Blogs from Sweden, Europe - page 6

When my sister and I were trying to see each other after two years, initially Sweden was closed to Americans and UAE residents. The week before our Greece trip, the restrictions suddenly changed, so I decided to keep our Greece plans and go to Sweden after for a week. My sisters and I took a quick trip to Stockholm back in 2004, when our other sister was studying in Finland. We had taken the ferry from Helsinki to Talinn Estonia for a few days stay, then an overnight ferry to Stockholm for a two night stay. Our ferry crossing then was memorable in that it was very rough seas. My sister I am seeing now has notoriously horrible motion sickness and she took dramamine pretty much immediately to pass out, but my other sister and I ... read more

Finally,finally on the road again So this blasted virus has not been very good for anyone to put it mildly. A lot of people have suffered more hardship than me and will continue to, i was lucky to be born where I was born and two shots of Astra’s crappy vaccine have entered my immune system and hopefully will keep me from croaking before the due date. Anyway I managed to get two weeks off, ok I know that I could retire but with our climate I can’t be on the road the whole time. Somehow the French Atlantic coast beckoned to me so off I went, 3 gruelling days on the bike with up to 33C made me rather tired and thirsty at that, black gear made me into human solar panel. The motorway down ... read more

A little known, but very fascinating, museum Over the years we have visited many museums of various kinds. We have found that those that cover a very narrow theme often tend to be very good. In the town Älvsbyn we heard of one museum that seemed to fit the profile of covering a narrow theme - namely a petrol museum. That sounded odd but interesting. We decided to visit it. Strictly the museum was not about petrol but rather about various advertising material for petrol stations and oil companies. The items in the museum all come from a private collection. When we arrived the staff, one person only, was about to close the museum for the day. When he saw us coming he explained that he was not able to stay to keep it open for ... read more

A blog entry in which Wild River isn't a river at all In a previous blog entry we mentioned that there are plenty of rivers and rapids in northern Sweden. We have quite a few of those represented here in this blog entry. But we also want to point out that hiking also is a big thing in Sweden. There are many interesting hiking trails ready to explore for anyone who wish to do so. Below we will write about four of the hikes we made during our vacation. Three of them are along rivers, and one is along a former river. All three hikes are short and can be walked without bringing anything other than perhaps a bottle of water and some sunscreen. Vindel River Nature Centre The first hike we'd like to write about ... read more

Sweden's largest rapid, Sweden's largest ghost town, the world's highest wooden house and the world's largest cheese slicer Something we learnt this summer while travelling in northern Sweden is that although there are plenty of rivers in this country there are not many waterfalls. Instead there are plenty of rapids, and they can be pretty spectacular too. We will start this blog entry by writing about the largest rapid in all of Sweden, Storforsen. Storforsen Storforsen, or the Great Rapid, is not only the largest rapid in Sweden. It would rank pretty high on a list of the greatest rapids in Europe as well. The rapid is untouched by the hydro power industry, as is the entire Pite River which is the river that feeds Storforsen. But Storforsen has sort of been regulated by the logging ... read more