April 30th is the day the Swedes celebrate the end of winter. Apparently, Uppsala is the place to be on this day. The students are starting the celebration early in the morning, with alcohol, and try to keep the party up until late night.
In the morning of this year’s April 30th, I was cycling to work, when I noticed a group of people with questionable faces, queuing in front of Systembolaget, waiting for the opening to buy booze. One usually sees these queues Friday evening, which is basically a Swedish ritual, but in that morning’s context it looked a bit unusual.
Getting back to Valborg, in the evening large fires are lit in various areas of Sweden, as a sign of celebration. There are a couple of locations in Stockholm for these fires, and that evening I went together with two friends to Riddarholmen.
The day was perfect, with a beautiful sunset happening behind the City Hall, a bit chilly, but very warm nearby the fire, if you managed to make your way there through the crowd. There were about 500 people gathered to watch that particular fire on Riddarholmen, from families with kids sitting on top of their parents’ shoulders and covering their faces from the heat, to drunken Russian tourists posing for photos taken with mobile phones in front of the fire.
After watching the fire for half an hour, we cooled down with beers in Akkurat. For a couple of hours.
Nice…especially the beer part
The fire was great!!
You know what really strikes me? Apart from the great photos of course: your particular care for exact names of places, towns, celebrations etc, so perfectly spelled in Swedish. Not that I know Swedish, but I have the feeling you´re writing them correctly. As though you were born with them in your head.
Well, for me these names are really funny. But I guess for a Swedish person “Ciorogarla din Deal” would also sound very strange, huh?
Hehe, thanks Olivia. But “Ciorogarla din Deal” sounds strange to me as well.
Misspelling is not nice in general and this also applies to Swedish names. But this post has mostly easy to spell names. It’s harder to pronounce them. For instance, “Valborg” is pronounced “valbori”.