A healthy dose of Nordic air

Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2006

I've been a few days now returned from my trip to Stockholm. Sorry my emails are always so long... I know I find it hard to sit down and read long emails.... call me a hypocrite. I just don't know how to abridge with so much happening.

"Alors.." Stockholm...

Friday, I checked into the hostel then had dinner. Fetatoast Smorgasbord. Fetatoast is a mix of feta and pesto - seems to be quite popular here. Unlike crazy science experiments, you should try it at home (it's your choice whether or not to use adult supervision - I trust your judgement). Smorgasbord is Swedish for sandwich; funny I always thought smorgasbord meant BIG buffet. I still think it does, but apparently it also means sandwich.

Post fetatoast (it rhymes!), I went to a concert. Two days prior to leaving, I somehow figured out that one of my favorite musicians in high school would be playing a concert in Stockholm that night- Ryan Adams. I hadn't much listened to his new stuff, but whatever. Though the concert was expensive, I figured it was too big a coincidence to let fly by, so I went. Overall, glad I went. Mr. Adam is reputed to be a rather ornery person and lived up to his reputation. After unsuccessfully trying to get people to stop calling out song requests, he said "If you want to hear the f**king song then go back to your house and put it on your f**king stereo." In response, the crowd cheered as if he'd just spouted glowing words of gospel.

Saturday I woke up to golden rays of sunshine dancing in my window. I rolled over to look at who my hostel roommates were, hoping it’d be a strapping, young, European lad. I looked. I rubbed my eyes and looked again. “No! not possible! Am I still dreaming?” Snoring away in the neighboring bed was a man of , honestly, 65, 70. White, bulbous red nose, old. That took the youth out of youth hostel. In fact, I'd say maybe 20% of the people I saw at my hostel were between the ages of 16 and 26. Needless to say, I unfortunately didn't meet any travel buddies.

The earliest thing open in the city was Storykan, a noted church. I'm getting sick of churches but everything else opened at 10 so off I went to church-ify. Nice, Nordic architecture. Then I wandered the winding streets of the old island (Stockholm is located on 14 islands if I recall correctly) and stopped in a free museum ‘til changing of the guards at 12.

Evidently, the changing of the guards is popular, even in mid October. I struggled to find a place in the crowd with a good view and resorted to climbing onto the base of one of the palace pillars. Starting on the nose at noon came fanfare with the blaring of marching band horn and the rat-a-tat-tat of gun and drums. The guards walked around like so many wind-up, tin soldiers – legs kicking out straight, upper bodies rigid as a board.

Afterwards, I toured the Treasury Museum in the old royal palace and the royal apartments. I basked in the glow of glittery shiny things in the Treasury which laden with gems, appreciated the old building foundations in the museum, and took a nice guided tour of the apartments. After the palace closed at 3PM (what!?), I wandered the remainder of the day and night seeing what hodgepodge of shops and free museums and buildings I could find.

Sunday -
I walked around my hostel's little island and the neighboring pin prick of land pre-10AM. A glorious, orange morning light rained down on the landscape and it was beautiful. I reveled in the crisp, fresh air drinking it up like water in comparison to the sludgy coffee of dirty city air I’d become accustomed to. After a failed attempted to go to the chocolate festival at the Nordic Museum (a $13 entry fee was not my budget - Stockholm is expensive enough as it). I went to the nearby Vasa Museum and saw a ‘Viking’ ship. Huge and imposing, covered in wooden carvings of Romans and angels, the Vasa sank on her maiden voyage. "Oops, looks like we didn't put enough balast in the boat... thhhaaaar she blows over." The museum was spiffy organized with sections that talked about life on board the Vasa or that displayed and spoke the skeletons they found at the site of the wreck.

I passed the afternoon at an open-air museum and park named Skasen. It smelled wonderful, like pine and campfire mixed with a tinge of fall leaves. The park showed Stockholm through the ages. In short, they picked up a whole lot of old Swedish buildings and moved them on over to Skansen. How? Teleporting? An army of ants? I don't know. The park workers are dressed in period garb and there were lodge houses with demonstrations of, say glassblowing or loom weaving. I bought a Kandelbule (name's close to that... classic Swedish pastry that's EVERYWHERE) and ate it - fresh from the oven, its sweet dough rolling down my throat as it steamed like a cup of tea in the brusque air.

Next, I stopped by the modern art museum - good collection of Warhol, Duchamps, etc.

In the evening I went to go see a movie, "Dark Horse". I asked the ticket seller if the film was in English. “Oh yes, it is in English.,” she replied. It wasn't . The was in some Germanic language, or perhaps Finnish, with subtitles in Swedish. Well, I had nothing better to do, so I chalked one up to a cultural experience (what's travel about anyhow) and made what sense I could of the movie while lounging in the old fashioned theater.

Monday -

I tromped off to another island in the morning for a guided visit of the City Hall. Most impressive was the gold hall, covered entirely in mosaic. Can you imagine having to mosaic the entirety of a huge room? No, me either.

After City Hall-ing, I walked around til’ lunch which I ate at a neat indoor market I'd read about. Lots of stands inside under a light-permeated roof that resembled a greenhouse. The market felt genuine, Swedish. It was. I tried a meatball. It had nice spices, but sadly cold. It would have been better roasted over an open fire like a toasted marshmallow..

Three o’clock rolled around and I took the bus back to airport. Next to me was an old Swede – interesting guy, who had thrice been a royal guard at the palace, who likes to walk through the forest and find mushrooms to cook and who grows potatoes.

On bus back to Paris from Beauvais, I sat next to a blonde Finish boy with narrow eyes and hair in a ponytail. Being the curious gal I am, I decided to strike up a conversation. "What are you studying?" I asked. "Circus," he said. "Whhhat?" I said. "Circus," he repeated. Turns out he was studying juggling right outside of Paris. Evidently Paris is home to 2 of the world's foremost circus schools. Who even knew they existed? Not I.

Back in Paris -
Last night, my friend Alex and I went out and ending up making real French friends; yes, it’s true! They walk and talk and have 10 fingers and toes! (Making French friends is pretty much the ultimate goal of every kid in the program. It's like winning the lotto or something). Only one of those we met lives in Paris, but hey it was fun. Also, I realized I was easily carrying on a conversation and could understand most of what they said. I was happy to note that it was so easy for me to have a bona fide few hours of conversation in French. yay!


Off to send off my absentee ballot now to good old Chemung County.

Bisous!
Hannah