As well as wishing you Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, I'd like to start by thanking you for your support in 2018. It's been a wonderful year where I have increased my readership and more than tripled my book sales! I've also been able to help a lot of other authors to publish and market their … [Read more...]
Happy Midsummer!
Tomorrow all over the Nordic countries people will be celebrating Midsummer Eve.In Finland this means that good food and drink will be consumed, there'll be some dancing, and fires will be lit to mark the night when the sun never sets.In Sweden, and in Åland, people will be picking wild flowers to … [Read more...]
Travel and special assistance
As luck would have it, at the end of a three week long Nordic holiday attending a wedding in Helsinki, visiting family in Tampere and celebrating midsummer on the Åland Islands, the day the Englishman and I were packing up the cottage to return home to London via Helsinki (a complicated route from … [Read more...]
A little bit of Sicily in Åland
Rosario Brancato of Belissimo Glassbar Åland islands (where we go on our summer holidays) has always been culturally a funny sort of a place. It's closer to Sweden than Finland, yet is an autonomous part of Finland. It has a rich history of seafaring; it even played a role in the Crimean war when … [Read more...]
Åland Islands: Glada Laxen restaurant in Bärö
On Friday, the last but one day of our week-long holiday to the Åland Islands we joined my family to celebrate a 75th Birthday by visiting a remote island restaurant, The Glada Laxen, near Kumlinge in Bärö. This restaurant belongs to a number of establishments listed in The Best of the … [Read more...]
Holiday packing
This is me unusually organised. But look at the size of the suitcase!There was an article in the Daily Telegraph yesterday which struck a cord with me - and annoyed me in equal measure.According to research the average woman overpacks a suitcase by 26 items. It seems we, as a gender, use just half … [Read more...]
Design from Åland: Ego Collection by Minna Rundberg
I discovered the simple designs by Åland born designer Minna Rundberg last summer when I was looking for a present for a friend's significant birthday. Then Minna had her products set out in a small corner of a shop and was just planning an internet site.I bought a pair of Prisma schnapps glasses … [Read more...]
Holiday packing: capsule wardrobe time
I'm hopeless at packing for a holiday. First of all I can't do it much ahead of time because the weather where we usually go (Åland Islands in Finland) is always unpredictable, and I have to wait until I have a proper reliable forecast. At least that's what I tell myself, because the real and … [Read more...]
A crayfish party for two
'I've never had a crayfish in such polite society,' said husband as the friendly waitress tied our bibs on and asked if we wished to order some schnapps. We looked at each other and smiled. 'Of course,' he said. We were sitting at a window table in a restaurant called von Knorring in Mariehamn's … [Read more...]
Finns can’t cope with ice – shock!
I've had some disturbing news from Finland: some 50 vessels of various kinds are stuck in the ice around the Åland Islands in the Baltic Sea between Finland and Sweden.During the most severe winter weather Northern Europe has experienced, this sounds a perfectly reasonable state of affairs. Expect … [Read more...]
