Please don't let things like these happen! Frida could have lived, her two-year-old son and four-months-old daughter could still have had their mother, Frida's family could have had their daughter and sister for many more years. She was only 24 years old when she was killed last Wednesday, seemingly by her ex-boyfriend, the father of her children. Only hours before, she had won full custody of the two children and it seems that this was his revenge.

I know what it is like to live under threat. I know what it is like to have someone violating my home, barging into the apartment I have moved to with my children, shouting at me with black hatred in his eyes, and then stopping when he realises that I'm not alone, that I have a friend and her boyfriend there. I'm alive. She's dead. I wish she had had a friend there.

40 years ago, the world was still trying to adjust to the mindblowing idea that man had indeed managed to walk on the moon. Yesterday, Sweden woke up to the news that Swedish astronaut, Christer Fuglesang, had left the earth for the second time. (The first time was in December 2006.) He is going to spend almost two weeks working on the International Space Station together with his six crewmates on the Discovery space shuttle. On this journey, Fuglesang is scheduled to do work outside the shuttle twice, thus giving him the possibility for more spacewalks.

With the above as a backdrop, it was very interesting to read Sven Grahn's account (in Swedish) of how particle physicist Fuglesang, in the early 1990's, was selected for space training in the European space program. He has come a long way, and indeed struggled both in Russia and in the U.S. for the possibility to carry out the work he has trained for for so long. Good luck on this mission!

Image from the Tizona Group.

Yes, books again... But these I already have. They were given to me for my birthday by my in-laws and I was thrilled to be able to sit in bed that evening, browsing them slowly. Kirsten Steno's Hjem med hjerte (Homes with a heart) tells several stories of homes and their owners and how they managed to create a feeling of home after having been through transition periods in their lives. In many ways it is an unusual interior design book, since the stories are so touching. I really loved it and it got me thinking about my relationship to our own home, which definitely is a temporary one. We will stay here a while longer, definitely not forever, but our rented apartment still needs to feel like a home until it is time to move again.

The second book, Mariette Tiedemann's Arbejdsrum, (Home office/work spaces) is a very hands-on description of work spaces people have created in their own homes. Beautiful images, a lot of good ideas, different styles... I will definitely use many of the ideas from this book when creating home office spaces for us in the future. We badly need it, since both T. and I are working from home a lot.

Founded by the Romans, Tongeren is the oldest city in Belgium. Its long, remarkable and often violent history has been displayed extremely well in the newly re-opened museum. It had been closed for three years, a beautiful, brand new building by architects De Gregorio & Partners in subdued grey has been erected, and more of the items they had hidden in their vaults can now be shown. The architecture of the new building works surprisingly well with the medieval cathedral right nearby.

I found the exhibitions truly amazing. The many tableaus seem almost lifelike. The mosaic floor, the vases, the tombs, the models of the city... all of it is shown in a very good way against the either black or white background. I got a glimpse of what life might have been like 2000 years ago — and it was intriguing.

One thing that puzzles me is the inscription I found on the wall, however. There might have been a translation somewhere, but I didn't find it and now I'm really aching to know what it says. Does anybody know?

Yeah, yeah... I know some people feel that I have far too many books already, but I was really happy to see that one of my absolute favourite authors/photographers has released a new book, Indret Ude. Danish Birgitta Wolfgang Drejer has, together with her sister Julia Mincarelli, photographed, designed and written about their favourite gardens spots and it definitely seems to be a must have for me, although we don't have a garden — yet.

The book to the left, Simply Contemporary, was published already in 2006 but it has slipped my radar. Just like Baltic Homes, which I already have in a Swedish version, it was photographed by very talented Norwegian photographer Sølvi Dos Santos.

The Begijnhof, the Béguinage, where the lay-women lived in the vicinity of the convent, is a really beautiful place. The houses are from the 16th or 17th century and we actually came there twice during our visit in Belgian Tongeren. We happened to be there during the Coronation celebration and procession, which only happens once every seven years "in commemoration of the crowning of the miraculous statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Bishop Doutreloux in 1890" (Tongeren on Wikipedia) and this became very evident when we saw all the beautiful tableaus in the Béguinage.

It's true that we weren't there for that long, but we nevertheless managed to see quite a bit of the inner city. Only an hour before this photo was taken it was actually pouring down and we were lucky to be able to walk around as much as we did in between the showers. It certainly is cloudy in this photo, but I do like the colours that are so common in Amsterdam... green, red and the grayish houses with a tinge of red...

My bike arrived a little more than a week ago (and was I happy!!), but T.'s took until two days ago to arrive. Although T. had to leave yesterday afternoon we still had time to go biking a few times and it was great. (My butt does hurt a bit but that doesn't matter.)

Anyway, as we were biking I realised that I needed a small backpack instead of my rather large shoulder bag so I started looking around. It had to be big enough for my camera, but still not to big and bulky; it had to be something that would be suitable at work as well as for leisure; and I also decided that I would prefer to have a black one. Today I found this one from Vezzano at Accent and I quickly decided that this was the one. Happy!

To be honest, I'm not that fond of bike helmets, but I do realise that it's decidedly stupid not to have one so I've ordered the Faction Matt Bronze Bats from Bell. Time to go biking!

...which is called Leuven in Flemish. Leuven is a university town (just like the French-speaking Louvain-la-Neuve) but it is of course much older. The Catholic university can be found here as well as an amazing medieval city centre. On the photo above the very ornamented city hall can be seen on the left. Our visit was brief and I hope we will return at some point.

While being in the vicinity (in Tongeren, the oldest town in Belgium), we decided to check out the newly opened Hergé museum in Belgium's youngest city, Louvain-la-Neuve. The museum looked very modern and "clean" both on the inside and on the outside. We weren't allowed to take photos inside, but it was a really impressive and interesting exhibition and I learned a lot about both Tintin and his creator, Hergé.

Louvain-la-Neuve is mainly a university town. It was founded in 1972 and all the buildings reflect that architectural period. No cars are allowed into the city and they would not able to get in anyway, since it is completely closed off. There is a parking garage underneath the entire city, however — an ingenious solution.

I thought I'd give you a few more glimpses from our travels in the Netherlands and in Belgium. In Tongeren we stayed at Hotel Eburon, a monastery from the 12th century built in the middle of the old, Roman town, now transformed into the most amazing hotel.

The Eburon is a part of the small, Belgian Different Hotels chain. Its origin is still clearly visible in the magnificent corridors but also in the guest rooms. They all have very high ceilings and large double door windows. The colour palette is mainly pink-red-brown-lime (which T. wasn't too thrilled about), but he agreed when I said the design was very well executed. The hotel opened last year and it still feels new. The people who work there are extremely helpful and friendly, the restaurant is really good and the town centre in Tongeren, with its famous Begijnhof, is really cute. Angelic is probably the best description.

We have now returned from a wonderful second summer vacation (we spent a week and a half at my parents where we both had relatives visiting from the U.S. and then T.'s parents, sister and brother-in-law arrived from Denmark). While there we celebrated my birthday and, since I received some money, I decided to use them to buy a new bike. T. and I have been looking around in the last few days and today we decided to order a brand new GT Avalanche 3.0 each. T. said he too needed the exercise. :)

Let's hope we will like the bikes as much as we think and that we will have plenty of opportunities to use them.