City of Birches

Today we drove up to Umeå, to be ready for our Tai Chi weekend starting tomorrow morning. We are staying in a cheap and cheerful hotel we found a while back.
Umeå is known as the city of birches and many streets include avenues of birches as you can see in the photo. This particular street leads away from the main railway station and has a park along its centre, hence the illuminations.  I assumed the birch trees were there for aesthetic reasons but writing this I checked to make sure. In fact the birch tradition started as a fire safety measure. Most of the city burned down on 25 June 1888, and 80% of the population were made homeless. This was obviously serious but not hugely unusual in a city built of wood. (Two other towns, in different parts of Sweden, burned down the same, very windy day!) When it was rebuilt it followed the new national city planning rules the Swedish government had already introduced, making the streets wide enough to act as a firebreak. Birches were planted along the streets because they are fairly fire resistant, which is why, to this day, Umeå streets are lined with silver birch trees.