in minnesota, we call these rock gardens...

here (hall's ranch) they have another term for them, they just call it "trail."

estes park riverwalk

bikes... real bikes... for getting around

umm... here in sweden i have noticed that people eat a lot of the things that could make you... er... kinda big in the waistline. like the fried fish i had today with a rich cream sauce. i wonder why most of the people i've seen here aren't (big in the waistline)?





errrm... this many people rode their bikes to the resacentrum on a rainy day? no, i guess i don't wonder anymore.

streetscenes

wandering around town on sunday before the town was really "awake," i snapped a few photos.



this is the street just outside my hotel.



here's the "local" lutheran church.

here's the cathederal (lutheran).
it's just about a five minute walk from the other church.

a museum. in the us, we'd have a high fence around the building to keep you from harming it. making the building the artifact not the contents.

a side alley in linkoping.



a closer look in the alley, this is the building on the left in the pic above. it's living space. i glanced in the windows enough to know that, but tried not to look too long lest i would be chased away for "peeping"
turning off the last alley into another. in the US this is where the dumpsters would go. where's all your slimy crap? well, if you don't buy so much, you don't have as much to throw out, i guess.

here's a blurry photo down by the river. the old guy is fishing.

bikes around town

ok, so we're talking about the utmost utility here, but there are bikes everywhere. i forgot to take a pic at the train station today when i was buying my bus pass, but i'll get a pic tomorrow morning of the racks and racks of bikes parked there.

this is the church parking lot... no, really

and the other lot. really, there's a service going on and there are only two cars parked near the building.

a public bike rack
and getting around town? you just do it on a bike...
in your regular clothes. i wonder if the industry that caters to sport cycling in the US has been the biggest barrier to the practical usage of bicycles. well, not the biggest barrier. there's legislation and the car lobby to blame for that, but the cycling industry itself focused on cycling as a sport, which, i believe, comes from the fact that it's a higher margin sale AND it represents much more return sales as bike nerds upgrade their bikes incessantly.

it's probably easier to stay in business selling new bikes than it is to repair (and stock the parts for) really old bikes. however, that doesn't mean they shouldn't try to sell practical bikes to everyday people.

mapping of one language to another

it's funny to find pieces of your own language embedded in the oddest of places in a foreign land.



heh, yes, i'm soooo juvenile.

looking at the swedish definition of fart in lexin my favorite tool for communicating with swedish coworkers, they describe it as such:

---

Swedish entry word

fart [fa:r_t] farten farter noun

hastighet, snabbhet

English translation

speed, pace, rate

Examples

• i hög fart---at high speed
• det var full fart på försäljningen---the sale had really taken off
• av bara farten---automatically, unintentionally

Compounds

• fart|fylld |fyllt---speedy
• fart|begränsning -en---speed limit
• fart|blind---fail to adjust to a slower speed
• fart|gräns---speed limit
• fart|kontroll---speed check (trap)
• fart|syndare---person who exceeds the speed limit

---

Swedish entry word

fart [fa:r_t] farten farter noun

färd

English translation

part of journey

Compounds

• nedfart---descent

---

i'm thinkin' utfart and infart maps more to the part of the journey than the speed thing being as they were the exit and entrance to a parking garage. however, this got me to thinking of the etymology of the american-english usage of fart... i'm thinking it came from the "unintentional" part of the definition. like, "uhh i didn't mean to do that," or "oops, couldn't help it."

ok, i didn't mean to spend too much time on this. i guess i'm just farting around :-)

pics around linkoping

i got a guided walking tour around town from per, one of the directors here in our linkoping office. we went for coffee on this square.


beautiful day. a little windy, but it didn't endanger my espresso. even the re-laying of the pave in the square couldn't spoil the view. bra!

then, on my way up the stairs to my room, i noticed how cool the spiral staircase looked, so i had to snap a photo:


yeah, i like it too!

well, that's about it for today. more adventures await tomorrow, i'm sure.

so, i went to the gate in amsterdam for my flight

and a bus pulled up...


i thought to myself, "i didn't know i could get from the netherlands to sweden on a bus," but after the bus was loaded up it drove us out to the tarmac where we boarded a fokker cityhopper bound for linkoping.

phew!

my digs this week

ok, since i'm in linkoping for a week, i've rented an efficiency apt with a fabulous kitchenette. here's the tour:

this is the office, livingroom, and bedroom.

this is the "wc" (and if you interpret "c" as closet, think of it as a step in and not a walk in).

and... the kitchen(ette). jättecool! really. it may not be the best, but it beats the heck out of being in a bland hotel without the ability to control your own food!