Stockholm 🇸🇪 (engl. edition)

Hey Guys!

Dora and I spent the last weekend in Stockholm - trying to relax after our biggest exam this semester (which kind of killed us in the process) but ending up being more exhausted than ever!

18th of May: 31.513 steps -> 22 km

19th of May: 27.685 steps -> 16,6 km

20th of May: 14.074 steps -> 9,2 km

I put our decreasing step count over the weekend down to the fact that we were just so done with our feet and legs that we had to hold back a bit (oh and it rained on the second day!).

Stockholm is a really beautiful city! Dora summed it up pretty accurately when she said: "I would move here in a second, if it weren't for the cold weather." And to be honest, it is pretty expensive, but I guess this is manageable for people working and living here. The atmosphere of the city is just amazing and really warm and open! Especially when the sun came out on our first and third day, everybody seemed so happy, relaxed and open - it really was a difference to grumpy and closed off Estonians during winter (although they're finally coming out of their shells). The old town is pretty similar to Tallinns old town - still really beautiful and colorful -, but also the government buildings located around the old town and other houses are really imposing. The colors range from dark grey to light grey, beige to light orange and everything was so clean! Even though the buildings didn't have that touch of imperiousness and ornaments that the buildings in Vienna's inner city have, it reminded me a little bit of Vienna. So all in all, the city is super beautiful and I have to say that I could also see myself living there. What is more: The Swedish actually liked to talk English and we didn't have the feeling that they were annoyed by our lack of Swedish skills.

The First Day

... started with us getting almost no sleep at all. Our alarms were set to 4 a.m., because our flight left at 7. I dragged my suitcase to the central tram station, because my tram wasn't operating that early. Fortunately, the tram going to the airport (Number 4, for future visitors) already worked. The airport was basically empty (and it is super small), so we didn't have any troubles going through security, reaching the gate and so on. The security guards were actually really friendly, but I guess that has less to do with being a friendly Estonian and more with the lack of annoying people in the morning.

We met a friend of ours from Belgium in the Airport, who - surprise - also had a flight to Stockholm, but on a plane that left 20 minutes later than ours. Believe it or not, three planes left the Tallinn Airport for Stockholm in the course of an hour. Which is why we had only 4 people in total on our plane. It was quite funny - and weird - to enter a small plane as the forth person and hearing the stewardess say "boarding completed" behind you. Also the security instructions were pretty ... personal? Anyhow, we landed safely in Stockholm and as there were only four of us, the plane emptied quickly. Dora and I took a bus and commuter train combination to go to the inner city for only 4,50€ (the Airport is pretty far away). Once we arrived, we strolled through the empty streets of Stockholm. It was 8 a.m. on a Saturday and the streets were empty, we encountered 4-5 people on the streets. We left our luggage in the hostel storage room and headed to a well-earned breakfast.

For further reference, we stayed in the Craaford Place Hostel, which was really clean and nice. However, they only had 2 toilets for women, and 2 uni-sex bathrooms (which worked for me, I never had to wait, but Dora did... I don't know what she did wrong). Oh, and we had to pay 5€ for bed linen. Who the f*** pays for their bed linen in a hostel? Like, of course I want to sleep there? But yeah well, we didn't have any choice, so we rented bed linen. Yeyy.

Most of the coffee shops we passed opened at 9 a.m. - we quickly found out that the "Espresso House" is the local coffee shop chain, which can be found on basically every street corner! We enjoyed delicious breakfast at Wayne's Coffee (which reminds me of Wave's Coffee in Vancouver, and I also saw a sign mentioning Vancouver, but well no Swedish skills whatsoever, so the sign was left undiscovered). Then we headed over to the Free Walking Tour starting at 10:00 with the Three Crowns. Dora really hoped for a Croatian tour guide, but we were told that he was on vacation this week in - obviously - Croatia. So, we were left with an Australian guy, who was pretty funny but after a while his jokes got a bit old. Yet, he told us a lot of fun facts about Stockholm, Sweden, their history and other incidents he found worth mentioning: an abundance of Ludwigs, a ruler called Christina (people are not sure until today which gender she had), Greta Garbo, the personal trainer  from a gym, who is now a prince of Sweden, a bank robbery and hostage situation that ended up as the eponym of the Stockholm-Syndrom, as the hostages and the robbers now regard each other as "family friends" and invite each other to weddings and other festivities. Big LOL right there.

 

After that, we hurried over to the Royal Palace to witness the Change of Guards at 12:15. What actually happened at 12:15 was us witnessing the back of other tourists heads and Chinese guys almost head-butting us with their cameras. Was fun! The Royal Orchestra (?) also played a little concert at the end including Bruno Mars' Uptown Funk. Which was catchy, but also included some not so well sounding tones near the drop.

Then we hurried to the next Free Walking Tour: The Old Town Tour. I am very proud to say, that Dora and I beat google maps calculation of the walking distance! The Old Town Tour was also very interesting, we learned that the Swedish have a history of killing their presidents so thats why the prime minister gets literally driven to work every day even though it's right next door. We saw a unique Viking stone, the smallest, shortest, and narrowest street in Stockholm and stones in a blood-red house that are supposed to stand for all the people massacred in the Stockholm bloodbath from 1520. Fun, fun.

The stones around the windows of the
Red Building signify the number of the Dead

Mårten Trotzigs Gränd (I bet he wasn't
so happy about a street being named after him after seeing how small and narrow it was)

After lunch, we mingled a but more among the tourists in Old Town, and walked around the neighboring islands. I didn't know that Stockholm has so many differences in altitude, for some reasons I always assumed that it was flat. But no, you have to go mountain climbing everywhere. We ordered some drinks in a bar and enjoyed a bubble waffle on our way back to the hostel. We basically fell into bed - well Dora fell, I climbed up (bunkbed).

Mailboxes near the Boats

Parliament (and Dora's favourite building)

I am also royal!!

 

The Second Day

... started with us being super tired, because sharing a room with someone snoring is not fun. We rushed to leave the hostel and enjoyed a long breakfast in Espresso House. The Swedish have a concept called "Fika", which means enjoying coffee and pastry to the fullest, without doing anything else. Dora told me that the Bosnians also have that concept, but it is called - hold your tea -  "merak", which is the noun, and the according verb is "ćejfiti". I am such a language guru!

Anyways, we fika'd and ćejfiti'd our breakfast and then headed to the hipster island (Södermalm) next to the Old Town (Gamla Stan) to explore beautiful views.

 

Unfortunately, it started to rain, so we had to seek shelter in a Taco Bar, where we had amazing enchiladas for lunch. Since it was raining pretty weirdly (you are wet, even though it is not pouring because of air humidity, if you know what I mean), we bought public transport tickets and did a little tour throw Stockholm's subway stations. Dora found this blogger, who recommended the best and most artsy subway stations to visit, so we spend the full 75 minutes a public transport ticket is valid in Stockholm chasing art in a Subway and jumping into and out of trains. We got out at the Hipster Island and explored the so called "SoFo" quarter, bought dinner at Lidl and fika'd with a cider in a bar called Balthazar, which actually featured a Croatian comic as their logo! Dora was really amazed and then thought about copyrights for a little while, but led the topic go eventually (we weren't looking for trouble).

workers at the "Blue Subway Line"

The Christmas and Roman-times station

The Blogger called this the "Mario Kart" station  for some reason

 

Back in the hostel, we celebrated that our snoring roommate was gone, enjoyed our dinner and fell or rather climbed into our bunkbed.

The Last Day

We fika'd again at breakfast and enjoyed the sun on the way to the ABBA Museum.

The only thing I can say about the ABBA Museum is: amazing! Some friends of ours had already been there and all of them praised the museum - that's why I also had high expectations and was worried that they wouldn't be met. But I loved it! I can really recommend it to anyone who happens to be in Stockholm. You should probably check out the old town, but the ABBA Museum should be next on your agenda! They have a lot of interactive stuff, and Björn, Benni, Agnetha and Anni-Frid tell their stories themselves in the Audio Guide! Totally worth it!

After that, we walked around Djurgården and enjoyed our lunch. On the way back to the hostel to pick up our luggage, we saw young parents with strollers basically everywhere. During the Free Walking Tours, we were told that men are obliged to take 3 months maternity leave in Sweden, which, honestly, I think is an amazing idea!

We then boarded the bus to the Airport and left Stockholm in sorrow.

By the way, I bought a book at the Airport and I really have to mention it. It's called "The Girl with Seven Names. Escape from North Korea" by Hyeonseo Lee and it is really, really captivating. I don't really want to say that it is a "good" book, since it is about her life and her escape from North Korea - which is everything but "good", but it is truly worth the money! I recently talked to Rebecca about how we almost know nothing about North Korea, and this book covers a lot about what is going on right now in a country on the other side of the globe. I can totally recommend it! (If you don't like reading, Hyeonseo Lee also gave a TED-Talk a few years back, which also is on YouTube!).

Thanks for sticking to the end!

See you soon,

Verena 👋