Here’s the most recent one (Ekängsturen from the leaflet I got from tourist information):

Ekängsturen

The paler part of the route was added manually, my GPS batteries died in Tallboda.

The flight is pretty long, but fortunately we were able to start from Linköping and fly via Amsterdam. Unlike the last few times I’ve flown via Schiphol we didn’t have hours of hanging around there.

Most of my time was spent working, but I did have a free weekend and Adrian and Amy managed to travel down from Vancouver. It was really good to see them again and catch up over some beers and nice meals.


Here are some more pictures:

The journey is pretty easy, Ryanair fly direct from Skavsta to Wrocław, so it’s just the usual torments of flying with an airline that hates passengers. We got there about lunchtime, checked in at the Scandic and then wandered down to the market square for a beer and some solid Polish food.

It was a really fun week, the team took us to lots of nice restaurants for lunch and it’s always good to spend some time with people you normally only see by video-conference. I especially liked the Spiż bar/brewery on the square, whenever you bought a beer you got handed a lard sandwich to go with it. Food and drink are very cheap compared to Sweden, especially lunch at Miś Bar — where you can get platefuls of dumplings for a few złoty.

It’s a city full of statues and monuments, this one was right across the road from the hotel:

I started off walking up Vasavagen to Raoul Wallenberg’s square.

On the way up to the cathedral there’s another statue sitting outside the Länsmuseum and lots of flowers covering this walkway.

Up at Trädgårdsforeningen they were celebrating 150 years since the society was formed, with music and dancers on the stage. Other people were just sitting in the sunshine or playing volleyball.

This weekend is also Linköping’s harbour festival, although there’s little left of the once-busy harbour. On both sides of the river there were stages, beer tents and various activities going on. They’ve even made a beach outside the Scandic hotel.

I’m renting a furnished apartment until August, so that I can take my time looking around for a more permanent apartment that I can then furnish exclusively from IKEA. In fact I’ll be going in there tomorrow for a few things I need right now.

Opera Software

More specifically I’ll be working on the Opera Mini browser for mobile phones. If your phone supports Java (most do) then it’s worth trying Opera Mini, the built-in browser on most phones is dire!

So, when I get back from my trip around the world I’ll have about a week to unpack, visit people and then repack and move out to Linköping.

On the label it gives the strength as “5% +- 0.5%”. This is a lot more honest than other Nigerian beers, claiming to be exactly 5.2% when everyone knows it’s more like “somewhere between 2 and 8 percent”.

Tonight the Nigerian version of ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ was on. The contestant was a bit stuck, so phoned a friend. The friend’s side of the conversation went something like this:

Hello? I can’t hear you. Who is speaking? Hello?

It continued like that until his 30 seconds ran out. The joke is that the show is sponsored by MTN.

For me the sight and sound of the young gardener sharpening his machete immediately reminded me of film of the Rwandan genocide, showing how easily perfectly normal words, sounds and actions acquire hideous new meanings. It really did send a shiver up my spine.