The Scandic Victoria Tower Hotel is designed by the architect Gert Wingårdh, 117 meter (384 ft) and did cost SEK 600 million (around USD 90 million) to be built. The hotel building is totally covered in glass – I just love this unusual patterned architecture!

My photo above doesn’t quite do it justice. I don’t exactly love it less when also discovering that the inside interior is decorated with design furniture from Vitra, Montana and Flos…

If you happens to be nearby: take the elevator up to the skybar at 34th floor and sit down and sip on a glass of Champagne with a view over Stockholms Silicon Valley.

This is the tallest hotel building in Scandinavia, but the tallest building in Sweden is actually Turning Torso in Malmö which I also adore and wrote about earlier.

©Lifecruiser Love Victoria Tower
 

The building has been nominated to Stockholm Building 2010 for it’s design by the Swedish architect Per Johanson, who played with pastel-colored balcony windows glass as a contrast to the white side of the house which continues over the roof and is supposed to make the house look like it’s upside down U-shaped – at least on a a distance.

What’s so special (read scary!) with this house is the balcony rail of glass from floor to ceiling that hangs like a loose plate outside the balcony itself. I’m afraid of heights myself, so my first thought was how I would dare to go to the front of the balcony rail without getting the feeling of falling down…

When traveling by the subway train passing by the house, you get many reflexes in the colored glass on the house. The more practical side of me thought: how difficult to clean the windows, so much glass everywhere – and how to clean the outside?

I suppose they hire professional windows cleaners to get the job done and not hanging out from there themselves. Phew!

This whole area at Brommaplan is now in the plans of renewing with 600 new apartments as well as 14000 kvm shopping/service areas and it was not a day too early if I should be honest! It’s a bit worn down and not effective used today.

Stockholm is growing and developing – all places need to catch the modern time we are in even though we also need to keep the wonderful old architecture Stockholm has too.

©Lifecruiser Love Stockholm
 

The Turning Torso is, with it’s 190 meters (623 feet) and 54 stories, the tallest building in Sweden when created, but also one of the most spectacular with it’s crazy 90 degrees twisting of the 9 cubes in the tower from top to bottom and irregular pentagonal shaped floors rotating around the vertical core.

A true artwork in structural expressionism by Santiago Calatrava (follow the link to read more about this fantastic engineers work!) from 2005, inspired by his own sculpture called the Turning Torso which the Swedish contractor saw and asked him to copy his design as a building.

Featured in Discovery channel’s TV program, Extreme Engineering – always so incredible fascinating – where they did show how a floor of this twisted tower was constructed. It’s also built with sustainability and an environmentally friendly way of life in mind and the building is supplied only with locally produced and renewable energy.

Santiago Calatrava (from Valencia in Spain) is considered to be one of the worlds elite designers who has won gold medal’s. A truly gifted structural engineer with an unusually artistic approach in his creations! I’m totally blown-away by several of his other architectural wonders too.

He also contributed (but did not won) in the architectural competition for the Swedish Öresund Bridge in the nearby area, which we had to pass over to get from Sweden to Denmark on our next leg of Lifecruiser Europe trip…

©Lifecruiser Love Unusual Architecture
 

This one above is just one of his old cameras, his "compact-camera" small enough to fit in the pocket – probably old times travel camera, don’t you think…?

The photo book is very scientific with lots of technical details and instructions of as well photographing as developing film – which I remember that he did by himself in our bathroom. The book was published in 1942 in the third edition – you can tell photo was a big hobby already back then!

His inscription in the Swedish book "Amatörfotografen" (The Amateur Photographer) tells me that he bought it in 1947, which makes me wonder if the camera were bought at the same time – or if it was some of his other cameras that he bought at that time.

- And don’t you just love the fact that it actually has a woman photographer on the cover of the book…? I do!!!

The camera is a Zeiss Ikon Nettar 515/16, S/N:R95250, a folding camera for 120 roll film (12 photos), 6×6-format, with folding viewfinder. Weight: 485gram. Lens:Novar-Anstigmat 1:4,5 f=7,5cm Aperture:4,5-22. Focus range: 1,2m-Endlessly. Pronto shutter B-25-50-1/200delssek.

Made in Germany, probably around 1946-1951. There are older and newer Nettar cameras than this one and with a lot of different lenses or shutters and was extremely popular, maybe even one of the most popular of all Zeiss Ikon cameras.

To be sure of the manufacturing date of the camera is almost impossible unfortunately. There is a serial number on it, but since there is no documentation of the numbers available anywhere, it’s almost impossible to know for sure. You can search on the internet and in old magazines for pictures and information about the Nettar cameras, to at least be able to tell around which years, but seldom more exactly.

Zeiss Ikon made it easier with the two red mark’s setting. There is one red mark for the aperture and another red mark to set the focus, giving the optimal setting for the lens, you just have to adjust the shutter speed after your actual light conditions. At this camera above, focus is around 8 meter and the aperture between 8 and 11, to get acceptable sharpness from around 6 meter to endlessly at normal photo sizes.

I haven’t tried to take photos with my fathers camera above (and I’m giving it away to my brother now), but it should be fully functional since I can’t see any damages on it and there still is film to buy in some photo stores that will fit those kind of cameras.

If you get a similar one in your hand I recommend to try it with black and white film first – what an authentic feeling it must give!

©Lifecruiser Love Vintage Cameras

Some other posts about Vintage Cameras by Lifecruiser:

Sexy Miss Gotland 1953 Vintage Photo
Vintage Still Photo Equipment
 

Julita existed already in the Viking era and was an medieval monastery that later became a state domain and manor owned by Swedish nobility. You can see that by it’s interiors and surrounded parks, with the architectural different green house and kitchen garden.

It was also the first Swedish Museum of Agriculture that started with gene banks in the seventies, in close collaboration with the Nordic Gene Bank NGB – and still is – for a lot of different plants, fruits and flowers. Their agricultural exhibits may interest garden enthusiasts, as well as their different markets and festivals.

Tours of the Julita Manor house is hold in the weekends in May/September and every day in June, July and August. There are also other different exhibitions, family activities and farm animals which will please the young ones.

There are simply beautiful decorated B&B rooms in the manor wings from the 17th century for around 12-1400 SEK/night and double room. There is also a newer hostel alternative in another building for around 600 SEK/night for a two-beds room.

If you want something different: ask if the more unusual Octagon House – an old distillery from around the 1800s down by the lake – is available.

For the Gourmet’s like myself, there is the Julita Skans Cafe and a well recommended restaurant, also mentioned in the White Guide: Julita Wärdshus, julitawardshus.se down at the lake shore, run by the silver awarded (Bocuse d’Or 2011 in Lyon) chef Tommy Myllymäki and Magnus Saleborn.

If you’re planning an unusual wedding, there is even a Skansen church where you have the unique opportunity to get married with your beloved one. In fact: if we weren’t already married, we would have jumped on this opportunity for sure!

There is other things to do in the area too, many beautiful walking paths or why not go horse back riding? There are around 400 kilometers riding tracks, have a look at www.ridleden.se.

Julita Gård is even offering a guest stable if you’re on the riding tracks, see the wonderful old stable building in the photo below.

If you’re planning to be there in May: don’t miss when the cows are put out to pasture at Julita, the pure joy of the cows are entertainment not only for children, but also for adults. Date and time use to be available at nordiskamuseet.se/julita at the start of May, the date for 2012 is the 6th of May.

Despite the dull weather when we were there in the beginning of March, we succeeded to get a few decent travel photos showing the interesting architecture. We’ll definitely go there again in the summer season when the place have flourished up.

Our reason for being curious of this special Mansion is that my grandparents once upon a time had a farm worker employed, that had been working as some kind of maintenance manager at Julita Gård, before he came to work for them.

Have a look at Lifecruiser Julita Gård photo slideshow here.

In the Google map below you can see were it is located and exactly how rural the area is.

Official info at: Nordiska Museets webpage about Julita.

How to get there: by car on road 214 or take the train to Katrineholm and then the bus to Julita: plan your trip to Julita by Swedish trip robot Resrobot.se.

©Lifecruiser Love Open Air Museums
 

I think this one is a N. n. gotlandica, but it’s hard to tell, they can look rather different from each other, up to 40 percent are black without the characteristic yellow spots on the neck – and there sometimes are black European Viper (huggorm in Swedish), Vipera berus, too.

See that it’s blurry, the photo? That’s because I was not totally convinced it really was dead and not was the more dangerous Viper. I do have a fear for snakes, so I was trying to take a good photo for a long time, but I was shaking too much… ha ha…

It was not I who killed this snake – in fact: all snakes in Sweden are protected species. I think it might have been increasing a little the last couple of years, because we even saw the farm cats playing with a snake at the farm yard once.

This also reminded me that one should always do research about a countries dangerous species before going there as a tourist. It’s always best to be prepared.

©Lifecruiser Love Swedish Nature
 

The names Sven and Ulv are common in the runic inscriptions but Frödis has only one known bearer from the Viking age and that is the daughter of Erik the red who lived in Vinland for a time.

The fragments of this stone has been found at two different places in Sigtuna. As the runes are damaged in important places the name of the father, in whose memory the stone was erected, is not readable any more.

I love to read those ancient travel postcards – I just wish they could tell us more than they usually do. Wouldn’t it be thrilling to read a more detailed one from a real Viking…?

©Lifecruiser Love Old Carvings

Other Sigtuna ruins related posts of Lifecruiser:

Travel Photo: St Lars Church ruin, Sigtuna
Viking Travel Postcard: Rune Stone 385
Travel Photo: St Olofs Church Ruin, Sigtuna
 

The runic inscription on this stone says: “..this stone in memory of Grimulv, his mate…“. The name of Grimulv has been found on four other runic inscriptions. The mate-word connotes merchants who shared their proviant during a journey.

We have no intentions to visit all rune stones now though, since only in Sweden there is more than 2500 runstenar with messages from the year 400 A.D. and forward….

It is said to be a total of around 6000 known runic inscriptions in the world and around half of them are rune stones from the Viking age.

As we know the Vikings traveled a lot, we might call the rune stones the Vikings travel postcards – or what do you say…?

©Lifecruiser Love Old Carvings
 

While you are on sightseeing around Sweden, you might want to visit a more scientific and unusual Swedish top tourist attraction, like The Sweden Solar System – the world’s largest model of our planetary system (scale of 1:20 million!).

I instantly knew which spherical building would be representing the planet of Sun: it couldn’t be anything else than The Ericsson Globe Arena in Stockholm – the worlds largest spherical building.

The inner planets like Mercury, Venus, Earth, Moon, Mars and some asteroids are placed in Stockholm and Jupiter at the international airport Arlanda.

The outer planets and asteriods are spread across Sweden at places as Uppsala, Skövde, Karlshamn, Delsbo, Gävle, Söderhamn, Knivsta, Härnösand, Luleå, Umeå and Kiruna.

A very nice touch is that each planet station have exhibits about the astronomy science and also related mythology and culture.

Click this link to find the list where you can find out where all the Sweden Solar System’s planet objects are placed.

©Lifecruiser Love Unusual Attractions

Related Travel Sweden Attraction Tips:

SkyView World Premiere Globe Glass Gondola Ride
 

The Cog Ship type was the absolute most common in northern Europe from the beginning of 1100 and long into the 15th century. They have a very flat carvel built bottom with a high fore and stern, making them more easy to defend during sea battles.

The Cogs only has one mast with one big raw canvas sail. This ship, Tvekamp af Elbogen, canvas is 225 square meter big and not allowed to set sail with passengers aboard, due to security issues. Instead we went by a help motor with a power of 70kW.

The project to build this Cog Ship was the Nordic countries biggest medieval project during 1998-2003 and the responsibility of Fotevikens Museum, which had both the archeological and overall responsibility to build those scientific reconstructions.

The original Cog Ship was wrecked outside the town of Skanör in the southern part of Sweden and it was not until the beginning of 1990′s the ship findings were dug out. The Cog was built in the Mecklenburg area and is the biggest Cog ship found so far.

The Cog Ship had at least four guns on deck which makes it the worlds oldest known fire-armed gun ship. Probably this ship was included in a pirate fleet which were plundering the Nordic coasts after that Queen Margareta had taken the power in 1389 and captured the Swedish/German King Albrekt of Mecklenburg.

From his prison, King Albrekt succeeded to get out his orders to his old home country Mecklenburg to gather a fleet and plunder the queens coasts. During several years thousands of sailors and warriors were sent out from just that area where Skanörs Cog Ship were built at the same time.

They loaded one of the guns with flour and oats and did fire it for us when we were returning to the Visby harbor, giving us a great show how the guns could bang. As you can see in the photo above the crew were wearing authentic clothes.

Today’s Cog Ship Tvekamp af Elbogen, has been out at longer sea trips and several German harbors has been on call. Even a trip north along the Swedish west coast. Those trips are of big scientific value, to test the ships seaworthiness and to get insight in how it was back in the medieval time era around the Baltic Sea.

Of course the ship crew was wearing medieval dresses to get it as authentic as possible, but also some of the passengers I think, since it were a Medieval festival in Visby this past week. A very nice touch, don’t you think?

Information source: The Swedish Archeological Open Air Museum of Foteviken, which also has a lot of historical activities – even a Viking village.

Click to see more of Lifecruiser Cog Ship Photos at Flickr.

Lifecruiser ♥ Old Ships