Sweden

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I thought it was about time that I should provide my story and update as promised following my return home to the UK a few days ago. It loosely follows a chronological pattern, as it was based on the ‘diary’ I was making of my trip and updating as I travelled from one city to another, either by plane or train.

I had an unforgettable time in Sweden, as much due to the people I met along the way as the sights I managed to take in during my time in the city of Stockholm and the surrounding areas I managed to take in during my short stay.

I was travelling alone, and Stockholm was the first in a 3 leg spot of city hopping through Europe - followed by Milan & Florence. I arrived at Skavsta airport late in the evening on the 11th of November, eventually making it to the City Backpackers hostel where I would stay for the next three nights. Shortly before midnight, instead of doing the 'sensible thing' of heading to bed ready for a full day ahead, I dumped my backpack in the room, grabbed my camera and took a stroll out from Norrmalm down towards Gamla Stan and the streets around about there. Managed to get a handful of great night shots during this expedition, before eventually heading into bed at 2am.

The following morning, I went for a walk south taking in a few of the sights in Gamla Stan, Sodermalm and taking in a huge number of photographs along the way, before eventually turning for 'home' upon reaching the football stadium of Hammarby - I have an odd fascination with visiting the football grounds in foreign cities that I visit!!It was around now that I realised how short the days were, even in comparison to the UK winters, when I started to think about heading back to the hostel to change and get ready for heading out to dinner only to see a clock in the street and discover it was only 1.30!!! Ooops! Upon finding this out I explored a fair bit more of the city and took in a number of the sights prior to eventually heading back and booking a trip for through my hostel for the following morning.

The trip was an outing for a traditional sauna experience out at a woodland/lake just outside the city limits (I still don’t know where this lake is or what it was called though!). There were 8 of us on this trip, 2 Americans, a group of 5 English guys/girl and myself. After a period of bus travel we made it to the woodland, where we walked for 15/20 minutes until we found ourselves at the edge of a beautiful (and cold looking!) lake.The guys in the group ... being guys ... decided to do the whole sauna thing in the traditional non-clothed manner, whilst the two females in our group and our guide decided to 'let us down' preferring the bathing costumes. Over the next three hours or so, we all 'enjoyed' a number of dips in the lake, in between the sweltering temperatures in the sauna. I am sure going from 107 degrees to 4 degrees is not something I will be doing again in a hurry. Haha!! Still a completely unique and unforgettable experience though.

Upon arriving back in the city at around 3pm, I walked the streets to find little odds and ends to take back home for friends, keen to avoid the usual ‘touristy’ items that litter all major cities in terms of ‘keepsakes’. Having finished this at around 5, I headed to the Mårten Trotzig Restaurant for some elk meatballs, lingenberry and potato from their bistro menu - this was on my pre-visit ‘to do’ list. Very tasty, and I’d recommend this eatery to anyone visiting the city - though it was impossible to escape the ‘awkward’ nature of being a lone person eating out in a city you are travelling through. I don’t think I will ever get used to that feeling when eating food from anywhere other than a snack bar/fast food place.

That evening, myself and the rest of my sauna-buddies decided to hit the town’s club scene. One of our group had studied for a year and a bit in Orebro University as part of an exchange programme and managed to persuade a doorman to let us in to a venue where there were many tuxedo/suited up guys getting refused entry. We were all dressed very casually by comparison. Had an interesting night mixing it up with some locals that were inside in what appeared to be a rather grand old building inside spread over 2 or 3 floors, and although not too much of a clubber usually, the people I was spending the time with made it a thoroughly enjoyable experience (exception: beer prices … eeeeeek!!!). All of our group was leaving the hostel the following morning, so we couldn’t afford to stay out too late - wandering back at around 2am to prepare for some early morning packing and getting checked out of there.

The following morning I was packed and checking out at the desk, grabbing some breakfast to fuel me for my day ahead when the girl from the group I’d been spending the time with the last day or so invited me to go skating with them in the morning before we all headed our separate ways. I’d initially planned to try and take in some of Djurgården before I left the city, however the time I had meant that I’d not be able to fit it in afterwards. In the end, the fact that the girl was both attractive and funny led me to side with going on the skating trip to Kungsträdgården - what else is a guy to do?!?

In all seriousness, it was certainly the correct decision as that morning is one that won’t easily be forgotten by myself. We spent some time rummaging through a chest of ice-skates provided by the hostel we were staying in, before embarking on our walk through the city streets to find the rink. Nothing too unusual so far you’d think… however one of the members of the group was keen to ‘re-enact’ (using the term loosely!) some moves from the Will Ferrell film ‘Blades of Glory’. Upon hearing this when I was first told it had amused me slightly, but it still didn’t prepare me for the sight of a 20-something guy entering the room wearing a green/turquoise unitard, woolly hat and sunglasses!! The worrying thing was that in all the time that we wandered along Vasagatan on our way there, not one local gave him a second look - maybe it’s ‘normal’? The rink was quiet at the time we visited it, with only one other family using the ice. We skated for around 40 minutes or so, demonstrating our varying degrees of ‘rustiness’ since the last time we’d attempted such things (from 6 months to 10 years). The experience culminated in the ‘oddball’ character attempting to lift his friend on the ice, for a photo opportunity to tell his about friends back home. To cut a long story short, he ended up lifting his friend, before his skates slid out from under him, leading to him doing the splits and both of them lying on the ice. Possibly one of the funniest things I’d witnessed in the flesh. Note: Both participants survived this ordeal (and some great images came out of this as a result - both photographic and burned permanently onto my retinas).

It was not long after this that we decided to walk back to the hostel to pick up our bags before begrudgingly heading off towards our respective destinations. Whilst I was leaving to catch a flight to Milan later in the day, the others were heading off to a different place in the city for their final night before leaving a day later for the UK. We all (inadvertently bumped into one and other again in ‘Max Hamburgare’ which I’d only visited after the guy who’d studied in Sweden continually sung their praises. Well, it was my last afternoon in Stockholm, so it would be rude not to try it out, eh? After a few minutes the others arrived in too, in a rather bizarre and premature reunion, having just said our goodbyes at the hostel minutes beforehand. We shared the walk down to Southern Gamla Stan, before we went our separate ways reluctantly. It seemed odd to find leaving these guys as hard as it was, given we had only met less than 48 hours beforehand. The trip to the airport was unnecessarily stressful after buying the wrong ‘Arlanda’ ticket at the train station and having to queue for 25 minutes to get it changed over by the staff, missing my train by seconds, and in the end making it to the airport check-in with less than 10 minutes to spare.

I can honestly say that the time at the airport was the ‘low-point’ of my entire trip abroad - a real sense of loss (oddly), frightening to think that a group of people that you share 2/3 days with can leave such a marked impression on the way that you look at things during that time and/or thereafter. Moreso,when despite having details to contact the guys, you are thinking at the back of your mind ‘will I realistically see any of these guys again?’. Looking back on the trip, neither of the Italian destinations came close to the experience of Sweden on a social level, but each of the places certainly left an impression on me in one way or another, which I guess is what travelling to places is supposed to do. I would certainly consider heading back to Sweden, though probably not Stockholm any time soon. I have always been a bit of an advocate of an outlook similar to that shown in the film Lost in Translation - “Let's never come back here again, because it will never be as much fun”. So in that respect, Stockholm has joined the company of Prague, Rome, Florence and a couple of the Southern Aegean islands visited in the last few years and come out of thinking the same thing (or similar).

I think that if I visited Sweden again, I’d be keen to be taking ‘someone special’ with me, and I’d be more inclined to visit the Northern parts of the country for more of a ‘wild’ experience of the nation. I’m a huge fan of the outdoors and nature, so its only normal for parts of the country have me under their spell already, it’s just a case of balancing the needs of funding travel, getting time off from work commitments and finding someone I deem to be special enough to share my next Swedish trip with. So realistically … it may be longer than I’d want it to be before each of these fall into place as I’d want.

Thanks (and congratulations!!) for making it through my overly long ‘diary style’ story of my time in Stockholm and the surrounding area. For those of you with any doubts about visiting … there shouldn’t be any. Just get out there and enjoy it!

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