It's been over four weeks now since I was last in Sweden, and given this fact, I think that it is high time for a description of my trip there. If I get on a roll, perhaps anecdotes and other information from all the other countries to which I went will follow.We departed for Sweden on the morning of Saturday, October 11th. Unfortunately the Sally Bussen would not be the vehicle to grace our presence during our week-long adventure, but I would daresay we traded up. With a different bus came a different driver, in this case one who could actually shift while going up hill and not stall out. We took off at 8:00 and settled in for what would be a long ride. All told, it would be about eight hours to Stockholm.
Our trip was broken up somewhat, thankfully, by a short ferry ride to cross into Sweden, a stop at the first church of many that we would see on the trip, and a lunch break in "the candy capital of Sweden." Those detours only occupied a small portion of the day, however, which ended up being just fine, as the bus presented a good opportunity to catch up on some of the sleep we had all missed while getting raped by our architecture projects earlier that week. The bus would continue to serve this purpose throughout the week.
Our first stop, St. Petri church, was nice enough, but attempting to describe it (and by precedent, every other church we saw that week) in detail would be enough to make me abandon the post here. Should you desire pictures of this particular house of G-O-D, they are available in the link you will find at the bottom of the post. Anyways, we made an hour's stop there before piling back onto the bus and making our way to Granna, Sweden.
I've commented to various people during the past few months about the noticeable lack of real geography in Denmark -- the country is more or less completely flat, and with the flatness comes an absence of rivers, lakes, or nature of any kind. Upon crossing into Sweden, the landscape was initially more or less the same as we passed through the area that most recently belonged to Denmark, but as we pushed further into the country, things began to change. By the time we reached Granna (the aforementioned "candy capital of Sweden" -- even the poles on the road signs are striped like stick candy), the landscape had changed completely. We drove past an enormous lake, and mountains were visible on the distant shore, covered in trees just reaching their peak fall colors; it reminded me of Vermont. When we stepped off the bus in Granna -- a small but charming lakeside town -- the air was noticeably colder, and the entire town sloped downhill to the lake. I felt more at home immediately. Over the course of the next week, I took every opportunity to enjoy the splendid views and unpredictability of real nature -- it was as close to New England fall as I'd get this year, after all.
In Granna we grabbed some food at a small, anonymous restaurant -- the kind they have in every town that serves all manner of burgers, sandwiches, pizza, and whatever else they decide to slap on the menu. A couple of us ordered pizzas, and when they arrived they were surprisingly good considering the establishment. A couple minutes later the owner checked on us and asked how the pizzas were, to which we replied, truthfully, "Really really good." He responded, "I know. I made them." He was the first Swede we'd encounter on the trip, and it's safe to say he made a good first impression.
After lunch we stocked up on some stick candy and piled back on the bus. I bought two pieces -- one for me, and one for my sister, eventually -- and it took me an entire viewing of The Royal Tenenbaums to finish mine. After eating it in one sitting I was hopped up on sugar for the rest of the day, so Sally, if you're reading this, I hope you did not do the same. Anyways, a couple hours later as I was crashing from my sugar high, we pulled into Stockholm and arrived at our hostel.
After check-in a few of us took the time to wander around our area of Stockholm and made the short walk to the top of a hill that had been recommended to us by DIS in our pre-trip meeting. At the top we had a gorgeous view of Stockholm over the water, and I again appreciated being in a place with legitimate topography instead of gentle ups and downs. Once back at the hostel, our group departed by public transportation to our dinner that night. One thing worth mentioning: the Swedish government has put an enormous amount of money into public artwork, and as a result, nearly every subway stop in Stockholm was designed and decorated by a different artist, which makes arriving at each next stop all that much more interesting. Dinner was at a small restaurant on Gammel Stan, the island that constitutes Stockholm's old town. One other thing worth mentioning: Stockholm was built on 14 islands, which breaks the city up into smaller individual sections that all conveniently have expansive views to the rest of the city. It is quite spectacular. While dinner was rumored to be a seafood buffet, it never materialized, and we made-do with our Swedish meatballs (how authentic), mashed potatoes, and gravy. It was a pretty good meal, buffet dreams aside.
After dinner a couple of us trucked out to the finest drinking establishment we could find, which turned out to be quite awesome. It was a small Irish pub with an extensive basement; around each new corner was another intimate seating area, and playing in the largest of these was an Irish band. The pub was of course packed, and it took us a while to secure an expanse of couch well-suited to the size of our crowd. Eventually though, we settled in, and brought some Danish hygge to Stockholm. We also had a chat with the Swedish girl and two Italian guys who were sitting next to us, one of whom was, as we soon found out, her boyfriend. How did they meet, you might wonder? (We did.) MySpace. Apparently "a space for friends" is as effective an international hook-up tool as its been rumored. And if their occasional pauses to absolutely suck face were any indication, they were quite happy.
Anyways, the bar closed, eventually (apparently they actually do that in Sweden), and we all trudged home. On the way we felt obligated to stop at a sausage stand, something my most loyal readers (I use that term regardless of whether or not they actually exist) have come to know the I enjoy tremendously. Per usual, I was feeling adventurous, and ordered the most intimidating-looking thing on the menu: the "dubbel rulle." What attracted me to the dubbel rulle was the fact that in the picture there were two hot dogs in one bun, something I found both awesome and irresistable. In my past experience, two things and then one other thing has always gone well -- Two Girls, One Cup, for example. (Actually I still have not -- by my own refusal -- seen that video, something I plan to continue indefinitely. Here's a funny Middlebury reaction video though.) Okay, so I got my dubbel rulle -- "With everything," I happily confirmed -- and it immediately became apparent that I was in over my head. I was handed a tortilla-like bun packed with two hot dogs, all manner of ketchup and mustard(s), lettuce, onion, gravy, some seafood-salad thing (I have no idea what this actually was), and to top it all off, another hearty serving of mashed potatoes. It was an experience, to say the least. Nevertheless, I fought through it, and even found a few-odd bites that were actually palatable. With three quarters of it gone, I cut my losses and sent it to the trash. So concluded my first day in Sweden.
On day two we rose early, as one is required to do on every school trip ever, and went for a walk around Stockholm. The day was cold but otherwise perfect (not a cloud in the sky, quite literally), and we first ascended the hill that I had been on with a few friends the previous night. In daylight, the view was even better, and we took a couple minutes to soak it all in and snap some pictures. We then returned to the old town, which really is quite enchanting. The streets are very narrow and winding, but unlike Copenhagen's they are so narrow that cars wouldn't even think of trying to get through them. So rather than finding the cobbled streets as packed and stressful as in Copenhagen, it was nice to take a walk around and enjoy the old city. We passed a few churches and a palace of some kind, but they were mostly inconsequential. Rather, it was much nicer just walking around and enjoying the brisk weather, gorgeous day, and brilliant foliage.
Later, we went into the more modern part of Stockholm, which could have belonged in any medium-sized global city. We took in a few more buildings, got some lunch, and then had the early afternoon to ourselves in the city. I strolled around a bit and checked out some recommended sites before making my way to Moderna Museet, one of Stockholm's newer art museums. Many of the museums in Stockholm are located on one particular island which functions as a large park, and the walk to this location was one of the more enjoyable ones I have experienced in a while. I don't know whether I was intoxicated by the day, the scenery, or just the change of pace from Denmark, but it was lovely indeed.
The museum, too, impressed, with an exhibit of Max Ernst's work and a collection which prominently featured Marcel Duchamp, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, and many other titans of modern art. Of all the works, some of the more noteworthy were Duchamp's Fountain and Great Glass and Rauschenberg's Monogram. Who knew that you could come to Sweden and see some of the milestones in 20th century art?
By the end of day two, I decided that I was in love with Stockholm and that Sweden, and not Denmark, had actually been the country I envisioned with my impossibly idealized visions of Scandinavia.
On day three, we rose, got breakfast, and then departed for a whirlwind tour of several Swedish funeral chapels. We visited Stockholm's Woodland Cemetary, which was nicely laid out, but again, I'm never one to be particularly fond of chapels and churches. We saw three, though (Resurrection Chapel, Woodland Chapel, and Holy Cross Chapel, for those keeping score), and in general they were all pretty nice. Unforunately, Holy Cross Chapel fell victim to the same fate of Arne Jacobsen's Arhus City Hall: it was graced with an appalling mural. Apparently just after blondes, sausages, and socialism, murals capable of making one's eyes bleed are one of Scandinavia's greatest loves.
So that was most of the day. We stopped for lunch and a brief tour at another art museum of sorts, and the in the late afternoon we drove just to the outskirts of Stockholm to Hammarby Sjöstad, which would become one of my personal highlights of the trip.
Hammarby Sjöstad is a large mixed-use sustainable development in Stockholm harbor. Upon completion the development will contain about 10,000 apartments for 25,000 residents. Currently about two-thirds finished, the main residential sections and major thoroughfares have been inhabitied for a couple of years now and are becoming increasingly popular addresses in Stockholm. Thankfully, unlike the Komfort Husene that DIS tried to pawn off as cutting edge sustainable architecture during our short study tours, Hammarby Sjöstad has truly earned the title.
The development is oozing with green cred: it was built on a brownfields site that used to be the home of several industries, it integrates public transporation directly into the design, it generates some of its own electricity from solar power, it turns sewage sludge into biogas to be used in homes and to fuel cars and buses, it maintained existing vegetation, it uses natural stormwater remediation, and the list goes on. Our group received a detailed presentation on the project in "the glass house" which is the information center for the development. There we learned about all the green features and were given a guided tour of the area. Perhaps one of the most innovative features of the project is its garbage disposal system. The development has one central building for waste, and the building is collected to all other areas in the development via a system of underground vacuum tubes. In their apartments, residents sort their garbage into three groups and deposit them in the appropriate waste shoot. Sensors in the shoot indicate when it is almost full, at which point an automated system in the main building turns on the vacuums and sucks all the garbage to the main plant to be disposed of. Sounds ridiculous, but it's ingenious. This system not only simplifies the waste management process for individuals and the community, but also allows the buildings to be built closer together, because garbage trucks never have to come in and take trash away. Just one of the many interesting features we learned about.
It is important not to get caught up in the environmental statistics of the development, because one should certainly not overlook one of the most important things: Hammarby Sjöstad is gorgeous. Like all of Stockholm, there is water everywhere, and in addition to the boardwalks and shorefront, there are canals that run between all the buildings (and passively treat stormwater). The buildings are attractive and properly scaled, and the landscaping is seems both natural and refined. We ended our tour on a large round swimming platform that juts out into the harbor, and while it might have been too cold that day, in the summer I could envision people everywhere taking advantage of the location to go swimming, boating, or just enjoy the setting. I wouldn't mind being one of them someday.
After Hammarby Sjöstad, we boarded a Viking Line ferry for Finland, and due to the debauchery that ensued and the fact that I am tired of writing (as you, surely, are also tired of reading), it will get its own post.
You can view my Sweden pictures here.
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