posted on 31st July 2009 under Habits, Summer, Travel Abroad
There is something for everybody in Mariestad Municipality, including the Göta Canal and several charming villages in the area. It’s situated on Lake Vänern (the third largest lake in Europe) and is visited by many tourists each summer – some in their boats touring the lake and canal, others enjoying the many fine camp grounds or other accommodations. Here you will find annual festivals, Circuses, exhibitions, concerts, and activities.
Mariestad’s annual Flea Market:
Once a year they invite everyone to visit the town flea market where you can get rid of your unused items or maybe find a treasure at a bargain price. I was there, with my Nokia mobile phone at hand, and gladly invite you along for the fun:
Flea Market at Mariestad’s Traffic free shopping street.
Get rid of your shoes or find a bargain 
Lyrestad Summer Fair:
Lyrestad is one of several small charming villages in the area around our vacation home. It includes one of the locks of Göta Canal and therefore attracts a lot of boat tourists in the summer time. Once a year they hold a Summer Fair with an auction, lotteries, concert with local musicians and various stands. Lets have a look at this charming place first, then go to the concert and finally, check out the various attractions and stands:
The village of Lyrestad on a Göta Canal lock.
Concert by the mini golf course.
Bouncing on the moonwalk for the kids.
Throw to win a Troll – or – Darts to defend your honour!
Blacksmith with nice handcrafts – or – Apple cider, honey and jelly from a local preserver.
It’s nice to go there and experience the event, to mingle and talk with the locals in a friendly, summer atmosphere and relaxing adventure. To me it’s recreational and helps me forget all the stress from work and our daily urban lives. Are you with me – do you get the feeling – or is there something else that gets you into the summer vacation mood?
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posted on 29th July 2009 under Food
WW is a casual or informal meme in BlogSphere and here is my contribution on my first attempt:
Found at the grocery store when buying ingredients for our veggie soup.
If you want to participate, just click this banner:
wordless wednesday
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posted on 27th July 2009 under Nature, Sports, Summer, Travel Abroad, Winter
Blogging about Norway and the Nordic countries; our culture, traditions and habits of course includes our significant four seasons. Sometimes I see a place in the winter time and am thinking; I have to show the same spot in the summer, to show the difference. Here is one from our favourite mini golf courses. I take it you see which season is which 
Bäcken mini golf course in Mariestad, Sweden.
My regular readers know I love winter and snow with all the great outdoors activities it allows. However, miniature golf is best played in the summertime I admit
Bäcken Summer House:
While I’m at it, lets take a look at this summer attraction, which is walking distance from our vacation home;
Mariestad Missionary Church Summer Activity Centre, with generous lawns and views of Lake Vänern attracts both locals and tourists for long coffee breaks. A very nice café plus lots of attractions and outdoors activities: The unique
miniature golf course, a child friendly
play area, courts for
beach volleyball,
Frisbee,
Boule (= Boccia) and even
canoes for rent.
The Mini Golf course:
Its very special as each and every hole symbolises a building, construction or attraction from Mariestad city or surroundings. Here you see one:
Mariestad Cathedral (tower in the center)
If you like to see and learn more about this very special course, you are welcome to read my post: Golfing in the streets of Mariestad.
There is a great difference between the summer time and winter time in Scandinavia as you can well see. All of the seasons are wonderful of course, however it is much easier to hit a hole in one in the summer season, and enjoy your sled in the winter!
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posted on 23rd July 2009 under Nature, Summer
The sun creates magical moments. Sunset is one – another is beautiful rainbow; this optical and meteorological phenomenon that causes a spectrum of light to appear in the sky when the sun shines onto droplets of moisture in the Earth’s atmosphere. They take the form of a multicoloured arc, with red on the outer part of the arch and violet on the inner section of the arch. A rainbow spans a continuous spectrum of colours. Traditionally, however, the sequence is quantised.
Enjoying our summer vacation in Mariestad, Sweden brings the opportunity to stop and appreciate nature’s magical moments, and while having a quality time with my wife DianeCA, we experienced this beautiful scenery from the balcony (captured with my Nokia N82 mobile phone):
I gladly share my trick to remember the colour sequence: Newton’s sevenfold; Red, orange, yellow, Green, Blue, indigo and violet, memorized by mnemonics ‘Roy G. Biv’).
If you like to have a closer look; click the picture to see it at my Flickr and then chose ‘All Sizes’ to bigify.
Rainbows in mythology:
The rainbow has a place in legend owing to its beauty and the historical difficulty in explaining the phenomenon. Since I always want us to learn something from my posts, let me share some of what I’ve found on the net:
In Norse Mythology, a rainbow called the Bifröst Bridge connects the realms of Ásgard and Midgard, homes of the gods and humans, respectively.
The Irish leprechaun’s secret hiding place for his pot of gold is usually said to be at the end of the rainbow.
In Greek mythology, the rainbow was considered to be a path made by a messenger (Iris) between Earth and Heaven.
In Chinese mythology, the rainbow was a slit in the sky sealed by Goddess Nüwa using stones of five different colours.
The Golden Beauty of Sunset:
Another natural phenomenon which brings magic into my life is this golden painted sky at sunset. Walking along Mariestad’s harbour with Diane one evening we experienced another quality time adventure and I had my mobile phone handy of course:
The red, orange or in this pic golden hues of the sky are mainly caused by scattering of sunlight by dust particles, soot particles, other solid aerosols, and liquid aerosols in the earth’s atmosphere. Sunset colours are typically more brilliant and more intense than sunrise colours, since there are generally more particles in the evening air than in the morning air. When there are no particulates in the troposphere, such as after a big rain storm, then the remaining less intense reds are explained by Rayleigh Scattering (named after the English physicist Lord Rayleigh) of sunlight by air molecules.
This picture was taken right after a rain fall and notice: at 9:30PM – so even a month after summer solstice, we still enjoy the late sunsets. It was a nice and quiet evening in fresh, crisp air (18C – 65F) – is there anything more recreational?
These magic moments are all around us every day, but we are so often too busy to stop and notice the beauty surrounding us. Maybe if we did this more often in our daily lives we would have better contact with ourselves and better enjoyment of this gift called life.
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posted on 19th July 2009 under Habits, Summer, Travel Abroad
Scandinavian weather is usually sunny and warm in the summer, especially in the southern part. Both in the capital’s areas – Oslo in Norway and Stockholm in Sweden (at the latitude of 60º) – the mid temperature in June/July is around 20 -25C (68 – 77F). It varies a lot though; some weeks ago we had a long period with 30C or more, but recently we’ve had more like 15C, occasionally 20C or more when the sun is out.
We are now in our vacation home in Mariestad, Sweden and regardless of the rain we are in a summer mood. It’s a charming little town (about 30 000 inhabitants) and very lively with a lot of tourists this time of year – the guest harbour is full and so are the inns and hotels. However, on a rainy Saturday afternoon, when we went for a walk the streets were relatively quiet. I had my Nokia mobile phone at hand of course, and tried to capture the atmosphere. It’s up to you to decide if I succeeded:
In the city centre; The Town Square:
Nice and quiet with just some umbrellas.
Only one stands where you could buy strawberries.
The raised flowerbed beside the square. Notice the person shooting pics under the umbrella – do you recognize her?
A sculpture with the town square in the background. Even they had an umbrella There is actually quite a lot of interesting sculptures in this town – I’ll take you on a guided tour showing you later.
So where was everybody? Well some were in their boats, some in their tents or cabins at the camp ground and of course some inside their homes. However, we heard some music in the direction of the town park and guess what we found there:
Mariestad Square Dance Festival:
Some might be familiar with this, but let me give you a resume: An folk dance with four couples (eight dancers) arranged in a square, with one couple on each side:
The various square dance movements are based on the steps and figures used in traditional folk dances and social dances of the various people who migrated to the USA. Some of these traditional dances include Morris dance, English Country Dance, Caledonians and the quadrille. Square dancing is enjoyed by people around the world, and people around the world are involved in the continuing development of this dance.
The dancers are prompted or cued through a sequence of steps (square dance choreography) by a caller to the beat of music, who leads, but usually does not participate in the dance. In the picture above you see the caller on the stage at the left to the Swedish flag.
I’ve actually never seen this dance in practice live before. I think it’s more popular in Sweden compared with Norway where we are much more into our traditional folk dance (which of course is very similar). What really caught my eye however was that they started quite young in Sweden. Take a closer look at this photo:
To the right; A baby with yellow ear protectors dancing on it’s moms stomach
Mariestad badminton Open:
Well, I might be exaggerating a bit with that title, but when we came home, the rain had just stopped and outside our house we found these guys deadly serious in their competition:
So even if it was rainy and we’ve had quite a lot of them lately, we had an adventurous day, thanks to this charming city and our summer mood. I hope you enjoyed our guided tour. My regular readers know there will be more since we are on vacation – so stay tuned!
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