Stockholm, Sverige

So, a long , long time ago (about 11 days ago) José, Daniel, Carolina, Wilson, and I traveled to Stockholm, Sweden for a whole 2 days. The Colombians had found really cheap round-trip tickets from Bratislava for only €18 with Ryanair. They ended up getting the last of the heavily discounted tickets, so I sucked it up and bought the more expensive €51 one. What an outrage! €51 for a round-trip airline ticket!?! If you broke down an Air Canada ticket you probably pay more than €51 for the pillow.

On the bus to Bratislava (~1.5 hours) we met a group of around 10 Mormon girls from Brigham Young University in Utah. They were also going to Stockholm for 2 days, and would be on both our flights. We ended up stealing their itinerary as none of us had planned anything, so we were continuously running into them.

The flight was great, I will definitely consider using Ryanair in the future. When we arrived in Stockholm there was a thick layer of snow on the ground and it was pretty cold, especially for José and the Colombians who just recently learned that thermometers don't stop at zero.José had organised for him and I to stay with a couch-surfer while the Colombians stayed with Maria, a friend of ours from Vienna who is studying in Stockholm. Our couch-surfer from here on named Elina was amazing. She had made us a lasagna for supper, and had sheets, mattresses and towels for us in her res room. That night José and I tried to go out to a student pub, but it was closing when we arrived, which was later than we planned because we got terribly lost while trying to find our way in the maze of cookie-cutter residences. Apparently that night I woke Elina while talking fluently and clearly in my sleep, apparently I was ordering wine at a restaurant. When she told me I was both amused and horribly embarrassed, she said it was pretty funny. The next morning she gave us an extra key and said that she'd be staying at her boyfriends that night and that we could just drop the key in her mailbox when we left on Saturday. She was very trusting and accommodating , even offering us more food if we wanted it.

We eventually got up and took the subway to the city centre where we met up with Maria and the Colombians. First thing on the Mormon girl's itinerary, a tour of city hall.

The city hall is a lot older than it looks, as it was designed to look like a medieval castle. The flag infront is the Stockholm city flag showing the head of St.Erik, a Swedish king who was beheaded in the 12th century.
The antechamber before the main political hall contains caricatures of prominent Stockholm politicians.
The ceiling of the chamber represents an overturned Viking ship. Apparently during bad storms and in the winter, the Vikings would bring their ships onto the shore, turn them over and take shelter beneath them. It was said that under these ships this first Swedish political meetings were held.
A window in the large tower looking across the water to the old city.
The Golden Hall is covered in glass mosaic tiles containing real gold. The mosaic designs were really different, having been designed by a young, modern artist in the 1920s. The mosaics depict the history of Sweden, and the giant woman in the centre represents "Princess Stockholm" a common theme in Stockholm. Many people were (and are) angry about how ugly Princess Stockholm looks, with big eyes, big feet, and big hands. Many people over the years have tried to have her replaced with something that better represents their beautiful city.
Every year the Nobel Prize Ball is held in the Golden hall, while the dinner is held in the blue hall (which is not, and never has been, blue) a room that was initially intended to be an outdoor courtyard until the Italian architect realized that an outdoor courtyard isn't very useful in Stockholm for 9 months of the year, and added a roof.

After the tour of city hall, we wandered around the old city, wandering into a church to warm up.
Only a block away from the church we found a cool restaurant built in a 700 year old underground prison. The food was actually cheap (an uncommon occurrence in Sweden) and the atmosphere was cool, with barrel-vaulted brick rooms covered in everything from needle-work pictures of kittens to old guitars and bagpipes. The old tiny cells were private booths for couples.
Another block away from the restaurant we came upon a courtyard with very Swedish architecture, a big Christmas tree, and an old hot-water dispenser. The hot-water dispenser was a large brick oven with spouts around the edge. I guess hot water would have been pretty important during a medieval Swedish winter.
Some of the small streets were already decorated for Christmas, however most of the stores on these quaint little streets were way out of our price range.
The old city is built on a fairly hilly island, so many of the narrow cobble-stone streets wind up and down. The old city of Stockholm looks how I pictured all of Europe to be, I suppose this is primarily due to their neutrality in WWII, resulting in a completely preserved architectural history without the devastation experienced by Vienna, Paris, and many other large cities.
The image of St.George slaying the dragon to save Princess Sweden is a common theme in Stockholm appearing in statues like this, shrines in churches, and even the animated glockenspiel set into the tower of city hall.
José, Daniel, Wilson, Carolina and myself infront of the very plain looking and oddly square Stockholm Palace which overlooks the harbour. It is still the official residence of the Swedish royal family, and is one of the largest palaces in the world still in use with 609 rooms!
From the palace we walked along the shoreline towards the Vasa Museum. Along the way we passed many old wooden sail boats, many of which appeared to be inhabited despite the cold weather.
The Vasa Museum was definitely the highlight of the trip. The Vasa is a warship built in 1628 which sank on it's maiden voyage, 15 minutes after it set sail, right in the middle of the harbour with everyone watching. At the time it was the most expensive, largest, and most modern ship ever deployed in the Baltic Sea.

The ship sat at the bottom of the harbour until it was re-discovered and raised in the 1950s and 60s. The water-logged wood which had been preserved by the cold, brackish water was treated with polyethylene glycol for 17 years to prevent it from crumbling away when it was slowly dried (for an additional 9 years).
The ship has been fully re-assembled with over 90% of the original timber and ornamentation, the few re-created prices are highly visible as they are lighter in colour. The ship was very very large and surprisingly very heavily ornamented, with the transom and bow completely decorated with sculptures of roman emperors, saints, mythological heroes, lions, and the king himself as a young boy.
Even more surprising was how heavily painted and gilt the ornamentation was. The pigments have all been found through detailed study of the wood fibres in which fragments were trapped even after 333 years under water.
The most impressive part of the ship was the transom, showing the original darker carvings and the lighter pieces re-created to fill in missing or heavily damages ones.
From the Vasa museum, we met up with Maria again and walked down the main shopping street in the old city, which is where I found my Viking friend below. the street was an odd mix of everything with jewelry shops and high-end dress stores directly beside 7-11s and emo clothing stores.
Back in the modern city centre we stopped for supper and watched a wood-splitting competition.
That night we stopped in at the weekly Stockholm couch-surfing party to say bye to Elina, but left after a few minutes. From there we went back to the room, relaxed infront of the TV (which plays un-subtitled English shows), laughed at the Swedish commercials, and got ready for an International student party we were invited to.

The next morning as José and I were leaving I took this picture of the cow pasture in the middle of the University of Stockholm campus. Apparently the cows come and go, but Elina had never seen how, she just assumed they had the ability to become invisible.
We met up with the Mormon girls again at the bus station to the airport and had a fairly uneventful flight home, with the exception of the 2 hour wait for our bus back to Vienna, at the oh-so-exciting Bratislava airport.

Stockholm was fun, and the city was beautiful, but I'm sure a visit in the summer would be better, as the cold wind and 3pm sunset really put an damper on the trip. Overall, Stockholm reminded me the most of Ontario out of any place I've been to so far. The trip to the airport could have been any section of the 401 between Cornwall and Oshawa.

Yesterday I moved into my new (and hopefully permanent) room. It is nicer, but apparently one of the girls on the floor has lived there for ~12 years and is more than a little crazy. There was a sign on the bathroom door accusing MA of stealing a bunch of her kitchen stuff, and asking the housekeeper to look for it in his (now my) room... Oh well, it'll keep life interesting, and I only have 2.5 weeks until I'm home for Christmas and New Years!