In the land of Volvo...and my ancestors

On the train with Cindy
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Wednesday night, Petra, Cindy, and I decided to go to Sweden and hopefully Norway. We booked a hostel in Stockholm and made plans to meet the next morning to begin our trip...but things didn't go as planned. The night train we had been hoping to take from Stockholm to Oslo didn't run on Fridays and due to high demand for train reservations to Stockholm, we wouldn't be arriving until midnight. But we decided that we could still have a good time and changed our trip to encompass southern sweden with stops in Malmo and Goteborg.

First stop in Malmo
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Malmo reminded us of Aarhus, and with only four hours to spend in the town we were only able to walk around the city center for a little bit. But when it started raining we found a coffee shop and spent the rest of our evening in the train station. The train to Stockholm was long (approx. five hours) but we arrived around midnight. Here began our adventure of hostel searching. We had the name and address of our hostel, but no clue where to start walking. The man at the train station ticket booth gave us directions which sent us on a 20 minute walk (when it should have been barely 10 minutes) in a big U before finding our lodgings. Everyone was asleep when we arrived and so we fumbled around in the dark finding our bunks to get some much needed rest. We stayed in a dormitory style room with 6 bunk beds. We all thought it was really strange sleeping with 11 other strangers in a crowded room and we all got very little sleep. In the morning, due to our change of plans, we needed to stay another night in Stockholm because our train left Saturday morning for Goteborg. The hostel was fully booked for the night but the receptionist gave us some recommendations for where to find another hostel. The next hostel we stopped at was also full, but this receptionist suggested we go to tourist information services to find out which places had vacancies instead of hiking all over the city. We followed her advice and tourist information helped us search for available lodging. We eventually found a hotel with a room for the three of us that wasn't too expensive. Instead of paying the $5 per person Information was going to charge us for booking the room there, we got directions and sped-walked through the city to snatch up this available room. We ended up at the Colonial Hotel, a cute little hotel/hostel that was clean, located in a charming part of town, and close to the downtown area and train station. Now, we were able to start our discovery of stockholm.

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All of us really loved Stockholm. Parts of it reminded me of Portland, although it was much more crowded. But the Swedes, while slightly stuck-up, seemed more relaxed than the Danes. We started with a walk around the harbor area and saw the Royal Palace. We made our way over to the National Museum and there, learned about Swedish design. I really enjoyed this museum because it walked people through the different phases/influences of design/fashion/art in Sweden. While the Swedes have some famous painters and designers, a lot of its design comes from France and China as well as some other European countries. I also really liked walking through the art gallery portion of the museum because I recognized many of the artists and the artwork due to my wonderful art education from Art Literacy at Cathedral. My favorite paintings were "The Immaculate Conception" by Francisco de Herrera and "Bringing Home the Body of King Karl XII of Sweden" by Gustaf Cederström. King Karl XII is known for bringing Sweden to its pinnacle of power through his successful war campaigns, but also lacked strategic wisdom at times with overambitious invasions into Russia and other parts of Scandinavia, leading to an anti-Swedish movement and its downfall as a Great Power. The painting of him was very powerful to me because there was a sense of respect and sadness for the responsibilities of a great leader. (http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en-commons/c/c0/Karl_XIIs_likfärd_(1884),_målning_av_Gustaf_Cederström_(1845-1933).jpg)

one of the many cool buildings in Stockholm
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After the National Museum, our legs were so tired that we could barely walk ourselves outside. We had planned on going to The Modern Museum, but decided our legs couldn't take it. So we wandered back down town for afternoon tea and coffee before returning to our hotel to freshen up for dinner. Cindy and I really wanted Swedish food, swedish meatballs in particular for our dinner in Stockholm. We asked several receptionist at a few hotels, but they only directed us to swanky, expensive restaurants where we didn't really fit in. Tired and hungry we settled for unsatisfying chinese food.

Roundabout in Stockholm
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Stockholm, was a beautiful city. I would love to return to it and properly explore the city with a guidebook and a plan. There is so much more to see than I was able to fit in. I felt more at home in Sweden than in Denmark. I never thought I would find a place with more volvo station wagons than Portland, but I did. The people were reserved but also more laid-back. It's a proud country with a little bit of everything influencing its traditions and rich history.