Monday, September 3, 2012

Little Spyros everywhere

This morning I felt exactly how the song above says.
The sun was shining and it was pretty warm. Then we went to the town and had a guided tour the Sundsvall. I finally discovered why there are dragons everywhere in the town. 

One of the city protectors
So, shortly - in 1888. there was a big fire in Sunsvall which destroyed everything. After that Sundsvall citizens looked up in Chinese culture and discovered dragons and then decided to put them everywhere around the town. They are protecting the town from disasters, accidents, fire and all other troubles. That is why dragon is a symbol for Sundsvall.

I won a lollipop here :)
The main square
There are a lot of bridges here
The funny game we played. My team won!
With Bella (this is for her mom :))
The weather today: sun - sun - wind - rain - sun - rain - sun - croup - sun - wind. Seriously, what to wear??!! I miss my dear Croatian weather! ;)

P.S. My dear Marta enjoy your first week at school! I am sending you a kiss! :*


5 comments:

  1. I'm not trying to be rude or anything, I just wanted to point out that the dragons in Sundsvall (to my knowledge) have nothing to do with the Chinese culture or the citys fire.

    When you attend the Gymnasiet/High School in Sweden, you are required to complete a project of your own choosing in your third year. Either you can come up with an idea of your own, or you can choose to start a UF-company (Young Achieven), which is basically a pretend company where you learn to do everything you would do, as if you had started a real company.

    I was told by one of the persons responsible for UF in Sundsvall that the dragons was a result of a group of students seeing "city-dragons" in Germany, and that they decided to have that as their UF idea. They then made the designs from the dragons and then offered local companies/organizations to rent one of the dragons, with their own signature model and design.

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  2. Thank you for sharing those information with me. I have no reason not to believe you.

    And well as you might notice I am not from Sundsvall or even from Sweden. I am an international student here who heard above described story in the Tourist Information Center where all international students had a short presentation about history of this beautiful town.

    Cheers! :)

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    1. I'm sorry, apparently I was a bit misinformed. I was correct in my statement that the citys dragons are a result of a UF-company, though the dragon symbol itself was used to by lords (english approximation) as a symbol of protection after the fire in 1888.

      And again, I was not trying to insult or anything in my earlier comment, if any signs of that exist, it is only a product of my, sometimes, incoherent english :)

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    2. ;)

      Thank you for reading my blog and feel free to comment whenever you want! ;)

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  3. At first when I saw that the Sundsvall dragon originated from the Chinese culture made me feeling very cordial. While came to the comment let me realized that we are misled.The dragon refers in west is very different with what we talk in China. The dragon is a rich mythological fictional creatures which was a symbol of noble in the ancient times. There are lots of myths about the dragon in our culture and I'm very glad to share with you if you are interested in.

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