A photo taken by Anders Blom, 20 years ago. The Shell station was situated in Gusum, Östergötland, in southern Sweden. None of us know if this gas station still exists.
This happened in 2008. I cannot be clear enough about this; but this blog is currently not a realtime blog, but an historical oddyssey through my archive with millions of gas stations. I know, it is not mainly what blogs are used to be, and there will be, eventually, more real time stories. But as for now, this is a past time medium.
Back to the story. These photos are just some other photos taken from the inside of a car. I was on a business trip to Denver Colorado and this turqouise, lovely gas station flashed by. In my opinion, it is an epic one and the photos have to speak for them selves. Period.
Ulcinj, Montenegro, 2008. A coastal town famous for extremely sandy beaches and traditional river fishing. BP apparently made it to this place. Sort of. But I sure did. I was, by choice, stranded in this border city to Albania for a few days.
I probably found the last gas station before the Albanian border, and I made the nice hotel owner, of which hotel I stayed at, to drive really slowly in order to make this shot.
This story took place after the financial collapse, but before the volcano Eyjafjallajokull had one of her famous angry moments. In fact, it happened only a few days before Eyjafjallajokull decided to erupt. By a coincidence my working colleague Maria and I took the very last plane back to Sweden, the same night the volcano had that last eruption which stopped the airline traffic for weeks after.
I was working at School of Education and Communication at Jönköping University and was fortunated to go on a Erasmus staff exchange to visit one of our partner universities in Reykjavik, Iceland. Exotic indeed, but the weather as well as the gas stations were nothing else but ordinary Scandinavian; we visited the Blue Lagoon in a hailstorm and at
We made a stop at this ordinary gas station, right by the so called ringroad, close to Reykjavik. The gas station could be anywhere in a Scandinavian country, during any of the four seasons; remember that we have about 250 (at least) different words for rain – but the language immediately reveals the destination. We managed to pick the full service tank – we should have understood that full þjónusta. The brand by the way, is oliuverzlun. It means oil business. Very exotic and innovative.
Some people cross your roads and walk in your heart forever. Some countries do too. In 2005 I was an exchange student at University of Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa; I country that has conquered quite a big piece of land in my heart. During Easter break some friends and I went on a road trip to Drakensberg and Lesotho. We explored the rough wild coast of South Africa, including Coffee Bay, hiked in Drakensberg and visited a village in Lesotho. We could experience many beuatiful sceneries and thatched roofs on the houses were a rool, rather than an exception. On the road up to Drakensberg and Lesotho we could confirm this, by adding the fact that even the roof of a BP gas station was made out of thatch. This gas staion truly belongs to one of my gems in my gas station collection. Enjoy!