Taking Stock of STOCKHOLM

Stockholm - the capital of Sweden , also calls itself the capital of Scandinavia. And with good reason. It is the biggest of all the Nordic cities, perhaps the most famous and also it gets the most visitors .And after spending a weekend there , I would say that it is the most beautiful as well.

I left Gothenburg on a Friday evening and as always I seemed to be hitting a city with lots to see and only a couple of days.

Since I reached late on Friday evening, there was no time for sight seeing. After a customary McDonalds dinner ( while on tour, its always junk food) me and Priya checked in at our dorm at the hostel we were booked for the weekend. Priya is a telecom engineer, talk to her about mobile phones and stuff she gets excited. So I was subjected to some valuable information about the difference between 3G and 4G while on the Stockholm metro towards our hostel . I also got admonished for possessing a Stone age model mobile handset. Stone age in the world of mobile phones in 2005. Goodness.

Saturday morning. The First stop was the Royal palace. A majestic looking building ,the Palace was indeed a wonderful sight. The visit of the Chinese Premier that day meant that most parts of the royal palace was out of bounds for us . Not sticking around there , we moved towards Gamla Stan - the old city. Advertised as one of the largest well preserved medieval settings in Europe, Gamla Stan had very typical cobbled streets, narrow alleys and medieval architecture buildings. .Right in the middle of Gamla Stan is located the NOBEL museum. The museum , which was disappointingly small , holds a few interesting pieces of display though. It contains the set of patents registered by Alfred Nobel , a replica of his last will and testament , as well as various items used by Nobel laureates over the year. Notable among them was a cycle used by Amartya Sen., and a writing slate used by Rabindranath tagore. The museum has a small theatre which keeps playing small 10 minute clips about the various Nobel laureates. The museum is a good visit, though you should enter without any big expectations.

Next stop was another museum. And this was unlike any other museum that I had seen anywhere before. The VASA museum is situated on the island of Djugarden, a 10 minute ride on the ferry from Gamlastan. The VASA was a Swedish warship that sank on her maiden voyage in the 1600s. After 333 years under the sea , the VASA was raised in the 1961 and then part by part, painstakingly put together. The museum now holds the almost fully restored VASA in all her majesty. The sight of the warship standing almost at 8 levels from the ground to her top most part , located inside the cavernous museum was breathtaking. An interesting point was that , if the VASA had sunk in any other sea in the world other than the Baltic, the wood would have been destroyed in the 300 years under water. But the Baltic sea being free from the shipworm Teredo navalis had not impacted the VASA s remains underwater. The musuem also has a mini theatre which runs a documentary about the VASA, and various displays and artifacts from the ship. THE VASA museum is a must visit if you are planning a trip to Stockholm.

Later in the evening , we visited the ABSOLUT ICE BAR. The bar’s claim to fame being the fact that it is made entirely of ice. The chairs, the tables, the glasses, the walls are made of ice. But the size of the bar itself was a slight disappointment. It was just one small room with a lot of ice furniture. As you enter u are given a long overcoat and gloves and you enter the ice bar feeling like an Eskimo. The drinks are costly and barring the last slot of the day at 9 45 pm, for the rest of the day one needs a prior appointment as well as only 45 minutes time inside the bar. Nevertheless the ice bar is cool experience. Pun intended.

Next day it was time to check The Stockholm archipelago which consists of 24000 islands. We hopped on to one of the various ferries plying between the capital and these islands. It took an hour and more of sailing to reach the island of Vaxholm and along the way we could see an incredible number of small islands , creeks and summer houses nestled on these islands. The farthest islands are about 3 hours by ferry. These islands are ideal getaways from the hustle and bustle of a city life. These are not places for a “ few photos and one more place off my must visit list “ type tourist. They are for the more relaxed , time in hand types who would like to stay a few days and enjoy the quiet , un spoilt and peaceful timelessness on offer. We walked around the beautiful island and I thought that everybody either seemed to be eating or sunbathing or swimming. Relaxed was the word.

The last stop before winding up the trip was the city hall - Famous as the place where the annual Nobel banquet is held every December. Located along the water front the city hall is a tall and imposing structure made out of 8 million red bricks. The Nobel banquet is held in the blue hall , which incidentally is not blue but rather red in color, apparently because the architect had a change of mind and decided to continue with red bricks and not paint them blue.

As I took the train back to Gothenburg, there was this familiar feeling inside me of maybe having spent a little less time than what would ideally be required to do justice to its sights and sounds..!