Wifi on our trip to to Sweden is proving to be a mixed pleasure. In Stockholm, free wifi was abundant: in our shabby guest room (don’t know whose router that was, switched over to ssl to be on the safe side), at the Espresso Houses, in random shops; just not at Skansen and the Royal Palace (can the Swedish royal family live without Internet?). In Göteborg, it’s a different matter. Our hotel (not shabby at all, hotel Vasa) has free wifi in the rooms; anywhere else there’s wifi allright, but there’s nothing free about it. So no Internet while I’m typing this (thank you WordPress iPhone app) at the Göteborg NK Espresso House, enjoying a large cappuccino and a rhubarb/raspberry pie. A small one.

Yesterday I saw some stunning photography from the Farm Security Administration collection at the Göteborg city museum. Apparently in the 1930s the government sent photographers out in the field to document how people lived at the time; which was around the time when my own parents were born. Beautiful shots of people from around 1935-1940 staring you in the face. I can never get enough of staring back. It may be the closest thing we have to a time machine.

Photo by Walker Evans for the Farm Security Administration, 1935/6