I have spent the last couple of days in the amazing city of Stockholm, Sweden. I went there on my own. Right before I left, not really knowing what to expect, I had a few paranoid doubts about whether I’ll like it there, whether I’ll be totally bored and just wanna go home. I wasn’t, instead I was completely overwhelmed by how beautiful that city is! Both Stockholm and Sweden are stunning and on top of that the weather was perfect (I got sunburned!). And everything is in Swedish! Swedish people everywhere! How exciting! Anyway, here’s my diary, complete with ‘I did this I did that’ and the occasional more interesting thoughts about the country and the city.

I took the plane from Düsseldorf to Arlanda on Wednesday, it was an almost 2 hour flight in a very cute little airplane. I took the Arlanda Express train to the city and on the 20 minute ride at 200km/h, I saw the first of Sweden. There was something fascinating about the sky… I don’t know what it was, maybe it’s higher and bluer than it’s back home and stray sun rays where shining through the clouds. The sky is always bluer away from home… Unfortunately I started drizzling when I arrived at the central station at around 1:30pm, but it wasn’t cold and the drizzle didn’t really bother me. I walked into the Old Town Gamla Stan, which is it’s own little island (Stockholm consists of islands, to the west is the freshwater lake Mälaren and to the east the Baltic Sea. I wonder how fresh and salt water don’t get mixed up) and was mesmerized by that beautiful medieval old city center with all it’s tiny little winding streets and beautiful old houses. It felt like walking 500 years into the past. I found Stortorget where I sat for a while staring at the city and the people there. Then I walked to my hostel to drop off my big big rucksack.

I spent the rest of the day walking – walking walking walking, everywhere through the city. Since my hostel was right at Gamla Stan, I started by walking through all it’s tiny. steep alleys, acting like a total tourist with my camera hanging around my neck, taking pictures every now and then. Most of Gamla Stan is tourist paradise – a lot of the streets have one tourist shop next to the other, but occasionally there are some cool stores like “Handfaste”, where you can buy all kinds of Viking stuff for the heathen heart (I didn’t). Naturally most of Gamla Stan is packed with tourists – you’ll hardly hear people speaking Swedish there. The two biggest groups of tourists seemed to be Germans and Americans, followed by Italians and Spaniards and various other ones.

After Gamla Stan I walked up Drottinggatan a little bit, a seemingly endless modern shopping street on Norrmalm, which pretty much starts in Gamla Stan. I walked and walked and walked, to Hötorget and Sergels Torg, and eventually I walked back to Gamla Stan and from there to Södermalm, the southern island of Stockholm which is supposed to be the ‘cool’ part of town where all the hip people are hanging out. I walked up it’s steep streets and ended up at the Katarinahissen, a sort of look-out platform which is right at the front of Södermalm (you can either pay 10 kr to take the lift, or you can ‘climb the mountain’). From there I watched a beautiful sunset over the city. Later I walked some more through Gamla Stan at night… Eventually I had enough of walking and went to my hostel. I was staying in a 14-bed dorm room, oh the fun. The beds were hard as stone and the mattresses extremely thin, the first night was kinda painful. On top of the pain I already had in my legs from walking.

On Thursday I was wide awake at 9 due to noisy roommates. I walked into Gamla Stan – thankfully the supermarkets sell bread stuff, so I bought a Ciabatta thing and a few Kexes (my new favorite candy). Swedes don’t seem to have a high demand for candy – the chocolate row in the supermarkets are very small compared to the ones here…
After breakfast on Stortorget I walked and walked and walked again – this time I walked pretty much clueless through Norrmalm and Östermalm following just a vague direction, up and down hilly streets. Östermalm is the expensive part of town where all the rich people live. Eventually I found what I’ve been looking for, the Historiska museet. In there I spent most of my time in the “Viking” section, which shows the history of the Vikings, several rune stones, dresses, a miniature of the first Viking trade town Birka and some other stuff. A temporary exhibition was “Odens Öga” about the religion of the Vikings aka Norse Mythology. It was nice, lots to read, but nothing I didn’t really know already. I also looked at the medieval parts of the museum, but those weren’t as interesting because they were mainly about Christian stuff. Another temporary exhibition was “Spelen om Maya“, a pretty funny concept – you can pick on of six characters, then follow their line on the ground and you’re led through a comic-style story about those characters which all have to do with the Maya in Guatemala.

After the museum I walked to the waterfront (there are lots of those in Stockholm) and ended up at the island Djurgården. I sat around and stared for an hour or so, and then I figured since I’m already there, I might just as well go to the Vasamuseet instead of doing it two days later. The Vasa is a very big big impressive old war ship, which sank on it’s maiden trip barely outside it’s harbor. It’s really impressive. And big. And wooden, with many beautiful decorations. I stared at it for a long time wishing to be a pirate viking on high seas. Unfortunately you can’t really go on the ship, which I would have loved to do, but the museum around it has some stuff which gives you the feeling of being there, at least a little bit.

Afterwards I did more walking – walking back from Djurgården to Norrmalm and all around it. I had dinner at the Harry B. James bar/restaurant, which is supposed to be a metal bar on weekends, but I didn’t really see cool people there, the Thursday afternoon audience seems very normal. I had chicken fillet with french fries, mozzarella sticks, onion rings and jalapeños – a great combination of tasty stuff. I wish they had something like that in the menu at every restaurant.

I walked some more, back to Gamla Stan and all around. Once again I spent some of the night sitting on Stortorget… where I then watched an interesting tourist guide… He had long hair and he was wearing a top hat and an elegant suit… And I thought, a long-haired good-looking Swedish guy, wearing a top hat and a sexy suit?! OMG MARRY ME PLZ!!!!!!11!1!! Of course I didn’t say that, I stayed put and kept staring/drooling. But in fact, Swedish men are awesome – not only are they tall, good-looking, very polite and have a sexy accent, but they’re also the better dads. I’ve seen many many men pushing strollers around on their own, two men pushing both their own strollers, men pushing strollers when with their women and I even saw a group of men sitting on a boat and one of them was holding his little baby. But it’s not like I definitely wanna have kids. Maybe when I’m 35 or 40. Gender equality is a big deal in Sweden, and has also been in the Viking age.

Later on I met two nice guys at the hostel in the dorm (yeah, it was a mixed dorm) – one of them was drawing a map of Europe to show to the other one. I sort of bumped into their conversation. The guy who was drawing was from Melbourne, Australia and he’s traveling all around Europe for 3 months. He just arrived that day from Tallinn, Estonia and he left for Prague on the same day as I went home. The other guy was a Swede from Gothenburg, who was to leave the next day. The day after that I talked to the Australian some more in the common room and he told me about his travels. He’s been pretty much everywhere in Europe. He said his favorite city in Europe is Berlin, because it’s just so big and crazy and amazing. I’ve never been there myself (yet), so I don’t know… But we shared some more stories, he told me how London is the absolute tourist hell, how Paris is full of beggars (it’s true), how Barcelona is a great place, how Tallinn is another one of his favorite cities in Europe because it’s beautiful, medieval and extremely cheap and how if I ever go to Australia, I should make sure to go to Tasmania (and how I should skip Sydney). And we shared some stories about New York… He was very nice, he wasn’t the first crazy traveling Australian I met…

On Friday I had my breakfast on Stortorget again, where an average aged women suddenly asked me “Är du härifrån?” and I said, “Nej, Tyskland…”, and we chatted a little in Swedish. She told me she’s a Finlandswede from the coast of Finland, and she was there by ferry with a group a people, they were going to a knife show or something. She was very nice, and upon saying goodbye she told me how very good my Swedish was and I was really baffled. That was actually the first time I had a real conversation in Swedish there. It was actually easier than I thought it would be, most of the time it all came out naturally, I only had real trouble trying to say how cities in in Germany got bombed in the war, but she guessed that herself. It was a nice conversation, but it totally ruined my image of Finnish people being shier than a scared mole. Maybe Finlandswedish people aren’t as shy as Finlandfinns, who knows…

Then I went to the Stadhusbron and took a ferry to Björkö, where the Viking trade city of Birka used to be. The ferry ride through the lake Mälaren was very pleasant and the nature is very beautiful out there – islands everywhere, full of trees and rock. On the ferry ride the guide told us about the land elevation process – in the ice age, Scandinavia was full of very very heavy ice which has been melting until a thousand or two years ago. That ice was pushing down the land, and since it’s now gone, the land is slowly rising out of the lakes. That’s also the reason why the town of Birka lasted only 200 years and was then abandoned – the entrances to lake Mälaren got more difficult to pass for heavy trade ships and the location (which was back then a bay in the Baltic sea) lost it’s appeal.

Birka/Björkö is a very very beautiful idyllic island with incredible nature. Out there, two hours into nature, a big city like Stockholm seemed very unreal. I took the English language tour instead of the Swedish one (lots of Swedish seniors on that trip…). Both of the guides were dressed up in old Viking clothes, and the Swedish guy was even bare foot (in fact, he wasn’t the only barefoot person I saw on my journey – I’ve seen people walking barefoot in the middle of Stockholm). The tour was very informative, but there is actually nothing left of the city of Birka except for the burial mounds. The place where the city was is now a plain field. There is a small museum on the island about it. But the trip was still worth it for the great nature (and the weather was great, though I got sunburned). A rock with a cross on the island was the highest point of it, where I spent a long time enjoying the view over the lake Mälaren and all the neighbor islands. I strolled around the island for a while. They’re rebuilding viking houses on a small part of the island. A small snake stuck it’s head out of one of those when I walked around them.

On the ferry back I kinda dozed off, but so did a lot of other people, apparently… Back in the vivacious metropolis of Stockholm I wandered around Norrmalm some more and had lunch at TGI Fridays. I think I only had American Food in Sweden…

On Saturday the weather got really windy, though the sun was still shining all day. I toured the Kungliga Slottet (The Royal Castle), which was nice, but a little bit boring, because not so much different from other castles. Big shiny old rooms which make me jealous about not living there myself. Actually the castle is a lot more impressive on the inside than it looks from the outside. It looks kinda boring from the outside, but that’s just because it burned down a couple of times in medieval times and had to be rebuild.

Afterwards I took the ferry to Djurgården again, where I walked to the open air museum Skansen. I expected something like the Freilichtmuseum Detmold but it actually was slightly more exciting (even though I felt crappy from 3 days of walking and sightseeing). It shows houses of how Swedish people used to live in the old days, but there are actually people in old costumes inside the houses, doing their thing like spinning, knitting or preparing fabrics. A small zoo with Nordic animals was also part of Skansen. I had enough after a while (too much walking for the last few days), and took the ferry back to the city and walked through Gamla Stan to Södermalm where I walked around some more and ended up in a Pizza Hut. I think I’m too picky about my restaurants. After dinner I walked through the empty alleys of Gamla Stan for a few hours.

On Sunday I stored my big big rucksack at the central station and wandered around the area of Drottinggatan and Hötorget. There was a flea market, where I bought two Swedish movies for a good price. I walked some more, here and there, and eventually I had to take the Arlanda Express back to Arlanda Airport. Lots of waiting, the plane was late. And when I was finally on it, I had an emergency exit seat. Argh! I hated it! There was a big lady next to me (she was wearing a mask, really weird) and there was nowhere I could put my arms, and I wasn’t allowed to put my bag at my feet, so alas, no pictures of beautiful clouds. As we were rolling over Arlanda, there was a plane sitting in the bushes. WTF is there a plane sitting in the bushes in Arlanda, I wondered. Upon takeoff I hated my seat again because I was on the wrong side of the plane and didn’t see Stockholm from above. What I did see though through the window at the other side of the plane, was a rainbow right over Stockholm as we took off. The view over the rest of Sweden was amazing – all the lakes where shining gold in the sun, the soft fluffy clouds shined orange and the horizon glowed pink reddish.

Back home I had my usual depression about being back home, asking myself why do I still live in Germany. Sweden is in so many ways a much better country, even though the weather could potentially be lousy if it’s not July or August. I definitely wanna live in Stockholm some day, even though probably just for a half year semester or something.

So that was my adventure in Stockholm. I had a great time in that great city, even though I was being my usual anti-social self. I didn’t party because no one will ever get me to go into a bar on my own and I don’t actually like going to bars that much. I’d rather spent time sitting at a waterfront (which I did a lot) when I want to spent time with people (which I didn’t really). I also hardly spoke Swedish except for in the Supermarket, though it’s very handy to be able to read stuff and understand people asking or telling you something. When going to restaurants it’s a lot more convenient having a clue about what the waiter is trying to tell you. I tried the Swedish there, didn’t work. A lot of people still talk way to fast for me. It’s not like I ever met people in New York either. In fact, sometimes Stockholm reminded me of New York, or of my trips there, a little. Sometimes a lot.

If you wanna go to Scandinavia, go to Stockholm. It’s an incredible city – beautiful, alive, international, medieval, everything you can image… I talked with the Australian and with the Finlandswedish woman about this – they agreed. Norway is way too expensive and Finland is boring (it’s true, there’s pretty much nothing to see), but Stockholm is everything you’ll be looking for and more. It’s not even as expensive as I expected (alcohol is expensive, but as you might know I’m not interested in that anymore), so I still have 500 kr left. I love Stockholm. And Sweden!

Now go look at my photos!