The Two Towers

 ... or, Keeping Things in Perspective ...

 

Walking back home from the city centre one day this week, I focused on these two tower blocks on the horison, and how my perspective of them keeps changing as I got closer.

 

 

This view is from the parking lot to the right of the roundabout in the previous photo. (From there I then turned right and followed a footpath along the river.)

The yellow brick bulding with the sign "Spinneriet" is an old spinning mill. No longer a factory but housing a number of different businesses - including a spinning gym...

 

 

Still that old spinning mill to the left in this picture - surrounded by modern apartment blocks. You can now see that the two tower blocks are not really as close together as it may seem from afar.

 

 “In one thing you have not changed, dear friend," said Aragorn: "you still speak in riddles."
"What? In riddles?" said Gandalf. "No! For I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to; the long explanations needed by the young are wearying.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers 

 

FMTSO: Important Buildings

If I choose to walk into town past the railway station, these are some of the buildings I pass by.

An ‘avantgarde’ triangular office building from 2010; the head office of a rapidly growing fashion company (Gina Tricot, founded in 1997).

The railway station, built in 1900 (building listed as an important part of our cultural heritage).

Not sure about the importance of the building in the background, but it’s one of rather few old wooden buildings in town, and is a restaurant of some kind. (It was really the tree that caught my eye now, though…)

Across the street from the railway station there is an old “senior high” school for technical sciences; founded back in 1856. On the ground floor in the red brick wing, facing the station, you now also find our tourist office.

Across another street from there, we have one of the town’s first cinemas, built in 1914 – Röda kvarn (after  the famous Moulin Rouge - note the decorative wind mill on top of the wall. 

This building is also a cultural heritage listed one. It still serves as a cinema, but is now run by the town’s culture administration. They show certain classics or more ‘difficult’ or educational films etc, usually just one or two shows per film (and daytime specials for schools sometimes).

The town centre this weekend was full of market stalls for the spring market, which I’ll save for a later post.  So let’s just sneak around all that for now and just have a look at some of the views along the river which I took from the town park while waiting to take a bus home.

View from the park across to the South Square, where most of our bus lines meet. It is surrounded on three sides by low old wooden buildings (and on the fourth side by the river).

Construction (FMTSO)

I thought I’d put in a post for last week’s Friday My Town theme, even if it’s too late to link up at the site. (But if you’d like to see some more photos from around the world on the same theme, go have a look!)

I took this photo yesterday (Sunday) on walking home from town (coming back from spending the afternoon out at The House in the countryside). The high rise building is just recently finished; what I had not seen before (not having walked this way for a while) is that they’ve now also got started with the next new building in the same block. I know it’s going to be a bit lower, more like the buildings you see in the background in the second photo.

Below is how the building site looked about 14 months ago (looking from the opposite direction). They were just getting started on the “tower” then.

They’ve been building several more apartment blocks in this area over the last couple of years. I’m glad I did not move to one of the older houses closer to these building sites. As it is, I do see the top five or six floors of the highrise from my window (rising above the treetops); but I’m too far away from it all to be disturbed by all the construction noise.

I know I have several more photos of the tower rising over the past year… But finding them is another matter.

Weekend Reflection

It takes a bit of reflection for the brain to sort out this reflection … At least it did for me, even though it’s my own photo! (taken across the river)

Linking to Weekend Reflections

A Swedish Inn

After our visit to The House of Glass we had lunch at the local inn, Limmareds Värdshus.

The inn was founded in 1962, after an old hotel in the village had been destroyed by fire, and a new restaurant was needed. The low building (2nd picture) was moved from another town and added as wing to the big house (1st picture), which was originally the residence of the managing director of the glassworks (but in 1962 owned by the municipality).

In the ceiling there are signs with proverbs.

“You should eat to live, not live to eat.”
“Eat little and say little, and you will have no regrets.”

(I have to say I’m not sure I ever actually heard the latter saying before.)

Wooden garden sculptures at the entrance.

Now I know…

… who is moving into the Mystery Place that I strolled around exploring a couple of weeks ago, while waiting to be connected to my new broadband cable.

They were actually kind enough to send me a brochure to enlighten me. I suppose they read my blog…

Whether by strange coincidence, or intuitive association on my part … The new tenants on these premises turn out to be none other than the local Electricity and TV and Broadband Cable companies. Yes, that’s right: The Very Important People (and Cables) that enable me to communicate with You!

Hey, I’m at a loose end here!

I have no idea what this is. It could hold the very Essence of Blogging for all I know…

This is where the Electricity Company used to reside (well, the offices anyway). The photo is copied from their website, it’s also used in the brochure informing the public about their Move. It’s an old photo showing electric cables being put down into the street at a time when the town “had at least one car” but not very many. Long before TV, not to mention the internet… I suppose a certain update might be in order!

Still Waiting

Today, mid afternoon, I got first an email, and then a phone call from my new internet provider, announcing happily that now I should be able to connect to the new cable. I was busy just then doing laundry; so I waited until I was done in the laundry room to try it.

Do you think it worked?

Right: Empty promises…! I still just get  “Unidentified network” and “No network access”…

So I called to complain report. One reason I chose this company was their generous support hours… Or so I thought.

Someone answered the phone readily enough – only to say that sorry, the support guys had gone home at 4.30 pm. But she’d leave them a message for tomorrow…

Tomorrow morning I’ll be out though, so remains to be seen when we’ll get things figured out!

Meanwhile, my old broadband is still working – at least today – so no real panic yet. Just a bit of frustration…

If you’re wondering what it is you’re looking at in these pictures – so am I! Ever since last year, they’ve been digging and renovating and building at this site and I still haven’t got a clue what it is they’re actually going to DO here. Easter Sunday I took a walk in that direction – not having been that way since Before the Snow; months ago. I was able to walk around the whole empty site now, but I’m still as puzzled as before. The only thing that’s obvious is that they think they’re going to need lots and lots of parking space!

The site is close to the little park where I go looking for butterflies in the summers. It’s not been quite the same since all the digging started at the opposite end of the park, though…

Midweek Blues: Looking into the Future

They’re building a lot of new apartments in my town at the moment. Behind the blue containers the town’s highest building yet is going to rise: 20 storeys. That’s twice as tall as the highest one in the neighbourhood so far. I suspect the top of it must also change the skyline I see from my kitchen window, but I’m still having difficulties imagining quite how. “As the crow flies”,  I live about 500 m from the site (and between here and there, there is the 10 storey building, which I see the top of in winter). 

This photo was taken from the walkpath directly across the river from the building site; which gives me something else to ponder about, from photographer’s point of view: Is there an angle from where the new highrise building’s reflection will fit in the river???

We might have to wait until 2014 to find out…

Linking to Rebecca’s Midweek Blues.

Time to Tear Down, Time to Build

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:
… a time to tear down and a time to build…
… a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them…
… a time to keep and a time to throw away…”
(from Ecclesiastes Ch. 3)

There is a lot of tearing down and building going on in my neighbourhood this spring. (See also the Friday My Town post at my other blog.)

Instead of the old factory building (3rd photo) there will be new apartment buildings. All part of a strategy to create more housing in or near the town centre.

Four years ago I was looking for a new (although not brand new) flat myself and had narrowed my search down to two streets or areas. At the end of April, 2008, I got the lease contract on the flat where I now live, which is about 1 km from the sites where all the tearing down and building is now going on.

The other alternative I had in mind (although there were no actual openings there while I was looking) would have been closer to where all the action is now. I’m glad I ended up where I did.

When they’ve finished the new buildings down by the river, I might be able to just see the top of one of them from one of my windows (I think I read one is going to be 12 storeys high) but otherwise my view is likely to remain unchanged. (Well – for a while anyway…) And while they’re working on it, the noise is too far away to be bothering us here.

The housing estate where I live was built in the 1940s but in good repair. I do live among a number look-alike buildings, but they are only 3 storeys high, each no more than three entrances wide, and with lawns and trees etc in between; and I don’t have to walk far to see other kinds of buildings. 

From one of my windows I see taller buildings but they are some distance away. In the summer I hardly see them at all because there is too much greenery in the way. Between “here” and “there”, there are trees, a football field, a railway, a street and on the other side of the street an old cemetery with more trees. And between those taller buildings runs the river.

Foggy November morning sunrise.
(In fog the far-away buildings disappear, too!)

End of March fiery sunset (from the balcony).

Linking to SOOC Sunday and Weekend Reflections.

Weekend Reflections – Home & Garden Fair

From a Home & Garden Fair I visited on Saturday.

The exhibition hall was originally an engine shed.

At the back of the building there is now a restaurant overlooking a river and an artificial waterfall.

The entrance hall, with a queue to buy tickets.

Linking to Weekend Reflections.

More photos from this fair will be coming up in other posts.