Scandinavian Diaries, Day 1 - 4

Here are a summary of my four days so far in Scandinavia. Pictures hopefully soon to follow.

Day 1 (Thursday):
We get to Stockholm at 11:30 am local time. Arlanda airport is immaculately beautiful – modern, bright, airy, clean, and the exact opposite from the cramped, ugly, and creakyAmerican Airlines international terminal in JFK. After an extremely hectic time in Heathrow (thanks for nothing, f’ing terrorists!), we were very grateful to arrive at a place where everything seems orderly and under control.

Upon arrival, however, Boyfriend and I discovered with dismay that our luggages did not arrive. The British Airway agent did not seem at all surprised, and very perfunctorily took down our information and said that BA would reimburse each of us up to 50 pounds for our expenses replacing the necessary toiletries for the next few days. He said that our luggage would probably be delivered later in the day or during the night.

With some difficulty, we find our way from the airport to our hotel. Swedish is very similar to German, which ended up helping enormously because I was able to vaguely understand that the subway that was supposed to take us to our hotel was under renovation and that we had to take a bus transfer instead. We finally get to the hotel around 3:30 or so. Our room is a small, cutterbox-type basic room at a hotel that we found at approximately $70/day – a real find for Scandinavia! – a ways outside the city. Boyfriend and I collapsed immediately upon arrival. I remember lying in the bed and literally not being able to move a muscle. Then I fell into a deep sleep.

We wake up at dusk, around 8 or so, and struggle out of bed and decide to go to the local supermarket, which turned out to be about a 20 minute walk away. The scenery on the way – trees and square and functional apartment buildings, remind me of East Germany, or Israel. Only one lone supermarket was open in the shopping center district. We stocked up on toiletries, yogurts, fruits, and veggies, then carried our purchase back in our backpacks and walked back to the hotel just before darkness fell. We had dinner in the hotel garden and went back to sleep around 10:30 pm.

High point: the airport
Low point: the lack of our luggage.

Day 2 (Friday)
I woke up around 2:30 am and couldn’t get back to sleep. To pass the time, I read Bill Bryson’s essays “Neither Here Nor There,” which is an account of his travels in Europe, starting in Norway, no less. It’s very funny. Boyfriend, who is a much better sleeper than I am, wakes up around 5:30, and we make our way out of the hotel around 7:30. Our luggage, sadly, has not arrived.

We take the bus/metro (which is called the T-Bana here in Swedish) into town. We get out at Gamla Stan, the Stockholm old town, and walk around. Gamla Stan is the classic European center city, with narrow cobble-stoned streets, colorful old houses, touristy shops, town squares, and outdoor cafes. Because it was early, nothing was open yet, so we had the whole quite winding paths to ourselves.

Stockholm is a city built on small islands, and some guidebooks have called it more watery than Venice. Walk in any direction for a few minutes and you’ll likely come upon a harbor, a canal, or a lake. In the early morning sunlight, the entire city was glistening with water and sunlight. The facades of grand old buildings by the water were beautiful and imposing. The view was quite stunning.

Boyfriend, who is still wearing his sweatpants that he wore to the airplane, needs a pair of regular pants urgently. So we found our way to the more commercial parts of the city, the equivalent of 5th Avenue in New York, where hundreds of glitzy, affluent boutiques and department stores opened their doors wide to tourists and shopaholics of all nationalities. We dive into the stores and shop shop shop. I got some urgently needed face lotion and lipstick (my own extensive collection is sadly inaccessible in my lost luggage). Boyfriend got himself a pair of pants.

In case you are wondering, Swedish people are indeed breathtakingly beautiful. Every other person walking down the sidewalk is so gorgeous he/she could be a model. They are tall and trim and blond and tan and glowing with wholesomeness. Never in my life have I felt so short and plain. The men have chiseled faces, and wear narrow pants and expensively cut sweaters or suits. The women are tall, stylish, wide-set eyes, almost whitish blond hair, golden skin, impossibly thin, their almost endless tan legs ending in a pair of understated ballerina flats. Random people are more gorgeous than movie starlets in the United States – the bank attendant, the ticket counter lady, the salesgirl, the ice cream vendor, even the bus driver (a blonde with large, liquid eyes). It’s almost ridiculous. There are women with darker complexions here too, some of them probably southern European immigrants, and they too are often very beautiful. Perhaps the city brings it out in people. Very few people are overweight here.

So, after the shopping, Boyfriend and I sat in the café section of NK, a large and ritzy department store here, and had an excellent shrimp and cottage cheese salad and coffee. After that, my sleeplessness caught up with me, so I went back to the hotel to sleep while Boyfriend wandered around more and met up with his cousin who lives in Stockholm for dinner. I myself napped until after 7, then caught the bus and wandered around in Gamla Stan a bit more. The canals and the old city looked very romantic in the evening, and the streets were filled with pedestrians and street artists. Around 10:30 it got chilly, and I decided to go home.

High point: Evening stroll by the canal.
Low point: having no matching shoes except for my blindingly white sneakers to wear all day long. I miss my luggage!

Day 3 (Saturday)
Still no sign of any luggage.

Once again I got up around 2:30 am and could not fall back asleep, so read my guidebook and the New Yorkers that I brought with me on the trip as reading material.

Weather-wise, the day was as perfect as the previous few days. It is sunny and dry and not too warm but also not too cool. No air-conditioning needed in our hotel room (and there was none). Perfect days to walk outside, which is what Boyfriend and I did for much of today. We walked around in the city center and had coffee and breakfast at a large gourmet market place that we discovered by accident. The food was fresh and delicious (couscous salad, tomatoes, fresh shrimp, broiled beef, plums, and beef teriyaki kebab), though certainly not cheap. Afterwards, a very full Boyfriend and I went across the street to Sweden House to buy a 48-hour Stockholm Card, which entitled us to enter more than 47 museums and use all of the city’s transportation system for no additional cost. We than attacked the city’s museums and attractions like there’s no tomorrow.

First place we went was the royal palace, right outside of Gamla Stan. It’s no Versaille, but there were quite a few rooms to walk through in the royal apartments section, and interesting nonetheless. There were a few interesting exhibits, both within the Royal Palace itself and nearby in the Royal Armory and art museums. We also witnessed an initially interesting but increasingly endless “changing of the guards” ceremony that takes place every day at noon. A lot of loud military music, shouting of orders, and men in military uniforms involved.

Boyfriend and I went to a few other museums after that, and contemplated taking the ferry, but ended up not to and just walked round and round the city, exploring several neighborhoods and neighboring islands. Before this trip, I got a pedometer from this trendy little store, and according to it, we walked more than 30,000 steps yesterday. Not bad.

High point: the royal palace. But the discovery of the gourmet food hall was wonderful as well. We will definitely be back for more.
Low point: Boyfriend losing his Stockholm Card, upsetting me and prompting a serious discussion about his carelessness while sitting on the bank of the island.

Day 4 (Sunday)
I woke up dutifully again around 2:30am, but this time was able to fall asleep again at 4:00 for a couple of hours. Had a lot of weird dreams about law school people.

Boyfriend and I had a leisurely morning and didn’t leave the hotel until after 9, the latest we’ve left yet. We spend some time in the central train station reserving train rides to Copenhagen next week, then debated how to spend our Monday – whether to go to a nearby small town named Uppsala, or to take a ferry to one of the 24,000 small archipelagos surrounding Stockholm and hike. In the end, we decided that Stockholm is way too pleasant and interesting for us to leave and that we should stick around instead. Also, in case we don’t see our luggage again, there’s some shopping that we need to do!

Boyfriend got another Stockholm Card, and we found our way to another of Stockholm’s central islands where there the Nordic Museum, the famous Vasa Museum and a big open air folk museum named Skansen. The Nordic Museum is beautiful, but the exhibits are kind of blah. The Vasa Museum, which features an entire sunken ship from the 17th century that was lifted out of the water and restored, is the coolest thing I have seen so far on this trip. Boyfriend and I spent hours in the museum poring over everything, and just marveling at the size and the beauty of the ship.

We then walked around the park grounds – the entire island consists of a large botanical garden and lovely views of the center city and lots of nice picnicking spots. We ended up eating our food at one of these spots, then strolled along the canals looking at the boats gliding by, the

We are now sitting at one of the cafes in the city that has free Internet access. This evening, we plan to take a cable car lift to the top of a cliff to see Stockholm from a high point.

High point: hands down, the Vasa Museum.
Low point: Learning that I hate, hate, hate herring. Ugh.