Saturday 29 September 2012

Autumn Market

It’s That Time Of Year again:

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Spring Market and Autumn Market are old traditions in the town of Borås – going back hundreds of years. In the autumn it’s always the last weekend in September.

The goods sold have probably changed a bit over the centuries; even if they always seem pretty much the same to me…

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Why do children love balloons so much?

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“Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon”
(quote from Winnie the Pooh)

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I came into town early on Friday while they were still setting things up.

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It soon got crowded though…

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… and rather hard to find elbow room to take photos.

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Christmas is less than three months away…
At the market you can buy Christmas cards or other postcards for just 1 krona a piece. To actually send it somewhere you need to add a stamp worth 6 kronor though (inland postage) – or 12 to another country.

The official currency abbreviation for the Swedish krona/ kronor is SEK. (In Swedish we usually just write “kr”.)

10 SEK = 1,50 USD / 0,90 GBP / 1,20 EURO

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Certain sweets are traditional at markets…
I resisted the temptation this time.

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We had a glimpse of sun yesterday morning for the market and I think the rain kept away most of the day. Today however, the rain was pouring down again.

One thing I bought was a bag, a single strap backpack. It was puffed up with various waste material inside. Getting home, and sticking my hand inside to take that out… I was in for a bit of a yucky experience as it turned out to be a very damp mix of plastic and crumpled paper… Made me realize how hard it must be for those selling their goods at markets in all kinds of weather to keep their goods dry!

It also makes me somewhat doubt the statement on the attached label that the bag is really waterproof...

Never mind, on closer look the entertainment value of that label is almost worth the price of the bag:

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As amusing as it might be to try and argue complaints based on that text, I decided to just keep it and try a ‘man-made’ change instead.

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It’s hard to demonstrate in a photo but I can’t quite figure out what size of wearer they had in mind. Someone with a fullgrow man’s shoulders but a child’s waist, it seems! I had to add an extension to the waist-belt but shorten the shoulder-strap.

6 comments:

  1. Hello:
    What fun the Autumn market looks to be. Just the thing for cheering up a dreary day. Balloons, just as the ones you show here, are very popular in Budapest and, on Saturdays, when families come en-masse to the Zoo there are helium filled balloons bobbing about everywhere one looks amongst the animals!!!.

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  2. We have similar market dotted throughout the year, too, but my favourite one is of course the Christmas market. And unlike you, I can easily resists the bags and other stuff for sale, but not the sweets :-)

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  3. i like all the rides they are setting up, looks like much fun to me. so now you have a waterproof sack that is not waterproof and was created for a mutant being. good luck and have fun with it.

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  4. “Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon”
    (quote from Winnie the Pooh)
    So true. I miss the days when we had children and an excuse fo blow up some balloons and bat them around from person to person. Our Mum in her nineties enjoyed sitting there batting one on as much as anyone.

    Postcards at 1 krona, I must visit.

    Even if designed for a gnome or orc at least your new bag is 'indefectible'. What a lovely word.

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  5. Well at least I know now (or is it now know - the English language is so strange) what indefectible means. I, too, love markets although there is a certain sameness anywhere I've been in Europe. The most fun I can ever remember was on the night markets on the Kurfustendam in Berlin in the 1980s but that was probably because it was all so new and unusual to me.

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  6. I'm not really a fan of crowds (and these big twice-a-year markets get VERY crowded). If there is something I'm set on looking for, I usually try to go early. The last few years I've also been finding it an out-of-the-ordinary photo opportunity, though!

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