowing out of the roof. If there are any further developments I shall report them in a future post.

Rymd Rhythms and Space Sounds

2006-12-04T10:20:00.000+01:00

On October 22 I was fortunate enough to see Ronneby Blåsorkester in concert. I was even more fortunate because I didn't have to pay for the ticket. BTH had received some free passes, and after many mis-communications, I finally received my ticket (normally 100SEK) in my mailbox with just a couple of days to spare.
The concert had a space (rymd in Swedish) theme. Each piece had some connection to stars, planets, etc. The set list included works such as Theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey, Space: Above and Beyond, and Mars from the Planets Suite. However in my opinion, their best piece was The Stars and Stripes Forever, a march by Sousa. The concert was at the Kulturcentrum and began at 6pm. Between each of the pieces, a visiting speaker from Kiruna Observatory would give a speech and slideshow presentation that was usually related in some way to the upcoming piece of music.
Here are the shiny banners with the kommun's star, river and moon logo on the music stands at the half-time break (paus).
During a couple of the pieces, someone dressed as Darth Vadar made a surprise walk-on appearance (cf. August concerts of years gone by).
Here you can make out a few of the orchestra's members accepting the final applause.
On the way home, I walked near Gamla Vattentornet (the old water tower) as seen in a previous entry. Here is a photo of it at night. However, I used the 'night' setting on my camera, which decided to blur things as usual. So although it looks like it is on fire, it's not. The flame-like object on the right side is in fact a street light. But still, it does look rather spooky.

Tio Tusen Dagar

2006-12-03T22:15:00.000+01:00

In the middle of October I had a bit of a milestone - 10000 days alive. To celebrate, the following Saturday I invited a few friends out for pizza and bowling at Rainbow Bowling, which has ten lanes. Here are some photos from the evening. I must point out that B was there too, but I don't seem to have any photos of him.
Here are U and J. Good times with J and A. U returns as M steps up to bowl.

MS and E waiting at the ball return.

A, E and J waiting for their next turn.

J and A.

MS and E.

E and Mel.

A (armed yet again with that camera) and E.

For some reason, there was this model of a crocodile/alligator next to the lane. I'm not sure what purpose it served.

More fogginess

2006-12-02T13:39:00.000+01:00

Here are two more photos taken of the fog here. These ones were from mid October. One is a view out the kitchen window, and the other is from the ground looking towards Härstorpssjön.

A Gawker In Bredåkra

2006-11-28T23:51:00.000+01:00

The next trip was in a northerly direction again. I wanted to extend my trip to Kallinge, to go further than the airport. Instead of going via Kallingevägen again I decided to go along a street I had seen up in Sörby. Its name is Djupaforsvägen because it leads to the industrial suburb of Djupafors. It's a very plain road that is not used often, and runs next to the railway line. Here is the northern end of that road, at the railway crossing. The ÖoB (Överskottsbolaget, a bit like WA Salvage) is off in the distance on the right. Between Djupaforsvägen and the river are these huge stockpiles of wood.
Going up the hill, this is some of the industrial area.
Continuing along the street of Häggatorpsvägen (Bird Cherry Croft Way), there were a few a trees starting sport their autumn colours. This one looked particularly dazzling. There is unfortunately a very loud guard dog at this house, so I moved along quickly.
From there, I cycled through Kallinge again. No new photos, as I had passed through a few weeks previously. I went past the airport on Bredåkravägen. Here is a different view of the terminal.
And here is an SAS plane which had just landed.
Riding along a little further, you reach the town of Bredåkra, or roughly "Broadfields". Here's the entrance sign.
At the end of that road is the cemetery. The following few photos are pictures taken there.
This one's a very peaceful view of the sunlight being filtered through the leaves of a tree.
Here is one of the main paths of the cemetery, lined by giant matching trees. More of a landscape shot, this one.
And here is a view back towards the church at the intersection of Solhemsvägen and Eringsbodavägen.
And here is one of the church itself. I suppose it's very similar in design to a lot of the churches here, e.g. Heliga Kors Kyrka and the one in Saxemara. Bredåkra's church does have one distinguishing feature, though. I thought the numerals on the wall read 1737, however reading the church's webpage leads me to believe that it in fact says 1939. From there, I headed north along Eringsbodavägen, to the town of Hasselstad, which is apparently big enough to get a black and white sign, rather than the blue Bredåkra one. Yet again, there was not much there, and moments later, taking the righthand road at the Y-junction, I was out in the country again. I was going along Eringsbodavägen in a northward direction, parallel with the airstrip. Here are some of the sets of lights that I imagine are used to assist planes landing here at night. Again things started to get interesting. Time was marching on and I was trying to circumnavigate the airport in a clockwise direction. However, the road just seemed to go on and on northward. If I went too far, I wouldn't get back south again in time. So I decided to chance going on a smaller trail that was marked on my map. The corresponding trail in real life was nowhere near as well marked. Soon I started to get disoriented. But I just kept trying to follow the airport fence. At times I had to walk my bike rather than ride it as the trail was too bumpy and thin. Here is a bare patch of forest where I stopped to consult my map.
Eventually I made it out onto Värperydsvägen and I started the long journey southwards. On the way I had an unexpected find - Ronneby Garrison. Here is the scrolling noticeboard saying it was 10 degrees at 5:18pm. The coat of arms for Blekinge is at the left. The best find of all was this plane mounted on a concrete block just outside the entrance to the garrison. You can make out the three crowns of Sweden logo on the side. It would be great to see at night, being lit from below.
I decided I had just enough daylight left to try crossing Ronnebyån and cycle home via the eastern side of Kallinge. And here Google Maps stuffed up a bit. Their roads did not match mine and I ended up hitting a couple of dead ends. I was not amused. I reached a small bridge and crossed over the river. Here are the views to the west and east at that point.
Getting back onto a main road at that time was somewhat difficult. Google seemed to say the path to do it was basically straight and fairly wide. I found no such road, but there was another one of those thin trails. Having the only other option of cycling all the way back to the garrison, I pressed on. Eventually, success as I found Kallebergavägen. From there, my route was basically directly south. I had to hurry, as I knew the sun was setting. Here's a view of the setting sun from near Kallinge Kyrka.
Cycling back via the familiar Ronnebyvägen/Kallingevägen, I managed to snap this lovely picture of the clouds at sunset. To me, the clouds resemble the shape of an eagle in flight. Arriving again in Ronneby, I cycled past Snäckebacken to discover that the flower display about Multicultural Year 2006 had been dug up. Here is all that remains of it. And finally, here is one of a tree back at Hjorthöjden in silhouette as the sun sets.

Flats at night

2006-11-28T00:01:00.000+01:00

The picture below was taken the night following the full moon in October, from my bedroom window. The moon was very bright. I tried using the 'night' setting on my camera and this is the result. Unfortunately, that setting seems to do weird things with lights in the image, causing them to become blurry. The next block of flats is at the bottom of the picture, with the moon in the top left corner.

Tour to Spjälkö

2006-11-26T17:30:00.000+01:00

The next trip ended up being to a little town called Spjälkö, west of Saxemara. But it didn't really start out that way. My main goal was to try to find some of the lakes west of Ronneby. So I set out along the eastern bank of Härstorpssjön, and then turned right at Hjälmserydsvägen. This road is relatively hilly in comparison with Vierydsvägen. Also, there is no devoted bike lane. But still, I was going somewhere new and different. The first lake on my map was Långasjön (Long Lake, named for obvious reasons) however there were no forks in the road leading in that direction, so I had to give up on that one and try for the next one - Kroksjön, or Hook Lake. I found the correct turnoff for it. I remember it being a rather muddy and hilly trail. Forestry is a very important industry in Sweden. This tree stump right next to the road really symbolised logging for me.

I followed the trail to its end, only to discover that it terminated in a farm paddock. I could see Kroksjön, but there appeared to be a number of fences in the way. So, I gave up and started back along the trail to the main road. Part of the way back, I came across this herd of all-white cows. I think it must have been afternoon nap time for most of them.

Further along Hjälmserydsvägen, I came to a T-junction. I could either turn left down Svedalavägen, or keep going straight. I chose the first option, mainly because I didn't want to go so far that it would take too long to get home again. Here is a view of a paddock with some rolls of hay, and crossed by power lines at the T-junction.

The route along Svedalavägen takes you to Saxemara, but this time from the north. It's an almost completely straight road, fairly quiet, with a few farms right near it. Here are some piles of wood - quite a common sight here.

Cue music: Michael Jackson's "Black or White" here. One of those farms I mentioned with an assortment of sheep.

Eventually you reach Saxemara. But I had already been there, so I headed further west along Vierydsvägen. I turned off at Spjälkövägen, which is a U-shaped road, and not surprisingly the main road of Spjälkö. Here is a view of the bay (complete with more sheep) from between Spjälköviksvägen and Steningavägen.

Here's another just for good measure. I think Spjälköviksvägen is a private road, so I travelled down Steningavägen instead.

Here are the vapour trails from some planes that had recently passed by, in front of a bright October afternoon sun.

There are lots of houses that are built right on the southern coast of Sweden. Here is one of them that was tucked away. The water in the bay is just visible in the background.

With that, I decided I should get home again, but I promised myself to pop in to see the sea wherever I could along the way back east. After passing through Saxemara again in the opposite direction, I came to what I think was Varvsvägen (Shipyard Way). Here is the very pleasant view from the jetty.

And here's a self-portrait at the same location.

The next stop was Sjöhagavägen. Here is the partially broken jetty there.

If you look closely, you can see a jellyfish in the water. It was my first Swedish jellyfish (unless it had floated over from Denmark or Germany).

I still had a small amount of time left before sunset, so on the way home I stopped off at Persborgsgolen. It's a little lake off of Utmarksvägen, right near the apartments. I took a few photos while it was still light.

This one is from the top of the rockface on the south side of the lake.

I was really hoping for a spectacular sunset photo. I waited around for a good 45 minutes. However, there were very few clouds in the sky that night, so firstly, it did not create any snazzy sunset effects, and secondly, it started to get quite cold. Here is a view from the end of the jetty back towards the shore.

And lastly, here is one in the opposite direction, from the shore looking down the jetty into the distance.

Tjugosju

2006-11-25T16:40:00.000+01:00

There is more than that to him,
If you would care to look,
There is more than blotched asymmetries
And more than just a hook.

He tires of being an output
For other people's data,
Tired of being the only one
Who's always told, "try harder".

He stares in horror at the growing toll,
The world's become a savage place.
Is that a reason to dismiss him?
Is that the downfall of his face?

There's but one way to rescue him,
Extract him from this bolgia,
Stop seeing him in binary,
He has more things to offer.

So he fights against the darkness
And defies the status quo,
Reroutes the ancient circuits
From where they used to go.

He took the steps to rise above,
For him, a feeling that's so modern.
But yet again he is flailing,
Yet again he is failing,
Yet again he is falling,
For he is now, and will always be,
The loneliest of the downtrodden.

Fun at Yxnarum

2006-11-20T23:46:00.000+01:00

With my bike repaired, I was keen to get back out on the open roads around Ronneby. I studied my map and looked for a place to go. In the ESE direction, I saw a town called Yxnarum. It sounded kind of cool as I had never heard of a place beginning with those two letters before. I had also heard of a thing called the Blekingeleden. It's a cycling/hiking trail going most of Blekinge. From what I had read, there were sections of this trail between Ronneby and Yxnarum. I decided to try to follow it where I could do so. Unfortunately, there was a place on the map where the trail's location became unclear, and I took the wrong path. I remember going around a very twisted path for quite some time, until I finally found the correct trail again. Here is a view of Hamnvägen from Bofinkvägen.
Further east, this is the tunnel under the railway line at Gärestads Bygata. This is basically the edge of my map.
Here is the countryside of that area.
It was at this point, looking at the map I had drawn freehand from Google Maps, that I realised I was not going to get to Yxnarum very easily if I followed this road. I had to turn around and travel along Gärestadsvägen instead. Cycling for quite a distance, I eventually came to the turnoff for Yxnarum. This is not the best picture, but it is of a field of trees along that road, under an afternoon sun shrouded by grey clouds.

Here is a tree in another nearby field. The bird at the end of the sawn-off branch is in fact fake.
And here is the entrance sign to Yxnarum. It's not the same style as the black and white ones for Ronneby, Saxemara and Kallinge.

Yxnarum itself was a bit of a disappointment. It was really just a few houses and barns. It would have been a shame to go all that way for almost nothing, so I continued on and rode the three further kilometres to Listerby. I knew of Listerby because of the Listerby pizza place I had seen at the big roundabout on the way to Karlskrona. Here's a "you are now leaving Listerby" sign, just near the bridge over Listerbyån.

Here is a small group of Listerby cows I photographed.

And here is the Listerby church.

It was by that time beginning to get a little dark, so I cycled home using the lane on the side of highway E22 for part of the way, and then back via Gärestad. Eventually I made it back to Brunnsparken. I took this picture to show some of the lovely colours that Autumn was producing.

And finally here a few of the ducks crossing the path between the duckponds at Brunnsparken.

House Warming

2006-11-19T22:18:00.000+01:00

That evening, the doktorands in the department of signalbehandling were invited around to Josef's new apartment for a house warming party. Warming is definitely important in a cold country like Sverige, although I don't remember it being particularly cold yet at that time.
The apartment is in Påtorp, and it is quite large. Dinner was excellent, and there were three different desserts. There was then plenty of interesting types of alcoholic beverages. I think a great time was had by all.
Here are two photos of some of the crowd, including U, M, Mart, D, MSo, Z, Ju, MS, T, and of course me.

I don't think we got home again until around 3am.

As a side note, here is a photo of the Swedish equivalent of Winnie the Pooh. This particular story is called Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree.

Blåsorkestern är tillbaka

2006-11-19T18:36:00.000+01:00

You may be surprised to know that something else happened in the world on the last day of September besides a certain Australian sporting event. Yes, Ronneby Blåsorkester was making a return appearance at the town square. I was running late, so I missed the beginning. There were also many people there, so it was hard to get a good viewing spot. The band was in the same spot as last time. Here they are. Not long afterwards, it started raining. In addition, some kind of fashion parade was starting in the square itself. Unfortunately the parade had very loud accompanying music, and this, along with the rainwater, drowned out the band. So they had to stop early. Here are some of the sousaphone players packing away afterwards.

Sunsets and Slopes of Sörby on a September Sunday

2006-11-15T20:11:00.000+01:00

As I mentioned at the end of my previous post, I had a puncture on my rear bicycle tyre. My bike was out of action for over a week. I in fact thought it had just gone flat. Thus, I took it back to the bike shop where I had purchased it and got it pumped up again. Alas, the following morning it was flat again. It took a few days to organise getting it repaired (as well as a few phone calls home in a flailing attempt to get help in fixing it myself). But 105SEK (about AU$20) later, it was all better. Whilst all of this was going on, another weekend of beautiful September weather was happening. I decided to take advantage of it. However, I was going to have to walk. So I decided to pick somewhere closeby where I had not yet been. The answer was Sörby, a suburb in northwest Ronneby.
How to get there:
Take Vierydsvägen north until you hit Västra Industrigatan and turn left here. As you might have guessed, this is the industrial area. Just before the bulk of the industrial stuff, there are still some houses. Here is one. If you look really closely, you can see a plane's vapour trail heading in the direction of the afternoon sun.
After the intersection with Karlshamnsvägen (no prizes for guessing where that goes), the street becomes Gamla Landsvägen. It's pretty deserted up here, right up in the NW corner of Ronneby. I remember passing the Miljöteknik buildings. The road reaches a jackknife. The only other way out is to take Sörbyvägen. Part of this is a semi-fancy bridge over the currently non-functional railway line. Here it is, with the railway line stretching northward below.Here is one of the many "noticeboards" I've seen around here. Literally, it says something like Sörby community's association. Usually you see notices such as for sale, for rent, what's on at the local church etc. There are a couple areas in Sörby where you can look down on the surrounding area from above, although a lot of it is fairly flat. The next two photos show the view from one such rocky hill. I guess it's a little like a mini version of Snäckebacken.

I saw on my map that there was a nearby tourist attraction called Silverforsens Kaffestuga, or The Silver Rapids Coffee Cottage (my translation). It looked fairly deserted, so I didn't go in. I also happened to notice there were a few bridges across the Ronnebyå just near here. So I tried to locate them. At the first place I tried, a young couple had just arrived home and well...my guess is they wanted some privacy...they also had a big guard dog, and I guess it wanted some privacy too, because it wouldn't stop barking. However I did manage to stick around long enough to snap this photo of the river at one of its widest points and heavily populated by rushes. I made my way back over the other side of Silverforsens and eventually I found one of the bridges. Here is the same part of the river, but viewed in the opposite direction. On the opposite bank is one l_a_r_g_e tree.Following the path after crossing the bridge resulted in this view of the sun reflecting on the water.Further along the path, there is this bridge, which is much longer.Upon crossing it, I placed my camera on the bridge's top edge to get a steady shot looking south down the Ronnebyå. This gives an idea of how 'foresty' it is around here.The bridges here had in fact inspired me to try to locate the other bridges acroos the river that I could see on my map. They were all basically at the sharp bend in the river, east of the Stadshus. This was quite a walk south from where I was, so I headed all the way down Sörbyvägen, and turned left at the second roundabout. I went behind Maxi, along Gamla Karlshamnvägen, and up this extremely narrow road, Trollabackvägen or something similar. Following it around to Bruksvägen, I found another one of those rocky hills like the one in Sörby. Here is a panorama of the view from there, including Maxi supermarket near the right hand edge.
Here is a close up of Maxi.This is one of those bridges across the river, at the end of Brännarevägen.
I checked my watch. It was approaching the time I knew was going to be sunset. I walked across Maxi carpark and started climbing Davids kulle (David's Hill), west of the Stadshus, to see if I could get any nice sunset photos like I had done the previous week at Sandvik. Here is a view looking southeast over the town. The old water tower from a previous post is visible on the left.

You could definitely tell höst (autumn) had arrived because of all the leaves on the ground.
Here is a silhouette of me projected onto one of the rocks of Davids kulle. The setting sun is behind me.
There it goes, over the horizon.
Alas, I wasn't getting the stunning pictures like the previous Sunday. I headed home along Vierydsvägen. When I reached Härstorpssjön, this magnificent sight greeted me. It was so good, I had to take two photos of it.

These are probably the photos of which I am most proud.

Sunset @ Sandvik

2006-11-12T16:31:00.000+01:00

This next trip was probably the most memorable so far, because I was pleased with how the photos turned out. I hope you are too.
My goal location was the tiny towns/suburbs of Aspan and Sandvik, which are on the extreme southeast corner of my map. To get there, I actually had to go off the map and get back on again, if that makes sense. To get there, I took the eastern side of the Ronnebyån. Going from BTH, I rode through the suburb of Påtorp, down Fornanåsvägen to the 4-way intersection near Ronneby Hamn. I kept riding straight on, along Heabyvägen. Soon I came to the little offshoot of water from Östersjön called Angelskogsviken (skog = forest, vik = bay). This was a peaceful area with a lot of boats moored there. You can see them in this photo.

Further along Heabyvägen, I came across this big barn with this horse running laps, wearing a blue coat. You can't see it, but the weather vane on the top of the barn is actually in the shape of a horse.
Following the road as it traverses east and then back west again, I reached a fork in the road. I took the left option, and headed towards the coast. This was the Aspan area. It looked like a real holiday village. The main attraction is the bay area. Here is a view of some of the jetties.

Looking in the other direction, here is a picture of the late afternoon sun, obscured by many clouds. It was kind of eerie as the water was so calm.

Here is a close up of the sun

Now looking northwest, here is a view of the Hamn.

And here is a panorama of the whole scene. Apologies that it's the largest size Blogger allows.

As you can tell from that last photo it was starting to get dark, but I wanted to fit in a quick visit to Sandvik (Sand Bay). So I rode back to the fork in the road and followed the right path. Unfortunately, most of the water's edge appeared to be part of private properties, such as this one. You can see the nice colours of the clouds as sunset approaches in the background.

Here is the Hamn from Sandvik.

Here is the view looking approx southeast from one of the rocky jetties at Sandvik, in front of a great obscured sun and its reflection on the still water.

And another view, slightly more zoomed in and southward. There is a group of ducks in the foreground.

It was starting to get dark, so I cycled back home via the Soft Center. Here is one of the bridges near there, covered in flowers. You aren't allowed to cycle over it, but there is nothing stopping me photographing it.

I didn't know it at the time, but my bicycle had received a flat tyre on this journey. My bike was out of action for a while, which influenced my choices of location for the upcoming week or so.

Back Home I Played In a Band...Now I Play Innebandy

2006-11-11T23:14:00.000+01:00

That foggy Tuesday was the first day of the innebandy season. The English equivalent of the sport is floorball. I remember spending the whole day stressing out that I was going to be injured by the ball and that I didn't have appropriate *ahem* protection. But I survived, without any injuries. It is now really the highlight of my week. Here are a couple of photos I took to mark the occasion. The players include GK, J, A and MS.

I would have the foggiest...

2006-11-11T18:54:00.000+01:00

And now some photos of that Swedish weather. September was a very fine month, with almost no rain recorded. This was probably because it all came in August. As usually happens with fine but cold conditions, you get fog. Here are some photos taken on a Tuesday morning in September. This first one was snapped at the apartments, looking in the direction of Härstorpssjön. Visibility has been severely decreased.

Here's another one taken in the opposite direction, with the bike rack at left.

And finally, this is the view I had out of my office window when I got to work. Yeah, I know I goofed with the whole camera reflection in the window thing. It almost looks like there's a giant camera-shaped truck going along Angelskogsvägen. Sorry about that.

Snaking Back to Snäckebacken

2006-11-10T18:32:00.000+01:00

On the way back home, I actually had some daylight time left (thankyou to daylight saving), so I stopped at Snäckebacken. I've been trying to translate it - something like Shell Back? Please feel free to enlighten me in a comment. Anyway, basically it's this big hill in the middle of Ronneby, just south of the river.
The most prominent thing there is probably this stone tribute to Pehr Thomasson. He was a poet from Blekinge and lived from February 1818 until March 1883. The inscription says, well at least from how I'm translating it, that he was poet of country folk, and a describer of people's lives...not sure if this means he was a biographer, or he just described life in general.

Although a lot of Snäckebacken is covered in grass, there are also a lot of trees there. Being so high up, it would make a great viewing point for the town, but unfortunately all the trees get in the way, so you can't see much. Here's the best I could get.

Thinking further about this, now that most of the trees are becoming bare as we count down to winter, perhaps I could get a better view of the town now.

Kallinge Calling

2006-11-05T23:58:00.000+01:00

The next excursion went in the complete opposite direction - north and slightly east. The destination: Kallinge. This is the town where the airport in Blekinge is located, and it's very nearby to Ronneby. It's like they are twin towns, because Ronneby would be the largest and Kallinge the second largest town in Ronneby Kommun. I had decided I wanted to see this place, as G had been to the airport there when arriving in and departing from Ronneby. I, on the other hand, had come by train and bus via Sölvesborg and had not seen Kallinge.
Anyway, the most direct route to get there is Kallingevägen which later becomes Ronnebyvägen. I know...really original street names they have here :-P Here is a photo of the "you are now leaving Ronneby" sign along that road, near the E22 highway. Not much later, you come to the entrance sign for Kallinge.

At the main intersection on the east side of the river (the Ronnebyån flows through Kallinge, basically dividing the town in half, on its way south to Ronneby Hamn) is Kallinge Kyrka (church). Ronneby Blåsorkester will be playing Christmas carols here in December. It's a fairly large church, with a very interesting steeple. Here it is, behind a row of tall trees.Here's one of the tower and steeple.
And here's one of me...yes I'm being a good boy and wearing my helmet.
The main street crossing the river (perhaps the overall main street) is Kockumsvägen. No, it's not what you're thinking! Not named after a brothel or anything like that! Kockums is the ironworks facility in the town. Here's a giant wheel thingy.
Closer inspection of the sign below it reveals it is a flywheel. I'll get around to translating the rest later.
And here is the main building.

Here's one of the posh houses along that road, with a really nice big garden. If you keep travelling along Kockumsvägen, it becomes Bredåkravägen (the reason will become clear in a future post, but you can probably guess) and you reach the boundary of Kallinge.

My goal in making the journey had been to get to the airport, basically because that was the limit of my map. Not very far past the Kallinge boundary is the airport. Here it is: Ronneby Flygstation. Positively miniscule, even compared with Perth Airport. But it helps heaps and heaps of people get here every year.
Having accomplished my main task, I now had to get home. There is a real aeroplane feel to Kallinge (again, you'll see evidence of this in a future post), for example this deightful metal design in the centre of one of the main roundabouts. There's an aeroplane encircling the symbol of the flag of Blekinge.
Nearby, I found this manmade pond with a few senior citizens relaxing in the afternoon sun in the background.
Crossing back over the bridge, here is the Ronnebyån with its almost mirror-like surface. So still...
Here's where things started to get interesting. There is a lake marked on my map called Lillasjön (Little Lake) in the southeast corner of Kallinge. I decided to pay it a visit. The problem was, the map didn't show the trails which would enable you to reach the lake itself. I had to just follow a dirt path and hope for the best. Here is perhaps the best photo I could take of it. It is surrounded by a lot of plants and is hard to approach.
But I was hoping for a better view, so I just kept following the path. Here you can see it, next to the very green grass.

It was a bit after this point that I started to feel rather lost. I mean, I knew how to get back, I just had to turn around and follow the path. But I had no idea where the path was taking me. Eventually, after what seemed about half an hour, I made it back to civilisation and found the other side of the lake. Unfortunately, it was fenced off. Here's the best I could do with my camera.

There were plenty of mushrooms in the area, just like this white one.

On the way back out to Ronnebyvägen, I passed this house with some lovely wooden creations in the front yard.

And here is the vattentorn, or water tower, as seen from Ronnebyvägen. However, it is located near another lake called Kallingegölen, and given my previous antics with the other lake, I didn't want to chance getting lost this late in the day. So, I didn't try to get any closer to the tower. I just kept riding home to Ronneby.

Saxemara, Saxemara, hey! Saxemara for you...

2006-11-03T11:04:00.000+01:00

The above title, in case you can't place it, is adapted from a childhood memory of mine about a Looney Tunes cartoon where one character (Bugs Bunny dressed up as a chef I think) goes around shouting "Hot tamale, hot tamale, hey! Hot tamale for you".
Well, this is the first of my entries about my regular Sunday afternoon cycling trips to a nearby town. I have made eight of these trips at time of writing. I'm not sure if I will get to do any more of these, since the weather has become so cold now. But anyway, on with the show...
Saxemara is a small coastal town located about six kilometres southeast of Ronneby. The most direct route to get there is by taking Vierydsvägen. This is another view of Vierydsvägen. You can see the cylinders of plastic-covered hay on the farms which border this long and fairly straight road.

This photo was taken near the T-junction at Risanäs, about two thirds of the way to Saxemara. It was a lovely late Summer's day. Well, here is another of those signs marking the boundary of a town. Approximately two kilometres after the T-junction at a curve in the road you reach this sign marking the eastern edge of Saxemara.

As always, one of the easiest buildings to identify in a small town is the church. And it seems that many of the towns here have the same design of church. They are almost always white.

This is one of the boating jetties. The water here leads out to the Östersjön.

Right near the jetty is a shed-like building with this poster on it. It describes the areas in which birds are protected.

A lot of the houses in Saxemara have a similar design. Here is one which is typical. In my opinion, they are slightly more posh than the houses in Ronneby, so it seems like Saxemara is a bit of a hide-away for those who are a bit richer. Towards the very western edge of Saxemara, there is a house with this charming windmill and carved wooden figures. The label on the windmill reads "Håkansson", probably the surname of the family living there.

Having reached the western edge of the town, I turned around and cycled back through the town. On the way out, I passed the "You are now leaving Saxemara" sign.

It would be a bit boring to just go home along Vierydsvägen again. So at the T-junction, I went in the third direction, up the hill to Risanäs. This is a fairly exclusive little village between Saxemara and Ekenäs. Here is a view of Busseviken (viken is the Swedish word for bay) as seen from Risanäsvägen.

At the eastern edge of this village at Risatorpsvägen, near the suburb of Bustorp, there is this sign. It means that you are now leaving a small outcrop of houses, not big enough to qualify as a town.

From here, I again cycled north on Risatorpsvägen past the circus grounds, and then home to Hjorthöjden.

Mr Nippy

2006-11-01T00:30:00.000+01:00

Here's a subject which everyone should enjoy - the ice cream van! They're not called Mr Whippy here, all the ones I've seen are labeled "Hemglass" or "home ice cream" in English. Like their Australian counterparts, they drive around selling desserts to the little kiddies (and the not-so-little kiddies) while their enticing sound effect plays over the loudspeaker, to let you know that they're in the area. These ones don't play Greensleeves, instead they repeat something like
Doo-bee-doo-bee-do (CEGEC)
Doo-bee-doo-bee-do (CEGEC)
Bah-doo-bee-doo-bee-doo (CFFDDC)
I am guessing the notes at the moment as I don't have a musical instrument here with me in Ronneby.
Anyway, what I find hard to get over is how late into the year these guys are peddling their wares. I saw one just last week when it was under 10 degrees. Swedes do seem to like their ice cream, no matter how cold it is outside. Hence why I think a good name for them would be "Mr Nippy".
In the photo below, a few people are queuing up at the Hemglass van as it visited the apartment block next to mine.

Farewell to G, Farewell to G

2006-10-31T00:44:00.000+01:00

Alas all good things must come to an end. Finally it was time for G to depart from Sweden. The farewell dinner was held at Taverna Santorini in Karlskrona. It's a Greek restaurant, with lots of traditional blue and white decor. I had the Bifteki Alexsander, which was really tasty. Here are some photos from the evening.
First up are M, U, G, A and E.
On this side we have MS, S, T, H and B.
Here is everyone, well...almost everyone.
Here are H, B and G deep in conversation.
In this one, G is opening a gift, while M, U, A and E look on.
After dinner, some of us went to a British pub named "The Fox and Anchor". Here is its sign above the front door. Here is one of G himself, perhaps looking surprised at just how big the glasses are at this place. G flew home to Australia a couple of days later. Thanks for being such a great flatmate :)

Swoon at Härstorpssjön

2006-10-29T23:00:00.000+01:00

I really was busy that weekend in August. I managed to fit in a trip to the local lake, Härstorpssjön, and locate another of the boundaries of Ronneby. Firstly, here are some sheep on a farm on Vierydsvägen.
Vierydsvägen is great to ride on, because there is a wide cycle path next to the road, and it's right next to farms with very green grass and some animals. Part of the way along is this "You are now leaving Ronneby" sign.

And now some images of Härstorpssjön itself. It's right near the apartment block. You just head down a very steep path and you're there. Here's a photo taken from near the bottom of that path.

And here is one taken right near the bank of the lake.

Finally, here is a panorama taken from up at the apartments. Sorry it's not the best quality.

A Peek at Peking

2006-10-28T22:22:00.000+02:00

A few days before the circus, G invited a few of us out to dinner in Karlskrona. It was my first time eating at a restaurant in Karlskrona (actually I'm trying to think if I had even eaten at a restaurant in Ronneby at that stage...) this trip. The place we went to is called the Nya Peking, located on Östra Vittusgatan. It wasn't too shabby. I think the thing that surprised me most was the set of poker machines just inside the entrance. The meal everyone seems to like here is "Tre små rätter" or sometimes you can order "Fyra små rätter" (3 or 4 small dishes). You can see G with his three in this photo, along with U and A, as usual taking a photo of someone. IMHO, G is doing the best impression I've seen of the sarcastic emoticon ^o)
Here is a photo of M with some isvatten and some of the gambling machines in the background.
As further note on gambling, I was surprised at a recent trip to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (a pub) to see a person working at a casino table - some sort of card game. I'm not really used to seeing that either, but I suppose given that they have computerised gambling machines, there's not much of a leap to employing someone in that same capacity.
I must add that MS was there at the Nya Peking too but he was pulling a face as he didn't want his photo taken, so to honour that, I'm not posting said photo.
Here's the yummy dish that I had - biff med ananas.
And finally, here is a photo of Karlskrona's Rådhuset (town hall) taken on a late summer evening as we were leaving. It was actually getting fairly dark by 21:25. By contrast, at time of writing two months later, sunset is at 16:27.

Nästa är Ronneby Blåsorkester

2006-10-26T11:15:00.000+02:00

One day at BTH I picked up an events calendar of things that are happening in Ronneby in the second half of 2006. One item that caught my eye was a performance in the town square by Ronneby Blåsorkester, which I'm translating as wind orchestra. So the day after the circus, I headed into the centrum to see if I could see them.
When I arrived a couple of minutes after the scheduled start time, I could see the square was full of people and things going on. I looked around and saw a stage. There was someone playing a cello and someone else playing an accordion. I could neither see nor hear any other music. I remember thinking "this is their orchestra?" I was very unimpressed. So unimpressed that I just wandered around the square for about ten minutes trying to think what to do. It appeared that I had come all the way into the town to hear a mediocre cello and accordion duet.
While cogitating thusly, I began to hear the sound of march music approaching. My spirits lifted and I almost ran down towards Strandgatan. I saw a marching band and realised the duet on the stage was a completely separate thing. I raced along Karlskronavägen with camera in hand to try to beat them to the next street. I got there just as they were turning the corner. Here they are in their snazzy uniforms. And here are the tail-enders. Look everyone! THREE sousaphones!
Once the march had finished, they stopped in the pedestrian mall for a stand-up "whoopdy-do" concert. I didn't recognise any of the marches they played, but they sounded very technical, with a lot of "icing". They have a female drum major, and the signals she gives are very elaborate. In addition, they have two flagbearers whose only job is to stand out the front and hold the flags of Ronneby and Sweden. You can see them in this photo.
Here are some of the members. You can see the bell lyra even has Swedish and Ronneby Kommun coloured tassels!

If you'd like more information on them, see http://www.ronnebyblasorkester.se/ but I warn you that it is in Swedish.

If You Build It, The Cirkus Will Come

2006-10-18T11:33:00.000+02:00

After seeing the Circus Maximus in Rome in the first weekend of August, I thought it was pretty cool that I would be able to see the Cirkus Maximum on the last weekend of August. Cirkus Maximum is Sweden's national circus. Unlike Cirque du Soleil, which usually comes to Perth for more than a month, or Circus Joseph Ashton, which never seemed to stop doing performances, this circus usually only does one peformance in each town. Given that Ronneby is one of the largest towns in Blekinge, we were fortunate enough to have the circus arrive on Friday, which meant a Friday evening show. Being such a small ever-travelling group, they do not sell tickets until the day of the performance. However to partially make up for that, and to prevent a last-minute rush, they do sell tickets at lunchtime as well as two hours before showtime. I decided I did not want to miss out on a ticket - there would be no second chances unless I travelled out to Karlskrona the next day, so I cycled to the ticket booth at the circus grounds in my lunchbreak. Ronneby actually has its own circus grounds, called Cirkusplatsen, located on Cirkusvägen, which runs off Risatorpsvägen. Unfortunately, there were only elderly women at the ticket booths, so I had a feeling they wouldn't be speaking English. Optimistically, I began with the usual "Talar Ni engelska?" to which the woman rambled back something in Swedish which was completely unintelligible to me. Nope, if I wanted a ticket I was going to have to speak Swedish. And here's where I made my error. I tried to ask for a 250SEK ticket (about AU$45), except I stumbled on the word for 'two' and ended up saying it twice. Consequently, the woman expected 500SEK for two tickets. When I handed her only 300SEK (I only wanted one ticket) she started yelling more stuff in Swedish. I was speechless. I was unable to communicate what I wanted, and had 200SEK being demanded from me. Fortunately, a middle-aged woman was also waiting in line and she did happen to speak a small amount of English. I explained the problem and got her to translate for me. Crisis over. Here is a photo of what the ticket looked like. After work, I cycled back to the cirkusplats. They have a traditional big top, which they have to put up and take down every day. I got there with a while to spare, and there was parking chaos outside, so I was able to get a fairly good seat right in the centre. It _was_ a fairly good seat, until a really tall guy decided to sit right in front of me just before it started.
Of course, it was all in Swedish, so only understood a handful of the words. However, they did have a lady singing. She sang a few songs in English, for example "Sparkling Diamonds" from Moulin Rouge. There were also songs that I recognised but now sung in Swedish, for example "Tomorrow" from Annie sung as "Imorgon", and "When You Wish Upon a Star". There were quite a few animal acts, namely a dog act, camels, horses and elephants. Also interesting was that they gave free animal rides to children at intermission. I hadn't really seen that before.
A lot of their acrobatic acts were imported from China. They did things like pole climbing and diving through rotating hoops. The one really weird act was the clowns - Los Rivelinos. Two of them were dressed the same and kind of looked like Hulk Hogan trumpet players (I'd never really seen the Swedishness in Hulk Hogan, but I do now). But the third guy was very strange. A painted white face but dressed up in this type of dressing gown and pointy shoes. He looked to have almost a transvestite quality. Reminded me of the Pompadour character in the Babar cartoon for some reason.
So that was basically it. It finished after about 2 hours 10 minutes. Having journeyed there by bike, I was able to beat a lot of the exiting traffic and was home by 21:30.

Ronn-e-by and I-vo-ry Ride Together in Perfect Hamn-o-ny

2006-10-12T17:34:00.000+02:00

The weather so far here in Ronneby has had a different feature each month. July was hot. August was wet. September was fine and October has been particularly autumnal - cold and cloudy. The colours of foliage here at the moment are really quite pretty. You'll see it in later entries. But anyway, back to the rainy month of August, as that's where I left off. Here is a view out from the balcony of the apartment taken on a rainy weekend in August.It was one of G's last weekends in Ronneby and he hadn't been to the hamn in a while. So, while there was a break in the weather that Jenny Morris was not singing about, we grabbed the bikes and headed south along Risatorpsvägen. There are quite a few farms in this area, and one of them had some sheep right near the road. A lot of the sheep here are black. I'm not used to this. Below is a picture of a group of them.
Eventually we made it to the suburb of Ekenäs, where the beach is. It was a completely different atmosphere this time though, the beach was deserted. Whilst there, we managed to get close enough to this duck to take its photo. G named it 'rugby duck' because its neck was that short that it resembled a rugby player.
A lot of houses have flagpoles in Sweden, but not many of them are on the roof. Here is one of them. Must be hard to change flags...but then again there is not much need to, as almost every flag I have seen here has been the familiar blue with yellow cross.
The following two pictures were tahen at the jetties where one can take a ferry across to the island of Karön. Apparently it is really nice in Summer...well, days in Summer when it's not this blustery.
As you can see, there are a moderate amount of boats at the jetties, and Karön is in the background.
Here are some of the signs which are used to mark the entry and exit points of major towns. I'm trying to collect photos of as many as I can. The two below are situated on Reddvägen, which is the street on the western bank of the Ronnebyån. One marks the entry of the harbour area, heading south, and the other signifies the start of Ronneby proper, heading north, at the suburb of Rönninge.

A Revelation

2006-10-09T21:47:00.000+02:00

I realised the other day that I had completely mistaken the meaning of Cityakuten. I had seen the word in TV guides a lot, and it sounded like some kind of late night local news program. This all changed when I saw an ad saying "Cityakuten är tillbaka" with vision of Dr John Carter in a helicopter in the background...Cityakuten is Swedish for ER. They certainly seem to like it here - they're showing three episodes of it next Monday on TV3.

Deal or No Deal

2006-10-07T23:25:00.000+02:00

Well I finally finished my tax return today, so to celebrate, I watched some TV. Flipping through the channels, I came across 'Deal or No Deal'. I was surprised that it wasn't called 'Affär eller Ingen Affär' or whatever it would translate to in Swedish. The format is the same as in the Australian version, but there are some differences. For example, the Dealettes (suitcase holders) are all men in Sweden. The only attempt made to make them all look the same was their clothes - there were no matching wigs here. Additionally, they open the suitcases really slowly here. There's no fiddling with latches, but they just lower the lid over a period of about ten seconds. They really build the suspense. The 'Bank' is in fact a person, seen only in sihouette, sitting in a dark room on the second floor of the TV studio. The bank offers are not just displayed on the screen - it's all about marketing. Being Sweden, the bank guy actually phones the host each time on his Ericsson mobile. I think it's all about chewing up time. Finally, instead of saying 'Deal', the contestant is required to press a button on the table next to the Ericsson when they wish to stop. The contestant tonight did rather well, collecting 802000SEK, which is about AU$146000. He did especially well, as his suitcase contained only 1SEK.

Rome Part V - Il Ritorno alla Svezia

2006-09-27T16:44:00.000+02:00

On Monday it was time to return to Ronneby. I made my way back down to the Termini. Unfortunately, I had forgotten how long the station was. Of course, the platform from which the Leonardo Express was the furthest from where I entered and of course the train departed as soon as I arrived at the station. I noticed that it left exactly on time. I just had to wait around for half an hour for the next one. Unfortunately, it was 10 minutes late. It seems to be just my luck whenever I try to leave Italy. Two years ago, I caught the train from Rome to Milan. It was an hour late, and I only made the plane by the proverbial skin of my teeth. This time I was not so lucky. With all the recent terrorism events, they now close flights earlier. Even though I had no cargo baggage, I was stuck at Fiumicino. There was another flight an hour later. I got in line to try to get tickets, however they were so slow that that time passed before I even made it to the front of the queue. I had to buy a ticket for the flight after that, which was six hours later (rather weird flight time spacings). That meant a lot of time waiting around in the terminal. I also at that time found out that I would miss the last train from Copenhagen.
I arrived at Kastrup Airport around 11pm. The first train on Tuesday morning was at 4:16am. That meant I had to sleep in the airport for 5 hours. After much searching, I found the place where they kept the rows of seats, mainly for people sleeping. Unfortunately, everyone else had the same idea and they were full up. So I tried to sleep on the floor. No sooner had I attempted this, but one of those ride-on floor cleaners came by and forced me to move. So I moved down the corridor. A few minutes later, the cleaners found me again! So I went back out into the arrivals area. There were hardly any chairs there, but I noticed that the cleaners had just been through. I managed to find a seat in the corner behind a staircase and settled in to try to sleep. Things were fine until about 2am, when the ride-on cleaners were back!! They had just cleaned the area two hours earlier, at a time when there were no flights, and they were back again!
Well eventually the time came to get the train to Malmö, and then to change trains at Kristianstad. On the way, I took this photo of the sunrise in Skåne. It's not very good, but it was the best I could do on a moving train.

Then I caught the bus to Ronneby, walked home to have breakfast, and then went in to work.

How do you like your eggs? - Sun-up and sun-down in Ronneby

2006-09-22T17:32:00.000+02:00

Given it's the autumnal equinox today, I started thinking about how bad it's going to be when I leave here in 3 months' time, at the winter solstice. So I went searching for some sunrise and sunset times on the net. I could find quite a lot for Perth, but not much for Ronneby. One of the niftier sites was gaisma.com, because they give you a graph of the daylight and darkness hours for the whole year. For instance, the one for Perth is http://www.gaisma.com/en/location/perth.html and you can see how quasi-horizontal the daylight part looks. There is not heaps of difference between winter and summer. Unfortunately, there is no page for Ronneby. However, there is one for Karlskrona, which is about 20km east of here, so an adjustment of a minute or two will make it comparable. The page is at http://www.gaisma.com/en/location/karlskrona.html and you can see the different shape of the graph. Depending on when you view the page, the figures will be updated. So, I'm copying the figures here to preserve them. Today, there is actually 6 more minutes between sunrise and sunset here in Ronneby than in Perth, which I thought was neat considering it's the equinox. But then the bad news hit me. We lose 65 minutes of daylight compared to now in two weeks' time, 138 minutes in 1 month, and by the winter solstice, there are less than 7 hours between sunrise and sunset. In an effort to cheer myself up, I tried to find a place with worse conditions. For example, Luleå in the north of Sweden, where on December 22 their day will be only 3 hours and 7 minutes long. Of course, nothing compares to the Amundsen-Scott Base in Antarctica, which experiences four months of complete darkness and more than five months of complete daylight every year.
By the way, the picture in the 'Links' section is a Weatherpixie. I added it recently. It allows you to instantly see what the weather is like here at the moment, including the temperature, wind and humidity. If you want a more accurate description, you can click on the web camera link, which shows a view of the town square.

Rome Part IV - Il Colle Palatino

2006-09-18T16:26:00.000+02:00

I signed up for an English guided tour of the Palatine Hill late in the afternoon. I think we had about ten people in our group. The Palatine is the most central of the seven hills of Rome, and is located in the area between the Forum and the Circus Maximus. You may have noticed how nice the weather was in the Colosseum photos, and how it started to turn a little cloudy while I was at the Roman Forum. Pay attention to the sky in the following series of photos.
I think this first photo was taken at the western edge of the Palatine. Looking at the map, I am guessing it is a view over Clivus Victoriae...a clivus was a street climbing a hill, in this case the Capitoline Hill, situated to the right of the view in the photo.
Here are some of the people in our tour group. The building to the right is a recent addition to the area from the last few centuries or so. It was not around in Ancient Rome. I did not go in, but I think it is the bookshop.
This is where things started to get a little scary. The clouds started to move into a spiral pattern, the sort of thing you might see in a movie like Twister. You can perhaps make out the spiral in this photo. A storm was coming. We weren't about to hang around to see if the spiral would reach the ground. We moved on with the tour...quickly.
This is a view of the atrium in the Domitian Palace. Apparently the curved shapes in the central square were low walls in a type of Amazonian themed room.
Below is a view of the once-famous Circus Maximus, or Great Circle. Now it is really a shadow of its former self. It was more elongated than circular, with two very long sides and two very short sides. These days, it's really just empty space. But back in its heyday, it would have accommodated a large portion of the population of Rome, and Domitian would have had an excellent view of proceedings, much like this one.
This is a view of what the map says is the Hippodrome, however that name seems unfamiliar from my journey. I think it was also another palace. There is much debate over the oval shaped construction - you can see part of it in the extreme lower right of the photo. Nobody seems to be able to agree on its purpose.
The last two photos in this set are of the Farnesi gardens. By this time, it was raining heavily, and the tour had ended prematurely. I dashed around to some of the remaining places on the Hill to grab a few last-minute snaps before I got too soaked. The first photo is of a fountain, and the other is of some of the hedges in the gardens. If you were to continue moving forward in the photo, you would come to a sort of small cliff, overlooking the Roman Forum.

Rome Part III - Il Foro Romano

2006-09-14T13:27:00.000+02:00

On Sunday afternoon I visited the Roman Forum. It is a little confusing - it is in fact free to look through these ruins. It is located just next to the Colosseum, and also shares a border with the Palatine Hill, which is what I had bought a combined ticket for in the morning. I wanted some sort of guide for the Forum, however the next English-speaking tour was not until 6pm. I then had the idea to get one of those audio guides I had seen many people use in the Vatican and Pompeii in 2004. So I approached the little green hut at the north entrance where two staff members were located. Honestly, they looked so lazy. I don't think they did anything except tell people who came in the north entrance seeking information to go down the path and turn left. So, that's what I did. I went down until I came to a T-junction, and turned left. On the corner is this building. It's the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, which is one of the best preserved of the ruins.

I looked around all over the place and finally found the booth on the south side of the forum. I purchased the guide for a few Euros. It's like you're talking on one of those chunky satellite phones. There were two mini-tours. I started on the second of them, as it began very close by. It basically followed the Via Sacra, or Sacred Way. The first stop was the Arch of Titus.
It is the highest point in the Forum. Here is a close-up of the inscription on the arch.Following the path westward, here is a view of part of the Palatine Hill, looking south.
Also along the path is the Basilica of Constantine. Unfortunately, less than one third of it still remains. It's mainly just an open-air stone pile.
The next stop on the tour was the Temple of Romulus. However, now it is the church of Saints Cosma and Damiano, which you might recognise from band religious processions.
The three pillars (near the Temple of Vesta) in this photo are all that remains of the Temple of Castor and Pollux. These were the legendary warrior twins which are now part of the Gemini constellation.
I then switched to the other tour on the audio guide. This photo was taken somewhere around the temple of Julius Caesar, looking west towards the Tabularium. The triple arch towards the right is the Arch of Semptimius Severus. This photo was taken just in front of the Arch of Septimius Severus looking southeast along the Via Sacra, in other words the opposite direction to the previous photo. Some trees on the Palatine Hill are visible in the distance on the right.
Here is the Arch of Septimius Severus itself, constructed by the emperor Septimius in honour of his two sons. The notable point here is that one of his sons killed the other then removed his name from the inscription at the top of the arch.
Finally, these columns are from the ruins of the Temple of Saturn. Saturn is the god of agriculture, and offerings to him were made here. December also used to include a week called Saturnalia, when many of the rules and regulations were not quite as strict and roles of master and slaves were reversed - makes it sound like Ancient Roman Big Brother.

Rome Part II - Nei dintorni del Colosseo

2006-08-28T10:12:00.000+02:00

Here are some more photos related to the Colosseum, posted in an separate entry because Blogger wouldn't let me put them all in the same post. The first one was taken while I was waiting in line outside. It is the Arch of Constantine.
Here is a view of the Roman Forum area from one of the balconies of the Colosseum.
The Colosseum apparently has exhibitions from time to time. The one that was showing while I was there was called 'Musa Pensosa', or the thoughtful muse. It was mainly a collection of statues. Below is a photo taken in the entry corridor, advertising the exhibit that was upstairs. I don't have any photos of the stairs, but they were quite steep.
Here is one of the statues in the display, one that was in good condition. It is of the muse Urania.
Here is a mosaic in the exhibition. Presumably it shows some of the gladiators in the morning games, up against a large animal. The humans vs animals games were mainly for the younger gladiators and were held i the mornings. The human vs human battles were held in the afternoons.

In the equivalent of the photo opportunities with cartoon characters available at Movie World, here is the Colosseum's answer to more money-making - get a picture of yourself with some Roman soldiers. I didn't partake myself, but here's someone who did.

Rome Part I - Il Colosseo

2006-08-25T13:49:00.000+02:00

Early in August, while the northern hemisphere's weather was still good, I decided to take a very short holiday to Rome, Italy. I had been to the Eternal City two years ago, after ISITA'04 and before my brief sojourn in Sweden. On that occasion, I had thrown a coin over my shoulder at the Fontana di Trevi and made a pact to return at some stage in the future. Sweden is a lot closer to Italy than Australia is, so I decided to seize the opportunity. Ronneby does not have an international airport (only Kallinge, which offers flights to and from Stockholm) and so I was flying from Copenhagen. This meant taking the bus and train west again. I remember getting to Kastrup and not knowing in which language to speak to the flight attendant at the gate - I was an Australian whose native language was English, but now living in Sweden, catching a plane in Denmark and flying on an Italian airline to Italy. It could have in fact been worse. Originally, I was looking at flying with Lufthansa and having to change planes in Germany before arriving in Italy.
I remember the magazine available to read on the flight down was about architecture. It was cool because it was the first bilingual magazine I had read - the articles were in both English and Italian. Eventually I arrived at Fiumicino (Little River in Italian) Airport. It is also known as Leonardo Da Vinci Airport. On a related note, I went past the town of Vinci in 2004 when I was at a conference in Viareggio. The thing about Fiumicino is that they don't seem to believe in airbridges (those things that go from the boarding gate to the front door of the plane). Instead, the plane stops nowhere near the terminal and then everyone has to cram onto this TINY bus (remember this is a whole planeload of people with hand luggage) and then be driven over to the terminal. Below is a (not very good) photo of one of the entrances of the airport.

My hotel was in the northern suburbs of Rome, and Fiumicino is off to the southwest. Most of the bus routes suggested on the internet seemed rather expensive, so I decided to find a different way. For €9.50 I took the Leonardo Express (a train) from Fiumicino to Roma Termini, the main railway station in Rome. Termini is the largest railway station in Europe. I think the word "Express" was a bit of wishful thinking. There were times when it just stopped in the middle of nowhere. Once I arrived at Termini, I had to catch the number 217 bus. Just finding which stop it left from was enough effort, but then I had to work out how to pay the fare. All I had were €20 notes. The fare I needed from the ticket machines cost €11 and they would only give €4 in change. I needed to change my money into smaller denominations. I realised I should buy a map and get change that way. I eventually found where they sold maps of Rome in the railway station. I then tried to buy a ticket from the machines. There were a few of them, and each one seemed to have a different problem with it so I could not buy a ticket. The guards seemed unapproachable, but I did overhear someone else with the same problem approach them and be directed to a little dodgy kiosk. I went there, got the necessary ticket and waited for the next bus, which never came. The one scheduled after that however did arrive, and eventually I arrived at Hotel Regent. This was 12 hours after I had left Ronneby. The hotel had nine floors, and of course my room was on the ninth floor. Also, the tiny lift only went up to the eighth floor, so I was forced to walk up and down stairs in any case.

A word about the television...

The TV did seem to have a lot of stations to choose from, more than in Australia. Some were in German. One was in French - I recall the program I watched on that station was some reality TV show, with this group of contestants competing as a team on an island. The island was inhabited, and had proper buildings on it - it was not like on Survivor. They had to rush around to different locations and perform different tasks. For example, one required someone to row out to a point off the coast and retrieve something, another basically had one person suspended on some kind of elastic cord inside a castle from a pulley and the rest of the team were outside on the ground trying to control the one person on the other end, who I think had to grab something on the ground. He didn't succeed. Nonetheless, it was an enjoyable program, even though I couldn't understand what they were saying. Italian TV seemed to consist of mainly phone-in type programs. There were heaps of 'live' tarot readers, which mainly appeared to be angry ageing women. There was also an abundance of 'the Uplate Game Show' type programs. Now these programs are in Sweden too, where the task is usually to unjumble the letters in some Swedish word, which of course has about 20 letters and they can only just manage to fit it on the screen. Anyway, the shows of this type in Italy have decided to show off their computer graphics department. Instead of 'thinking music', they would have 'thinking vision', where a pre-recorded video of the female presenter would be superimposed behind the 'live' one. The video would usually be of her dancing around the studio rather quickly, and the camera would seem to zoom in super-close to random parts of her body, like some very bad 80's video clip. The problem was that they had recorded sound from the dancing around video, and it would interfere with the 'live' audio. It was funny stuff. In the end, I slept very soundly that night after travelling for so much that day.

The next morning, I set off for the Colosseum. I decided the best way to get there was via the Metro, the underground train. To catch it, I had to get back to Termini. I had never really taken an underground train before, so this was another thing I could cross off my list of things accomplished in life. The problem was, I didn't know which direction was which track. It was very confusing, and I almost got on the wrong train. In the end, I asked a guard-type person in my best Italian, and he told me I had to go back up the stairs and across to the other track. Talk about crowded! I only just managed to escape out the doors before they shut, due to being entangled in so many people.

Well, onto the Colosseum. I had read in a tourist guide that you could also buy tickets at the Palatine Hill, which would save waiting in the long queues. However, I didn't exactly know where the ticket office for the hill was, even though I had a map with me - it was rather sketchy. So I decided to try my luck in the Colosseum queue. A very small part of that queue is shown in the following photo. I managed to join an English-speaking tour group. I think I got ripped off on the price, but at least we could basically go straight in. Our guide was fairly elderly and walked around on half-crutches. After a lecture outside, we went in the 'groups' entry.

Here is a view of the Colosseum from the inside.
This is a view of the tunnels which were below the floor of the arena. Interesting fact - the contemporary English word 'arena' is derived from the Latin word for sand, because this is what was on the floor of the stadium.
This is a view of the large cross inside the Colosseum. I can't remember exactly how it came to be there. Some websites say it is just to remember the Christians that died there, but I thought the story was more complex than that....anyway if anyone knows, leave a comment.
Here is a carving of a message in stone, located in one of the corridors. Apparently there was a spelling mistake in one of the words.
Below is a view of the tunnel system from higher up. You can see where they have recreated part of the stage a few years ago in an attempt to show what it was really like thousands of years ago. At centre left is the Libitinensis Gate i.e. the Death Gate where the bodies were taken, before being dragged below the arena. People would apparently pay a lot of money to drink the blood of dead gladiators - they thought drinking blood would cure illnesses, especially the blood of virile young gladiators.
Here is a view of the Colosseum from the other direction, towards the Gate of Life. As you can see it seemed like a wonderful Summer day.
And finally here's one of me, to show you I really was there.

To be continued...

Kyrka etcetera

2006-08-19T12:11:00.000+02:00

As part of the Vattentornet expedition, I also went to visit the Heliga Kors Kyrka (Church of the Holy Cross according to my web translator). A page about it in Swedish is at http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliga_Kors_kyrka and it's a large white building located just north of the town square. As you approach it, there is a small fountain at the base of the staircase. I have to admit though, the fountain does look kind of amateurish.

At the top of the staircase, there are a couple of flower gardens (yes, more flowers...Ronneby seems to be known for them). Here is one of them, just across the path from the archway.
This is the main path up to the church entrance. Again flanked by flowers. This photograph was taken looking south, back over the main part of the town.

The following is a stone in the archway on the western entrance of the church grounds. Yes it's in Latin, not Swedish - it is a church after all. The stone appears to have been placed there in 1733. It is also interesting that the Latin name for the town is Ronnovia.
And now an addendum to my previous post on the water tower. For some reason, this photo was left out. It clearly shows the graffiti around the base of the old tower.

And finally, this is another attempt at the panorama from the tower. Blogger is not very good at showing photos in any detail. I have set the photo size to 'large', but I'm not sure if this will give much of an improvement. Hey, I tried, anyway.

Assault on Hulta

2006-08-11T12:22:00.000+02:00

One of the main suburbs in northeast Ronneby is that of Hulta. The day after my trip to the hamn, I decided that I needed to see the 'big red tower thingy' which is perhaps the highest point of the centre of the town. However, I did not see much point in making a journey just to see one tower. So I thought I would see what I could of the nearby residential areas.
According to the map I had taken with me, the 'big red tower thingy' was labelled "Gamla vattentornet" or the old water tower. It actually took me a bit of time to work out how to gain access to the tower area - its base was obscured by bushes on a very steep hill. Once I finally reached the summit, I took this panorama of pictures looking south over Ronneby. Interestingly, the object sticking up on the horizon two thirds of the way across the image is the new water tower.

I took the following photograph of the old water tower. You probably can't see it from the image, it is now a derelict locked-up building covered in graffiti. The coat of arms for Ronneby is visible above the doorway.

On the way back down the hill towards the town centre, I met this cat, who seemed intent on winding its way around my ankles. Maybe it just wanted me to take a photo of it? Speaking of pets, quite a lot of the townsfolk take their dog(s) for a walk around the time I ride home from work.

Continuing to explore Hulta, I came to Hultagölen, a very serene and secluded lake. In fact, so secluded that I almost didn't find it. Basically the only way to access it is to follow along the driveway of a private house until the house is on one side and open bushland is revealed on the other. Here are three views of the lake, taken at various points around its perimeter. It looks like a great spot for private reflection.

Riding along some of the many weaving cycle paths in this area, I stumbled onto one of the main roads which pass by Ronneby. The interesting thing I noticed here is how patriotic the Swedes are about their motoring signs. The 'road bends here' sign in the background of this photo is a series of alternating blue and yellow arrows. Blue and yellow are the colours of the Swedish flag. By contrast, the same sign in Australia would use (boring) black and white alternating arrows.

From here, I actually travelled briefly off the edge of my map. Then I quickly reoriented myself by finding a landmark on the edge of the map, and then rode home through Östra (East) Hulta.

There's No Hamn in Taking a Bike Ride

2006-08-10T08:30:00.000+02:00

On a Saturday afternoon recently, I decided to go on a bit of an exploratory journey of Ronneby. After all, I'm here for six months, and it would be a bit embarrassing if I didn't get to see everything that the town had to offer. So, I thought there would be no harm in popping down to see the port and beach area. The Swedish word for harbour is hamn. This relates to the Swedish translation of Copenhagen as Köpenhamn, meaning merchant's harbour. You can see the similarity between köp and the English shop, since a 'k' before an 'ö' is said more like a 'ch'. For those interested, Copenhagen in Danish is København, and in Italian it is Copenaghen.

Anyway, I took my map of Ronneby which only just showed the harbour area on it, got on my bike and headed off. It's only a few kilometres south of the flat, so it didn't take me all that long to reach it. I do remember riding past a lot of farms with horses on them though, and for that reason the air was rather smelly. The following two photos show almost all there is to see of the beach, which is located out the back of a caravan park type area. So you can tell we're not talking anything like Cottesloe proportions here. Nonetheless, the people seemed to be enjoying the Summer weather.

Having gone basically as far south as possible, I turned eastwards. Along this road there was quite a lot of industrial buildings. This was quite a shock to me, as all I had ever seen of Ronneby was this quaint little village, mainly filled with trees. Right near the mouth of the Ronnebyån, I came to the hamn. Here are two pictures I took. One is of a boat docked at the harbour, and the other is of the LARGE pile of wood on the other side of the river. This was the 'filled with trees' part of Ronneby.

It wa getting towards dinnertime, so I decided to head home. I rode northwards along by the river. After a bit, I came across one of the famous signs with a diagonal red line through them, to be interpreted as 'you are now leaving...' and this was one for Ronneby Hamn.

Along the way up towards the water park and BTH, I rode past the golf course - I hadn't even known that Ronneby had one. Sorry this is not a very interesting photo, but it was about the best I could get from the footpath.

A Sweden Must-Do: IKEA

2006-08-02T10:47:00.000+02:00

Okay, it's time to talk about a Swedish icon - IKEA. If you are going to be in Sverige for any length of time, you really should try to get to see one. They're a national institution. At time of writing, there are 15 stores in Sweden, with the 16th one scheduled to open this November. This one will be at Haparanda-Tornio, located on the border of Sweden and Finland, and will be the northernmost IKEA store in the world.

On a recent Sunday, I got my chance to go to one with A and G. Even though there are 15 or 16 stores, there are currently none in the province of Blekinge. One of the nearest stores is about 110km away at Kalmar. This is in the province of Småland, to the north of Blekinge. To this date, it marks the northernmost point on the globe to which I have travelled. The province contains some important cities, such as Växjö, Jönköping, and of course Kalmar (umlaut-free!).
The drive there was dominated by two main topics - the number of churches along the way, highlighted by roadsigns, and also the number of speed cameras. In Sweden, the cameras appear to be in fixed positions, and there are roadsigns telling you that there will be cameras for the next so many kilometres. Just so you don't miss it and drive past, the sign for the IKEA store is quite elevated: Although the Kalmar store is only single-storey, G tells me it is of about the same area as the one in Malmö which has two floors. Nevertheless, it was still HUGE. Here's me standing in front of the entrance, just to prove that I actually am here - I don't think I have posted a photo of me yet, so here is some kind of proof.
There's plenty of things to buy inside the store. One of the more interesting products were these critters - I imagine they are footstools or something similar.
Getting through all of the items at IKEA can take out a serious chunk of your day, so the thoughtful (and enterprising) people at IKEA introduced restaurants in their stores, so that you can shop for longer than just between meals. Here is a photo of what we bought. Although the sauce was a little rich, the meal as a whole was delicious.
Whilst seated at the table for lunch, I happened to notice some of the light fittings in the store. It's not obvious from this angle, but they were in fact made on a dodecahedral (the sides are pentagons) framework, which I thought was very cool.
Here is a view of part of the store. I apologise that I did not have the camera held flat when I took this, so it looks like the store goes noticeably uphill, which in fact it does not.

Flower Power

2006-08-01T18:37:00.000+02:00

Another impressive thing about Ronneby is its flower displays. In my opinion, the best one is at a place called F.d. Tingshus, according to my map. There's a large red building with a grassed area in front of it, a place to sit, a small pond with a statue in it, and this huge work of art made of plants and flowers. A photo is below.
The purpose of the display is to advertise Multicultural Year 2006.

The following two photographs were taken closer to the display. I wanted you to see the detail and amount of work that has gone into creating this. It's really quite brilliant. Each individual plant is a pixel.

Another eye-catching display of flowers can be found at the Stadshus, or City Hall, which is just near Maxi supermarket. The display is of a red heart, presumably chosen because Ronneby's catch phrase is 'the heart of the garden of Sweden'. Unfortunately, the display was that large and flat that I could not gain enough altitude to get a good picture of it, however here is my best attempt.

This final picture is of the pond in front of Stadshus, with its model boats and additional flower displays.

Remarkin' about Brunnsparken

2006-07-28T09:56:00.000+02:00

As I have mentioned in a previous post, just to the west of BTH lies a wonderful park/forest called Brunnsparken. It was voted Sweden's best park in 2005. You can read more about it at http://www.ronneby.se/publicweb/templates/WidePage.aspx?id=4809 but I will attempt to give a quick guided tour in this post, again from the comfort of your own monitor.

I had heard that there was a flea market at the pavillion there every Sunday during Summer. So, I went to check it out. I hadn't really been to a flea market before, so I didn't know what to expect. There were many sellers there, but not many buyers. And they didn't seem to be selling anything that I wanted or needed. So, I just had a quick stroll through, long enough to take this photograph.A pleasant surprise was finding that there was a museum (called a naturum) just next to these stalls. Even better, it was open on Sunday afternoons! It's basically like a big old hall, with a small film screening room located on the northern side (but I didn't watch the film as it was in Swedish). Below is a view inside the building taken just inside the western entrance. Closest to the camera is a fancy model of the buildings in Brunnsparken, and in the distance you may be able to make out a display of the different timbers that can be found in the forest.
Here is a closer view of the miniature model.
Thankfully, the naturum had some free (I hope they were free, because I didn't pay :-P) detailed maps of Brunnsparken. Armed with this and my camera, I set out to take some photographs of the main attractions. Just near the naturum is this hedged garden, which is rather pretty.
The next photo is of Directörsvillan, which is the first building one comes to heading SW from the naturum. You can find more info about this building at http://www.ronneby.se/publicweb/templates/WidePage.aspx?id=4803
Heading along the path past Villa Emma, you can see the tennis court. In the distance is Ronneby Brunn water park, which I could tell was packed with people on such a lovely day.
The main body of water in Brunnsparken is named Trollsjön, or Troll's Lake. This sounded intriguing and/or dangerous. I decided to have a look. It seemed rather innocuous, quite idyllic really. The water was very blue. There was even a jetty. The two photos below are of the lake, one taken from a distance and the other taken on the jetty.

Continuing westard along the path, I saw this rather large rock. I decided it was photoworthy. After comparing this with the giant rock out the back of the apartments at Hjorthöjden, the one at home is actually bigger, but this one was still impressive.
Towards the western edge of Brunnsparken there are several farms, basically located in the suburb of Risatorp, if my map is correct. I thought this design of fence was quite interesting. Normally, the poles are parallel or perpendicular to the ground. Instead, these ones were on about a 20 degree angle.

Heading northward now, I looked across the pond to see some of the houses on Risatorpsvägen.

Travelling back through the centre of the park (as opposed to going around the edge as I had been doing) one comes to two of the main gardens. The first is the Scented Garden, which has a lot of trellises. A photo is below.

Right in the middle of the park is the Japanese garden. This was very well presented. The dirt beds had been raked meticulously - you can see this in the photo below. The rock at left was definitely different, like it was only partly finished being carved.

The view below is really stereotypical Japanese I guess. I was very tranquil and very cool and shady there. The stone carving at the back was some kind of bird bath I think.

Here's where I decided to head a little off the main track. I had completed a full circuit of the park and wanted to make my way to the edge again but without going over old ground. So, up in the northeast corner, I found this notice about a cairn. It was a big pile of stones which apparently covered a huge burial pit. It was quite old, so thankfully there was no smell of rotting flesh and bones.

Closer examination of the stones comprising the cairn revealed that this place gets used for orienteering courses. This was apparently stop number 16.

Travelling out along the ledge a little, you can look eastwards down to the flat plain below. I was told that during Spring, a giant display of white flowers was made here, in beds which spelled the word Fred. No it's not some obscure Flintstones prank. Fred is Swedish for peace. You can see the remains of where the flowers once were in this photo.

Here are two more views from the ledge. The first looks basically northeast towards the town, and the second basically southeast towards the water park.

As a final 'cutesy' photo, here is a duck with a few ducklings, taken in front of the ponds at the northwest corner of Brunnsparken. I had to be REALLY quiet when taking this photo, as she was understandable very protective of her young.

Until next time,

Bruce.

Riding to BTH - a virtual tour via photographs, now with 96% less effort required!

2006-07-24T15:33:00.000+02:00

I thought it would be interesting to show you some of the landscapes I ride through each morning on my way to work. This not only will provide you with an idea of what sort of area Blekinge is, but if I remember to repeat this exercise later in the year, it will be a way to show the effect of the seasons on Ronneby. That's an if, not a when. It is also a way to view my journey from the comfort of your computer screen, without having to move any pedals or change gears. Sit back and enjoy the ride.

This first photo is of the edge of the set of apartment blocks at Hjorthjöden, looking down towards the long sloping road that takes you towards the city.

Here is a view from near the top of that sloping road. As you can see, most of the surroundings are forest, with the occasional road and street sign thrown in for good measure. (Speaking of street signs, one of the most amusing from an English point of view is at BTH, where it says Farthinder. No, it's not a way to stop flatulence! It means speed bump.)
One makes a sharp right turn part way down the hill. Along this street is where I have seen the deer, since there is quite a lot of forest. The western end of the street is relatively flat compared to the eastern end. The eastern end is where the more conventional housing starts. It's hard to get an idea from this next photo, but at the eastern end of the street is a very steep slope downwards. This is great fun to ride down in the mornings, but a real pain when riding up the slope in the evenings. In the distance, you may be able to see the crane at the construction site at Vidablick.
Speaking of cranes at Vidablick, here it is. Vidablick is a sjukhem, some kind of hostel.
Continuing in an easterly direction, behind Vidablick, there is a gravel path. This path leads to the edge of Brunnsparken. For more information, see http://www.ronneby.se/publicweb/templates/WidePage.aspx?id=4809 It is here where you really feel like you are out in the country, even though you are only about a kilometre away from the centre of town. This photo was taken further along the same path. This is another place where it slopes down towards the east, but it is not obvious from the photo. At centre left, you may be able to see the sign indicating one of the entrances to Brunnsparken. Also interesting is that there are streetlights along this path, and there is a paddock on the right hand side.
Here is a view into that paddock. Yes, it seems the sheep here get streetlights. Maybe they like to read? Anyway, I think it's cute that they have a little bridge built for them so they can cross the pond.
At the end of that gravel path, one comes to a T-junction. Looking eastwards, the view is as shown below. There are plenty of rocks and trees. This environment is perfect for frogs. I often see baby ones about 2cm long trying to hop out of the way of my rapidly approaching bicycle tyres.

Finally, making a left turn and following the winding path down the hill, one is confronted with this glorious view. At the moment, there are plenty of ducks and ducklings about in the ponds. After a minute or so riding basically straight ahead, one reaches the Ronnebyån, and on the other side is BTH.

Barrrrrbecue!

2006-07-24T15:29:00.000+02:00

During my second week here, G, A and I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean Två: Död Mans Kista. From what I have learnt so far, the k in Swedish behaves a little like the c in Italian, so that the start of kista sounds more like the start of chest, and less like the start of keyster. Anyway, back to the movie. We saw it at the one-screen cinema in the eastern part of the town centre - Centrumbiografen http://www.centrumbiografen.se/ They show one film per week, and only one or two screenings per day. The seats were very comfortable and had plenty of leg room, as there were not many rows of seats. We sat near the front and took full advantage of the 3 or so speakers situated under the rather tiny screen. The movie itself was quite good, especially the make-up/special effects.

The following day I opened my Swedish bank account - no, that's completely different to a Swiss bank account. So hopefully one day I can actually get paid. This is good, because my scholarship runs out in 3 weeks!

On the Saturday night of my second week here, I went to B's licentiate party, which was a BBQ powered by garlic and chilli next to the river. In Sweden, a licentiate is sort of like a half-PhD, and is a qualification in itself. It was a really great Summer evening (except it was rather cold on the walk home), and B's father even set off a couple of amateur fireworks. A photo from the evening is below. In it, you can see Jö at the food table, while E is chatting in the background.

The Rest of Week One

2006-07-21T18:40:00.000+02:00

I can't believe it but it's already up to my fourth week here, and I haven't even finished writing about my first week! Time to rectify that...
On Tuesday (I think) of my first week, I went bike shopping with A. This task took quite a long time, because the three (yes, three, in Ronneby!) bike shops were on different sides of the town. In the end, I settled on this one

from the Norwegian guy simply because it was fairly cheap (800kr) and it was more the type of bike that I was used to in Australia. It has had a few issues since then, but I've been able to deal with most of them. Thankfully, the seat no longer tips upwards at the front so I don't fall off the back whenever I'm riding. I've also put on two lights so that I can see when I'm riding home in the dark towards the end of the year. The front wheel reflector has also been reattached thanks to some garden ties! As an added bonus, the bike has a gear system - although it did take me a day or two to work out which gear corresponded to which type of slope. The gear system comes in handy on the way home, as most of it is uphill. Also, my luggage finally arrived on that Tuesday.

On my first full weekend here, Ronneby had its Festival - a bit like a small version of the Royal Show back in Perth. It takes over almost the entire town centre. There were heaps of stalls, and a huge number of people who had come to buy things. G had never seen so many people in Ronneby. A couple of photos of the event are posted below. I didn't end up buying anything because I was not confident speaking any Swedish. The first photo is of some of the rides in the town square, and the other is of some the stalls near the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Pub.

I have also taken a few photos from around the area of our flat. We live in a suburb called Hjorthöjden. The sign for it is below. Basically it translates as 'Deer Heights', because we live in an elevated location, and there are some deer in the forest quite nearby. I have seen some a couple of times, but they are always too fast for me to take a photo.

The next photo was taken about half way down the hill of Lindblomsvägen towards more of the main part of Ronneby.There is also a photo taken out of our balcony. The bike shelter is at centre left. The other photo is of the steep path on the other side of the flats, near Årdervägen. I don't like going up the hill this way by bike as it is quite steep and there are too many bugs in the air.
The first Friday evening I was here, we had a BBQ out the back of our block of flats. Then we went to the beach volleyball court just near BTH to work off some of those calories. In one photo, A is showing off her muscle tone whilst J and G set up the net. The other photo shows the car which we had to protect with covers which was parked dangerously close to the court. There were cars everywhere due to the Festival being on. Despite the covers, the car was hit a couple of times. Fortunately, there seemed to be no visible damage. The BTH building is in the background at the left.

Saturday night was an evening of fun at M's flat, which is just 2 buildings away from our own. M is my office neighbour at BTH. G made nachos, and most of the time was spent on a game of Settlers. A link about the game is at http://www.funagain.com/control/product/~product_id=011246, however I laugh loudly at the suggested game time. We took almost 8 hours! This game had so many rules to remember that it would take me a few times playing it in order to get used to it. The night concluded (at 3am!) with a quicker game of Robo Rally.

As a final note, I include this photo of the vapour trail of one of the many aircraft that fly over our building. This happens a lot in Sweden, but rarely happens in Australia...I think it has something to do with the air temperature. Anyway it provides a little entertainment when you get a few planes crossing paths (although not at the same time!)

Take care all,

Bruce.

The Birds and the BTH

2006-07-20T09:08:00.000+02:00

Today, a little bit about where I'm working/studying. It's a place called Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, or BTH for short. For more info, see the webpage http://www.bth.se/eng which is in English. I have my own office, which is something I'm not used to. It's nothing special, but I will be spending most of my daylight hours here. A photo with part of the view out the window (another thing I'm not used to from work in Perth) is shown below.

A better view out the window is shown in this next photo. Unfortunately, I neglected to factor in the reflection from the window, so you can see a bit of the camera and me in it. Between the house and road is the Ronnebyån, which at its southern end connects into the Östersjön (Baltic Sea).

One of the main things you notice about Ronneby in Summer is the number of birds. Just in front of my office window there is a curved awning-type-thing which has quite a lot of bird droppings on it. During my first week here, I would watch the everyday activities of a baby seagull (fiskmås). It was so cute. The grey fledgling lived in a nest at the right-hand end of the awning and I used to watch it slide down the curve towards it. It was rather defenceless and there were times when groups of adult seagulls would land on the awning and squawk loudly, perhaps taunting the baby, which used to try to stay as small as possible in the corner. Unfortunately, since the Friday of my first week here, I have not seen the baby. Either it very quickly learned to fly, it moved home, or it died. With each passing day, I suspect more and more that the latter is the case.

The Journey Here...Copenhagen to Ronneby

2006-07-18T08:16:00.000+02:00

In order to get to Sweden from Denmark, the usual method is to cross the Öresund. So, getting on the train at Tårnby, I went back past the Kastrup station at the airport, and then across the large bridge between the two countries. This particular train terminated at Malmö, however every second one continued on to Kristianstad. Because of this, I had a 1.5 hour wait at Malmö station. I decided it was a good opportunity to take some photos, and I went for a stroll around the city. Being a Sunday morning, there was not much that was open.

The first two photos are of the train station just behind the canal, and a bridge over the canal.

Next is a fountain and a statue surrounded by Swedish flags.

Walking further south, I came to a kind of pedestrian shopping mall. The most interesting thing here was this set of artworks which was a marching band sculpture. Here is the entire creation as well as a close-up of the trumpeter.

As seems to be the norm in cities I visit, it was not long before I found the cemetery. The graves here were all quite old, and there did not seem to be many of them - there was lots and lots of space to walk around...maybe the mortality rate is negligible in Malmö?...anyway, most of the graves were 'family graves', where, you guessed it, you could have eternal fun for the whole family! Here are two views of the park-like ambience.

I also managed to photograph this family of birdlife. The canal system from in front of the railway station continues along the west side of the cemetery.

As I headed back to the train station, I noticed something coincidentally amusing - a coffee shop named Wayne's Coffee.

Unfortunately, I didn't have time to stop in for a coffee. I had to get back to the station. The next train journey went from Malmö to Kristianstad. There are a lot of forests and fields as you pass through the Skåne region. Last time I was here, the trains ran all the way through to Karlskrona. However, they are currently doing something with the train lines, so the rest of the way had to be travelled by bus. Without my luggage, there was fortunately not much I had to transport from the train to the bus. The temperature was a pleasant 24 degrees. I arrived at the Ronneby bus stop at approximately 2:05pm and G and A were waiting for me. This was almost 54 hours after I had arrived at Perth airport, and only 24 hours later than my envisaged arrival time.

The Journey Here....Perth to Copenhagen

2006-07-15T13:59:00.000+02:00

Well it's time to describe my journey here to Ronneby. Since it took 54 hours, I'll split this up into two parts. This post will cover from Perth to Copenhagen. The remainder of the journey will be covered in another post.
I was scheduled to leave at 4:30pm on Friday 30th June from Perth. Upon arrival at the airport at 2:30pm, the departure time had been put back to 7:30pm. Whilst queuing to have my baggage checked in, I learned that the ETD was now 8:30pm. Not good news. Fortunately, the kind man at the desk gave me a dinner voucher worth $15. Also, K and D had been kind enough to see me off, so we passed some of the time at the bar. After that, the departure time had been pushed back to 9:30pm - 5 hours late. This was bad news for me because it meant that I would miss my connecting flights. The reason given was apparently there had been a medical emergency on the flight from KL and they had had to make an unexpected landing at Jakarta. I hoped it was not due to food poisoning from the aeroplane food! Eventually it was time to walk through the departures gate (of doom). 'The Hardest Part' by Coldplay had been playing recently. After a teary goodbye to my parents, there was a further long wait at the boarding gate. The flight was uneventful and I was able to watch some repeats of comedy programs like Frasier, Friends, etc. There were even songs available to listen to. I could not bring myself to listen to 'The Hardest Part' however because it reminded me of home. I managed to sleep a tiny bit. We arrived at KL at around 3am. Here is an obscured view of the plane.

I was then told I would be flying via Heathrow in London, rather than Amsterdam. I hadn't been to London either, so it was still a new city for me. We were then lodged in the airport hotel. G tells me that this is a quite expensive hotel, so I was glad I did not have to pay for it. I got to bed about 4:15am and then got up at 6:45am...not much sleep! For some reason I had not been given a breakfast voucher like most other people. I decided that I would wait it out until the meal on the plane. The flight was scheduled to leave at 9am, so I didn't think it would be too long. I tried the drinking water as I did not want to dehydrate in the hot conditions. Unfortunately the drinking water in KL did not taste good. The plane was a 747 and it was the first time I had been on one. Here is a photo taken at KL airport in the morning, but I don't think it was the plane that I was on.

I was starting to get hungry. The plane was delayed an hour and a half. Something about the air conditioning not working. I could tell that, too - the plane was starting to smell. I think I managed to get in a quick nap on a very long flight. I remember watching a few movies - Last Holiday, Pink Panther, Failure to Launch and most of Madagascar. We arrived at Heathrow at 4:30pm. I had 20 minutes before my flight to Copenhagen departed, and I had no idea from which gate! Heathrow is such a big airport and it was purely by luck that I found the right terminal. The man at the desk told me I had to RUN in order to make the flight. Fortunately, this flight was also being delayed slightly, so I made it in time. I even stopped to take this photo! (yes I know it's an extremely boring photo, but that's about all I could see at the gate just before boarding)

I had also been put in econoflex class (between business and economy). Almost all of the food had been eaten on the previous flight, so only business and econoflex passengers were served food (yay!) The flight was quite short and at a very low altitude. The view over the Netherlands and Denmark was amazing as I could see lots of small islands and houses on them. I had arrived in Copenhagen.

After waiting at the baggage conveyor belt for quite a while, I realised my luggage had not made the journey with me. Luckily I had a change of clothes with me. Also fortunately, I knew about the Zleep Hotel which is one train station away (Tårnby) from the airport, as I had stayed there in 2004 on my previous European trip for ISITA. It was fairly expensive, but I was able to pay using the money I had changed at CPH airport. I was also able to contact G to let him know that I would be arriving Sunday instead of Saturday. I waited around for the train station to open and then purchased a ticket for Malmö. The rest of the journey will be in my next post.

Welcome to my Blog

2006-07-10T22:55:00.000+02:00

Hi...and welcome to my weblog especially devoted to my sojourn in Sweden from July to December, 2006. I'm still working out how this site works, so I shall keep this first entry brief, but I look forward to sharing my adventures with you, and showing you some of the sights of Ronneby and beyond through some photos I have taken. The first eleven days have been a whirlwind, I almost don't know where to begin. But the real beginning will have to wait until my next entry.
As a bit of a teaser, below is a photo of my apartment block on Lindblomsvägen. This was taken at about 9:30pm. As you can see, sunset is quite late here in early July.

Thanks for reading,
Bruce.