Stockholm, Sweden

           Upon my arrival at Arlanda Airport in Stockholm, Sweden two thoughts immediately crossed my mind: 1) I felt slightly strange being surrounded by so many white people as I have become accustomed to being the absolute minority, and 2) I am also used to being in the top 75% as far as height goes in Kurdistan, but the Swedish people are huge!  Blond hair and blue eyes abounded, and I saw numerous women who were as tall as or taller than me, and a number of men who were over 6’5.  It was actually quite comical!

            Rather than continuing this post in chronological fashion I will write some thoughts by category.  This will save time for me since I can’t remember every detail, and still provide the overall gist of the experience. 

Transportation

The Swedish airport is similar to most except that I didn’t have to wait around for very long.  It was also extremely easy to find public transportation and the fact that most people can communicate quite effectively in English made it easy to navigate.  There are buses, trams, trains, and a subway in Stockholm, most of which also has some kind of map in English.  If you are looking to buy tickets on a trip by trip basis it will be quite expensive, around $6 per trip; however, we bought a week long pass for about $47 which we utilized at least 3 times a day.  The system is very efficient and was always right on time; no matter where we wanted to go we were easily able to get there. 

Weather

            Evidently northern Europe is best traveled to in the summer as many things shut down for “wintry months.”  This was also true in Tallinn.  I was not surprised that certain boat lines were shut down due to ice, but some ordinary things like viewing towers I expected to stay open.   The overall weather in Sweden was cold, but not nearly as cold as I had prepared myself for.  I thought there would be snow aplenty and icy waters; numerous Swedes told us that this wasn’t even a real winter and it was the warmest in about 40 years.  There wasn’t any snow on the ground at all!  Considering we were in the city, and heavily reliant on public transportation, I wasn’t exactly distraught about the lack of snow, although the light rain did get annoying.  What was a semi-problem though was the darkness.  It seemed as if it didn’t get light out until past 8am and was already dark by 3pm!  Days were quite short and this limited the time frames for certain sight-seeing activities. 

Activities

            Stockholm is essentially composed of a number of different, small islands.  Some areas feel similar to New York where it is large, pricey, well-developed, and lined with high fashion stores.  Others are more down to Earth, residential, with a bit more greenery.  On quite a few occasions we just hopped on a random bus or subway just to see where the line took us.  We rode it right to the end, then turned around and came back.  It was an interesting way to see different parts of the city, and had the weather been nicer, we surely would have explored some more on foot. 

            A lot of the main attractions we only viewed from the outside given their price.  We had already spent a decent amount of money in Tallinn, and given the cost of everything in Stockholm we found it better to save some money by not going into all of the palaces.  However, we still saw the Royal Palace, Stadshuset (City Hall), and Drottningholm Palace.  The Palaces were similar to ones you would see at other locations in Europe so I wasn’t overly disappointed that we weren’t able to go in.  City Hall, where the Nobel Prize dinner is held, has a viewing tower but it was closed for the winter.  It was still cool to see all of them and gave us some places to walk around to, mainly around Gamla Stan and another trip to Drottningholm.    

            We did manage to a Swedish hockey game to watch AIK of the Elitserien, their professional hockey league.  We were sitting next to a German woman who we talked to quite a bit which was nice.  AIK won the game and I was really impressed with the atmosphere of the arena; although there were only about 6,000 people it was fairly loud and the hardcore fans were chanting for almost the entire game. 

            Another interesting attraction was the Vasa Museet, a museum which houses an old ship from 1628 that sunk in the harbor and was then pulled up, almost fully intact.  Just to see something from that long ago in such good condition was amazing.  On the same day we went to the Skansen Open Air museum which had a lot of old Swedish style buildings, a small zoo, and a lot of different areas to walk around. 

            On the last day before we left we also took a bus out to an island called Vaxholm.  In the summer it is supposedly a huge tourist destination, but it was quite dead at this time.  It felt like the Lakes Region of NH so I was particularly fond of this area.  It was peaceful and homey, offered beautiful views of the water, and was nice to walk around.  Most days in Sweden consisted of going to see an attraction, some random exploration of a different island, trying a new restaurant for lunch, then heading home for dinner where we proceeded to watch 2 movies in a row.  It was a good combination of exploration and relaxation. 

           

Food

Throughout the trip we found that most people can speak in English, yet there are still many menus that are only in Swedish.  By the end of the trip we figured out a key main phrases and that lunch was the best time we could eat out because of dagens lunch specials; it was basically half the price.  It seems like food in Sweden was either fast food or over $20 a plate for dinner.  There didn’t seem to be too much catered to the middle, a group we squarely fall in.  However, the lunch specials still provided us the opportunity to eat out. 

I can’t say that I got a real feel for traditional Swedish food while I was there.   Stockholm is a very international city so you can basically get anything you want; establishments that offer mostly traditional food are mainly frequented by tourists so you naturally have a premium in price.  The food was good, especially since it offered the exact kind of variety that Iraq lacks, however the prices were well above what I am used to, even in the US.  Beers were at least $7 each so that wasn’t even worth it. 

Overall

            In the time we were there I definitely had a great time.  I love randomly exploring new locations and getting a feel for another culture and way of life.  The trip was a nice blend of relaxing and going out, and I definitely saw some interesting things.  A week in Stockholm is probably more than you would need IF you have good weather and can pack a lot of things into one day.  It is a pricey city so that limits what you can do.  I would like to have gotten a greater feel for Swedish culture and try more foods, but I think that we would have to go to different cities to really get it.  Either way, it was definitely worth seeing and I am glad that I finally got a chance to go to Scandinavia. 

---More pictures are on my Facebook profile. This one to the left with the Patriots and Bruins logos was actually from a restaurant called O'Leary's! ----