Saturday in between breakfast and my unusual trip to the theatre was somewhat messed up by the unexpected and startling appearance of the sun. Having lost a couple of toes and grown mildew in unmentionable places tramping around stalking fictional characters the day before, I’d decided to spend Saturday coming over all cultured in museums. I’d picked out the museums I was going to go to, and had even worked out a route to avoid further frostbite to extremities, so was entirely discombobulated to wake up on Saturday morning to find the city blinking in bright sunshine.
It’s an unwritten rule of being Scottish that one must never, under any circumstances, waste an instant of sunshine indoors. While people from warmer climates can blithely carry on their day safe in the knowledge that it will likely be sunny the next day or the day after, in Scotland summer generally lasts a matter of hours, so the instant that unfamiliar light stuff peeks through thick grey clouds we all drop what we’re doing, coat ourselves in olive oil and fling ourselves on the pavement. So clearly, my museum plan needed to be re-thought.
I decided to walk up to something labelled on my map as “Viking Terminal” which sounded suitably exciting and mysterious – the place where the Vikings came to an end? I marched up a slushy and cracked pavement that ran between a dual carriage way and the Baltic Sea – from which a biting wind ignored the sun and howled, apparently just round my head (honestly, I could see people in t shirts and flip flips barely meters from where I walked in my own private North Pole expedition). No matter, I thought to myself, it will all be worth it to see whatever this Viking… thing is that I will reach any moment. It must be behind that bloody great ferry I can see up ahead.
Ah. Or, it IS the bloody great ferry I can see up ahead. The Viking Terminal turned out to be the ferry Terminal for the Viking line that goes to Finland. So basically I’d walked along a slushy and cracked pavement in my own private North Pole expedition, to look at a mini version of Dover. It was all worth it though, when I saw the sign reading “Viking Check-in” which conjured fabulous mental images of a queue of giant hairy dreadlocked blokes with horned helmets and possibly the head of an Anglo-Saxon tucked under their arm, queuing up with their passport and hoping for a window seat.
I idled what remained of the afternoon away wandering through neighbourhoods consisting of endless coffee shops, a video shop where I tried and failed to find DVDs of Swedish films not released in Britain (every DVD I found turned out to be an American film, sadly), a supermarket where I bought some salty liquorice for my friend Maja (after first polling everyone shopping there to ensure that someone in their right mind would actually want salty liquorice and I hadn’t mistranslated her request), and possibly a park or possibly someone’s front garden (less said on that the better).
Just as the sun was sinking, I made my way back to Slussen and decided I had time for one more mini-exploration before it was time to forage for some dinner (and, as it would turn out, a school play). I managed to translate a sign by a passenger boat that read “next departure 5 minutes” so to celebrate I bought a ticket and got on the boat hoping vaguely that it wasn’t going to Finland.
It was in fact going to an absolutely brilliant place called Djurgården (bashing some icebergs on the way which was excellent) – though it ended up proving the only disappointment of the trip as I got there too late to explore it as I would have wanted to. Not only was it starting to get dark, but the last trip back to Slussen was leaving about 20 minutes after I’d arrived and I wasn’t sure enough of where I was to attempt to get back any other way. So I zoomed around what looked like beautiful gardens with intriguing statues and beautiful museums and even a funfair (though that was closed) and then collapsed back on the return boat slightly out of breath.
I did manage to fit in a quick return trip to Djurgården and the Nordic Museum the following day, where I discovered a swing band playing and mostly elderly people lindy hopping, which cemented my impression of Djurgården as a fabulous place I definitely want to return to.
So that was it. Nearly three decades of Swedophelia and my first trip there did nothing to dampen my ardour. There is definitely a predictable (though far from unpleasant) efficiency and cleanliness; but anywhere with porn in mainstream shop windows, teenage Goths demanding opinions on Afghanistan and the eloquent homeless man deeply put out by the gentrification of Södermalm is far from bland. They’re not effusively welcoming in the way that Americans and Canadians can be, where, if you stand on a street corner holding a map and looking confused hoards of people will all but trample you in their eagerness to give you directions and introduce you to all their family; I stood on many, many street corners in Stockholm holding a map and looking confused and the people cheerfully left me to it. But if I made the effort to approach them, they couldn’t have been lovelier, and their dry humour and quirky friendliness put me in mind, oddly enough, of Glaswegians (albeit taller and infinitely more gorgeous). I’m making plans for a train trip this summer through Northern Europe that will take in Stockholm – though this time will study a map in advance and be sure to watch out for statues of August Strinberg.
It’s an unwritten rule of being Scottish that one must never, under any circumstances, waste an instant of sunshine indoors. While people from warmer climates can blithely carry on their day safe in the knowledge that it will likely be sunny the next day or the day after, in Scotland summer generally lasts a matter of hours, so the instant that unfamiliar light stuff peeks through thick grey clouds we all drop what we’re doing, coat ourselves in olive oil and fling ourselves on the pavement. So clearly, my museum plan needed to be re-thought.
I decided to walk up to something labelled on my map as “Viking Terminal” which sounded suitably exciting and mysterious – the place where the Vikings came to an end? I marched up a slushy and cracked pavement that ran between a dual carriage way and the Baltic Sea – from which a biting wind ignored the sun and howled, apparently just round my head (honestly, I could see people in t shirts and flip flips barely meters from where I walked in my own private North Pole expedition). No matter, I thought to myself, it will all be worth it to see whatever this Viking… thing is that I will reach any moment. It must be behind that bloody great ferry I can see up ahead.
Ah. Or, it IS the bloody great ferry I can see up ahead. The Viking Terminal turned out to be the ferry Terminal for the Viking line that goes to Finland. So basically I’d walked along a slushy and cracked pavement in my own private North Pole expedition, to look at a mini version of Dover. It was all worth it though, when I saw the sign reading “Viking Check-in” which conjured fabulous mental images of a queue of giant hairy dreadlocked blokes with horned helmets and possibly the head of an Anglo-Saxon tucked under their arm, queuing up with their passport and hoping for a window seat.
I idled what remained of the afternoon away wandering through neighbourhoods consisting of endless coffee shops, a video shop where I tried and failed to find DVDs of Swedish films not released in Britain (every DVD I found turned out to be an American film, sadly), a supermarket where I bought some salty liquorice for my friend Maja (after first polling everyone shopping there to ensure that someone in their right mind would actually want salty liquorice and I hadn’t mistranslated her request), and possibly a park or possibly someone’s front garden (less said on that the better).
Just as the sun was sinking, I made my way back to Slussen and decided I had time for one more mini-exploration before it was time to forage for some dinner (and, as it would turn out, a school play). I managed to translate a sign by a passenger boat that read “next departure 5 minutes” so to celebrate I bought a ticket and got on the boat hoping vaguely that it wasn’t going to Finland.
It was in fact going to an absolutely brilliant place called Djurgården (bashing some icebergs on the way which was excellent) – though it ended up proving the only disappointment of the trip as I got there too late to explore it as I would have wanted to. Not only was it starting to get dark, but the last trip back to Slussen was leaving about 20 minutes after I’d arrived and I wasn’t sure enough of where I was to attempt to get back any other way. So I zoomed around what looked like beautiful gardens with intriguing statues and beautiful museums and even a funfair (though that was closed) and then collapsed back on the return boat slightly out of breath.
I did manage to fit in a quick return trip to Djurgården and the Nordic Museum the following day, where I discovered a swing band playing and mostly elderly people lindy hopping, which cemented my impression of Djurgården as a fabulous place I definitely want to return to.
So that was it. Nearly three decades of Swedophelia and my first trip there did nothing to dampen my ardour. There is definitely a predictable (though far from unpleasant) efficiency and cleanliness; but anywhere with porn in mainstream shop windows, teenage Goths demanding opinions on Afghanistan and the eloquent homeless man deeply put out by the gentrification of Södermalm is far from bland. They’re not effusively welcoming in the way that Americans and Canadians can be, where, if you stand on a street corner holding a map and looking confused hoards of people will all but trample you in their eagerness to give you directions and introduce you to all their family; I stood on many, many street corners in Stockholm holding a map and looking confused and the people cheerfully left me to it. But if I made the effort to approach them, they couldn’t have been lovelier, and their dry humour and quirky friendliness put me in mind, oddly enough, of Glaswegians (albeit taller and infinitely more gorgeous). I’m making plans for a train trip this summer through Northern Europe that will take in Stockholm – though this time will study a map in advance and be sure to watch out for statues of August Strinberg.
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