A menorah in the wind

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(Advance warning: not actually much to report here)

On wednesday morning I slipped and sled down to West Ealing station in the slight frost that covered the ground, caught the Heathrow Connect, and then got held up spectacularly as the plane I was booked on didn't even turn up until 25 minutes after it was supposed to leave due to this aforementioned frost! 2 and a half hours after we were finally given our lovely airborn view of Slough, we pierced a thick nimbostratus to a panorama of vast lakes entirely frozen over, evergreen forests flecked with snow and eventually, a small city which, unlike heathrow terminal 3, seemed to be fully functioning in "extreme weather".

After these delays there didn't turn out to be any time for much sightseeing in Stockholm. It was a relatively small place, probably about the size of Sheffield, whose tallest building was only a few floors taller than Paragon (probably about 20 floors). My friend Sanna's flat, where I was staying, was in an "island" district of the city just south of the centre called Södermalm, which was full of ~6 story apartment blocks like hers, whose windows were all flocked with Menorahs - apparently nothing to do with any considerable Jewish population, this is the Swedish compromise to the English urge to plaster your exterior walls with flashing lights, plastic santas and reindeers in the festive season mid-october.

After some food and drinks at Sanna's place, we got to the club early to set everything up. It was surprisingly well decorated with red carpet, candles and tarted up mannequins - a club looking that swanky in London would give off the impression of charging a tenner for a drink. The dancefloor and DJ booth were contained in a small glass dome, so that the place didn't make too much noise and therefore could stay open later. One thing that rather surprised me was that one of the beers they had on tap was Starobrno, which I thought I remember being told you wouldn't find outside South Moravia, and on closer inspection later on, everywhere in Stockholm seemed to do it! It didn't taste as good as in the Czech Republic of course, but gave me enough fuel to pass time whilst the first few DJs spun some minimal, techno and deep house, and I chatted with some of Sanna's friends, who were all, in such unique ways, fascinating people.

The flier for the club vaguely indicated the required texture with "deep house, vocal house, UK sounds" - deep house in all its disputed definitions had been played for the past 4 hours, before Sanna took to the mic, satisfying the "vocal" rubric. Therefore, the "UK sounds" (beatles?!) was left to me, so I took the place from jackin' to fidget to bassline with plenty of oldskool rave breakdowns thrown in (the club was named after the TB-303, so I felt that appropriate!) It got to about 2:30am when the final few hardcore people staying out that late on a weeknight had filtered out of the club. Sanna, her friend Amanda and I then got loads of food from McDonalds (forgive us, it was the only place still open..) and went to sleep at about 4am.

I slept til about 2.30pm the next day, and Sanna and I were both really tired, so we did little, just amused ourselves with the photos and also found out the recording I did of my set turned out painfully distorted - despite sounding great over the club soundsystem - so unfortunately that won't be going online. No one was available to drive me back to the airport on the way back so I took the "Arlanda Express" train which was pretty exciting for the geek within me of course, 20 minutes of whizzing past clouds of menorah-laden windows at top speeds of 180Km/h (which was indicated to us by the display tickers!) Was a pleasant return journey on the plane, had a conversation with a Swedish guy about cycle logging, since he was interested in me scribbling in the flipbook, and got a lovely clear view of London by night as we descended into Heathrow, even spotting Paragon, indicated by the colourful lights across the A4 from it. I get the feeling I'll be returning to Stockholm in the new year, possibly for the same purpose, and must stay longer and see more of it next time so I actually have something to write about!!

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Photos

the stockholm skyline
yeah, srsly.

hardcore house fans
raving it up on a weeknight

speed:
only so slightly faster than a car in central london at rush hour