FMTSO: Winter in My Town

Except for one cold and snowy week in early December, I think this must have been the most ‘unphotogenic’ winter in my blogging history. Since then (and still) it’s been constantly rainy and gray. I’ve hardly been out except for necessary grocery shopping; and the camera has been left at home on most of those occasions.

This is the only recent outdoors photo I have to offer – and even that was taken looking out from a window:

View from the Abecita Art Museum a week ago, overlooking a parking lot adjoining a shopping center (not all under one roof but spread over quite a large area).

The link will take you to a post on my other blog about the museum and an exhibition of huge colourful tapestries I visited there. More fun to look at than rainy winter!

Or if you prefer, scroll back down through my December posts on this blog for more wintry pictures.

Friday My Town

FMTSO: Holiday Traditions

 

One of the holiday traditions in Sweden is to put up extra lights in almost every window. Electric candlesticks in a variety of sizes and shapes, and/or stars. It’s also common to put a wreath or other decoration on your front door:

I took these photos today on my walk to/from the supermarket. The stone building is an old factory; the yellow wooden house was once upon a time the residence of the managing director. Nowadays both buildings have been converted into offices.

Snow for Christmas is something we can’t make a tradition of in this part of Sweden, even if it does belong in our mind’s image of how it “should” be. This year we had a mild, stormy and rainy Christmas; with the water level in the river rising very high.

Friday My Town Shoot Out – Holiday Traditions

♥ Merry Christmas ♥

Friday My Town Shoot Out – Colours of the Season

Weekend Reflections

FMTSO: What Lights Up My Town in December

The Christmas Tree and Market in the Square.

Light decorations replacing the water in the fountain.

Inside this tent (or goahti) there’s a temporary café serving hot drinks (coffee, tea or ‘glögg’) and perhaps a ginger biscuit or Lucia bun. Inside they have a live fire burning. There are fires outside in the square too, where you can warm your hands for a while:

In the wooden market stalls they sell mostly food stuff or handicraft objects, or lottery tickets.

Roasted almonds here!

On some days there are extra tents put up at the market.

In the streets there are “curtains” of lights hanging between the buildings:

Lucia, or St Lucy’s Day, is celebrated on 13th December. In Sweden, it’s customary for each town to elect a Lucia with a number of maids who spend December going round to various public places, singing traditional Lucia and Christmas songs, and collecting money for  charity. They also visit hospitals and nursing homes etc to bring joy to people who can’t get around much themselves.

My town’s official Lucia crowning ceremony took place on 7th December this year. (By then Lucia and her maids had already been “at work” for a week or two, though.) That ceremony takes place on the terrace on top of the stairs of the town hall/courthouse, at 4 pm when it’s getting dark.

This is the best shot I was able to get with my little camera from below in the crowd:

We also have a more recent tradition of an ice sculpture or sculptures also being hewn on the spot by an ice sculptor that weekend. I was not there to watch it being made this year and I’m not actually sure what it’s supposed to represent. (Since Saturday it’s first been snowing a lot and then thawing a lot, and I’ve not been back to the square this week, so not sure what’s left of the sculptures now!)

Anyway there were also fireworks to celebrate:

 

While waiting for the bus back home, I looked up into a perfectly clear, deep blue sky with a crescent moon, doing its best to compete with all the man-made lights:

Wishing you all a Happy St. Lucy’s Day on 13th December!
~ Monica ~

 

FMTSO: Rush Hour Traffic

Usually, the rush hours in town is something I try to avoid!

The busses are usually very full that time of day too.

If I walk, I try to choose the side-streets if I can.

When walking home from town, there are only a few places where I have to cross more heavily trafficated* streets.

* Ooops - I'm guilty of "Swenglish" here, it seems :) ... We have the word "trafikera" in Swedish...

,~,~,~,~,

In the summer there is sometimes a more fun kind of rush hour traffic, as on certain occasions special vehicles gather in the town square (which is usually forbidden area for traffic).

… Like mini cars …

… or motorcycles …

Friday My Town Shoot Out – Rush Hour

FMTSO/Weekend Reflections

 

Friday My Town Shoot Out: “My Weakness”

“When driving through town where does the car pull you? Is there someplace you just can't resist stopping? A favorite shop, store, house....? Show us in pics.”

---

I don’t drive… I walk.
There are some views in town I always return to.
I love the river, and trying to catch reflections in the water.
Trees, sculptures, old factories, churches…

 

The sculpture “Bodhi” in the water next to the old cinema “Röda Kvarn” (Moulin Rouge, the Red Mill)

 

A wonderfully rounded old factory building, following the curve of the river;
and the tower of the town’s oldest church.

 

Turning round, looking the other way.

 

The old trees in the Town Park.

 

Window lights at dusk.

 

… also linking to: Weekend Reflections …

 

 

FMTSO: Photographer’s Choice

 

Stone wall along a cemetery near where I live.
The month of November is a challenge in itself:
With all the greenery gone, it’s a different world.

Friday My Town Shoot Out: Your Choice

Shadow Shot Sunday

FMTSO: Black & White

Some of my photos from the last couple of months, converted to black & white for Friday My Town Shoot Out.

Clouds (at sunset)

Window reflection

Water reflection

Old wooden church and stone wall

Old stone bridge

 

 

FMTSO: Wild Critters

Birds flying off into the sunset… (1 November 2013)

for Friday My Town Shoot Out: Wild Critters

FMTSO: A Mystery

I was on my way home from town last Saturday,
when I suddenly saw this rather unusual sight:

Actually, I first met the creature face-on, but it took me a second or two to take in what I was looking at, turn round, and get the camera out of its bag… And by then, I only saw the back of it…

Another second or two to make the decision that even though it was going in the opposite direction from where I had intended to go, I just had to follow and see where it was going!

Perhaps to McD for a burger?!
No… It turned left around the corner.
I almost lost sight of it for a while,
but then I spotted it again… 

…headed for the new playground in the Town Park.
Well, I guess that makes as much sense as anything!

 

I wonder what the children were thinking?
(I wasn’t close enough to hear any conversation.)

For me, seeing a troll brought back memories.

When I was four years old, my mum enrolled me in an outdoors playgroup called “Troll School”…

She left me there, in the wild woods with a bunch of people I’d never met before, and then out came a TROLL… Eeek!

Well, luckily it turned out to be a rather nice one, bringing us ginger biscuits if memory serves me right (and it probably does, because why would I make that up?)

But I still remember being scared when the troll first appeared!

 

Maybe that’s why (54 years later) I found myself still lacking courage to just walk up to this troll and ask WHAT exactly it was doing in Town this Saturday in October.

However, I did not have to return home still wondering.
I found the answer to the mystery on the playground noticeboard: The Occasion was a Book Release.

The book title: “Jens and the Tree where the Echo lives”.
Jens is a boy’s name so it seems the troll was a little boy troll (even though I could have sworn it to be a girl… but who knows with trolls!) 

It seems the author and the illustrator of the book were both visiting our town for a couple of hours this Saturday, selling and signing books in a building near the town park.

Apparently the troll got tired of just waiting around, and decided to go out for a stroll around town instead… :D

For Friday My Town Shoot Out – A Mystery