stockholm

I have now been demoted to 2nd class. Turns out Sweden doesn't care how sweet my ticket is, and still charges twice as much to reserve a first class ticket than a 2nd. Therefore, I have decided that I am too cheap to pay the 16 dollar reservation fee, and have stuck with my 8 dollar ticket with the rest of society.

When I arrived in the Stockholm central station, I realized just how big the city was due to the fact I had no idea how to get out of the station because of its hugeness. I was supposed to meet Denis in the 'front' but as far as I was concerned, there was like 5 different exits. Eventually we met up, and thus began the week of traveling.

Stockholm was huge. Idk how i feel about it, but it felt like every street was a highway. Later, I got used to it and started liking it more, but I probably needed to stay there longer to really appreciate the city.

Since the beginning of my traveling, the European Cup has been going on- EMFest. In Stockholm, there was crazy stuff going on everywhere and everyone was dressed up for the big Sweden game later that night.
There were concerts with huge screens to play the game later, and this one concert was super sweet in that the guy playing’s name was NordicMan or something like that. Denis and I both agreed he wasn’t very good. We wandered around the city for a while, and headed into Gamla Stan, which was Stockholm’s Old Town. I think that was my favorite part of the city in that it was quaint and cobblestoned. One street in particular was known for its ice cream, so this was obviously my point of destination. The shop we ended up at made their own waffle cones, so the whole shop smelled so good. I decided to go crazy and get 3 scoops, which was whoa more than enough. Best ice cream ever though. Then, this guy came in with his daughter or grandaughter or something, and was whoa spoiling her and told her she could get whatever she wanted, which was 5 scoops of lemon, after a very large tantrum that she really did indeed want all 5 scoops. She proceeded to eat 5 bites and then wandered away, so whether or not she finished a very large grown man’s portion of ice cream will remain a mystery. We also tried a Belgian waffle the next day, with a scoop of ice cream on top and that also was amazing. Man I love ice cream.

That night we went to the Stockholm Ice Bar, which was featured on the cover of one of our roommate’s Lonely Planet of Sweden. Why, Idk. I was kind of expecting something crazy, but it was literally a really cold room with some blocks of ice and cups made of ice that you can drink out of. We got to wear really sweet parkas though. Denis and I decided it wasn’t worth the steep fee (payable upon purchase of a drink) so we took some sweet pictures to make it look whoa more exciting than it was and then bouced, happy we saved like 20 euros.

The next day we took a ferry over to Djurgården, to see the Vasa ship museum and Skansen, a very large, open air museum. This is what I learned about the Vasa ship… it was a warship built for Sweden in the 1600s, which sank after sailing less than a mile into her maiden voyage due to the fact that it was so packed full of cannons that it was too top heavy (see super artistic photo that I took of a model representing the sinking, on left). Denis thought it was cool because he’s an engineer and proceeded to explain exactly why it sank, in engineering terms, but what I got from it was that it was heavy and sank. Anyway, it disappeared under water and it wasn’t until 1961 that it was re-discovered, preserved, and brought to the museum. It was, in fairness, a really cool ship. It was pretty much all intact and the details were incredible.

We stayed at the museum for quite a while and by the time we made it over to Skansen, we only had about 45 minutes to see all the old fashioned houses with actors portraying old fashioned roles. For example, we went to the local apothecary and she made us smell all these horrible smelling tonics which apparently used to be used back in the day. Everything in Skansen was real, and had been relocated to the area in order for the museum to contain all types of houses one might have seen in Sweden back in the day. One of the houses was for a poor farmer or something, and the house itself was crazy small. Once the actors closed up, we headed to the animal exhibits, where we saw lots of different Scandinavian animals. Pretty much just a zoo, but it was still pretty cool.