Saturday, 21 June 2014

Midsummer Magic...

Today the Summer Solstice occurs and we in the Northern hemisphere will get our longest day of the year courtesy of the sun reaching its northernmost point in the sky. Stonehenge was awash with 37,000 worshippers at sunrise this morning and all manner of celebrations will take place throughout the world. 

Today also marks Midsummer in Sweden, a festival as important to the Swedes as Christmas is to me and mine. It's a time of family and food, dancing and drinking and the Swedish contingent at work are pretty much out of contact during this holiday period.

Which brings me to a little Midsummer moment of my own, this week's visit to Skanor med Falsterbo.


It's actually my fourth visit to this lovely little part of Sweden. Our European division holds its mid-year sales meeting here, a nod to a time when the company (or part of it anyway) was Swedish and management would leave the conference to travel to their respective holiday homes in the area for Midsummer. In any case, it's not your run-of-the-mill conference choice - and that's a good thing.

Skanor med (with) Falsterbo are twin medieval towns situated 28-30kms south of Malmo on the Falsterbo peninsula. It's a quiet place with a population of less than 7,000 and the area is filled with quaint, wonderfully kept houses and surrounded by pristine beaches and glorious stretches of sea and sky. This year we were blessed with warm mid-20s temperatures and I found a little time to take a stroll to the beach and to soak up a bit of Midsummer magic...





Like a row of quirky sentinels, tiny beach huts line the foreshore. 




Unfortunately the magic of Midsummer was not quite enough to keep Australia from departing the FIFA World Cup...in spite of this, last week still found this little Aussie more than happy with her lot.

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