My Midsommar

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Continuing from here

Midsommar (Midsummer) is The Big Holiday for Swedish people. If you can't see almost anything of the Sun for months, it's very well understandable that you will be extremely happy about the days when it is light all day. Here in Stockholm, around the longest day of the year we have 5.5 hours only when the Sun is not up. In the North, it's even more so: the Sun doesn't even go down at all.

Well, lets don't talk about how difficult is to sleep when it is as light as on these pictures, let's just enjoy the summer!

Last year I had a few photos of how people celebrate it when they get together in the community.

Other than this singing & dancing together, it's garden party time: the people disappear from the city and go out to their summer houses for the weekend. So did we on friday: got together with my husband's family and a few friends.

And a dog one of the couples was sitting for a few days, which brought some excitement and funny moments into the not-too-actionful day.

Nice food: a lot of fish, mostly herring prepared in different ways, potatoes, a little grilling and rhebarb in delicious hot zinnamon sauce. The only point was that I couldn't really enjoy the vanilla ice cream that went with it, because I was anyway freezing like hell...

In the middle of summer, around 13 degrees, sitting still for long hours... Brrrrr! Luckily, my husband's jacket was big enough to put on top of my outdoor jacket...

But yesterday it was very nice weather, so we made it up for freezing before.

Me & my Honey had a little trip to Tyresta which is a wonderful national park and nature reserves area. Just outside of Stockholm, so if you follow the Journey planner link on their website, you can easily go there with public transport (type in "Tyresta by" in the "to" field).

It is definitely worth for a trip!

We started with walking in a beautiful primeval forest which is unique: they don't cultivate it but it is left in it's natural state, representing a typical Middle Sweden forest. So you can see dead trees and such pretty often.

A few shots, on the way to our picnic place:

A smart automat

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Yesterday evening we went to the movies, saw the Pirates of the Caribbean.

One extremely funny thing for me here in Sweden is the language. The movie is called bio. In other countries, when you speak about bio, it means something connected to biology, natural food etc products. Here it's mostly used for cinema...

Buying a movie ticket is absulutely easy, you don't need to stand in long lines: you just book it on the net in your home, then go and pick it up 15 minutes before the film starts. You just swipe your credit card you paid with in such a machine and there you have the tickets.

By the way, Biomat is the name of a laundry powder in Hungary :-DDD

Seagulls waltz

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Seagulls are beautiful birds, I'm sure you agree. Especially at sea.

Here in Stockholm you don't only see them by the water but basically everywhere.



When I moved here, first I found it wonderful to have seagulls outside our window, around the big tree. Isn't it wonderful? For a girl coming from a country where there is no sea!

The strange thing is that it's a suburb in Stockholm, pretty far from any water I know of. We suspect they nest on top of the high houses. And I was wondering what do they live on? Here we have fish only in the supermarkets...

Well, here's the answer: they find all kind of crumbles and other trash, which pretty much takes away from all the aesthetics these creatures are associated with.





And what is more, they have a terribly aweful voice! Why can't they sing nicely, like other decent birds do???

It might sound very romantic when you are walking on the beach with your love.
But when a dozen of them are having a conference just outside your home at 3 in the morning... I got really pissed off last night! Uhhhhhhhhh!

But this song is way much nicer than seagulls singing: Seagull's Waltz by my friend, Evan Paul. You should definitely listen to it!

Liljeholmen, business area

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Okay, so back to Stockholm.

Last week I had to go to Liljeholmen, to change the modem that has died. There is a business area there, with modern office buildings. Steel, beton, glas, stone everywhere.

This art piece is called Origin, if I remember right.





It was extremely refreshing to find a little piece of nature: a pot with pansies. And what was even more interesting for me: in Stockholm, you can see almost only blue/purple and yellow pansies, mostly together in a pot. But finally this pot was more colorful!