Scandinavian Flags

Does anything specially attract your attention in this picture? Probably, the similarity of the different flags, belonging to Finland, Denmark, Estonia (this is different), Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Europe (also different) and Åland. I have been asking myself the reason of this, and even asked some locals whitout any success. At the beginning I thought all of them would be based in the Swedish Flag, as all Scandinavia was ruled once under Sweden, but I was wrong.

It seems that all flags are inspired in the Dannebrog, the danish flag, which is considered the oldest flag in the world, with records back to the 14th Century.

Interesting, isn't it? =)

Baltic Sea

I like the sea. It doesn't matter which one.

Lost in Translation

Montréal

I expected to have written a few days earlier, but the last days have been quite work-intensive together with domestic tasks, but now I found couple of minutes to write a short post about my visit to Montreal last week.



It was my first trip outside Europe, and the second time in my life where I needed to show the passport, and I am in love with Schengen... I don't like filling in forms, answering questions to policemen about why I am visiting their country when they are reading exactly that information in the paper I gave them, and you have to pass two security controls, ...



And the country, although it's not US, it is quite similar. Everything is big, specially when talking about cars and trucks.



And about the city, let's say that it is strange, when you look at it. The architecture in the city varies a lot depending on the area you are. The financial centre has lots of skyscrapers and everything is new, while in the other neighbourhoods really old buildings (some of them about to collapse) and new ones share the quarters, divided by a bit scary alleys like in the american movies.



And, of course, the water of the river San Lorenzo (this can also be included in the "Big" chapter) and the famous Mont Royal, the small mountain which gives the name to the city, and which allows walks in the nature without leaving the city. In our walk, we "met" some squirrels and a funny woodpecker, which after working for more than half an hour, finally got its prize: two big worms. We also saw some moles in a small island in the river.




And, last but not least, the restaurants. You can find restaurants from all over the world in this multicultural city, but many of them have something in common: Apportez votre vin, which is a quite interesting concept. Instead of selling alcohol, they just serve water and soft drinks, and people bring the wine or the bier from home. With this, they allow people have dinner with wine at a reasonable price (you all know it is always ridiculous expensive), and they don't need to pay the special tax associated to the right of selling alcohol.



And this weekend, again to Helsinki. This was planned many weeks ago, so I will repeat visit to the city, this time with couple of locals and a bunch of foreigners. It'll be fun. :)

Going back

Last hours in Montreal, before taking the plane back to Europe. It's been an interesting experience. I will posts more photos and some text when I get recovered of the jetlag in Stockholm.

Spring

Tallin

Last weekend I was in Tallin. I liked it, quite a small medieval city, so we enjoyed the good weather relaxing a little bit. Only negative point was the quality of service in the restaurants (3 out of 3). Here you can find some photos of this trip.

We went by boat, so I took lots of photos from it.




Now, couple of typical postcard photos.



One thing which surprised me a lot was the huge quantity of good cars they had. There were plenty of BMW, Mercedes, etc. As far as I know, Estonia is still developing helped by the UE, so I don't see where those big and expensive cars come from.


One particularity of the ferries which joing Stockholm with Helsinki or Tallin, is that they stop in Åland, allowing selling in the boat taxes free products. And, as alcohol has very high taxes in Sweden, you can see this kind of images:


Sorry for this short and late post, but lately my life is a bit crazy... For example, now I'm writing from Montreal... Soon, I'll talk about this in the blog.

Como en casa

Esto no sé cómo tomármelo... Mirad qué cantidad de revistas "Hola!" hay en el Pressbyrån de al lado de mi casa.



No termino de creerme que haya tanto hispanohablante en el barrio interesado en leer prensa rosa. ¿Será que a la gente sólo le interesan las fotos? Pero, ¿conocen a "nuestros" famosos?

Estoy hecho un mar de dudas. ¿Alguna idea?

Long weekend in Stockholm

30th April's night is Walpurgis in Northern Europe. Sweden is not an exception and many bonfires can be found everywhere.


But the weekend had some more news. 4 friends came to visit me (and Stockholm, by the way), so we did some tourism, and for first time I went quite far away in the Archipielago, were you can find small islands, together with huge cruises. O_o


And, to finish with this short post, two photos taken in the same position... Yes, the amount of boats is so high around Stockholm that you can find two petrol stations competing with each other.

Helsinki

This week, I had couple of hours free in Helsinki, and they were more than enough. As far as I could see, it is really beautiful the surroundings of the city: lots of islands and forests, but the city was not that beautiful.


I didn't know that some of the big cruises in the world are built in Helsinki.


I knew that Finland was part of Sweden until beginning of last century, and that many people there speak Swedish, but I didn't expect to see the street names in both languages.

Copenhague

Last weekend I went with a friend to Copenhague. It's just 1-hour flight far from Stockholm, and we were interested in knowing other scandinavian capital. It happened to be an beautiful city and with a very interesting mix of Scandinavia and continental Europe...

Much more life, more flexible schedules (for eating, for example)...


... and with a real open live sea, apart from many channels...



... with an overvalued Little Mermaid ...


... with some funny situations, like these guys with a living room on a boat (please, pay attention to the details) ...


... and where you can always find your place for relaxing.