Stockholm

Feb 19-20. 2009
Took a weekend trip up to Stockholm last week to visit with some fellow UW-ers and good friends: Blake and Courtney. Courtney is currently on the Valle Scholarship, like me, and Blake is on his second year in Sweden following a Valle trip to Lund University last year. (As an aside I told my British friend about my trip to Stockholm and he laughed when I mentioned everybody's names. I guess Kelly, Blake and Courtney sound straight from a 90210 drama. Huh, perhaps another reason I scream American?!)

I first arrived late Thursday afternoon after my 1 hour flight was delayed due to a dusting of snow on the ground at the Copenhagen airport. The remarkable inability to deal with snow in this nordic city rivals that of Seattle.. interesting. Anyhow it worked out great because we spent Thursday night in with Courtney's delicious curry and spent the evening catching up over wine and episodes of 30 Rock. (No online streaming of tv shows to European countries... all you NBC.com fans should feel lucky, these were newly arrived DVDs)

Friday when my hosts were at work I first met Blake for lunch near Slussen then went to the Vasa Museum on an island downtown. This is one of the must sees in Stockholm and I'd agree. Its a beautiful museum that is built up around this recovered war ship that they pulled from the bottom of Stockholm harbor about 50 years ago. The ship set sail in a big ceremony typical of a festive, colorfully painted war ship leaving. It had on board a crew and army of ~200 people. Two gusts of wind later it promptly tipped over and sunk. Its pretty funny, but better yet that the designers all knew it the ship was unstable and that a huge contributing factor to its quick sinking was because they had forgot to shut the cannon doors after all the pomp and circumstance when the cannons went off at the departure ceremony. If only it had hung on for 5 more minutes..!

After work we met up for dinner and went to an old football club for dinner. They picked this place because it has some great traditional Swedish dishes like meatballs..
..and Reindeer meat and hash browns mixed with different kinds of meat and an egg on top. What do Swedes eat? Meat, potatoes and everything hearty.
We decided to go to a bar on the island that is the old city center called Gamla Stan. Even in the evening it has a lot of charm. It has a beautiful medieval city layout with windy roads and tiny streets. At one point this tiny island was all that existed of Stockholm.

The smallest street in Stockholm called Marten Trotzig Alley. Blake had some connections at an old Medieval bar so we went there to try some mead.

The bar was in a cellar which definitely contributed to the cool, dank atmosphere.
Candles aplenty in Scandinavia we had our fun then went to another bar for some more mood lighting.
Feb 21.2009
As proper tourists we returned to Gamla Stan the next day. On our way we stopped by Slussen and took some pictures off a converted bridge platform that pretty much goes nowhere. But as my mom asked.. over cautious with pedestrian safety. The wiring and massive elevator shaft did block out some of the amazing view of downtown but otherwise was a great way to look across downtown Stockholm.
Gamla Stan has a square near the top of it that has these adorable little buildings. All of the streets are cute but this square is really amazing.. You'll notice that we went back just to see it again in daylight.Next door is the King's Palace and Storkyrkan which is the church where they would hold the crowning ceremony. (Because there were so many pictures between the three of us, I posted most of the sight seeing ones online in a Picasa album.)
We went down the main pedestrian street called Vasterlanggatan which connects Gamla stan and the parliament building to the rest of the city center.
And then over to the City Hall (Building with the big tower)

Along the way B&C stopped for some hot dogs. Yes Courtney's hot dog is everyone's favorite combination of hot dog, condiments and mashed potato.














This is a view from the City Hall building looking back across to the island where B&C live. (Everything in Stockholm is an island.. its too hard to explain and despite my navigation sense I wouldn't be able to get it in a single weekend either)
That night we had Blake and Courtney's friends Bjorn and Ulrika, and their friend from Italy, join us for some dinner and traditional Swedish sing-songing. (Notice the laptop my corner of the couch is reading the "lyrics" from.. they were not written in Swedish but expressed as a series of pronounceable syllables so I pretty much made noise while everyone else sang. I'll have to work on developing my rituals..)



Dinner followed with a trip to a local club and we all had a great time.

Even made some new friends.. that BAPE was a class act fellow.

Feb 22. 2009
Sunday's plan was to go to an outdoor museum but we woke up to some heavy snow fall.. so we opted for the classic modern art and architecture museum instead. It was really nice and as Courtney put it, a good fit for two snowbound structural engineers. In my casual attitude towards catching international flights out of airports I don't know, we decided to leave the island about when I probably should have been leaving for the airport and had an interesting experience trying to flag over a ferry boat in the whiteout. I don't think it was our poor waving but more likely just an unknown detour route, but the ferry never came. We made it interesting but I got home no problem. It was snowing after all and my flight was to Copenhagen.