Celebrating Roland's 60th birthday We still have one more blog entry to make from this last summer. In August we went to Poland with all of Emma's family to celebrate Roland's, that is Emma's father, 60th birthday. On this trip we were a total of 9 people - Emma and Ake, Emma's parents Inger and Roland, Emma's youngest sister Anna, Emma's other younger sister Ida with her boyfriend Mattias and finally Ida's and Mattias' two daughters Jonna and Julia. We were away for one week and most of the time we spent in a seaside resort named Kolo [View Full Entry]

---

---

Five days in the land of midnight sun and reindeers If you follow this blog you know that I, Ake that is, two or three times a year can take a vacation when Emma has to be home working. As long as I visit places Emma doesn't want to see I am permitted to travel on my own. Emma is not very interested in visiting northern Norway but I have for several years been thinking that a trip up to the land of midnight sun and reindeers could be interesting. So to northern Norway I went on a trip this summer. [View Full Entry]

---

---

A weekend in Riga A few months ago we went to Latvia. We haven't come around to publish a blog entry on that trip until now. But we figure it doesn't matter much if we are a bit late before we publish our travel tales and photos. We spent a total of three days there enjoying some nice spring weather while walking around in Riga old town and a few other places. The old town is a World Heritage and is the major tourist attraction in Riga. Many of Riga's visitors barely venture outside of the city centre and therefore don't [View Full Entry]

---

---

I have touched the Button of Doom We hope you are not getting too tired of us when we publish so many blog entries on Ukraine. We felt we had a lot to say and we had many nice photos we wanted to publish. But along the way perhaps we got a bit carried away because seven blog entries on vacation that lasted only three weeks is almost silly. We have yet something more we would like to write about so we do need a seventh entry. But we promise that this is the last one on Ukraine. At least unless [View Full Entry]

---

---

Ukrainian hotels, a large park, a Swedish history lesson and some other stuff we didn't know where to put it In this entry might look a little bit strange because we have decided to throw in some stuff we didn’t know where else to put it. We still hope you will like it. We can start with Sofiyivsky Park in Uman. It is a large park from the early 19th century. It contains forests, open landscapes, some artificial pools and other things you expect to find in a park. We had heard that the Sofiyivsky Park is one of the gr [View Full Entry]

---

---

Devastation can be devastatingly beautiful When we were making plans for our summer holiday this year one of the things that made us choose Ukraine was Chernobyl - the sight of the worst civil nuclear disaster in history. As a tourist destination this is a totally unique experience. In the entire World Chernobyl in Ukraine is the only place where you can enjoy a tour of an area that has been devastated and rendered uninhabitable by nuclear fallout. The word "enjoy" in the previous sentence was not meant as an irony. Chernobyl really is devastated, but it is also devastatingly beaut [View Full Entry]

---

---

Kamianets-Podilskyi, the Carpathian Mountains, Lviv and an egg museum In western Ukraine we first went to a city called Kamianets-Podilskyi. Tourists visiting Kamianets-Podilskyi come there to see the old town and the fortress. Over the centuries power over Kamianets-Podilskyi has shifted several times. With each new ruler came new architecture styles. This has given the old town a special character with different cultures living side by side. The most obvious example of this can be seen in the Cathedral of SS Peter and [View Full Entry]

---

---

Gammalsvenskby In the middle of the district Kherson Oblast in the south of Ukraine there is a small village with an interesting history. The village is called Gammalsvenskby. Gammalsvenskby is today incorporated with three other villages, Schlangendorf, Mühlhausendorf and Klosterdorf, and on maps they are shown under their combined name, Zmiyivka. Gammalsvenskby is a Swedish name and it means Old Swedes Village or Old Swedish Village. The story of this village starts in the year 1781 on the Estonian island [url=http:/ [View Full Entry]

---

---

Crimea and Odessa After we left Kiev we headed for the somewhat unusual tourist destination Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. Donetsk is dominated by mining and heavy industry and there are very few tourist attractions in the city. Add to this that the city is located far into the east close to the border with Russia, far away from the main tourist attractions in Ukraine, you realise that very few tourists visit the city. Our guess is that there are at the most two things that come from Donetsk you have ever heard of: 1 The winners of th [View Full Entry]

---

---

Kiev - the capital of Ukraine For our summer vacation this year we went to Ukraine. We started our tour of the country in Kiev, the capital and the largest city of Ukraine. In the centre of Kiev is Maidan Nezalezhnosti or Freedom Square. This square is a natural focus point of activity in Kiev. People come here to for partying, for shopping or just to sit in the sun and eat an ice-cream. During weekends Maidan Nezalezhnosti and [View Full Entry]

---

---