Sleep among the trees in Sweden's newest novelty hotel

Financial Times reports on the new hotel in Sweden where guests sleep among the trees.

Located in Harads in northern Swedish Lapland, the Treehotel has uniquely designed rooms like a mirror cube (picture) that are placed among treetops in the forested location. The design elements are meant to assimilate with nature as much as possible. According to the architects special features like infrared coating on the cube room's mirror prevent birds from hitting it.

In providing novelty in a natural environment, the Treehotel is a successor to the wildly successful Icehotel, built from snow and ice every winter 160 miles north of [Treehotel's location] near Kiruna. It is also part of the “landscape hotel” trend – stylishly designed luxury hotels placed in the middle of nowhere, not so much for their proximity to hiking or other outdoor activities as for the views from their (usually) floor-to-ceiling windows.

Read the full story: A luxury hotel in Sweden's treetops

Photo from Treehotel

Cars to run on used clothing?

Reuters video reports on bio-fuel made from old clothing.

Swedish engineers have created a chemical process that breaks down cotton and synthetic fabrics into bio-fuel (ethanol and methane) which could fuel vehicles.

The scientists claim that this process uses less energy than extracting from plant sources and "50 percent more ethanol is produced."

Watch the report below:

Fly to Stockholm, overnight in plane hostel

CNN reports on the old 747 plane that has been turned into a novel hostel at Stockholm's Arlanda airport.

Swedish hostel developer, Oscar Dios, created the Jumbo Hostel (picture above) from an old Transjet Airways Boeing 747:

"'We were looking to expand the [hostel] business but it was more or less impossible to find reasonably priced housing at the airport. And you cannot build a new house and run a hostel because it is too expensive,' he said."

Jumbo hostel will have space for 85 guests (the original configuration had 350 seats) priced from 110 Euros ($150) for a three-person suite to 500 Euros ($700) for the cockpit suite, and is scheduled to open in December 2008.

Read the full story: Airplane hostel prepares for lift-off