Archive for January, 2009

26
Jan
09

Soldaten Svejk

By Paul 2 Comments
Categories: Stockholm and Stockholm restaurants
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Soldaten Svejk is a pub I was considering visiting for quite some time.

Today I met a friend in front of this pub for a drink, to discover to my surprise that I’ve been here 3 times so far. Each time I missed the name at the entrance and also on the menus and I couldn’t read it upon exit from obvious reasons related to well done Czech beer.

The place is not that big, basically 2 rooms, one built around a bar, with tall tables and another one made like a restaurant. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a table near the corridor between the two rooms, thus having the privilege to mix the scent from the bathroom nearby with the delicious Schnitzel Feldkurat Katz. But this doesn’t matter that much after a couple of Bernard dark beers on top a few Skalaks.

Soldaten Svejk it’s the kind of place you wouldn’t take your new girlfriend to if you want to impress her, even though it’s quite cool for the guys’ night out.

A directory of not so nice places is being built under the name Syltor, meaning Joints. It’s a collection of restaurants with cheap beer and tasteless environment, rated by a so called joint barometer. One of the conditions for a pub to get into this directory is to offer beers for less than 30 SEK, which I didn’t even think it’s possible in Stockholm.

Not related in any way with the above, here is a photo from last Saturday, taken in Saltsjöbaden, during the last day with sunshine in Stockholm that I remember of.
Ice arena

20
Jan
09

The 2008 retrospection

By Paul Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,

In the past couple of weeks I came upon a multitude of blog posts around the web with 2008 contemplations, like lists of achievements and earnings, summaries and so on.

It’s kind of cool to look back over the course of one year and run through the facts, especially if the year has been good, in a way you define good.

Since I’ve been taken photos quite often this past year, I thought it would be neat to make a wrap-up. Therefore, here is is my 2008 Swedish photo retrospection. For every month, I selected an image that I like and made some sort of retroactive calendar.

January
Gloom
The image was taken on Djurgården on a sunny day, but I played a little bit with some fog effect to give it this sulky look.

February
Path
In Uppsala.

March
Park

April

On Djurgården. At that time I was experimenting a bit with vignette effects, which I’m not too fond of now, but I found it cool back then. I have to process this image again, and spare it of any weird dark edges.

May
Slant
This is from Hagaparken, a huge park nearby the office, a few days after I got the bicycle from ebay.

June
Slussen
Layers of buildings in Slussen, taken from the City hall.

July

On our way back from a trip to Dalarna, we stopped to eat near a small lake and we got surrounded by seagulls and ducks.

August
Krokträsk
The lake in Norra Sandsjärv, from a trip up-north.

September
Gärdet
In Gärdet, near Kaknästornet.

October
The chase
From a walk on Kungsholmen, nearby home. Nobody was hurt during the process. Bobcat wasn’t really chasing them.

November
Conversations
Conversations between statues near the City hall.

December
The message
From a walk in the short period of daylight in December.

Well, actually, I cheated a little bit. I got nothing in January, March and April, at least not something worth mentioning, so I put some images from adjacent months. What the heck, it’s good to be king of the blog and I bet you don’t really care about that. :)

No resolution for 2009. Just living.

12
Jan
09

Hike in Hellasgården

By Paul Leave a Comment
Categories: Around Stockholm
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The previous week has been cold, but at the same time sunny, with spectacular lights almost all day long, cast on the thin layer of snow. I was hoping the same pattern will persist throughout the weekend, but no luck. A thick layer of clouds brought in the gloomy days at the end of the week, but there was a strong need for a hiking trip in any case.

In one of my previous cycle trips to Nacka I tried to reach a lake called Källtorpssjön, which did a good job hiding itself from my sight. Therefore I headed toward it this Sunday, more specific to a place called Hellasgården.

The weather was quite warm, +3 degrees or so and I didn’t expect to find the lake still frozen and with a lot of ice-skaters on it. The ice didn’t look very thick, especially near the shore, but it was strong enough. Don’t worry, I tried it first with the tripod’s leg. ;)

Skaters in Hellasgården

I spent some time “hidden” between trees, trying a couple of panning shots on the ice-skaters and looking a bit strange, stalker like.

Family on ice

At 15:30 the sun already set, so I packed my stuff and headed back home. On my way back to the bus station, I saw some spectacular burning clouds between the branches of the trees. I rushed to the nearest gap in the forest, to get a better view, and quickly pulled out the tripod.

My tripod’s head has a clever mechanism to put the screw in the camera. They made the screw slot in such way that it may be fastened with a coin. Convenient. There is only one drawback here: having no coin with you. Of course, I could improvise, which is what I had done before, but the clouds weren’t waiting for my improvisation. I just put it in place and start shooting and in less than 5 minutes all the clouds you see in the photo below were gone.

Sunset colors above Hellasgården