Stockholm Syndrome Part 1

As of yesterday I am now home from my Stockholm adventure, fingers unthawed, wallet empty, and brain boggled.  But it was definitely quite the adventure.

My friend Nichola and I left for the airport around 3:30 pm on Sunday for our flight at 9 pm.  We had to take a train and then a bus to the airport, then our flight, and then another bus from the Skavsta airport to the main train station in Stockholm, and then a Taxi to our host's apartment.  It was quite the ordeal and we didn't actually reach the apartment until around 1 am on Monday, but oh well.  We were ready for an adventure!

Starting at 8 am on Monday we began the ultimate walking tour of Stockholm, guided by none other than ourselves.  Stockholm is actually comprised of 14 separate islands, of which we managed to hit five.  Here is a map to show you how it looks.

Ok so now that we covered that, Stockholm is a really really really Old city.  I mean parts of it were Medieval.  So there is tons of history to be absorbed there, and the sights are gorgeous.   The Swedish people are truly a kind and welcoming culture (probably the most welcoming of my trips thus far) and are extremely skilled in English.  Although, side note, don't ask them for directions to the tourism office, because they'll send you in circles for about three hours no matter how many of them you ask, and eventually you'll just have to give up and wander to the City hall for tourist information.  Anyways.  Back to the city.  The streets are kind of a mixture of cobblestone and almost brick-like things, but you can't really tell the difference between cobblestone and ice..  so.. oh well.  They don't actually salt their sidewalks and such during the winter months; they accumulate far too much snow and ice to have a stable salt supply on hand.  Instead, they use sand.  There are sandboxes outside of all the shops, and at moments you feel like you're walking on a beach instead of the streets of Stockholm (granted that feeling only lasts a milisecond until you realize you are no where near warm and can't feel your face).  The temperatures while I was there were around 35, and we had two days of sun which apparently is just unreal.  Their headlines of their newspapers will be "It will be sunny today!!" if the sun is expected to even show for merely than 10 minutes.  I guess in the winter it is only true blue, sunny skies about one day out of the month.  The rest is just cloudy and dreary.  So yay for us, we somehow got two!  Talk about luck.  The sunshine was great, but the wind could be brutal since we were right on the water throughout the entire city, which lead to major glove and hat usage.  Here are some photos from the old medieval island of the city (now mostly cute little shops and restaurants) called Gamlastan.  It was the halfway point to a lot of our destinations, so I actually spent quite a bit of time there..

 

The National Parliament Building and Royal Palace are both also located on that island, not too far from most of the shops.  My friend and I basically just stumbled upon them without really trying to locate them.  According to our host for the weekend, the Swedish people aren't really a fan of their Royal Family, because they aren't really truly Swedish (The queen is Brazilian and German, the Prince, who just married the Princess, was a commoner and just a mere fitness trainer) so it is quite the controversy.  But apparently Norway's monarchy is apparently in more of a scandal, however, beacuse their crowned prince just married a stripper.  Anywho.  The palace isn't all that stunning from the outside, but it suffices.  The parliament building is then directly across the street from it.  How convenient.  The royal family has no real official power over the country, they are just more a symbol of tradition and something to make their postage stamps adequate.  Here are what the buildings look like..

National Parliament Buildings..

 

Royal Palace

 

Yep.  As I said, not the most impressive looking Palace, but I guess it gets the job done.  They give their guard a nice little heating pad to stand on during the cold winter months.  How sweet.

I'm starting to realize I've collected far too much information for this trip to be merely one blog post, so hence the part one.  I'll keep writing until I have to leave to meet my new roommates for a movie at 8 pm :)

As far as Stockholm goes for a trip destination, I would say if you're out of college with a stable income and are willing to spend a little more money in an expensive city, go for it.  However, if you are a college student on a limited budget, DO NOT GO TO STOCKHOLM.  Or Sweden, or Scandinavia for that matter.  It is ungodly expensive.  Like seriously.  I could barely afford to feed myself, much less pay entry fees for museums and other things with the hope of coming back to Germany and affording to feed and clothe myself ever again.  To put it in perspective, if one wanted to eat a cheap version of Chinese food without anything special, it would be around $20 per person, minimum.  And that is just chinese.  When you try to eat at authentic Swedish restaurants, you're looking at anywhere from $30 a plate or up.  Drinks in bars and clubs are at least $10 each, so scratch out the idea of kicking a few drinks back at the end of the day.  Coffee is about $5 per cup, at a cheap cafe'.  I mean it folks, Stockholm was not cheap.  My friend Nichola and I lived off apples purchased at a grocery store and 7/11 Hotdogs.  It was not glorious. 

See what I mean? ha.  Anyways.  Although the expenses part of the trip wasn't the best, I would still say I am glad I went.  It is truly a beautiful city, probably even more beautiful in the summer, with a really interesting culture to be observed.  It is also a easy city to walk around in- a lot of things are central enough to only need a good pair of tennis shoes to reach, no bus pass needed (or suggested, they're about $4 per trip, one way..).  I guess in all, it was an adventure which I can tell my kids someday.  One of those "I walked 20 miles, uphill, in the snow, in Stockholm, just to find the Jewish Museum after only eating an apple in the last 48 hours" stories.  :) 

Speaking of the Jewish Museum, Nichola and I really couldn't afford a ton of museums, nor are all of them open during convenient times, so we chose to walk clear across town on our second day to the Jewish Museum.  It was super small, only two rooms, but they had some good information on the Jewish history in Sweden.  I was not aware that Sweden did not prosecute their Jews during the Second World War, in fact, they sent buses in to save them from concentration camps.  The buses they sent were called the "White Buses" and were sent to concentration camps throughout Germany.  They literally took back all the scandinanvian Jews from the camps to Sweden, and ended up saving approximately 8,000 lives.  Too bad they couldn't save them all :(  But on the other side of things, Sweden was the first country to fund the beginning of racial profiling research.  So I guess their slate isn't completely clean.  In total, I learned quite a bit about the Jewish history which was cool.

 

Another place we visited was the City Hall, although it truthfully wasn't one of our planned destinations.  We had tried to find the tourism office in order to buy a pass for students for the transportation and museums our entire first day in Stockholm, however all the Swedish citizens which we asked kept sending us in all different directions all over the city.  Unfortunately, we didn't find it until the last night we were in Stockholm, but on the plus side, the extra walking just let us see more of the city than we probably would have otherwise.  We found out we could buy the pass at the city hall, however, it ended up not being worth the money for the little time we had left in the city, plus we didn't need the transportation; walking was suiting us just fine.  The city hall was gorgeous though, especially the views from out front on the water. 

 

 

 

Personally, I found the views quite gorgeous.  Although, at one point, there are some steps leading down into the water with no guard rail or anything- it's quite dangerous.  Especially since there are gigantic ice chunks floating around everywhere, ensuring a freezing body of water below.  Interesting how safety standards are different in other countries.  In the USA people would freak out and write their city mayors about it I'm sure.  And this is on the front steps of their own City Hall.  It's a different world out there people, I'm telling ya. 

Well, I am going to wrap this up here for today.  I will continue on tomorrow.  As for right now, I'm going to meet my new house mates at the movies tonight to see Virgin Suicides.  I know it's a quite popular book in the States, and I think I even read it, but I seriously can't remember anything about it.  Hopefully it's not super scary or something.  Also, here is the link to the rest of my photos from the trip, if you would like to just not wait for the remainder of my post and look at them now :)

https://picasaweb.google.com/113919949355390501172/20110203?authkey=Gv1sRgCLiUjpTYzarQFw&feat=directlink

Also, I'll try and figure out how to put a youtube video of Stockholm on here tomorrow which would give you a real feel for the city. So yep. Until tomorrow!