Fortuitous timing...

Last week google launched a Swedish version of its translator.

Its not perfect- but in tests on theological and fishing (as varied as you can get!) websites showed it to be good at getting the sense of a page...

give it a try!

At last... real CAFEchurch

I'm not a big fan of "cafechurch".

Why?

Because although I like the contemporary setting, service and atmosphere, its still cafeCHURCH.

Or in other words its still a church, just one laid out as a cafe rather than a church. But its still church and the people who don't go to church don't go to "cafechurch" (ok, I'm generalising here but for the most part cafechurch simply attracts Christians who dislike traditional church and want something more contemporary- nothing wrong with that, I understand the desire).

I've said it before- real cafechurch would be in a cafe in which there happened to be a church meeting. Here people who would never go to a church building might be found.

And at last its happening- in major UK coffee shop chains.

Read all about it here

UPDATE: Our boxes (should) arrive today... (they did!)

Without retelling the whole saga, we decided to use a firm to move most of our goods to Sweden.

When we arrived just over a week ago we received an e-mail on the same day telling us our things would arrive today.

This morning we tracked down the Swedish office to call and see when they would arrive... after a while they said that they didn't have anything booked and couldn't see our delivery on they schedule.

We can't get hold of anyone in the UK as its a bank holiday.

So we'll just wait and see if our things arrive today!

UPDATE: They did arrive- on a UK truck. Which is why the local depot know nothing about it...

Falkenberg: S:t Laurentii kyrka

I decided to visit the local church yesterday

The main church is being refurbished so services are been held in the older St Laurentii church in the old town.

Inside the church has a painted ceiling and walls and the service looked fairly well attended (on par with the C of E services I've been too- with a corresponding age range!)

I had fun following along with the Swedish service book (fortunately enough was familiar to make sense!) and trying to sing along to the hymns.

Until my Swedish improves there's not a lot more that I can say about the service- I'll make a few observations abut the church here later.

A cottage by the lake

We had a couple of nice days away at Peter's summer house on the lake. It changed a bit (in a good way) since I was there 2 years ago. Here's our green car blocking the view of his cottage!


We stayed in the annexe


I did get out and fish (twice)...

But we caught nothing!

We also helped out with some of the odd jobs around the place. This is part of my mountain of split logs (fortunately, in the 10 years since I last tried it there is now a machine to do the job so you don't have to swing an axe!)


So we had a really nice time, thank you!

Gone Fishing!

I'll be away for a few days. My friend is over here at his summer house doing a few jobs before the next guests use it and he's invited us down (it will be a nice break, and interesting to see what he's done to it since I was there 2 years ago).

So we're on our way (its not too far from here). He says the fish are in the lake so we'll take the boat out and see what we can catch.

I think my trout fly set up will make landing a pike "interesting"- so I'll either borrow some spin gear or try to catch some smaller fish on the fly...!

A week...

I haven't updated the blog as much as I wanted-I've been settling in, trying to get out and walk a bit more (I'm trying to get a bit better!), and the pictures I took of the town came out badly as it was too sunny! (Although I spotted, stalked and photographed two sea trout in the river the other day- and here are the pictures to prove it!



If you've emailed me... well I can receive on both my addresses, but I can't reply on one of them so you might find my reply in your junk folder as I'm using googlemail to reply to all emails.

Falkenberg: The weather today will be...

Skrea Strand is a beach a few km from here. So if you want to see what the weather's like here check out their webcam

It looks like its going to be another good day (did I mention that we need to go to some shops in Skrea today?)

Reasons to like Sweden: clothes that fit!

Ok, so this might not be a big deal for most of you, but for me it is.

I'm slim- in fact in UK sizes I'm a waist 28. The problem is the smallest trousers/jeans/etc most UK shops stock is 30 (with some only starting at 32...).So you can imagine my surprise at seeing jeans going down to 26 (with a few 24) in a high street jeans store here in Falkenberg at Christmas.

With the exception of two pairs all my jeans and trousers come from Sweden!

We went shopping for shorts (my only pair is a child's 3/4 pair I got last summer which look knee length on me!) I even managed to find a pair of "combat" style (you know- the ones with hundreds of pockets on them) shorts in my size. Big deal I hear you saying... well I haven't been able to wear them before because if I put things into the pockets of larger shorts they simply fell down!

So another reason I like it here- Clothes that fit!

Falkenberg: The River Ätran

I thought I would start sharing my new surroundings with you...

Less than 100m from the place we're staying in is the river Ätran- there is a walkway accross bridge (with a forest walk/park area on the opposite side).
-here is the view upriver from the bridge

-and here is the view down river to the town centre and eventualy the sea (the building you can see is a famous open air theatre)

There is a walk along the left hand (southern) bank which leads towards the centre

In the centre you find the Tullbron (toll bridge- the historic entrance across the river into the town

You can cross the bridge and walk back up on the other side...

That's all for now- I'll show you some more next time.

(oh did I mention that the Ätran is one of Sweden's best known Salmon rivers? I didn't- well I'll come back to that when I unpack my fly rod!)

Falkenberg? Where's that?

In case you wondered were we were, we're here in Falkenberg on the west coast of Sweden.

You can visit there tourism website here, and watch a videoabout the town (there are also some other brochures available as .pdf's)

Arrived!

Just a short note to let you know we arrived on Thursday morning- since then we've been catching up on our sleep, trying to put away all the things we managed to stuff in the car, enjoy the sunshine and shopping for a few things we needed.

I'll start to tell you more about life here soon!

Update

Ok,

Sorry for the blog silence but things have been quite hectic what with packing, arranging transport, changing transport, repacking, being ill (at times quite badly ill), more packing, etc.

The flat still hasn't sold...argh!

But we have someone to stay in it temporarily until it sells...phew!

The boxes finally went... at last...

We're not to well and need to leave quickly... sorry

So,all the people who I wanted to see and say good bye to...

I'm sorry... (but too be honest I haven't been very well and it might have been a struggle to get around...)

But don't worry- I need to be back quite soon because I need to sort some things out so I will be back and I have already started planing to see you all...

I hope you understand...

I think we're leaving tomorrow sometime to catch a boat on Wednesday morning... yep, that soon

I feel a bit like this!

Another of Jon Birch's excellent Ongoing Adventures of ASBO Jesus