Summer tourism
Fewer tourists chose Sweden this past summer. On a brighter note, the tourists that did come spent more money than before so the profits were greater. While fewer Danes came, more faraway tourists arrived, like Indians and Chinese. The global financial worry as well as the rain torrents that plagued Central Europe this summer might be some reasons behind the decline, according to Thomas Brühl, managing director at Visit Sweden. “It’s been a cool summer, but the number of sleeping accommodations are pretty much the same as the record year 2010,” he says. The development for tourism is hardly bleak; though fewer tourists came, the number of hotel bookings increased. “The number of tourists decreased a little during the summer, but the proceeds increased for the 8th year in a row,” adds Peter Terpstra, tourism analyst at TIllväxtverket. It has to do with the fact that the tourists who came shop more and stayed at hotels more frequently. Brühl calls it a positive trend.

Chocolate lovers less likely to have strokes
Chocolate lovers rejoice! A new Swedish study gives you yet another reason to keep eating chocolate, especially if you're a woman. Eating a small piece of chocolate every day can work as medicine against stroke, according to the study of 33,000 women. Ten years ago, the women, all living in Uppsala and Västmanlands counties, were asked questions regarding their chocolate consumption. Since then, 1549 of them have suffered a stroke, but researchers noted the cases of stroke were less among the women who ate the most chocolate. According to the analysis, the risk decreased by about 20 percent. “It’s quite a great decrease, fully comparable with the effects of certain types of medicine,” says Susanna Larsson, researcher at the department of Nutritional Epidemiology at the Karolinska Institute. The women in the group with the highest consumption of chocolate ate 66 grams of chocolate a week, a little more than half a bar of chocolate. It's not that much—perhaps we should consume more chocolate? “We don’t know that yet,” Larsson continues. “It’s not yet clear where the upper limit for positive effects is.” The study will be published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, and it is not really the first of its kind. “Perhaps it would be better for us if we were to consume pure chocolate powder,” Larsson concludes.

Message in a bottle-22 years later
A belated message of sorts: The bottle that Josefin Grund threw in the water when she was a little girl, was recently found-22 years later. “It’s hard to believe it’s true,” says Josefin, who is now 31 years old. When she was 9, she wrote a note, put it in a bottle and threw the bottle into the waters at Solumshamn, south of Härnösand. Annika Windhagen found it four miles north at Bönhamn. “Send me a letter,” the note said. Well, in keeping with the changing times, Annika sent a text message instead. According to Guinness World Records, the oldest message in a bottle spent 92 years 229 days at sea. A bottom drift bottle, numbered 423B, was released at 60º 50'N 00º 38'W (about halfway between Aberdeen, Scotland and the coast of Denmark) on April 25, 1914 and recovered by fisherman Mark Anderson of Bixter, Shetland, UK, on December 10, 2006.

Confirmation camp interrupted
A confirmation camp in Halland had to be interrupted this past weekend, when the pastor realized he and his staff had no control over the situation. The parents of the candidates for confirmation were called and asked to pick up their children and bring them home. Some sources claim alcohol was involved, but the pastor doesn’t want to comment on that. “As a leader, I realized toward the evening, that we weren’t in control,” is all he says.