Ake Och Emma

Particle accelerators, jet fountain and Freddie Mercury Over the years we have probably met hundreds of people who think we are from Switzerland. People seem to have a problem with telling the difference between Switzerland and Sweden. So, only to confuse people even more, Ake decided to visit Switzerland for a few days this winter. A Swede going to Switzerland. That, if anything, is going to confuse people. Most of the time I was in Switzerland I stayed in Geneva in the far west of the country. I have been thinking about going there for several years. The reason is in Geneva you can visit the nuclear research facility CERN and that is a physicist’s wet dream. If you have no interest in visiting CERN then Geneva has very little to offer when it comes to ... read more

The Rocket, palaces and two world heritage sites This blog entry is about the second half of my journey in Bangladesh. If you would like to read about the first half but haven't yet you can follow this link. First I'd like to write a little about the traffic in Bangladesh. If I am to describe the traffic in Bangladesh the first word I come to think about is 'nightmarish', and after that the words 'noisy', 'crowded' and 'scary' come to mind. A bus ride could be described as a series of chicken races while honking the horn like crazy. To give you an idea of what it is like I have shot a short film from inside a car. The film is really bad, I know, but it really is the sound that is important ... read more

Balconies en masse OK we admit that cheat a little bit this time. Most of the text, and it isn't much, we have simply copied from a blog entry we wrote last year. But we spend so much time writing all the other blog entries that once in a while we think we can allow ourselves to put together one without effort. When we were in Tbilisi we walked through the streets and we were surprised over how many different styles of balconies they had in town. We started taking photos of them and the more we looked for balconies the more interesting they became. After a few hours we had quite a collection of photos of balconies. When we started this blog in 2006 the main purpose was to make it possible for us to ... read more

Drinking and bathing in the Evian of the USSR An interesting question came up during this trip: are the three countries in Caucasus, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, in Europe or Asia? It is not a question that has any obvious answer. The boundary between Europe and Asia is said to run in the Ural Mountains and in the Caspian Sea. Since the Caspian Sea is east of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan that could place all three nations in Europe. We can also add a few examples that indicate that they indeed are European nations. * Eurovision Song Contest (For non-Europeans: It is a large annual TV-show the best can be described as European Championships in music. Check this link for more information). Every year the three Caucasian nations join and this year Azerbaijan even won. * ... read more

A blog entry dedicated to the gun with the knot on the barrel This blog entry is slightly different from the ones we normally write. We hope you still find it interesting to read. Outside the UN building in New York there is a sculpture of a gun with a knot on the barrel. The sculpture is named Non Violence and is created by the Swedish artist Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd. There are many copies of this sculpture on display in various cities in the world and for the last couple of years we have photographed some of them. Here in this blog entry we have collected the photos we have gathered so far. We have mainly taken photos of the copies of this statue that can be found in various cities and towns in Sweden. Four ... read more