Stockholm is hard to describe geographically. It's not a single city sitting on the edge of the Baltic Sea, but a conglomeration of fourteen small islands situated where Lake Malaren empties into the Baltic. Some basic information about Stockholm, and somewhat of Sweden in general. Most everyone speaks English. I don't know why they do, but it's really convenient. English and the Scandinavian languages all come from Germanic, so there's a lot of similarities. They also seem to devour English media as well-the radio is full of American and British hits, the movies are predominantly American, and . The currency is the Swedish Kronnor, or crown, and it's roughly 10 SEK to 1 USD. Stockholmians are super fit. People walk or bike all over the goddamn place. There are bike lanes on most roads in the city, and lot of bike/walk lanes and bridges to get everywhere you need to go. I was outpaced by pretty much everyone, even those who were easily 20+ years older than me. Being slow, fat, and carrying a camera probably clearly marks me as a tourist---probably as an American tourist. Hopefully replying to everyone I don't understand with "Sorry?" Makes them wonder if I'm Canadian.Another fun fact, Stockholm is cold in November. Not Antarctica cold, but colder than South Carolina. I knew this...this wasn't a surprise. But coming from the mid 60s of home, and the freaking 80s in Ft. Lauderdale during my layover, I was surprised to see a good coating of ice on the windshield of my rental car. I was equally surprised by the approximately $100 parking ticket on the windshield. In my sleep deprived state the night before I had forgotten to check with reception to see if the cruise line parking lot was fair game, despite trying to remind myself several times, and found out that it was not. Lesson learned, I moved the car into a parking garage that was at the top of the massive cliff that is immediately across the road from the little harbor where the Burger King is...moored? Then I walked down the 144 steps of the switchback staircase that led back down and played my first game of chicken with the traffic of Stockholm.
My first stop was really one of convenience, even if I am actually interested in the subject, because it's basically right next door to the Burger King---the Fotografiska, or the Photography Museum. The bulk of the museum's exhibits, all of which I believe are temporary (I don't believe they have a permanent collection like most museums), is primarily from Scandinavian photographers, but there are a few small exhibits of American and other artists. The biggest exhibit at the moment is that of a Swedish photojournalist named Paul Hansen. His works span the majority of the different international crises of the last 10 years - earthquakes in Haiti, civil wars in Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, and others, Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and the fight against ISIS. He has a heavy emphasis on refugees in particular, and the innocent victims of these atrocities in general. The photos and the stories that accompany them are heartbreaking and horrifying, but he captures them with such reverence and respect (and talent) that it's hard not to admire the bleak outlook they portray.
Between sitting at the breakfast table for a couple hours trying to work on my own photos, and taking about two hours to go through the exhibits at Fotografiska it was pretty much lunch time when I finished so I headed up to the museum's rather slick looking restaurant. Supposedly they've won an award for Museum Restaurant of the World. Now I don't know if you've spent much time in museums, and in turn museum restaurants, but they tend to kinda suck so it could be a dubious award if it weren't for the fact that food really is quite good. Even though I only had a salad, the centerpiece of which was a beetroot tartar (yeah, I don't really know what that means), it was a really good salad and the restaurant has a phenomenal view of the Stockholm harbor. I would complain about the fact that it was a bit expensive considering it was a salad but all Museum food is expensive, and all food (and just about everything else) in Stockholm is expensive too.
After leaving the Fotografiska I decided I was just going to walk around and explore the parts of Stockholm that were within easy walking distance. It turns out that the majority of Stockholm proper is within distance, depending on your limits. My walk first took me into the historic district of Stockholm, known as Gamla Stan (literally Old Town) which is primarily on the island of Stadsholmen, nestled in the water between the main land masses of the city. Gamla Stan seems to be the main haunting ground of tourists to the city, which is understandable considering it's quaint, old-world narrow streets filled with shops and restaurants inside buildings hundreds of years old. Gamla Stan is dotted liberally with beautiful old churches and the Kungliga slottet, or the Royal Palace, where Sweden's monarchs still live (their government is very similar to the UK with a monarch but also a parliament).
I wandered through the open areas of the palace where armed guards stand at attention and march along short, seemingly symbolic routes and bought a ticket to go inside. For whatever reason I only went through a small section, namely the old treasury, but the ticket is good for a week so I intend to go back and check out the rest. The treasury is small, but houses some well preserved Crown Jewels from reigns of the past; A dozen or so golden crowns, crusted with jewels and backed by beautifully woven and richly colored fabrics; several ceremonial swords with detailed etchings on the blades and pommels encircled with pearls; and various accoutrement that make up the royal regalia like intricate keys of state, globes cruciger, and scepters. I'll cover the rest when I go check it out.
Once I continued on my meandering through the city I continued walking around the waterfront and ended up stumbling on a museum of modern art, the Moderna Museet on the island of Skeppsholmen. Now I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with modern art. Most of my favorite artists are modern...they're still alive and producing work. But most of my least favorite artists are modern and appear in many museums of modern art. They produce the kind of art that makes me feel like an asshole just looking at it. They take a pair of soccer balls and stick one each in little half-round pieces of Home Depot junk, set them on the floor, and call it a statement on our interaction with objects and the world around us. Yeah...that's the kind of asshole stuff in Moderna Museet. Granted, they have a decent selection of some of the lesser known pieces by Picasso, Mondrian, Matisse, Edward Munch (a Norwegian), and even a Dali. They also have old, weather-faded soccer balls in half circle things. They have an exhibit where a computer mines bitcoins, and when it's earned enough bitcoin it prints out a giant poster of an ancient form of currency on a large format printer. There's a large room wallpapered with used burlap coffee sacks the artists got from coffee farmers by exchanging them for new ones. It is slam full of Grade A asshole material and I enjoyed my time in the Moderna Museet. It's the kind of place where you wonder if the grumpy looking old woman sitting at a table reading a magazine is actually an exhibit. I still don't know for certain she wasn't.
Once I left the museum, walked back because I realized I lost my phone, and left again after finding it in the bathroom it was well past dark (which doesn't mean much since it's dark by 4:30) and I was exhausted after doing a bit more walking than I was used to (about 8 miles all told) so I walked back around the large half-circle route I'd taken until I got back to my Burger King home and had a tasty dinner of fish and chips (not exactly quintessential Swedish fare) and a couple pints of Hoga Kusten, a decent but not amazing amber beer named after the High Coast of Sweden. And then I slept on my Burger King bunk bed.
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