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Published: September 19th 2005
I
LOVE this city!
5th July
After a dreadfully boring trainride, possibly six of the longest hours of my life, I arrived in Stockholm and immediately set about getting my bearings on how to get to my hostel which is located in an area known as Zinkensdamm. A quick metro check revealed that there is a stop within 1km of the hostel, brilliant. I grab a 10 stop ticket to see me through my stay here and then head down to catch the train. The metro stops in Stockholm are, as the Californians I have bumped into during my travels would say, hella nice! They are all sparklingly clean, and feature many murals and cool tiled patterns or decorations, with almost no signs of grafetti which is not the norm for subway stops in general. No smell of urine either, I won't be missing that smell anytime soon, thanks for the memories Italy...
My hostel this time warrants a mention actually, the Zinkendamm HI is a good place with friendly staff, very clean and modern (if small) rooms with good beds, a spotlessly clean shower that is nice even despite being communal, and best of all......an AMAZING kitchen at
Gamla Stan
One of the busier shopping streets in the old townthe guests disposal. Check out the pics at the bottom of the journal, that kitchen rocks!
Anyway, by the time I was all settled down in my temporary abode, I noticed it was only 1700, so I decided to take a walk into Gamla Stan, or in English it would be simply "old town". Gamla Stan is located on a small island right in the center of the city, a really beautiful place. Get used to the word beautiful being used, there was a lot of it in Stockholm. Old cobblestoned streets, tight alleyways, and wonderfully designed old buildings that have been well looked after. It all combines for a special feeling of being somewhere in a different time. Gamla Stan also home to a few important places, since it holds Stockholms oldest buildings, a magnificent old church known as Storkyrken, and the Royal Palace itself.
I didn't get a chance to go see any of the major sites though, since it was late, so I just wandered around over the next island and onwards, one which was tiny and held only the Swedish Parliament building and nothing else, and the next was the mainland. Stockholm is actually
Parliament
Inside, lots of construction work going on. built across no fewer than 14 islands, so there are bridges all over the city. I arrived on the right street for shopping right away, one called Drottinggatan which must be the main street downtown for shopping. It was filled with people, buskers, and most importantly, the unbelievably gorgeous Swedish girls. At least 75%!o(MISSING)f the female population here could be models, and I am not even kidding in the slightest. And yes, the country really is filled with blonde haired, blue eyed girls; I would estimate that 50 percent of the female population fit that profile, and about 90 percent are natural blondes, with some girls actually dying their hair black to be different. The buskers were pretty entertaining too though (in between my hard practice and being an Italian male and staring at all the girls), and I saw two guys playing a glockenspiel thing very skillfully, a group of guys jamming on panpipes (no joke), and even a guy playing a keyboard with his feet since he had no arms. I strolled around this area for a good while and gradually worked my way home to get some rest for the night.
6th July
Slept very
Parliament
Outside, its an impressive building well, except for the fact the the 3 other idiots in my room were all leaving that morning and couldn't possibly have packed up their things in a louder fashion at 7 in the morning. To add to this, the door in the room will slam very hard unless you take care when closing it, and common courtesy will suggest to anyone with manners that if someone is sleeping, then you should try to be quiet. Not my wonderful Swedish roomates though, oh no, they came and went at least a dozen times and the door slammed every damn time. I should have said something I guess, but some mornings you just take it for some reason....
Anyway, I eventually got sorted out and headed back into Stockholm. My mood wasn't superb though, and I didn't know what to do really. I ended up taking a free tour of the Swedish Parliament on that small island I mentioned, it was very nice and I learned a little more about this wonderful country that I have been a little too interested in over the last couple of years. I even got to sit in several of the seats that the
government officials would usually occupy when do their government things, they belonged to the Social Democrats party I believe. Not terribly comfortable to sit in though, so I don't envy those people in their jobs too much.
After that I just decided to explore Gamla Stan some more and relax in one of the public squares there. I got a little free entertainment there from a drunken guy stumbling around with a beer in his hand. He could barely stand up, it reminded me a lot of home. No idea if this is common or not, but I will note that the Swedes do seem to enjoy a good drink, and I think the only thing stopping people from getting drunk more are the ridiculous alcohol prices here. If you have any kind of tolerance for beer, then you will likely be spending about 50€ to get drunk in a bar. Not too practical, but then again I have no tolerance so it doesn't bother me too much, mwuahahahah!
Eventually I swung back to the hostel and made way too much pasta, but still forced myself to eat it all, all 5 bowls of it. This was much
to the amusement of everyone else eating there, watching this skinny guy eat such a massive amount of food. Why should it go to waste though?
At night I walked along the waterfront for a bit, enjoying a panorama of the city, I really like this place a lot.
7th July
Overslept hardcore today, and was generally rather tired for the whole day. So I just took it pretty easy and didn't venture too far.
I did see Storkyrken though, på engelska: The Great Church, which is the oldest church in Stockholm. It was consecrated in 1306, and later became a Lutheran Protestant church in 1527 when Sweden hit reformation thanks to Gustav Vasa's (Sweden's King back then) close friendship with Martin Luther himself. It is situated in the heart of Gamla Stan and is a stones throw from the Royal Palace, which helps explain why Swedish Kings were crowned here as lately as 1907. It is a terribly plain looking building on the exterior, partially due to its remodelling in 1740 to the Baroque style. I would have liked to have seen what it looked like in its older Gothic form. The interior was very nice
though, lots of gold, a HUGE pipe organ blasting its notes for us tourists to admire, and I got to see its most famous attraction, the wooden statue of St. George slaying the dragon, which dates back to 1489. The only bad thing was having to pay admission to enter a church, 25sek, which is about €3. Not a lot, but I have never believed in paying admission into such places...
I was a lazy for the rest of the day, and basically wandered the shops. One of the shops, NK, was like Stockholms version of Harrods or Bloomingdales I would guess. It was very upscale in the things it sold, all the designers and such, but Sweden is expensive enough to me without even dreaming of buying anything in NK. I did enjoy the helper/greeter girl at the entrance though, a pretty blonde girl wearing Sweden's national dress, also known as a landskapdress. Not easy to make that look good, but she pulled it off very nicely.
I also made the mistake of noticing a used book store and ended up buying 5 books before I even knew what happened to me. It was rather cheap though,
and cheap English reading material is hard to find in Europe. I also bought a Swedish childrens book to help me improve my Swedish skills.
The rest of the day was spent in parks and on a rocky bluff that looks over Stockholm, where I got to watch the sunset. Very peaceful.
8th July
Got myself up at an acceptable hour for once, go me!
Today I decided to go and visit the Royal Palace on Gamla Stan, which is just one of many Palaces that the Swedish Royal family have. This one specifically is known as Kungliga Slottet. I arrived at 12.15, perfect timing for the changing fo the guards, which was fantastic to watch. Basically a group of two dozen guards, the military band, and another group of a dozen or so soldiers in dress uniform all march into the courtyard, perform a ceremony, and then the band plays for a while. The whole show lasted about half an hour, and was fun to watch, especially for the band. Music is a big thing in Sweden, and I guess with the conscription here they have a great choice of skilled musicians to pick from for
this job. The Swedish dress uniform was very cool too, blue with polished silver helmets.
The Palace itself is divided into 4 attractions:
The Royal Apartments This is the area of the Palace that had historically been where the Royal family lived in past days. I got to see many rooms that were decorated to suit the fashions and desires of past Monarchs. One of the rooms that sticks out in my head was Ulrika's Dining Room, because I remember looking at this gorgeous dining room, then noticing this disturbing and huge painting hanging on the wall depicting several hounds tearing a deer to shreds. I bet that helps everyone enjoy their venison a lot more while eating there....
The Three Crowns Museum The Palace as it stands now was only built in 1754, but before this Palace was here there was the older fortress structure. That old structure has had its foundations excavated and now there is a museum down there. It was pretty interesting to look through, and offered an insight into Sweden back when they were a powerful warring nation.
Gustav III's museum of antiquities A very small museum featuring a collection of
Folk dancing
At Skansen museum old Roman statues and busts. It was pretty neat even despite my having been to Rome itself, since the busts lining one of the walls were of the Caesars, and it was cool to walk along looking at them all.
The Treasury This was the real highlight of the Palace, a small treasury underneath the Palace which contains the crown jewels, and many old historic swords. I saw a bunch of gold crowns encrusted with an incredible amount of diamonds. And I even got to see the sword(s) of Gustav Vasa, the man who became King of Sweden after leading the country to successfully split from Denmark. He was also the man who befriended Martin Luther and reformed Sweden from a Catholic nation to a Protestant one, more specifically "Lutheran".
The Palace was cool, I liked it, and afterwards I still had a little time, so I took a short walk from there to Riddarholmskyrkan, a nearby church. This church holds the tombs of many of Sweden past Royal family members. At 20 kronor it was a bit of a rip since I spent only 15 minutes in there, but it was something to see I guess..
The Vasa
My Camera struggled in this dark place, and then the batteries died. Best pic I got, sadly. Went shopping at night to make some food in the amazing kitchen at the hostel. Sweden has a government monopoly that dictates that all alcoholic beverages over 3.5%!c(MISSING)an only be sold in their store, known as "systembolaget". How do you think the beer manufacturers got past this hump that the government created? simple, they all make their beers at 3.5%!,(MISSING) and it can be sold in supermarkets for the masses to purchase. I took a quick pic, heh.
On another note, I almost bought a can of Campbells chicken soup (broth) to have for dinner with some bread. Luckily for me I noticed that they wanted about 28kr for it, a small tin of cheap soup! 28kr translates to about $4.50 cdn roughly, and back in Canada it would cost me $0.69. So I said "no way in hell!".....out loud actually, to my own embarassment, haha. Then I went to the meat counter and bought 3 cooked chicken thighs for 15kr(?!), this country makes no sense sometimes....
9th July
Skansen!
Skansen is a huge open air museum that is centered around a historical look at Sweden from the 19th century. The park was started in 1891
IKEA
Doesn't look so big, does it? Well it has 5 floors, and that blue in the distance on the left is still the same store. It's huge! by a rich gentleman that travelled around Sweden buying buildings to move to the parks location on Djurgården, one of Stockholms islands. The park now has around 150 buildings, all maintained with historical accuracy.
What is really fun though, is that every building is still used for its original purpose, and has people in periodic dress working and living in them. I got to see a carpenter building chairs, a glassblower making a vase, a potter making mugs, and so on. It was neat. There were also examples of homes and the living conditions back then, one being a lumberjacks home that two families lived in.
Around 1600 I went to one of the squares in the park and saw some traditional Swedish folk dancing. It was very country style, and the people even let out a few eeeeee-yoo's from time to time. A little odd to see in Sweden, I didn't expect to see something like that here.
A quick note on the Swedish language. It's very beautiful, it just rolls together so smoothly and musically. It's actually really enjoyable just to relax on a bench downtown or something and listen to a few girls yammering
Rune Stone
In Uppsala away about whatever they talk about. They could be talking about anything, even the weird foreigner guy who is obviously eavesdropping and really creeping them out, but regardless, it sounds amazing. I love Swedish.
10th July
The Vasa Museum, something I have been looking forward to seeing for a long time.
The Vasa was a warship completed back in 1628, just two years after work on it had commenced. The ship was the most heavily armed ship of its day, the pride of the Swedish Navy, Sweden at the time being a nation of moderate power. The King of Sweden demanded that the ship be readied as quickly as possible, and that it be as stunning in its magnificence as possible, it was his baby. Those two demands should never really go together though, and because of the King's unreasonable demands, the ship was launched into disaster on August 10, 1628.
After it was launched it was fine at first, but within a few minutes a small gust of wind caught it and due to some oversights in the design and preparations, the ship leaned heavily to one side and water surged in through the open cannon
ports. The water dragged the ship onto its side and it sunk just about 1Km from where it was launched. Turns out the ballast was poorly stocked and the ship was far too top heavy.
It sat at the bottom of the Baltic sea in that position for 333 years before being raised back in 1961 and then painstakingly restored to as close as its original condition as possible over the course of almost 20 years. Now it has its own museum and anyone can go and admire the Vasa, walk around it, see a rebuilt model of the interior, see actual skeletons of some of the 50 crew members that died when it sank, and more. The museum is almost as remarkable as the tale of the ship itself, and I loved it enough to have spent almost 4 hours in there, taking in everything it had to offer. Fantastic!
11th July
Decided to try a few less touristy things today, and experience something a little more normal and Swedish. So I went to IKEA! I have never actually been to one before, so it really blew my mind to see just how big this place is.
Drottninggatan
downtown shopping street It's bloody huge and has everything including several dozen kitchen sinks to choose from. I liked what I saw, and will have to find one nearby in Canada when I eventually buy myself a house. Nice stuff, and cheap, the two go together well in my book. While at IKEA I noticed they had a little restaurant there, so I swung in for some cheap grub. Got something typically Swedish, Meatballs with lingonberry jam and potatoes. Pretty tasty and at 49 crowns it is in McDonalds price bracket.
I also hit up one a secondhand shop called Mynorna, which is like Oxfam, Salvation Army, and the like. I love these shops, I really do, and it was different to see one here in Sweden since the quality of the items on display was a lot higher than in Canada or Britain, but with prices that are comparable. Some really nice furniture again, real wood and such, and at IKEA prices. A little sanding, some varnish, and voila, you would have an extremely nice table or whatever and it would be worth a lot more than what you paid. I bought a couple of books in Swedish to help me
with my learning, at $1 a piece I can hardly go wrong.
Before swinging home, I was walking through a shopping center and saw a SystemBologet, the Swedish Liquor store. I nipped in there and treated myself to 2 bottles of Aquavit, the Swedish National drink. One bottle to share with friends, give them a taste of Sweden (haha), and the other purely for myself. Good stuff!
12th July
Today I took the train up to a smaller town called "Uppsala", which is about the same population as Kingston (where I live back in Canada), and like Kingston it is also a student town. Although it is now summer, so I won't get to feel the full impact of the student life here, and I missed the major party day of the year, Valborg, which see's the whole town explode into party mode. Pity that.
I didn't do too much sightseeing here, just a hell of a lot of walking in the hot summer sun and heat. I probably rolled in about 15Km. I visited an old Cathedral here that dates back to the late 13th century, another church to my long list I know. This one
Parliament again
On it's own little island was actually the largest in Scandinavia, it was rather large. Originally it was Catholic, but like everything else in Sweden, when the reform came, it switched to Lutheran. I got to see the resting places of a few very famous Swedes, including Gustav Vasa, Carolus Linnaeus, Emanuel Swedenborg, Nathan Söderblom, and Eric the Saint (Sweden's patron saint no less). Lots of good history up in this city, and next I was off to somewhere even older.
Gamla Uppsala has been a bit of a burial site for over 2000 years, and it in fact holds the burial mounds to over 3000 people. But three burial mounds in particular are very noteworthy as dating research, which dates these mounds to around 500AD, supports the information of the Ynglinga Saga that Aun, Egil and Adils (the Eadgils of Beowulf) are buried there. If you are familiar with Beowulf, then here they are, very cool. If not, well.....whatever then. I also saw a bunch of Runestones all over the place.
Went to the supermarket at night and decided to try some knackerbröd and a thing called Kalles Kaviar which is a fish paste thing with some caviar in it, it's very
popular here. The knackerbröd was a thin crisp bread, quite hard, I liked it a lot, but the Kalles Kaviar.....it was disgusting as hell. An acquired taste I guess, but to describe it in my own senses, it was very salty, had a strong and lingering fishy taste like old salmon or something, and the texture was....wrong, just plain wrong. I didn't care for the stuff too much. I also tried to find something called surströmming too, which is a bit of a traditional food here. Basically it is a can of old rotting fish, which when opened can be smelt for about 100 metres, haha. Don't open it indoors I guess, or the place will stink for weeks. The people here eat this stuff and drink it with Vodka to kill the taste I guess. Well, some people eat it, not many are brave enough to. I wanted to try it just because it sounds so stupid and pointless, but maybe it's a good thing I couldn't find any after all, saved myself from a bit of illness.
13th July
My last full day here *sniff*, makes me sad. I have spent a good 9 days in Stockholm,
Sergels Torg
The heart of downtown Stockholm. One of the few places that *isn't* beautiful in the city. and despite four days being more than enough in most cities, I could easily go for more here, I like the place that much. I just chilled today though, wandering around the city and bought a couple of small things to take home with me. Another beautiful day, Sweden will miss me when I leave her and the rain starts again, haha. I must be pushing near 80 days in Europe now, and still with only one rainy day to memory, lucky lucky!
Final thoughts
Stockholm likes to call itself the most beautiful capitol city in the world, and I am not sure if that is quite true, but it's pretty damn beautiful all the same. It's a real pity that most people when touring Europe will only go so far as Copenhagen and turn back, ignoring Sweden and Stockholm. Skipping out on this amazing city is criminal, since it has everything going for it. It is clean, safe, trendy, gorgeous in scenery (and women), and genrally it has a great vibe. It just feels so comfortable somehow, like home. I will be back one day.
Final note: After Italy, Sweden must be the mullet capitol of Europe.
NK department store
Not much to look at, but cool inside. The mullet has somehow become very fashionable here, and there are literally hundreds of young boys AND girls to be seen sporting them all over the city. It was hilarious, who starts these trends anyway?!
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kim
non-member comment
sweden
can ufind sweden's national food?