Stockholm Day 1

The first sign I saw driving last night was the moose crossing sign. Seems to me the moose here are sneaky looking or maybe malnourished compared to the ones at home. I have not seen a real one so I will report back if I do.

We got through the weird tired time-zone thing by sleeping through the night. As usual, it took a while to get used to all the Euro stuff. Weird power sockets (the converter I bought actually works!!), weird toilets, light switches, traffic signs, car controls, tipping rules (10%), you name it. Some observations from our first day here. The buildings are really old and as a result any wiring or plumbing has been put in on a retrofit basis. So switches may be in odd places, bathrooms will probably be small, the toilets are tiny (smaller bottoms on these fit Swedes?), and electrical outlets are big scary looking things you could plug a plug-in Space Shuttle into, and you feel kind of silly plugging your iPhone charger into. Everything is 240 volts here which is twice that at home. The adapter weighs more than the thing you are plugging in.

The car is slick. It is diesel, has no crazy warning systems, interlocks, fear inducing lights, signals or sirens like the cars back home. You can even start it in gear with the clutch out (I tried it) unwillingly crushing the people in the parking spec in front of you. I guess it has not been a problem here. The other amazing thing is the number of rotaries (the car brake pad manufacturers hate rotaries) and in the little town we are staying in, there are no stop signs, which is a little unnerving at first. Everybody figures it out (higher IQ here). So the best part is that the Swedes ride bicycles everywhere so there is not much car traffic. In Stockholm the trolleys (electric buses) and buses (diesel) have dedicated lanes so the car guys feel kind of silly sitting in traffic with their $40K cars while bus commuters just cruise by. What I am getting at is that between bikes and trains and buses, Sweden has made the car sort of not required. The trains are great. We take a 30 minute train into Stockholm and snooze (no can do in the car, well maybe real briefly), read (possible but only really short sentences), and meet really nice Swedish people (only if you pick up blond hitch-hikers and get lucky).

There are bikes racks everywhere and the bikes are the work-horse bikes, well built ($6-800 kinds from what I see in the bike shop windows). I have not seen a single drop-bar type bike and very few mountain bikes, mostly the Wicked Witch of the West style bikes (go back and see Wizard of Oz or ask you parents). Get this. There are streets all over that do not allow cars and 2 bike lanes fit nicely in the narrow old streets here. They lay out smooth blacktop for the bikes and leave the side or sides cobblestone for the walkers. And everybody is pretty fit looking (besides being blonde) as well from walking and biking no doubt.

So the other problem with cars is it is expensive to fuel them ($8.00 a gallon) and park them ($24 to $40 per day in Uppsala) . You can see where these guys are going with this.

OK, back to the strory. We got up the first morning a little jet-lagged and had the typical (I guess) breakfast at the hotel. Bread, cheese (yes they have cheddar), hams, salami, soft-hard boiled eggs (that is what those egg holders are for, oops), yummy breads, yogurt (pour it from a pitcher), pitch-tar coffee (but tasty), tea (English) and fresh fruit. This is not a wicked fancy hotel either. There is an elevator but it holds about 2 people (pretty old, buttons have Roman Characters on them), but it is only 4 stories to the top floor so the stairs work fine. We have a great view of the town and especially looking across town at sunset (about 9pm) over the other old buildings.

There seems to be a lot of public wealth here, that is, the streets, parks, fountains, and public places are many and in good shape. Nothing fancy, but simple and nice.

OK, back to the story again. We caught the train into Stockholm ($12 each one way, half hour ride) which put us right in the middle of town. We bought something called the Stockholm Card which gets us into all the museums and we can take all the simple transportation (trams, buses, and one of the boats). We then went to City Hall for a tour, but they had some big mucky-muck event going on, so no tours today. We got on the free boat tour of the city and rode around the main islands of Stockholm. Stockholm is basically a lot of islands connected with lots of bridges and there of course is water everywhere. Lots of boats tied up to every piece of shoreline side by side.

After the boat tour we went to Skansen which is an outdoor park, sort of like Shelburne Museum on steroids. The government (remember socialist country) has over many decades collected and reproduced all sorts of historical buildings in a huge park that help folks keep in touch with where they came from. We spent probably 5 hours there and still did not see everything. Like Shelburne Museum back home, most all of the buildings has someone dressed for the period explaining how one-room school houses worked, how they made furniture way back when, how the machine shop worked and what it built and how, how the mail system was started and who lived there, etc, etc. Wonderful. We would recommend it to anyone. Our feet were beat after that.

We went into the main part of the city and had dinner and met a couple who lived ironically in Uppsala where we are staying. I had been hoping to talk the ear off someone so they filled us in about lots of the ins and outs of Sweden. After dinner, we hit the real old part of town and wandered around the back streets. Deb had a guide that explained a lot of the really old history so you could sense you were there. Again, these buildings are really old (after everyone changed to stone instead of wood) so the streets are really narrow, but the buildings are in great shape.

Back on the train and North to Uppsala. We sat with a woman and her Aunt who were great. They were from Stockholm, but were going to Uppsala to visit an uncle who was ill. Those 2 were the best of friends and enjoyed themselves tremendously. It would be wonderful if we all had a crazy aunt to spend time with. They asked us, as some others did, why we chose Sweden for vacation since the Swedes try to escape the weather for their holidays. This came up a few times. The winter here is brutal by all accounts as the sun comes up at 9am and sets at 3pm. On the flip side, the summer days are really really long (sunset at 9 p.m. , light until 11p.m., not sure about sunrise, have not seen one yet).

So back to the hotel and collapse in bed. Another day in Stockholm tomorrow..