01 February 2012

Gävle!

From time to time, I like to look at my little stats tracker (the one on the right side of the blog, under the labels area). Click on the number and you will get to a page that will show frequentation over the last 24 hours and below that a map with stars on the places where people who came to my blog were accessing the internet. Click again on the map and you get a somewhat larger map that will give you names of cities (or sometimes just countries) and even the number of people from that place who have visited my blog.

Imagine my joy to discover that there was a star on the town of Gävle, Sweden! (I presume that's what "Gvle" means.)

Why so excited about Gävle? Well this is the home of the legendary straw goat, built each year for the Christmas season and usually set alight by a prankster shortly after completion. Yes, each year. It must be frustrating for those who would like to build their goat and have it, too, but not so frustrating as to have regular recourse to fire retardants. Apparently, these were used in abundance in 2006 and 2007, but they had the effect of turning the goat brown. City officials would rather have a flaming goat than a fire retardant brown thing that looked like a dog to them.



There's even a surveillance video that manages to catch the onset of the fire, if not the perpetrators.


So, if you're from Gävle and you're reading this blog, welcome! I have been admiring your holiday goat for years.

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