old hometown looking older

Even though the greenery outside right now is luscious, and beautiful, I wanted to post some pics I "made" the other night. Read in another blog about this cool Japanese site where you can transform your pictures into vintage looking ones, and it was so much fun. These are all pictures from my hometown, Nyköping, a small town about an hour south of Stockholm. There are a lot of cute places there, and it's very nice for long walks, but I wouldn't want to live there again. The above picture is taken just down the small street where I lived the last three years before I moved away from home.


I love the stream, and the little walks by it's sides, and there are some adorable wooden bridges. Or maybe it's just the one, I honestly don't remember. Here it is anyway. It's also very beautiful in the winter, with lots of snow everywhere. There are some gorgeous sweeping weeping willows along the stream, it's one of my favorite trees.



I usually go by train when I go back, and this is the pretty little old station house. I've loved this station ever since I was little, maybe cos it also meant I was going somewhere else. But mainly cos I really love old station houses in red brick, although there aren't that many left nowadays I guess. There was a time when I dreamed about living in one, but I'm not too sure about that anymore. Trains are definitely my favorite mode of traveling, there's nothing like it. Well, it's not always great, it can be horrible, but when it's good it's the best.



Here's the most famous building in Nyköping: the castle. Terrible things happened there in 1317, during the dark middle ages, and every summer we get to relive it in the courtyard if we want. I've seen it enough times. One of the weirdest and most daring things I've ever done was climbing around the main part of the castle with a friend. She was always very daring and loved climbing, the complete opposite of me who've always been terribly afraid of heights. But for some reason, one night with a full moon, I just went for it, and nothing bad happened. It was incredibly scary at one point, but my friend encouraged me to jump and I made it. Crazy moon.



Also very close to the stream next to our old house, you'll find the old brewery, which is one of my favorite buildings. My dad used to have his office on the third floor, and there were some terrifyingly huge spiders outside the windows, one night I was even scared to walk home alone cos I imagined they would attack me. As is so often the case of course, attacking giant spiders are quite common in Sweden. The picture is taken from a bridge, and just below that bridge a heron called Harry usually stands on one leg looking very statuesque. For real. I wonder if he ever eats the spiders.



Here are the sweeping weeping willows, looking amazing as always. The house is another part of the old brewery, very classic redpainted wood with white window frames. In the Swedish countryside it's the most common house you'll see, well maybe except for the southern parts where a very low one storey white stone house is more common. As far as the weeping willows go, I've got one outside my building here in Stockholm, but I have no idea how common they are anywhere.



Finally a picture of another house that at least got a very famous architect, Ferdinand Boberg, and thereby should be famous. But is seems not even that many people from Nyköping know about the architect and the story behind the house, they might just think it looks a bit odd opposite the castle, with it's national romantic Swiss look. I'm not gonna give a lecture about it either, cos it's not that I'm an expert, but it's from 1906 and called NK-villan, that much I'll say. I'm not sure what I should say about the ghost standing in front of the house ... Let's leave it alone. Maybe it's just Harry flying by.