Aug 1, 2014 |
I’m getting a lot of fresh air at the moment. It’s helping a lot. Every now and then, you need a bit of scenery and oxygen. As you may have picked up, I’m in Sweden. Actually, I’m further north than most people think of when they think of Sweden. I’m just outside of Umeå, in the Västerbotten region.
But I’m not in Sweden for my health. I’m working here. I’ve been meeting with some fantastic people at the University of Umeå to bring Music Tech Fest to Scandinavia.
If you haven’t heard of it, Umeå is currently Europe’s ‘Capital of Culture‘. That means there’s a lot of investment, a lot of optimism and a lot of fascinating interdisciplinary projects – many of which take place at the intersection of design, music, technology and art.
In other words – my kind of thing.
There’s also a rather cool Guitars museum – with the largest collection of electric guitars on the planet. They have rare Fender and Gibson guitars from the 50s that Fender and Gibson themselves don’t have.
The university has a new facility opening up soon called Sliperiet. It houses a range of innovative projects and businesses making art installations, feature films, new types of interactions and products, and – interestingly – projects that bring together music and technology.
The facilities here are incredible. Make anything you want from digital video to large structures of wood and steel. They can 3D print a car, for goodness sake.
Sliperiet will be the home of Music Tech Fest Scandinavia 2015.
I don’t seem to have taken a lot of photos of the city centre here. Or any, actually. It’s very nice – and there are cafés, record stores, cinemas, supermarkets and all the other things you need to run a city. Traffic is no problem whatsoever. There are even cycle lanes.
But there’s also an awful lot of nature here in Sweden. Bears, moose, reindeer, frogs, squirrels, and birds of many shapes and sizes. And it tends to be those things that I’ve been pointing my camera at. After all, this is not the sort of thing you see every day in Kings Heath, Birmingham.
More noticeably, from a nature perspective, Sweden appears to be basically a series of lakes and fjords loosely held together by pine forests. A trip on the Wilderness Way is strongly recommended if you get over this way. In fact, make a point of it.
Hiking’s a big thing here. So is fishing. Cycling, golf and hunting also seem to feature heavily on the ‘going outside’ agenda.
Swedes appear to like being outside rather a lot. I thought it might have been something to do with the fact that up here near the Arctic Circle, any bit of sunshine would be welcomed as an opportunity to leave the house, but apparently the whole going out into nature thing is a year-round experience. Even when it’s minus 30 outside. Those activities that require the surrounding area to be entirely frozen are also very popular.
I heard that the year-round average temperature here is 3 degrees. That’s not very warm. And yet, my experience here has been sunshine and temperatures in the mid to high 20s. One day, it reached over 30. I’m okay with that.
And of course – from a sightseeing perspective, what you can see when the sun does come out is worth seeing.
Imagine, for instance, visiting Niagra falls, and being the only person there. That’s a bit what going to Hällsingsåfallet is like.
Imagine going swimming where the beach is in one country and the water in another. Did that a couple of days ago.
Imagine taking a stroll through a mature pine forest from the banks of a fjord to the edge of a lake just to get from your own house to have a cup of coffee at your friend’s house. That’s where I’m at right now. And I’m less than 15 minutes from the city centre.
Imagine sitting and writing a blog post at 10:30pm as the sun slowly starts to set outside. That’s what I’m doing.
I like it because it’s not what I’m used to. I like it because despite all of the work and the stress going on right now for all sorts of reasons – it feels like a holiday. I like the people and I like the place. I like the innovation, I like the optimism and I like the ambition here. I like the food, the attitude and just how damned civilised it all is here.
I love the forests and I love the lakes. Those are really special. I’m out of here after the weekend – but I’m definitely coming back. This is a magical place. Can’t wait to see it buried in snow.
Apr 28, 2013 |
Confession: I have lived for eight and a half years in walking distance of Moseley Bog and had never actually visited until this morning. Not entirely sure why that is, or what it was I’d pictured that had prevented me from setting foot inside until now (despite having been past thousands of times), but it’s where I’m going to be going walking pretty frequently from here on out.
It was a lovely way to start a crisp, overcast spring morning and it’s only going to get nicer as the weather improves (assuming it ever will). The place is far bigger than it appears from the street. These things, I’m starting to find, usually are.
There are multiple paths and walkways through Joy’s Wood (named after the woman who spearheaded its preservation from the threat of developers just 15 years ago), some signposted and boardwalked, others more of a dirt trail through thin, moss-laden trees that lead to open grass areas.
You don’t have to venture far from the road to lose the sense of suburban South Birmingham. The traffic noise in the distance fades into the constant rustle of the trees and disappears beneath the bubbling songs of the finches and jays and the repetitive rapping of the woodpeckers who live there.
Didn’t even know we had woodpeckers.
I’m led to believe there’s also an incredible display of bluebells in Spring, if that’s your kind of thing (and it’s starting to be mine), though they’re late this year because of how cold it’s been. Something to look for each time I go back, I suppose.
I picked a tree stump on the edge of the wood as a place to sit, drink my flask of coffee and write. I’ll be doing that again, weather permitting. Perfect spot. The occasional dog walker to say hello to, but other than that, quiet and fairly isolated – a broad, undulating grassy area on one side, a tangle of trees on the other.
It made me think about the fact that these places – the woods, the parks, the rivers – are not situated in neighbourhoods, but rather – the other way around. Neighbourhoods are cut out of these places. Built around and within them. The further I walk into the green areas around South Birmingham, the more I realise that the terraced houses and suburban streets are more of a facade than they are representative of the area.
And while we may have tamed these spots, built barriers around them, constructed pathways and erected helpful signs, I’m increasingly reminded that they were here before we were. And the more time I spend in these places, the more I feel like this is my neighbourhood rather than the Poundland on the Kings Heath High Street or the endless wall of brick houses on every side street.
Yesterday, I managed an eight mile hike that took me alongside streams, out the back of Sarehole Mill, along the river Cole on trails through woods and then onto the canal system through the back of Digbeth and into town. I was never far from civilisation, but it felt like a different part of the country. A different part of the world.
Or maybe I’m only just starting to figure out what this part of the world is actually really like.
Anyway… today, I walked less than half that distance, and the fact that I was so incredibly close to home the whole time was the thing that really stuck in my head. This has been here all along.
I should probably make the most of it.
Apr 7, 2013 |
I went for a walk near my house today. Hardly blogworthy news, but I mention it for a couple of reasons.
The first is that I’m only really starting to discover the extent to which Birmingham is actually green. I always think of this as a road-intensive place. Birmingham, more than most cities, prioritises the car (which is why so many people have only ever driven through, rather than visited our fair city) – but behind most of the roads, park land has been cunningly hidden.
It’s not just parks either, though there are certainly a lot of those. Get onto the canal towpaths and you’re so isolated from the main roads that you could fool yourself into thinking that you’re in the countryside.
And there are some unexpected gems. I was strolling along the Birmingham-Stratford canal, heading South – and there was a small gate to my left that simply said “Warwickshire Wildlife Reserve”. The reserve was a remarkably small patch of land, but it did what it said on the tin: it was a space that was reserved for wildlife. We’re allowed to visit, sure, but it’s not ours. I kind of like that idea.
As wildlife goes, of course, the English variety is archetypal in its understated modesty. You might see a heron (I did). You will not see a lion or a bear. Even so (or perhaps, as a result) a wildlife reserve is a perfectly wonderful place to think, reflect, breathe and drink coffee.
The second reason I mention that I went for this particular walk is that I’ve started to alter the way I think about the concepts of map and terrain, and that really came home for me today.
Until quite recently, I used to think of roads and paths as methods of getting from one place to another. Lines that joined points of origin and destinations.
Today I really began to look at those lines as places to be in themselves. Not “it’s about the journey” but, more interestingly, that the route can be a perfectly good destination in and of itself.
Both physically and psychologically, the place I went today was a path.
Apr 1, 2013 |
I went away for Easter weekend. Needed to get out of town for a bit, clear my head and so on. As you do. Also, I’d never been to the Lake District, and I’d heard it’s beautiful.
I went for hikes. One of them took me to the top of a mountain. The highest peak in England, in fact: Scafell Pike. I must be the only person I know who can accidentally go mountain climbing.
I parked the car, and started to stroll. There were no signs in particular, but there was a trail and so I followed it. It joined another one, and there were several people walking up that same hill, so I followed the pack. Before long, there was snow and it got rockier, steeper and increasingly cold.
Cut a long story short, despite seriously considering turning back a few times, I eventually (nearly 5 hours later) found myself at the summit, which felt like quite an achievement. It’s not mountain climbing in the traditional sense of the term, but it was certainly the longest, steepest, toughest and most treacherous walk I’ve ever been on.
The way down was somehow almost more difficult. Slippery. Tricky. Hard on the knees. But gravity sort of ensures that you eventually get down. And there was a roast dinner at the end of the trail.
As you’d probably expect, given that I was as high up as it was possible to be in England without being in an aircraft, and in the Lake District at the same time, the views were pretty spectacular.
I also saw some nice scenery from the ground – and the water too.
Since it was the Lake District, I thought it was also a good idea to get out on a lake, so I did the Windermere Lake walker’s route.
From Brockhole to Ambleside by boat, a ferry to Wray Castle, then a 4 mile lakeside hike to the next ferry to Bowness, and another boat back to Brockhole, which is another 2 mile walk back to where I was staying.
My feet hurt, and I’m exhausted, but totally worthwhile. All the photos are here on Flickr.
Mar 30, 2013 |
Those who know me will know that I love a good list. Trivial stuff, mostly: Top 5 New Zealand hip hop albums of all time. Best Buffy episodes. Sub-divided daily to-do lists organised by context. That sort of thing. However, I just made a list that I’m quite excited about. And it’s a list that I made to ensure that I don’t die.
Okay so “die” might be putting too fine a point on it, but it is a list that has the words “first aid kit” on it, which is certainly a first for me.
In a couple of hours time, I pick up a rental car and make my way up to the Lake District. I’m staying in youth hostels, and I’m going to be doing some hiking. People who have known me for a long time will probably find this surprising. I’m not known for my intrepid outdoors adventures.
So more than ever before, I’m preparing for this trip. I’ve been doing research, taking lessons from friends who have done this sort of thing before, talking to the guys in the outdoor equipment store (who managed to sell me a few things along the way), and even downloading a couple of useful apps.
I’ve travelled a lot, and I’ve been to some really amazing places, but there’s something about spending time on very deliberate preparation that makes the whole adventure more exciting in a way that I hadn’t really encountered before. Usually, I simply turn up and see what happens. I’ve been known to arrive in foreign countries only to realise at the airport that I don’t know where I’m staying or the names and contact details of the people I’m there to see. It generally seems to work out okay.
But this is new territory. I have my flask of coffee, my hiking boots, a backpack full of useful things, my waterproof jacket, and – an unprecedented marker of preparedness for me – a folder full of information that I’ve printed out about the places I’m going.
And I have my list. I think I’m all set. I’ll see you on the other side.
Have a fantastic Easter.
