They say that the Vikings had a saying like this:

“Those who know nothing but their home are stupid”.

Now, I may not take it that far, but to conquer the world doesn’t sound that bad to me today. After all it’s Monday, it should be ’nuff said.

But just to add some juicy stuff to that ’nuff, I throw in a late night and too early morning, resulting in a dentist torture of me (I got a cancelled appointment) and a little nice surprise nauseous for Mr Lifecruiser.

Good (?) thing though is that the dentist agreed with me to go on the cheaper (?) filling with plastic instead of porcelain, but it still cost me 750 SEK ($107) for just one tooth filling.

On top of that we have lost the warmth weather. It has been snowing and it’s cold. They say that it’s going to continue and even become colder. I don’t like snow and to slip around which makes my back worse. Or to dress in skipants with suspenders looking like a 5 year old kid going out to ride a sledge. At least not when I’m not allowed to ride’m!!! It’s not fair.

Or wear woolen clothes that itch. Or freezing my butt off.

I had ’nuff of it, I’ve been living in Sweden all my life.

So I’m seriously thinking of doing like the Vikings. Well, not the plunderings (hm…) or rapings (sorry guys ;-), but the cruising. After all, being born up here in the north must mean that I have some Viking blood in me, right?

Now, I’m just wandering, do I need an icebreaker to make it out of here or would it be sufficient with a nice little Cruise ship? I think I’ll skip the authentic Viking ship, there is no time to build one now…

We’re seriously thinking of booking a 24h cruise to the island Åland, just to get going with the feeling and sort of put the Viking blood in surging. And we’re not going alone either, we’re taking a bunch of other savages Viking friends with us. Our best friend Miss Ass. Lifecruiser among others and then you understand the caliber of this gang…

I’m not telling you the date yet, so you won’t be able to send out alerts! I’m not stupid, I’ve Viking blood in me remember…

I do have one other problem though. It can be windy. I get seasick. Remember how it went last time when we cruised to Helsinki, Finland? When I had that romantic night in the cabin…. toilet… One time is quite ’nuff.

I don’t like to showel up seasickness pills in my butt either.

You see, no matter how I turn, my butt is still back there.

How do Vikings send secret messages?
- Norse code.

So I must send a SOS message to get me OUT OF HERE….!!!!!

NOTE: Not even those flames or the heavy Love making here can hold us ’nuff warm…

Theme: Wild | Blogroll Info | Next week: Silver
Photo from our trip to Iguazu waterfalls (on the border of Brazil and Argentina) from Estancia Aventura, Paraguay on our South America trip 2005.

Iguazu has 275 (!) waterfalls with an average height of 40 an 80 meters! Much more beautiful than The Niagara Falls! We were visiting Niagara the month before, so we really had it fresh in our memories for comparison.

The Iguazu falls is situated in the beautiful Iguazu National Park, which has 67.000 hectars of tropical rainforest, so it really is out in the nature and not at a city area like Niagara falls.

I think I have to write an own post about this fantastic trip later on… See it in pictures is not quite like in real life, but gives you a hint :-)

Lifecruisers photos from Iguazu Falls
Lifecruisers photos from Paraguay
Lifecruisers photos from Brazil

Memory for life x 2 This is a photo of a road cross box up in the mountain at Crete in Greece, a memory for life - the life of someones near and dear one. Very often with a photo of the passed away person and a candle or some flowers inside it too. I didn’t get the chance to take any closeup of it since it were kind of dangerous to make a stop… Sadly enough we saw these kind of cross boxes EVERYWHERE up in the mountain and it was not hard to understand since these roads were very narrow and curved - up and down the mountains all the time. You can see the edge of the road there, no road fences almost anywhere… Phew! This trip to Crete was also another kind of memory for life for us, since it were our honeymoon and an unbelievable beautiful place to visit. We’ll hold it as one of our dearest memories for the rest of our life! © Lifecruiser (Crete, Greece 2004)

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At first I thought that I would start the new year kind of mild and just make one tackle today: cleaning my desk. You can see the results below. Quite a difference I’d say!

Then I happened to Stumble Upon a site with an excellent Map guide function Schmap.com that made me aware of other tackles I have to do. It called me back to the real world.

You know that we’ve been travelling a lot before? (If not read our travel report) And maybe you’ve noticed that we only travelled twice during 2006? This is mostly because of my health issues.

The Schmap Player is an excellent guide to different places in the world which is essential for a traveller and it made me aware of how much I really miss it… I really long for to go somewhere now. To explore. To enjoy. Ahh…

If only my health would allow me too… It’s mainly my back, stomach and my lack of iron I need help with.

So the tackle I have to make as priority #1 this year is: my health. I just have to kick my ass to act in the matter to find a new doctor that actually can help me. That’s how it has become in this real world.

It shouldn’t be that hard to achieve, it’s just that the health care here in Sweden is really bad for the moment, I’m sorry to say! We are left with the service of something called Vårdcentralen and they really don’t want to help with you with anything that may costs anything.

Like tests to see if I still got the lack of iron for an example. Can you imagine that they won’t test me for it again? I’m still going bald and feeling very tired, can’t say I notice any improvement and since I have problem to eat the iron pills, this don’t come as any surprise to me, but maybe for them.

The “fun” part of it is that they tortured me with forced me to go through a much hated gastroscopy back in June, they said it was so very important to find out the reason behind the lack of iron. Then when the results in the gastroscopy didn’t tell about any problems, they suddenly lost their interest totally.

After that they weren’t at all interested in finding out what’s wrong. They dropped me fast like a pooped diaper…. I’ve asked for tests several times, but I don’t even care to tell you about the respond to that, it makes me so mad even though it actually is like a parody.

So I must hunt for a private doctor that actually care for the patients. It might not sound like a hard tackle for you, but for me that’s not well, it sometimes feels like climbing Mount Everest!

Wish me luck :-)

Reminder rest Tit’s:

1. Kick my ass to find a new doctor
2. Deal with my health issues
3. Kitchen cupboards
4. Porcelain boxes
5. Clean bathroom
6. Clean hall closet
7. Basement storage
8. Sales ads

(Have you noticed that it keeps adding up tackles to this list all the time instead of the opposite? *lol*)

See the latest post and Tackle It Tuesday participants over at 5 minutes for mom.

In my last GTS post I had the baby climbing Figtree and that reminded me of this another very interesting tree we saw in Fuerteventura.

I wonder if these trees were planned to grow like this or if it’s one of natures little surprises?

Was it the trees or the holes that came first? *lol*

What do you think?

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When travelling you get to see a lot of interesting things, not only the most obvious tourist objects. This is a big Fig tree we spotted at the famous Knossos in Crete, Greece, on our honeymoon 2004.

Don’t miss to click on honeymoon above to read our post about it and see the photos we succeeded to take between all the kissing ;-)

I call this picture “The tree of life”, because for me it’s placed in a paradise and in my vision this looks exactly like a lot of babies climbing up the tree. Mother Nature has many ways of showing us marvelous things.

I know that other people can see other things in this picture too…

What do you see in this picture? (If you dare to tell us!)

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Help the ants to fight the elephants by support Lifecruiser in The Weblog Awards 2006!

♥ Vote every day here ♥
(Why don’t make it to the startpage in your browser?)

This building is a wonderful old house at Stora Gåsemora, on Fårö, our favorite island outside the island Gotland on Swedens east coast. I don’t know exactly when that house is dated, because there are several buildings from between 18th - 20th centuries.

The thatched sedge roof is a very particular custom at these two islands, perhaps the most exotic part of them, mainly in the northern part of Gotland with Fårö. The tradition is still continued, mainly to keep the knowledge going, the technique is rather complicated.

Every year there are roofs that is replaced or repaired, often with some help from government funds. The public can study or even participate in this procedure, it’s announced in the media as “Täckatingar”.

The straws (Ag) are grown on the island and the tradition to use it as roof material is ancient at Gotland, how old is difficult to know. The ag roofs is laid mainly on barns and lamb houses (lambgift in Gotland), but has under pre-historical time even been on the residential buildings.

During his trip to Gotland in the year 1741, Carl von Linné writes in his Diary:

“We had not lost the sight of Lummelunds Church before we saw on the left side a big marsh, which was called The church bog, in which it grew a tall grass all over, as seed in the field, it was up to 2 m tall and was called ag… The people cover their roofs on the barns with it, they harvest it with a scythe between midsummer and Ols mass, put it tied and undried together at different directions and because of that it becomes more dense and prolonged than normal straw.”

The work is done under something called “täckating” (like cover session) which means that the täckarlaget (cover team) works without any other pay than food and drink during the day.

The roof shall be steep and be constituted of so called “raftar” which is resting between the roof foot and the ridge. The Ag layers are thick, 70-80 cm, and is packed with help of a so called “täckastake” (cover stake).

Then the roof is attached with something called vidjor, which probably is the most difficult task. After several ending moments the roof is ready and a party with food, drinks and music can start.

If the work is proper done and maintained, the roof can hold for about sexty years!

I love to see all those Ag roofs around the island, it gives a certain old atmosphere that I find so tremendously charming.

Ag wasn’t only used as roof cover material but even as stuffing in the bed, because they wanted to save the normal straw to the animals during the long winter.

Ag is a kind of half grass, almost like reed…

I’m so glad that I don’t have it in our mattress!!!

UPDATE: I read somewhere that it exist about 146 buildings with ag roofs in Gotland and 78 of them is in Fårö. That is a lot on such a small island!

Plush The Scottish Way We’ve all wanted to know what the Scottish men wears under the kilt… This is actually Mr Lifecruisers dream outfit, I guess he loves to get things out in the open air ;-) It’s expensive luxury clothes for expensive luxury content… © Lifecruiser (Scottish Highlands)

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(Wordless Wednesday post is below!)

Uisce over at Whiskey Talking have a post where he is asking us to create maps of where we’ve been and linky up in his post.

As the cruise maniacs we are, this was a must for us of course :-)

I’ve been thinking of writing much more about our trips, but I never seem to get started, so why not let these maps be the start?

Take a look at Our Cruise Maps.

UPDATE: An old travel report of 2004-2005.