So compared to going to North Norway, going to Stockholm is a bagatelle. :P By the way, one of the routes shown on the screenshot might actually be the one we took. That is because we did not take the plane (which would have been a flight of ca. 1 hour) but the night bus, since that was the cheapest option. You only have to sacrifice a night of sleep and 7 to 7.5 hours later (the bus stops a few times on the way, in Örebrö and probably some other places with similarly strange names), you are in Stockholm!
I'm not really good at sleeping on busses, especially not when they stop in random Swedish towns in the middle of the night, including microphone announcements, turning on the lights in the bus etc. Therefore, I will spare you the details. (There are no photos of the journey, either.)
Anyway, we arrived in Stockholm around 6:15 on Saturday morning, had breakfast at a café chain called Espresso House (recommended, as they happened to have a few vegan options!), got a 72 hour public transport ticket (recommended, as single tickets in Stockholm are similarly overpriced as in Oslo), and made our way to the hostel. Since it was still way too early, we couldn't check in, but we had already received the code for the luggage room. After dropping our stuff there, we basically went our again immediately (there was not much to see or do in the hostel) to start exploring the city.
I was thinking about splitting this post into the different days, but that might have caused quite a bit of delay in the publishing process on this blog, as I might have just published one article and postponed the other ones... That's why you will have to deal with one gigantic blog post! :P
Stockholm quick facts
Capital of Sweden, city with the highest number of inhabitants in the Nordic countries, almost a million inhabitants in the city itself, 1.5 million in the urban area, 2.3 million in the metropolitan area, on 14 islands*
For everything else, I'm referring you to Wikipedia.
* Prepare for lots of water photos!
First exploring stroll
To the water, of course:
Just to give you an idea of where we were running around: this is what Stockholm, or sort of the inner-city of it, looks like. Zinkensdamm was "our" metro stop (in Swedish: T-bana, i.e. tunnelbana). The small island above is Gamla stan, the old town. And Norrmalm is the city centre with e.g. the main station and the bus terminal.
Free Walking Tour 1: city
After walking around a bit, we made our way through Gamla stan to T-Centralen, the metro stop at the main station. Somewhere there, our first Free Walking Tour in Stockholm started. And for the four others, it was actually the first Free Walking Tour of their lives, as I had only introduced them to the concept of these tours.
If you're interested - and since the tour was really good -, we went with Free Tour Stockholm.
Ryan, our tour guide, was an Australian who had moved to Stockholm and married a Swedish woman. And he seemed to have adapted to the Nordic climate quite well, because he was not even wearing a hat or gloves, while we were freezing at some point! (Unlike in Oslo, there was no snow and ice in Stockholm, but it was still cold!)
Anyway, Ryan was quite obviously a native speaker of English, and he was talking quite fast, which was a bit of a problem (or at least a challenge) for everyone but the one native speaker among us. But we got quite a bit of information about Sweden's most important companies, IKEA and H&M, royal history and present, the Nobel Prize (don't tell Swedish people you consider the Nobel Peace Prize most important - it's the only one that's awarded in Oslo instead of Stockholm), Swedish mentality (mostly like the Norwegian one: do not talk to strangers on the metro), and the Stockholm syndrome. (We went to the place where the bank robbery and hostage situation giving the syndrome its name took place, but it's not a bank anymore, so I didn't take any photos of it.)
As for the royal history, I can't really remember the stories of good and bad warrior kings, but found Queen Christina interesting - for gender equality reasons (surprise, surprise!), because she was probably a quite important figure there.
Oh, and regarding the current royalty: we went to the gym where Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden, met Daniel, her former gym trainer and now husband.
(The Swedish royals seem to be a bit more interesting than the Norwegian ones, we found - but maybe we're just lacking information here.)
 |
| The opera (some king was killed here) |
As you might have noticed, the weather was really nice on Saturday, so I took some more, rather random photos during and after the tour:
 |
| Lots of ducks & swans! |
 |
| (part of) the Palace, I think. |
Viewpoints
In the afternoon, we went to two different viewpoints, both on the Södermalm island, where our hostel was as well. I think, number 2 was Fjällgatan, and the other one was a bit west of that:
Number 1 was actually on a crane:
Anyway, both were close to the water, of course!
View 1:
View 2:
 |
| Btw, that's Gröna Lund, an amusement park. |
And since we came back on another day for the view at night, I'm just going to add the photos here:
Free Walking Tour 2: old town
On Sunday, we did another of the Free Tour Stockholm tours, this time for Gamla stan, the old town. Kevin, our guide for this tour, was slightly easier to follow (verbally). :D
I did not get the chance to take a photo, because we only passed it on our way, but the first story was about the fox statue. It represents a homeless fox and was placed in the city centre, between the shopping street and the parliament, to remind the wealthy as well as the politicians of the homeless.
 |
| Parliament (with some tour participants) |
 |
| City hall |
 |
| Government (with the fox in the bottom right) |
And here we have Storkyrkan, the oldest church in the old town:
 |
| Storkyrkan |
Fun fact: the name means "the big church". Very creative. :P
We also got a pro tip on how to tell how old building are: check out the anchor plates!
For example, this "hipster moustache" (I'm quoting our tour guide!) is from the early 17th century.
Saint George and the Dragon (replica, the original is in Storkyrkan). I'm not a fan of the dragon-killing story, I just added this to show how much the Swedish and the Danish like each other: Saint George is Sweden, the dragon is Denmark, and the beautiful princess they are fighting about is Stockholm.
This is Iron Boy, Stockholm's smallest sculpture. His head is shiny because people touch it to make a wish. Originally, it was used by locals who wanted to have children, but at some point it changed from a fertility to a wishing statue...
 |
| Stortorget, the main square of the old town |
 |
| Another photo of proof |
FYI: Vikings were not much of a thing, as the Viking Age had already ended before Stockholm was founded. This rune stone was moved to the old town at some later point.
However, another fun fact: Viking helmets with horns, as most people imagine them, or as they are sold (cf. Amazon), have nothing to do with the original Viking helmets. The horns were invented during a Wagner production in Germany...
Speaking of Germany: there's a German church in Stockholm:
Because why would you want to listen to the sermon in Swedish? (Actual reason of the German merchants in that neighbourhood in the 14th century to build Tyska kyrkan!)
This is Mårten Trotzigs Gränd, the narrowest alley of Stockholm. It's called after Mårten Trotzig, a German merchant (or rather after his grandson, who just happened to have the same name. ;))
And to end the tour with another fun fact: the Swedish concept of fika refers to a break, so advertisements like "Buy your fika here!" kind of miss the point.
City hall
The city hall had already been part of the old town tour, but more like "over there, you can see...". Therefore, we made a small trip to the city hall later. This turned out to be an adventure of its own - too many bridges... But we found it in the end:
And, naturally, there was also some more water / a nice view:
Ferry and Djurgården
On Monday, we went to Djurgården, another one of Stockholm's 14 islands. I'm not inserting another Google Maps screenshot here, it's just East of Gamla stan. In order to get there, we took the ferry. In Stockholm, there are ferry lines that are part of the normal public transport - which makes sense for a city consisting of a bunch of islands. So we could just get on board with our 72 hour ticket.
 |
Welcome on board! |
ABBA The Museum
Well, and then, we went to our first and only museum visit in Stockholm: the ABBA museum! This was not originally my idea, but I joined anyway. And it's a really good museum, designed in a nice way, with lots of interactive elements (singing, dancing etc.) - I just still feel it's a bit over-priced.
 |
| Very realistic wax figures |
 |
| Original stage costumes |
 |
| The BRAVO Otto! :D |
T-bana stations
Some of the metro stations are basically pieces of art. We didn't see a lot of them, but you can actually do a whole T-bana tour on them if you have the time.
Food & drinks! (Not necessarily Swedish though)
This is a sneaky photo of the liquor store we went to on our last day. In Sweden, you can only buy alcohol (except for beer, I think) in special government-owned stores with limited opening hours. It's actually the same in Norway, just that in Sweden, they are called Systembolaget (The System Company), and in Norway Vinmonopolet (The Wine Monopoly). The only difference: alcohol is cheaper in Sweden (already more expensive than in Germany though).
Anticipating the question: nope, I did not buy anything in the liquor store.
And about food: unfortunately, traditional Swedish food is not particularly vegan-friendly - meat balls and fish, you know? However, I found Blå Dörren (The Blue Door) quite impressive. They don't even have explicitly vegetarian meals on their menu, but when we went there and I asked for something vegan, I got a quite nice dinner.
And definitely recommended: the bakery chain Bröd & Salt (Bread & Salt)! They offer vegan versions of the Swedish specialties semla (a sweet roll with cream) and kanelbulle (cinnamon bun):
Oh, and McDonald's (we had to kill some time before our bus back to Oslo left) added a vegan burger to their menu just a month ago. It's extremely creatively called McVegan. xD And it's only available in Sweden and Finland, not in Norway (or any other country, but as I currently live in Norway...)
As we stayed at McDonald's for quite a while, the employees eyed us a bit suspiciously (we only played one round of hangman, I swear!). But in the end, we left for our bus before they kicked us out.
No comments:
Post a Comment