James Shearer

At last, I have had time to put some photos from the last 2 countries I have been to - the Netherlands and Sweden.

There are also some wildlife photos which I will be adding to.

Lots more pictures coming soon along with updates to the travel section of this web site.

So much to do and so little time.

Enjoy the photos and please feel free to post comments or email me.

Photo galleries

See ya,

James

I have to make this a quick update due the fact my Internet cafe credit is about to run out and I have no change for another just now.

I felt quite sad to leave Stockholm behind and head to the west coast and the industrial city of Goteborg (Gothenburg) - pronounced yoo-te-bor! Stockholm immediately became a favourite destination of mine and Goteborg would have to try hard to compete.

I took the train across the country which took about 5.5 hours on the express Intercity. My train car was half seated accommodation and half childrens’s playground! I’ve never seen that on a train before. The comfortable, spacious passenger car was pulled by possibly the oldest electric train I have ever seen - see photo soon.

Arriving in Goteborg I discovered that once again there was no where to stay! This time due to the Metalica concert in the city which drew in tens of thousands of fans from across Scandinavia.

Fortunately I found a room, at not too bad a price (600SEK) - still double what I wanted to pay for a budget break - but it was worth every Kroner. I quickly discovered what the giant squeegie (how do u spell that?) in the bathroom was for. As soon as I turned on the shower the entire bathroom instantly flooded by about 3cm deep water. This was due to the very inadequate drainage and the design of the shower to be one of these walk in, share the same floor as the rest of the bathroom, type of things. I ended up using the squeegie thing to direct the water to the plug afterwards.

Goteborg on the night of the concert looked a little like a field after an all night rave. Litter, glass and empty bottles and cans strewn everywhere. It wasn’t until the next morning the city cleaned up the mess.

Exploring Goteborg by foot, tram and ferry proved a delightful way of getting around. The uninterrupted sunshine and temperatures exceeding 20 degrees lasted until 9.30pm every night.

Stockholm was probably the most photogenic cities I have ever had the pleasure to visit and Goteborg, also a very beautiful city, offers little in comparison. The impressive industrial structures along the harbour, including a giant building which I assume is part of their port authority showed off unique designs which make Sweden famous for this art.

I have many interesting and some unusal photographs which I will post in the next few days. I also need to put up the photographs from around the Netherlands too!!!

That’s it for now, another remarkably vague post but I am sure I will write something more interesting as I collate my experiences of the land of Vikings, Volvo, ABBA, Ericsson, Ikea, Bjorn Borg, and of course tall, attractive blondes!

Hej da,

James