It starts early this year

..Yes, this is what it looked like Friday morning last week. And it actually stayed that way most of Saturday as well - which is a good deal more than you can say about the small amount of snow we had last year in October.

The Fan Mail Box

Even if only few people outside of Sweden have heard of him, Sweden has it's very own pioneer of electronic music.

Ralph Lundsten was building his own electronic instruments already in the 1950's and has released roughly one album per year in the period from 1966 to 2008.

In Nacka municipality (south-eastern greater Stockholm) one finds the town Boo where Ralph Lundsten is living in a large pink wooden house called Frankenburg.

As is fitting for a great artist with his own fan club (Andromeda Fan Soceity) Ralph Lundsten of course has an especially large mailbox which can hold loads of fan mail.

Fiery Fall

During the first half of October this year the Bergian Garden (some of that page should be available in English, but I'm not sure how much) hosts the exhibition Het Höst. Het is Swedish for hot, while höst is Swedish for fall. However, I can't help but add that the Danish word høst (which is pronounced the same as Swedish höst) translates to harvest - especially since the exhibit is about chilli plants and their fruit, which could be considered a hot harvest.


After having travelled to varied places around the globe we felt we knew quite a bit of different kinds of chilli, but as it turned out there are many, many more that we had never even heard of - both in terms of colours and shapes.

Monkey face chilli

The exhibit included both types normally used in cooking and types normally not used for cooking. Most of those that are not normally used in cooking are not used because they are considered not to have an interesting taste - but they vary in hotness like other types of chilli.

Peter chili

The exhibit spanned the whole range from chillies without any hotness to what is today considered the hottest chilli in the world, the naga jolokia from Assam and Bangladesh. Naga jolokia is some 200-400 times hotter than Tabasco sauce - and about 10 times as hot as a habanero pepper (which is the hottest that has so far been used in Tue's kitchen).

Pinocchio's Nose chili

Horses are traded, right?

'Hästskojare' (Lidingö)

Considering how small a fraction of Sweden we have seen we think it's quite remarkable that we have found two almost identical sculptures in two different locations in Sweden by random chance. Here on Lidingö we had already noticed the sculpture Hästskojare which is standing on a lawn near Lidingö Centre where we often go to shop.

Therefore we thought the sculpture Hästhandlaren in Sandviken looked rather familiar. As it turns out they were both made by Swedish sculpturer Sven Lundqvist. The one in Sandviken looks a bit older which is only natural since it has been standing there since 1984 while the one on Lidingö has only been here since 2008. Finally, one might speculate as to why the sculpturer has named one of them Hästhandleren, which in Swedish is a fairly neutral term for a horse trader, while he named the other Hästskojare, which in Swedish conveys much more directly the notion of dishonesty on the part of the salesman...

'Hästhandlaren' (Sandviken)