I (an Englishman) live in Sweden with my Swedish wife, and we rent an apartment in the middle of quite a large town in the middle of Sweden.
When the summer finally arrives we do not want to be in the flat/apartment in town, so with the help of a friendly local bank, we managed to buy a very small torp out in the countryside.
A torp is very much like a Scottish croft and basically is a small, red timber house with a large red barn, usually in a large clearing in the forest where, in the past, the people living there were self-sufficient, growing food and keeping livestock .
The house is well over 100 years old and not a lot has changed as far as normal facilities are concerned so it is a case of water from the well – and so on.
Back to basics indeed.
Needless to say, our Norwegian Forest Cat loves to be here as well and soon reverts back to nature, unfortunately for the local small animal population.
I was rudely woken up by my wife’s screams the other night.
The cat had brought her a present in bed – a small, live furry animal.
Absolute chaos! Oh dear ;o)
Apart from that it is a great chill-out place and as we are surrounded by forest it is very peaceful.
However, this comes at a price and that is that only G3 mobile phones will work here.
We don’t have a landline as the local telephone company wants a lot of money to connect us – and anyway who is putting in new land lines these days.
So we had a problem as I still need to work on the internet when we are there .
Last year we heard about G3 internet connection. I thought, at first that this would be via my mobile phone and expensive but this was not the case.
It is in fact via a small USB connected modem.
It sounded good so I went for this and I was soon up and on the internet, out in the forest.
The speed was 3.5 Mbps and whilst I could surf and check mail etc., downloading large files/software took quite a long time.
Recently the local telephone company upgraded this to 7.2 Mbps which is more like it.
They call it Turbo 3G and rightly so.
Some companies are advertising speeds greater than that but I am happy with what I have at the moment
The connection is very good now although I do realize that this level of 3G connection is not available everywhere yet.
A plus point today is that I can now connect up to Alex Jeffreys live calls.
I thought this might be of interest, as with many places, there is no public WiFi in town – or outside of town for that matter, but for us this is no longer needed as we can now access the internet anywhere (presuming transmitting masts exist in the area).
This is indeed progress.
A further plus point is that if something goes wrong with our broadband connection in town we have instant backup for one computer at least. I have heard that you can use it with your in-house WiFi network but I haven’t looked into this yet.
Not quite the demise of public WiFi but interesting perhaps and I have noticed there is a lot of research going on into combining and developing various technologies i.e. WIMAX, 4G etc.so it can only get better.
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Tagged with: 100 Years • Absolute Chaos • Animal Population • Check Mail • Chill Out Place • Clearing In The Forest • Countryside • Englishman • Flat Apartment • Furry Animal • G3 connection • G3 Mobile Phones • internet connection • Landline • Livestock • Local Bank • Local Telephone Company • Mbps • Norwegian Forest Cat • Sweden • Timber House • Torp • WiFi
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Hi Dave,
What a great blog & a wonderful post! As a ‘slightly older student’;-) I am just blown away by the technology that is available today.
By the way…I absolutely love this place of yours…it is so cute! My dream is to own at least 50 acres of land, with my dream home built right in the middle of it. Your place reminds me of that dream!
I wish you the very best, Dave-take care,
Joann
.-= Joann Henry´s last blog ..Alexa Rankings Are A Lot Of Fun To Watch! =-.
Hi Joann,
From one ‘slightly older student’ to another ‘slightly older student’ thanks for the comment
)
Yes, it is a nice place and it comes relatively cheap in this country – lots of space here as well.
Glad you found the G3 post interesting. It is quite hard sometimes keeping up with the rapid
advances in technology.
All the best,
Dave
Hiya David , what a beautiful house, mind you “Its not as good as an ex miners house in parr.
joking apart it looks a lovely house and a lovely place to live , nice clean fresh air in abundance.
The G3 connection or similar is being advertised over here more and more everyday and the price is flying down.
Its a strange situation over here in the uk as internet access is pretty much accessible everywhere,
But these gadgets are catching on like wildfire, most probably because laptops are becoming more popular than desktops.
I must say its not on my must have techie list as yet . as I would love to get my hands on camtasia.
and a flip camera , but all in good time as i have made so far in my Internet business a grand total of Zilch newt not a bean , Never mind it will be penny for the guy soon over here.
I can stand outside the Widnes town hall with a stuffed Chemics player in a pram “might earn at leased five bob”.
Take care David and don’t get homesick , might be able to catch you for a pint when Alex has his UK bash .
talk soon mick.
Hi Mick,
Thanks for the reply. Yes, lovely old house – very small but fascinating. Large timbers inside and all done with wooden pegs instead of nails.
I notice there is quite a lot of discussion in the UK papers about folk out in the countryside having poor or no access to the ‘net.
Is this a solution – all that is needed is masts (already in use for mobiles) and G3.
Have to talk to Mr Broon about it ;o)
Camtasia and flip camera on my list as well.
It would be nice to catch up with the UK crowd (and a few pints) when Alex gives the word.
Talk soon.
Dave
Hi David,
What a neat little house. It must be great to go there and get away from the city. I’d be interested to see a picture of your Norwegian Forest cat too. Even more so my girlfriend.
Your mentioning the USB device is very interesting. I could have used it today when my broadband connection failed. Well, in the end it was the router whose firmware got updated and I didn’t get the update that caused the problem. All of a sudden I lost my internet connection. Not being a technical geek it took two phone calls, $9.95 and 3 hours to have the thing running again.
It’s nice to know that one can be away in the woods and still be able to have internet connection. So your post is very informative and I’m glad I stopped by to read it.
Hi Vance,
Thanks for the comments.
I have created a post about the cat and some photos taken when she was younger – no up to
date ones I’m afraid. I hope this helps.
I have been using the “dongle”, I think they call it now, out at the house. I can use it fine with my old laptop but it is a bit of a performance, however my wife’s more recent laptop (2 yrs old) picks it up automatically. No problems at all.
I wonder what they will come up with next?
Regards,
Dave