In the morning, during breakfast, it was clear we were close to our destination.
We went topside and looked out around us. We had arrived in Sweden!
It was beautiful to come in by boat. We saw many beautiful islands (that looked suspiciously like the Upper Peninsula), before turning the bend and arriving at Scandinavia’s greatest city: Stockholm!
Arrival in Stockholm
It was a warm (but thankfully not hot) day, so we changed into cooler clothes after checking in and set about to explore the city! Stockholm is a very… grand place. There’s lots of beautiful old buildings mixed in well with modern designs. There’s a lot of people walking around everywhere, and it’s clear that it is a very cosmopolitan city.
The city is built on an archipelago, and the different islands are aligned towards different purposes. One island is where the old town is located, with the parliament and palace located on it. Another island was primarily museums.
Prices were much more expensive than Finland and it became clear that this was not going to be a budget honeymoon!
Food
The traditional fare of Sweden seemed to be similar to Finland. Fish-heavy, with meatballs and potatoes as a cheaper option. We elected, as with Finland, to lean heavily on the much cheaper international cuisine to stretch our kroner.
We did splurge on one spot though. On the recommendation of a Swedish acquaintance from college, we went to a place called ‘Restaurang Hantverket’. It was a small plate restaurant, and while I quite enjoyed the food, it was also a bit comedic and gimmicky. For example, look at home Shamita had to eat her deconstructed ‘sandwich’:
Museums
We had time for two museums. Both for our own personal interests. Shamita loves ABBA, so we went to the ABBA Museum.
I’m personally not obsessed with them, but I found the costumes to be fun to look at and their story as a band was interesting. Not many groups from the 70’s disco period have had such an enduring legacy. Last I checked, there was no Bees Gees museum in the UK!
Afterwards (since most of the museums are on the same island), we went to the Vasa Museum. I had been fascinated by the Vasa since I read about it in Muse magazine two decades ago. It’s a giant, ornate 17th Century warship that sunk almost immediately in the Stockholm harbor due to poor design. The cold water preserved it incredibly well, and you can walk around see all the woodcarvings that decorated the ship.
Highly recommend!
The last site of interest we visited was the Stockholm City Hall. This is where they have the Nobel Prize Banquet, so you may have seen a photograph or two from here. The most incredible of the rooms was a mostly-gold mosaic room.
The guide seemed annoyed when I asked if there was any connection to the Freemasons in the designs present. Maybe he’s just had too many conversations with conspiracy theorists. I’m not some loon who thinks they secretly control the world, but the Freemasons are indeed a real organization and when they had more prominence back in the day, they would include their symbols (like the sextant above and the Eye of Providence below) in their work.
Midsommar
Our last day in Sweden was an auspicious one. Midsommar is the biggest holiday of the year in Sweden (yes, bigger than Christmas) where the solst-ish is celebrated. I should note by now the sun was setting very late, after 10 PM and rising around 3:30 AM. It’s a huge party night, with Maypole celebrations and lots of drinking. Some of the women wear flower crowns and Shamita could not resist joining in.
After checking out a few more sites, we were on our way to the fjords of Norway! We got on a train to Oslo, where we would transfer on a night train to Bergen.
Train to Oslo
On the bullet train to Oslo, we had a man peer over the seats and ask if we had chicken in our takeout tray. He was concerned we had chicken that was developing salmonella in the sunlight. When we assured him it was just Margarita pizza we had picked up earlier in the old town, he used the opening with the slickness of an American salesman to sit across from us and chat. This was actually quite welcomed, as we hadn’t had much of a chat with anyone so far in our travels. His name was Martin and he dominated most of the conversation. Being an extroverted, gregarious Scandinavian like himself must be a special kind of hell living amongst the land of the introverts. We discussed all sorts of things. Love, politics, the war. The three mainstays of humanity that never seem to fully disappear.
At the risk of extending Martin as a representative for Swedish culture, something I found interesting, is that, though we disagreed rather profoundly on topics such as religion and macro-economics, he would listen and not be too prescriptive on what the correct way of doing things was. This was in stark contrast to the many ‘Besserwissers’ I had encountered during my multiple trips to Germany. My experience with Germans was that sooner or later, when talking with an American, they wanted to discuss one of two things: Trump or guns. Once on their preferred subject, they would like to lecture me, their American surrogate, on how my country was wrong and not listen to any explanations of how there could be more to the situation than they personally understood. Such is the Besserwisser attitude of the German people… and it’s not new! Hessian mercenaries (hired by the British) in the American Revolution could not understand why the colonists were in full revolt against their king when they lived luxurious lifestyles compared to the squalor of war-torn Hessia. (Some of them ended up staying in the new country after losing the war and even petitioned for German to be added as a national language).
After several hours of wonderful conversation with Martin (and a few beers), we arrived in Oslo for a several hour “layover”.