A Weekend in Stockholm

The Swedish equivalent of a coffee break is known as Fika, and it's infinitely popular. In fact, the coffee in Stockholm was so good that I felt like I was back home in Auckland again.

The best little café in Stockholm (if I may be so bold!) is called Chokladkoppen, and it's located at the bottom of a cute IKEA-chic building right in the heart of Gamla Stan; the old town. Dim bulbs dangle with excess wiring from the ceiling, providing enough illumination to admire the oil paintings but not enough to spot a pimple on the face opposite you. Perfect.

Having arrived in Stockholm the night before, this is our first excursion into the city, and we're excited to sample chocolatey perfection in the form of a delicately presented double shot mochaccino.

Chokladkoppen on the right.

From the café, we walked to a tower in Slussen that boasted the best views of Stockholm, but unfortunately it was closed.

So we headed back along the edge of Gamla Stan to the National Museum of Art. The collection was breathtaking.

From there, we had the pleasure of walking along the edge of the water for about an hour to our next stop. Stockholm is on an archipelago, and has many bridges between islands, so you're never far from water.

 

Our next stop was undoubtedly my favourite part of the entire trip. That moment when you know it was already worth coming.

The Vasa Museum sounds vaguely interesting when you read about it. It's not until you actually visit and see it for yourself that the penny drops about how incredibly fascinating this really is. The Vasa was the pride of Sweden's fleet until it sank in 1628. Sweden's water is cold enough that it doesn't host the vast numbers of wood destroying sea creatures, so when the wreck was discovered in 1961, it was still intact. The war ship was slowly dredged from the ocean floor at the request of the King, and salvaged with advanced wood restoration techniques.

The result isn't just the pride of the Vasa Museum, it's the only thing on show in this purpose built venue.

 

And it's incredible. The sheer scale blew my mind. The most comparable experience of my life was watching Pirates of the Caribbean at IMAX. And this was seriously cooler.

We left the Vasa Museum seriously energised in that way that only happens when you experience something truly unexpected on your travels.

When we left, the sun had come grandly out.

We walked back to the tower we'd tried to visit earlier, which was now open. We arrived just in time for sunset. However, Murphy's Law dictates that something must go wrong at this moment. And in this case, I forgot to update the settings on the camera from the dark Vasa Museum; so captured a whole lot of nothing. At a stretch I was able to squeeze this out of the best photograph:

It's not as amazing as what we actually saw... but at least it looks sort of ancient!

One of the few things I knew about Stockholm before visiting was that the metro system was a work of art. Specifically, the hard rock that was carved out to create the metro has been painted to become part of the charm of the network.

This was our next stop:

The guard at the station was able to give us an art guide to the metro system, so we embarked on a trip all over Stockholm encountering the weird and wonderful public art installations.

Definitely the first metro system I've ever encountered that's worth of a tour in its own right.

Our final day in Stockholm was spent again exploring Gamla Stan, walking right through the centre of Parliament:

We returned to Chokladkoppen for a traditional Swedish open sandwich along with the perfect white chocolate cheesecake. Afterwards, we explored the Modern Museum of Art. Then headed back to the airport, and home again to London.

Life Lesson #43 – Mad Dash

You can call me Usain.

This is me. For real.

When you fly Ryanair on a non-EU passport, you have to get a visa-check stamp when you arrive at the airport, before going through security. Every other airline does it just before you board. This means that if you’re silly enough to forget to get one, you’re pretty much screwed unless you’re Usain Bolt.

Which I totally am.

This kind of rookie mistake should have cost us our trip. But, with lightening speed and a flash of a smile to the security people who aren’t supposed to let you back out, and the check-in people who aren’t meant to stamp a passport for a flight that’s leaving in 2 mins, we made it all the way through Gatwick airport and back to our gate in a flash.

The gate had already closed. But the guard was so shocked to see us again that he tipped his hat to us by reopening and allowing us to board!

I was puffing and panting the whole way to Stockholm. I haven’t felt so exhausted since Fourth Form cross country (after they foiled my plan to see the school counsellor at that exact time in order to get out of it).

I guess, unlike the other Usain, exercise doesn’t agree with me. Endorphins Schmendorphins.

Archipelagos and Cinammon Buns

Our last day in Gothenburg is the one I've been looking forward to the most. The West Coast of Sweden is made up of a series of rocky archipelagos, and near Gothenburg many of them are inhabited, so its quite easy to catch a commuter ferry from the last tram stop out to see the islands.




You see few tourists in Gothenburg, and even fewer when you get out to the archipelagos. We took the ferry right out to Vrångö, the furthest one. It has around 300 inhabitants but the rocky landscape feels deserted in a really alien way.




Unfortunately the wind was coming from the north today, so we were too frozen to spend as much time there as we would have liked, but that didn't stop us from enjoying the baguettes with ham and Swedish beetroot salad that we'd brought with us from the mainland.

When we arrived back in Gothenburg we still had several hours before our shuttle, and there was no questioning how we would spend it.




Spending the afternoon in Haga with a perfect coffee and a fresh cinnamon bun was the first thing we did when we arrived, and despite costing more than the average lunch in NZ, repeating it was the perfect end to a delightful long weekend in Sweden.





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Life Lesson #23 - Mayday, May Day

Today I learned that Mayday is more than just a maritime distress signal. Turns out it's quite important to the Swedes, they hold enormous public parades, and it's a bonafide holiday so they even close half the city down for it. Including the museums, art galleries and markets. No prizes for guessing what we were planning to do today.

Gothenburg

Early rise this morning. 3:45am, to be exact. I always find it funny how a two hour flight can take nine hours travel, but I suppose that's budget airlines for you.


We've been looking forward to coming to Gothenburg (aka Göteborg, and pronounced yer-te-borh) because we haven't had much of a chance to get off the beaten track in our travels yet. Places like Vegas and Paris are amazing to visit, but they do lack that element of the unknown, that thrill when you feel like you've stumbled across a completely foreign gem.

Our hopes may have been high, but so far Sweden has not diappointed. Our first impression was the green farms and brilliant blue sky as we took the almost-dirt road from the airport into Sweden's second largest city. Our second impression was the genuine kindness of strangers, who have all learned English and seem over the moon that you've provided them with an opportunity to use it.

Just near our hostel.

Our arrival was wonderfully non-eventful. No life lessons about missed trains or getting lost this time. After checking into our awesome clean hostel, we took the tram to Haga, a little cobbled café street where the Swedish custom is to spend an hour in the afternoon sun over a great coffee and a cinnamon bun. No prizes for guessing what we did there. The coffee and the bun were expensive, but obscenely delicious.

We had planned to head from there to the Art Gallery, but after comparing closing times, realised it would be better to leave that for tomorrow, and instead head to Liseberg (pronounced lisa-bere), the largest theme park in Scandanavia. 

It was fantastic! Their latest attraction (Atmosfear) opened last week and is a giant drop half the height of the skytower! It also features Balder, an old school wooden rollercoaster voted the worlds best several times. I really valued the greenery around the park - it's by far the greenest theme park I've ever been to. In fact, it was refreshingly non-American overall.

There are trees and fragrant flowers everywhere.

Back at the hostel now, it's 10:30pm and I'm and looking forward to getting a decent sleep! That won't be too hard in a 16 bed dorm, right?




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