Stockholm

I hope that my Swedish friend will not be offended by the length of time I spend on this post (certainly she has a right to, given how much time I spent in Stockholm Central Station on the internet!).

The arrival

At the airport was a gorgeous woman behind the information desk who sold me a ticket to get on the bus into the central station. I'm sure that she must have pushed the button for security to monitor this POI (person of interest) because I can't quite remember how long I went slack-jawed for, or whether that was just a fleeting lapse in the control of my facial expressions.

Outside with a silly grin on my face, I sniffed the crisp air and almost felt like I was home in New Zealand again. Stockholm is built on a number of islands and as a result has a nice little sea-breeze that reminds me of Auckland, especially as you get closer to the waterfront.

If it wasn't chilly, I would have described it like Hawkes Bay in the summer, no clouds in the sky and brown grassy slopes. Minus the stifling, dry heat.

The week that was

We went out into the old part of Stockholm on Saturday and found a church to go to on the Sunday (lesson from Berlin learned), and went swimming on Sunday afternoon. Off a cliff.

When we were talking on Sunday morning about going swimming, I had imagined a beach with sand or at least pebbles. Instead, my friend is talking about going swimming off rocks, and somehow I get this idea of a cliff. Maybe it was that she said 'cliff' and then 'rocks' in the same sentence as 'swimming' and I kind of overreacted.

Swimming of rocks is splash-splash, like the beach and sand, yeah? Swimming off the cliff is AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH... I think I embarrassed her because I acted out the last sentence with some fingers to illustrate an enterprising swimmer trying their luck at cliff-diving, with sound effects. Loudly. To the surprise of the fellow breakfasting patrons of the cafe. Whoops.

As it was, it was swimming off rocks, not a cliff. Off rocks, into freezing water. Forget the heat, it matters more that you are freezing than boiling. For all my bluster and banter about swimming ('oh yeah, you know, Kiwis and water, hor hor hor...') I found myself shivering very un-manly-like up to my knees in water, because I was standing on a very green rock without a decent place to launch from (more rocks in the way). Later I see two revealing photos on my camera - my friend took two snaps of me while I was standing there wailing like a kid.

Countdown: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... Lean forward, feel that point of no return. Splash. Ooooh that's a old one.

And I'm out. Two minutes I lasted, I'm told. Impressive.

I also went out to Skansen, which is kind of like Jurassic Park meets Sweden - it's about 30 square kilometres (so they say - all right then!) and it has working model farms, animal enclosures, heritage houses and lots of other stuff to show foreigners what Sweden was like before electricity, and to remind young Swedish people what it was like before last year (I'm kidding of course, we're actually talking before 1980 here).

Very cool to see a wolverine in the flesh though. And some brown bears.

On Wednesday night we went to the Stockholm Jazz Festival which was pretty enjoyable, even though most of the music that night was pop-rock... Swedish beer and Langos aplenty!

Thursday night made up for Wednesday night with some genuine jazz and swing dancing! An hour lesson at 7pm and then freestyle dancing from 8pm onwards.

I was asked to dance by a beginner who had the 7pm lesson as well (there were about 50-100 people there) and then as soon as we had finished and I picked up my cup of water to take a drink, another girl came up to me and said, "Now we can dance?" I looked down at my cup and decided the thirst could wait...

So the venue was very cool, a sunken quadrangle with lights and a live band playing, with plenty of talent on show. Quite a few were clearly regulars and some went to fantastic effort to dress up for the occasion, I almost felt like I had gone back in time a little!

A great end to Thursday night and my visit to Stockholm... Nåsta London.

I can highly recommend going to Stockholm. A lot of people speak English, but if you have some grasp of German or a Scandinavian language, you'll be fine...

I will also remember Stockholm for Kevin Costner as it was apparently Kevin Costner weekend after I arrived and of the 10 movies or so we watched in my friend's apartment, about 3 or 4 of them featured Himself...