Gary Writes A Blog

After the heavy rain that we have had for the last couple of days, I thought that they might be letting water out the lake at the barrage and that it might be stirring up some of the local Salmon population.

I decided to take a half day from work and was excited when someone at the office told me they had seen a news report on TV last night saying that an unusual amount salmon had been seen splashing around in Stockholms  ström.

I went for a walk around Skeppsholmen and Kastellholmen casting as I went and I saw more Salmon and Seatrout in 3 hours than I have in 4 years of living in Sweden. Some absolute crackers were jumping clear out the water, but they were probably 100 or so meters off the bank, so out of casting reach. If only I had a boat!

All I ended up catching was a small perch (but I wasn’t too unhappy as that’s the first perch I have caught this year).

The BBC game where you guess the scores for the SPL season is back after being missing for the last year or so. It’s called “The Predictor“.

I’ve entered my prediction with the username garyfraethedale.

Has anybody else entered or set up a mini-league? I used to be in a league with Neil, but the level of competition was poor (unfortunately, it was poor for Neil and too good for me…)

I want to join a mini-league!

The weather has taken a turn for the worst over the last couple of days with some places in Sweden having a months rainfall in 1 day. Luckily we managed to make the most of the good weather we did get over the weekend.

On  Friday night we made a quick dinner at home and went to the lake to eat it.

On Saturday, we were meant to be having a BBQ, but the weather wasn’t great so we all made a dish and ate inside instead. A Spanish friend that I haven’t seen in about a year turned up with a Spanish Omelet (Tortilla Espanola ) that was delicious. My mum says she used to make them for us when we were young, so that must be the reason I liked it so much.

On Sunday, we went to Vaxholm which is a small town about 40 mins north of Stockholm. It’s a fantastic little place that really feels like some kind of small seaside retreat. I went there with my parents on my birthday 2 years ago and we found a great little cafe by the sea. Maria and I went back there and ate lemon merengue pie and drank coffee…

I do a fair bit of web design and my normal set-up on the web is Firefox browser and a screen resolution of 1024*768.

There have been numerous times in the past when I have made a change to a website and it looks great on Firefox and unusable on Internet Explorer, but because I don’t even think of using IE, it stays like that for weeks ’til someone points it out to me. Unfortunately, about 80% of people still use IE so it ends up looking bad for 80% of people.

No longer! I found a site called browsershots.org which allows you to put in your page address and come back 2 minutes later where you can view and download what your page looks like in every browser on every operating system and lots of resolutions. Perfect!

The weather over the last weekend has been unbelievably hot. Over Saturday and Sunday the temperature was 32 degrees here in Stockholm.

Perfect weather for a picnic or two! On Saturday we were at Högalidsparken and then to my friend Johanna’s birthday party in Lappis.

On Sunday it was our turn to put on a picnic and unfortunately this meant Maria working in the kitchen through til 3pm making Chicken salads, a pie, potato salad and Bulgarian Banitsa. It was a lot of work for her, but the food was great and we went down to Ulriksdal’s park with some friends who all enjoyed it.

I asked these two if I could borrow their boats for a while, but they seemed reluctant…

The results are in from a UK parliament by-election in what is known as Glasgow East. This is Labour territory through and through, but last night the people voted SNP in a swing of over 22%. (Ever notice how politicians always say “The good people of…<Insert name of by-election here>”?)

A lot of bloggers are suggesting that this is a turning point where independence is just round the corner. Although this of course is a great change, winning a seat Labour have held for 60 years, I don’t think we can all rush out and start ordering new blue and white passports quite yet.

Independence wasn’t really mentioned in the campaign and the real vote was between the popularity of the two party’s which of course can rise and fall cyclically, rather than on the constitutional makeup of the country.

I think that there is a lot more work to be done before significant proportions of west central Scotland are convinced by the arguments for independence.

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However, I do think that this by election could influence Labour’s “support” (the inverted commas can be read twice as strong as usual) for an independence referendum through the Scottish parliament. Would they risk a vote now when thy have just lost such a safe seat?

This of course is a double edged sword for them. I have to say that I think an independence referendum in 2011 would be 50/50, but in 2015 we might have the edge. The new Labour leader in Scotland has some hard decisions to make…

 On Saturday I saw an exhibition of humorous signs from around the world which had been placed in Kungsträdgården as part of the signspotting project.

Here’s some of my favourites, especially the one that is designed to ensure you don’t get confused on the best way to use the toilet…

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Pictures from the last few days from my Bulgarian Holiday.

We needed a rest on the Wednesday, so we spent the day in Maria’s home town generally eating ice cream, drinking coffee and then going up to a hillside restaurant for dinner. The restaurant was lovely except for about half way through when the “entertainment” came on. A tuneless singer trying to deafen the audience into submission…

On the Thursday, we visited Maria’s dad’s company in Mezdra and left him to work hard while we visited the nearby swimming pool.

It was rrrroasting  hot and although I was using sun lotion, I still developed a lobster-like complexion.

I’m the skinny, milk-bottle first doing a belly-flop and then floating in the water below.

In the evening we met up with Marine and Galia again and their varied family of sons and daughters and grandchildren etc. for a meal at their house up in the mountains. Marine owns a butchers, so we had a great BBQ

Friday was my last day and it was off to Sofia to get the bus at midnight. We had the day in Sofia first though and met up with Maria’s old room mate from Uni, Nadia who is a political reporter on Bulgaria’s top TV channel…

Another thrilling installment of my holiday snaps!

This time was when me and Maria and her Mum and family friends Marine and Galia went to visit one of Bulgaria’s most famous sites, the Rila Monastery.

This was a very beautiful place set up high in the mountains and near Bulgaria’s highest mountain which still had snow on it and is around 2912m high.

Both the inside of the monastery and the outer courtyard were something special. We couldn’t take pictures inside, but every inch of wall was covered in paintings and the whole interior is filled with gold leaf carvings and idols. I’ve seen the inside of a lot of Orthodox churches over the last couple of years and this was one of the best.

I’ve attached another Youtube video that we took, it’s a little long this one, but I couldn’t be bothered editing it and adding an exciting soundtrack. The soundtrack is the one that you actually hear when you are there of the hundreds of swallows flying round the courtyard.

After the monastery, we headed up the mountain side a little to find the grave of Rila, this for some reason meant passing through another very narrow cave and climbing through the roof of the cave.

Here’s another video, this time a bit shorter. We got a great view from the top of the hill.

After coming down from the forest and off the mountain side a bit, we stopped for lunch at one of the restaurants which is famous for the local trout dishes, so that’s what we had.

Even time for a quick paddle… (in the freezing mountain stream)

Before lunch!!!

The next stage of our Bulgarian holiday was to visit the old Bulgarian capital, Veliko Tarnovo.

Veliko Tarnovo played an important part in Bulgaria’s history especially their ongoing battles against the Turks. Famous things to see in the city are the site of Bulgaria’s first university and the ruins of an ancient fortress called Tsarevets (If you ever visit, I recommend walking from the city to Tsarevets. It’s much shorter than it looks and is a beautiful walk through the old streets) .

We made a little video about our day in  Veliko Tarnovo, but I think that both of us and the camera got heat stroke half way through…