Beijing, where tradition meets innovation

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One of my favourite city sights of Beijing, China, the CCTV Headquaters. Located in the Beijing Central Business District, this stunning 51 storied skysraper on East Third Ring Road was awarded the 2013 Best Tall Building Worldwide from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.
Text & Photo © CM Cordeiro & E Sindhöj 2023

My last visit to China was in 2019, to the cities of Shanghai, and Chengdu. Shanghai, located on the eastern coast of China, is the country’s largest city and a global financial hub and easily one of my favourite cities in China to visit. The city has a modern, cosmopolitan vibe, with glass walled skyscrapers, luxury shopping malls, and a trendy nightlife. Evening walks along the Bund and day time walks around the French Concession, offer glimpses into the city’s colonial past. Chengdu, located in southwest China, is memorable for its more relaxed city vibes and lifestyle, spicy cuisine, and adorable giant pandas. I have written about dining at its many traditional tea houses, meandering through its parks, and contemplating the symbolic architecture of its temples.

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Tjolöholms Slott Julbord SE 2022

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By the fireplace in the main hall of Tjolöholm Castle for this year’s Christmas table sitting, in Halland, Sweden 2022.
Text & Photo © CM Cordeiro & JE Nilsson 2022

Tjolöholm Slott, video compilation.

It began to thaw a little in the west coast of Sweden about a week before Christmas. But it’s always a pleasure to walk the expansive grounds of Tjolöholm Castle, witnessing the last gold rays of the sun dive below horizon.

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Vörtbröd Jul2022 Styrsö SE

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The weekend bake, vörtbröd, at Styrsö Sweden, 2022
Text & Photo © CM Cordeiro & JE Nilsson 2022

Just out of the oven warm.

It’s been some years since we last baked our own Swedish Christmas vörtbröd. I love bread baking but I’ve often found this dough difficult to work with because of the delicate combination of sticky molasses and dark ale. There are variations to the recipe that can be found online, so it’s easy to tweak to make your own favourite version of vörtbröd.

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Lussekatter AW2022 Styrsö SE

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The weekend bake, lussekatter, revisiting our own a recipe from 2012 at Styrsö Sweden, 2022
Text & Photo © CM Cordeiro & JE Nilsson 2022

I saw the boundaries of festive periods, often indicated by the appearance of certain foods, dissolve when I recently walked into a grocery shop along the Swedish west coast, and found a luscious twin pack of semlor (a specific February treat), in mid-November. The appearance of a Shrove Tuesday food appearing just past All Saints took us by surprise, and it took us all of two seconds to grab that purchase. It seems the semla is the new Swedish preserved herring, soon to be eaten year round at all Swedish festivities, so we’ll roll with that.

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Jul i Haga Göteborg SE 2022

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The beginning of the festive winter season at Haga, Gothenburg, Sweden, 2022
Text & Photo © CM Cordeiro & JE Nilsson 2022

The plan was to head to the Design Christmas Market happening at the Culture Arena in Gothenburg, but as plans go these days, we found ourselves walking the nearby cobbled streets of the oldest quarters of the city, at Haga. We had a window of fair weather under a clear blue sky in the morning, which promised sunshine and crisp winter for the whole day.

Having lived in Tromsø for the past four years, with snow on the beach, I haven’t had the opportunity to walk these streets in a long while. So, I was totally happy to be peering through the various café windows. In the background was the soft murmur of crowds and the symphony of clunking boots on stone.

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In celebration of All Saints’ Day in Sweden

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At Kungstorget, Gothenburg, Sweden, for the Ghost Parade or Spökparaden 2022 for the Feast of All Hallows.
Text & Photo © CM Cordeiro & JE Nilsson 2022

The Feast of All Hallows of alla helgons dag, is always celebrated in Sweden on the Saturday between 31 Oct. and 6 Nov. This year, the celebration was in the form of a ghost parade. I first saw the invite on Facebook with a modest note of 3 interested persons curious to attend. The organizers were attempting for a Guinness World Records for largest spook parade. The instructions attached to the event invite were, “Come dressed as a ghost”. That didn’t sound too demanding at all, and being inner witches and warlords, we thought it fun to impersonate a relative.

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Postcards from the Arctic Circle July 2022

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Tromsø, Northern Norway Photo by Thomas Lipke at Unsplash.
Text & Photo © Thomas Lipke, CM Cordeiro & JE Nilsson 2022

It was pictures of Tromsø by individuals such as Thomas Lipke that made me fall head over heels in love with the compact Arctic City. I spent all of two days somewheres in early 2018, browsing tourist information sites that featured Tromsø, and after closing several consecutive running windows on my laptop, I decided that I could move there to live and work, time indefinite. I completely ignored the fact that I was city born and bred in equatorial Singapore.

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Summer solstice and Midsummer’s Day 2022 Styrsö

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The Midsummer Pole at Styrsö Bratten, Swedish west coast, Sweden 2022.
Text & Photo © CM Cordeiro & JE Nilsson 2022

The summer solstice on 21 June marked the day of maximum sunlight in the northern hemisphere. In Gothenburg, Sweden, these are the days when you can see the rim of the sun lightly touch the horizon and then rise again.

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Sjømatfestivalen 2022, Tromsø, Norway

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Grilled salmon at the Tromsø Seafood Festival / Sjømatfestivalen 2022, Norway.
Text & Photo © CM Cordeiro & JE Nilsson 2022

It has been some years since the Arctic City, Tromsø, saw such a great buzz of activities that appealed to people of all age groups. It seemed like the majority of city folk and its suburbs were out on the streets this morning with the Seafood Festival weekend for 2022.

There were several activities on-going simultaneously, and I was eager to catch them all in action at the same time. In Tromsø harbour, at one pier, starter guns and flares were up in the air at regular intervals for a rowboat race. The participating crowd dressed in festive costumes for the race. Two teams caught my eye, the first was a group of women who wore black t-shirts and gym tights, paired with colourful tutus, and the second team who had beautiful costumes chose the more elegant bunad or Norwegian folk dress.

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