28 October
Day 2 Stockholm
Since I have the Stockholm card I've planned most of my visit around using that.
My first stop today is the Vasa Museum which is on the next island over from me. I had originally planned to get the hop on-hop off boat (covered under my pass!) over there but it turns out the boats only run until September. Cowards. So I ended up walking about 30 minutes to get there. It's a nice enough day so that's not a problem.
I came across a couple of pretty cool public artworks on the way. I liked the one with the 2 obelisks. They measure various metrics of the air and water at some unspecified point in Stockholm so you can get a view of how much damage you're doing to yourself by drinking and breathing.
The Vasa Museum is about a shipwreck they found in Stockholm's harbour a couple of decades ago. Basically this ship was built in the 1700s sometime at great expense. King Gustav (I know this because there are MANY important Swedish people called Gustav so if you assume the one you're talking about is Gustav you've got a 50/50 chance of being right) had a vision of a beautiful, modern ship with all the bells and whistles. Unfortunately Gus' vision (and his desire to constantly change his mind about what he wanted) and his shipwright's skill level weren't quite up to the task and the ship sank in the harbour 18 minutes after its maiden launch. WHOOPS!
Anyway some dude found the ship in the 1970s or something and they brought it up for preservation. Apparently Stockholm's harbour has a very good mix of water that meant the ship was amazingly well preserved. This is the first time anyone has had a wreck 300 years old in such good condition so the Swedes are sort of learning as they go about maintaining it.
The ship is beautiful and really is in spectacular condition given it's wood that's been underwater for 300 years. The amount of detail still present on the sculptures and carvings is amazing. The museum itself is really interesting as well. They have interesting exhibits around how they are preserving the ship, what they have been able to tell about the skeletons found with the ship and various aspects of shipboard life. One really cool thing was that they were able to take some samples from the wood and determine the colour scheme which the ship was painted in so they have been able to recreate what they think the ship actually looked like.
A really great museum and I would totally recommend it if you're ever in Stockholm.
Unlike the Nordic Museum next door. So after having my expectations lifted by the Vasa I went into the Nordic Museum with high hopes. And it started really well! The building is awesome! It's huge and gothic looking and the interior is a huge awesome space.
The first thing I walked into was the Northern Lights exhibit. Which sucked. They stick you in a dark room for a few minutes to let your eyes adjust to darkness then you go into the next room where they have lights (supposed to be stars) and a very boring grey dusting across the sky.
Unfortunately the rest exhibits were for the most part a checklist for things I find absolutely tedious. Jewellery. Crockery and table Settings. Obscure local artists. Historical Fashion. Yawnfest.
At the end on the top floor were a couple of rooms I didn't hate (interior furnishings with some nice wooden pieces and a section about the indigenous Swedish people) which were interesting but overall this place was a waste of time for me. Ah well - can't win them all.
Now Sweden - like I think Iceland, Finland and Norway - has a Government controlled liquor store monopoly. Anything over 3.5% alcohol content has to be sold by the government liquor shop and it has pretty limited hours. This is because apparently the swedes like to get shitfaced and it was causing enough issues the government felt the need to step in. There are also extortionately high taxes on booze here so it's really expensive to drink in bars.
On weekends the liquor shop is only open til 3pm on Saturday and is not open at all on Sunday. What this means is that the swedes all hit the booze shop about 2.30 on a Saturday afternoon to pick up enough booze to carry them through the rest of the weekend. And since I like to drink but don't like to pay a lot of money for it I decided to be part of the local culture and join them. The booze wasn't actually as expensive as I thought it was going to be (the beer anyway). I got myself 4 decent craft beers for about $15 which is cheaper than Australia. And while the story was busy there weren't as many people as I thought there would be. Oh well.
I wandered around the area for a while and picked up a snack at some store then I accidentally wandered into a christening in a local church. Not quite into the christening but there was definitely a christening happening and I was definitely in the church at the same time. Lucky I went into the entrance I did because I ended up in the half of the church they had clearly left for worshippers to use while events were happening.
Next door to the church was the Army Museum which I hadn't intended to visit but decided to go into because I was there. And it was a surprisingly interesting museum. They had a good exhibit on the ground floor showing various board games (like Go and Chess) that have been used as training through human history as well as showing a bit of stuff about tabletop gaming and model battlefields.
They also had a really good permanent exhibit showing the Swedish army's involvement in the various wars throughout Europe over the last few centuries. Not having grown up in Europe I thought this was interesting and they covered it in enough detail that I felt like I was learning something but not so much detail that I got bored quickly.
And they had a great collection of guns!
This is the horse. A lovely torture method where you sit on a piece of wood and weights are added to your legs. They have one you can try out. It was not pleasant even after a few seconds. I can't imagine this for minutes or hours. I reckon you'd be split in half.
This was a memorial created by Swedish soldiers who were part of the war in Kosovo.
After that I went back to the hostel for a while to just chill out. Cooked some dinner then at about 9pm I went out to the Fotografika gallery.
This was a great gallery with what I thought were some really high quality collections. A couple of my favourites were these. I thought the star wars figures in the garden were whimsical and fun. And the plants in beakers were just cool.
The gallery is open til 1am because they have a bar and restaurant upstairs which are pretty popular. I went up but they were playing music I wasn't really into so I headed to a craft beer bar nearby for a couple of drinks instead.
Restaurant Akkarat was a pretty cool pub with a great selection of craft beers including Cantillon Gueuze on tap! I was very happy with this. And the price wasn't even horrific. About $13 AUD per glass. So I had a couple of glasses then started yawning so made the long walk back to the hostel.
Where I discovered 5 Lithuanian basketball players had filled the other beds in the dorm room. They had just won a 3 a side basketball competition in Stockholm and were trying to get drunk on 3.5% alcohol beer. I'm not sure if they succeeded but it took them a while as they were going til about 4am. Thank goodness for earplugs.
