Although I am not generally a fan of airport hotels, this one at Arlanda Stockholm is the exception. Really nice rooms, really nice breakfast and nice bar areas too. And you reach it from the concourse somewhere between terminals 4 and 5
Many aspects of Slovenian food are not unlike good quality British or American food.In 2006, the leading Slovenian ethnologists have divided the country into 23 gastronomic regions. Breakfasts tend to be a mixture of fresh fruit, cold meats and cooked eggs. The quality is exceptionally high. The first Slovene-language cookbook was published by Valentin Vodnik in 1799 and I am not planning the second. A few more curious ingredients it seems also, such as Dandelion being popular in salads, and soups it seems are quite a new invention in Slovenia although they now have around 150, enough for most.
There are however a few more unique aspects to their food. For example a very thin crispy pizza served as a starter, with toppings in different lines of pizza being different. Works well as a starter but a temptation to eat rather more than one might want to. Many countries seem to bring their own cultures and influences. The provision of an extra course of cold meats and cheese after a starter with ample bread also suggests not a UK tradition!
There are however some strange traditions here, like giving cups of coffee seemingly only half full even when one asks for a traditional large Americano!
As Slovenia borders Italy and is not actually a million miles from Venice, there are some Italian influences in addition to pizza and ice cream. Roasted potatoes are simple and ample portions. Pork cordon bleu is almost German in its origin.
Desserts can also be interesting with Tarte Tatin hot with ice cream. Prices are maybe 30-50% below what current UK prices are. 
Last sunday The Sunday Times ran an article in their money section that purported to inform us that smart meters were not only unreliable but potentially overcharged many customers and created havoc with energy bills. The biased and opinionated headline ” Scandal of the £11bn smart meter rollout plan” gave clear identity to the content of what then followed. Having had a smart meter installed a few weeks ago I was somewhat curious to know these hidden pitfalls that neither British Gas nor anyone else had told me.
The evidence to support this ” scandal” derived from a few cases where clearly errors had happened, mistakes made and where old meters ( from 2010) had been installed in error. The opening paragraph designed to get us running for either deep caves or our lawyers told a case that clearly cannot be the norm of an installation where monthly electricity bills had increased 1906%. We were then informed that these meters sometimes go wrong ( well yes, anyone care to put forward any electrical item that is faultless), and then a single suppliers meter may not be compatible with any new supplier should we change. To the latter point I actually agree that there should be uniform meters but as the meter took around 1 hour to install then any new suppliers can fit a new one without to the customer any great fuss free of charge. This then brings us to the next issue that these meters are free to consumers, and that they are designed to help reduce fuel bills or at a minimum make us aware what we are spending. The poor guy with clearly an errant meter whose bills had rocketed overnight would not need to be a degree level mathematician to be aware that spending £4.50 each time to boil a single kettle would be less than fiscally optimum.
This plan to have smart meters in all our homes was announced over a decade ago and every home would have one by 2020. Many homes have them. According to the Department of Energy and Climate change 764,800 have already been installed and although Sunday Times makes the mathematical point that the number of complaints has trebled last year ( without telling us that no doubt the numbers of meters have also trebled) the numbers are minimal increasing from 16 complaints in 2013 to 50 in 2014.
Some customers will not like the fact they can visually see how expensive the fuel is and no doubt some will ” want their meters checked”, this will be done free if faults are found, but cannot be free if this purely on the whim of a customer. This ” pay if nothing is wrong” concept is also not new and providers of Cable and Digital providers have been doing this for years on items such as Tevo boxes.
Clearly these meters do and will go wrong and over time will be improved and modified, anyone who is not comfortable with this approach, should just wait then, as many companies including Apple also find new items come with faults and these get modified early one. EDF as an example find fault with only 0.5% of their meters. This is not a wonderful ratio but certainly an understandable one and one that will decrease over time.
So what are the stated benefits? Easy. The government reckons that the £11bn cost to install these smart meters will be offset of savings of £17.1 bn by 2030 according to the Sunday Times. This may or may not happen, however my own experience so far is very positive. I have found by judicious use of the various numbers I can easily access on the meter, that I have reduced daily energy consumption from around £5/day to around £3/day. Actually seeing the cost for example of how much it costs to heat the house in the morning led to a simple change, turning heating off maybe 20 minutes before leaving the house.
These smart meters are not perfect but they will do a good job to educate and help reduce fuel bills, they are free, and yes, sometimes they will go wrong. Lets live with that awful scandal. The meters themselves look just like any other but have wifi potential and the actual smart meter reading tool is quite smart too, tells us the time, the costs and a whole host of other useful information.
With all the UK nonsense about Jeremy Clarkson and his appalling behaviour, whether we describe it as bullying or not remains to be seen as they alleged crimes from Clarkson get investigated. It may of course come to nothing, but the media portray him as guilty as charged. Over in New Zealand some ddeadful antics from their X-factor judges have led not only to a public outcry but to them being uncermoniously sacked. And from what we read this is the correct outcome.
This is the source of my information.
Husband-and-wife duo Natalia Kills and Willy Moon sacked by MediaWorks for ‘destructive tirade’ against Joe Irvine, 25 is the headline, so what did they do?
Kills criticised a 25-year-old contestant, Joe Irvine, on Sunday’s show for allegedly stealing her husband’s look “from the hair to the suit”. She called him “disgusting” and “creepy” and asked: “Do you not have any value or respect for originality?”
Despite the obvious discomfort of their fellow judges and booing from the audience, Moon joined in, likening Irvine to “Norman Bates dressing up in his mother’s clothing” before suggesting he might murder the crowd.
The conclusion in the media is that this unacceptable, also to the other judges and was bullying.Kills – real name Natalia Noemi Cappuccini-Sinclair – is an English singer best known for her 2013 single Saturday Night. New Zealand musician Moon came to prominence when his song Yeah Yeah appeared on an iPod commercial. The pair married in 2014.Natalia Noemi Cappuccini-Sinclair, better known by her stage name Natalia Kills, is an English singer, actress, record producer, fashion designer and director. She was born, and raised for part of her early life, in Bradford
Even more curiously, Duncan Greive added: “From a pure entertainment perspective we lost something beautiful in Natalia Kills and Willy Moon. They were deeply strange and often unpleasant, but never less than dynamite television. I feel like that’s extremely unlikely to be true of whoever they rope in to replace them.”
Is this acceptable? Showbiz news also reported that these behaviours were not unique.
Natalia Kills lost her temper during an audition taping of The X Factor New Zealand.
The reality show judge started screaming and swearing at the audience, as they were pressuring her to let through a “mouthy” contestant.
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/showbiz/news/a614143/natalia-kills-swears-at-audience-during-x-factor-new-zealand-recording.html#ixzz3UZ1aKNXd
Comments on Nataliia Kills facebook page are less than impressed by her behaviours . One of the more mildly toned comments went something like this ” have no friends to take pictures of you???? not surprised” and “U are doing it wrong.. Meant to have looped it over your neck and jumped”, in a photo of her swinging from a rope. There is clear anger aganist the pair here. Other comments liken her to Willy Wonka.
Either way it seems fairly settled that the NZ public and their keyboard warriors are no longer in love with this pair.
In general terms the food is superb if rather expensive. Many meals are fish based with excellent quality and also good sized portions compared to some of the anorexic fish that get deported to UK. On the other hand they like their ” bad food” too and many good burger restaurants and suchlike exist, including one that smells at you as you arrive at the airport and clear baggage hall. What however is striking is that the food in the airports is excellent. Take Landvetter airport in Gothenburg, a small airport really but the quality and choice of the foods puts Heathrow to shame. If you are a cake lover then allow yourself an hour and 1000 calories to indulge before your flight. Some of the food combinations also make novel cuisine. Take the combination of cod and chicken in a gravy that i was served at Clarion Post hotel. Excellent and the combination works.
Gothenburg is the second largest city in Sweden and the fifth largest in the Nordic countries. The population is around half a million and the city was founded in 1621. Gothenburg also has the largest university in Sweden with 60,000 students. Daylight cana last 18 hours in the summer and only 6.5 hours in December. When one arrives it seems a nice place with most hotels arranged around a central square with the Centraal Train Station on one side.
My impressions of Gothenburg were rather coloured by the huge number of Eastern European immigrants begging in the square rattling their plastic cups in one’s face and trying to sell a magazine called ” Sofia ” which made me presume they were Bulgarian. They were hunting in packs and although not frightening to me, I could see that to others they could be persuaded as being so. In the evnings they were inside the train station taking up most of the chairs and seats and in the day they operated in and around the square. A head ” beggar” a large woman sat on a bench barking out orders in a language that seemed alien to me.
The city of Gothenburg portrays itself as “soft and more human” when dealing with poor EU migrants, local paper Göteborgs Posten wrote. But the situation is far from black and white.
In 2010 Gothenburg’s social services paid for 28 beggars to return home. In 2013 that number was 93. The largest increase of those sent home has been seen with beggars from Romania.Between 2010 and June of 2014, the Gothenburg paid to send home 135 Romanians. Norwegians came in second place, with 35 getting a free ticket home, and Bulgaria came in third with 23 beggars sent home.
The police in Gothenburg suspect the begging is organised, however that doesn’t make it a crime. There’s a difference if relatives are collaborating or if someone forces poor people to beg and then takes the money.
Several cases of human trafficking have been revealed in Stockholm where people have been brought to Sweden by criminal networks. Disabled people and children are in special demand by the networks.
The Gothenburg police have not been able to clarify if there is someone in the background making money from the beggars in the city.
In contrast the hotels are nice, comfortable and the staff ultra polite. The food is good, heavily fish-based. The affluence is obvious with hotels like the excellent Clarion Post having expensive Japanese Sushi restaurants. In the square one must avoid the trams if not the beggars as they take no prisoners and seemingly come from all directions. There is also an amusing angle with the emphasis in Sweden on living healthily, and thousands of bicycles in the square, but with some sponsored by burger companies. This seems a good city of not an exciting one.
Gothenburg
A very Surrey winter morning with ice and snow unheralded. A cold station full of commuters and schoolchildren, early in the morning as the world wakes up.
Painting of Motspur Park Station in Surrey 2015 Winter
Just a various eclectic mix of food photos taken in various locations. Nothing special. Just enjoy and be hungry.
Coconut Tart
Sliders and Beef Wellingtons
chris1957
Arcticterntalk.org 