Stockholm syndrome

You may or may not have noticed that I went quiet after we arrived in Stockholm. To be honest, I’m horribly guilty about the fact I went to the most beautiful city I’ve ever been in – and that includes Paris and San Francisco – and all I really wanted to do was hide in the hotel. The problem was that Stockholm is so fucking overwhelming. It’s big, gorgeous, self-assured – fantastically expensive – and was just too much to consume even in little bites. Also, it rivals Rome for the volume of tourists and the annoyance and traffic caused thereby. It’s exhausting struggling through rude,yelling teenagers, and clueless Italians, and everywhere I might have liked to have gone was chockablock with groups.

And the biggest issue was a small one on the surface. Toilets. In Iceland it was reasonably stressful knowing that toilet access in some of the places we went to was either severely limited or non-existant. But that was out in the middle of nowhere. Stockholm is one of the most visited cities on the planet, and yet toilets were either non-existant or pay by coin only. Paying wouldn’t be so bad if there were enough of them, but there aren’t. In most public places and parks there are no WCs at all (although there are pissoirs, of course, and in what few loos there were, the urinal only side was always free entry – this did not stop men pissing everywhere incuding in the train station lifts on their evening booze up). I wouldn’t mind paying if the service was decent, but one public loo I paid 5 kronor to use, was filthy and without paper. I had to pay 10 kronor to use the sole WC facility in a huge, posh, central city shopping centre (mall), where the attendant/guard watched everyone go in and out the unisex cubicles, and practically followed me into the damn thing. Absolutely creepy and unpleasant.

And again,you had to have exact money. At least in copenhagen you could use a cdit card, and in malmo, you could just pay at a counter with whatever currency you had, and get change. A group of italian tourists, obviously desperate and confused by the system, we struggling to understand the whole thing as I left Herr Creepy’s little pisspalace.

So it’s a real issue, and I suffer from a “nervous bladder”, where I need to pee much more often if i’m afraid i won’t be able to use a loo later. Vicious circle. But it’s insulting to all women that we have to pay to pee, and have to hold onto it when men don’t have to. Women with kids, and the disabled have no accommodations made for them either. It’s just not on.

Anyway, these are my reasons for only visiting one gallery in stockholm and no museums, spending almost no time on the famous Gamla Stan (old town) and being generally glad to get out of the place. Yes, i suck.

However, I did see some stuff, since our hotel was right on the canal across Gamla Stan. It was incredibly convenient for public transport, being Right next to a metro station, and had I been able to work it out ona map, i wouldn’t have been stung 666 kronor ( yes, 120 dollars!) for a journey of less than 1 km and ten minutes by one of stockholm’s thieving taxis 🙁

This is the infamous Stortorget (great square) in Gamla Stan, site of a horrible massacre in 1520 which ultimatey precipitated Sweden’s independence from Denmark. It’s also where the Nobel museum is (too many groups to visit, a story repeated all over Gamla Stan until we gave up, bought public transport passes and went bus riding.)

In our exploring, I wanted to find a gournet food hall that a tourist promotion channel on the hotel TV mentioned. Success!

All the buildings in central stockholm are ridiculously pretty. This is a theatre opposite a tram stop we were waiting at.

Naturally, coming to a city full of gorgeous buildings and interiors, we wanted to find the great outdorrs. Fortunately Stockholm is blessed with heaps, including the lovely Djurgarden, a whole island of parks, museums and walks.

Djurgarden is the exact Stockholm equivalent of Richmond Park, which is a similar oasis of green beauty in a busy city.

Doug’s energy and bladder were much more up to Stockholm than I was, so he went to see the Vasa museum (which holds the swedish equivalent to the ‘Mary Rose’)

We met up and went to the Thielska Galleriet, which is both a lovely stately house as well as an interesting and varied collection of art

The next day, i slobbed about while Doug went to Skansen, a huge open air museum, zoo and park again on Djurgarden. He spend all day there, and had a ball

The people in that last photo are harvesting flax.

Inner stockholm is full of the super rich and pampered ( though like London, you don’t have to go far out to see normal and not so wealthy people). The dogs are also pampered. Tamieki, don’t let your baby see this custom doggie/baby pram combo!

On our last day in Sweden we went to Uppsala, which we both loved and enjoyed more than Stockholm. Post tomorrow. Now we’re in Helsinki, with all its ugly, amazing architecture, and loving it. I think me and big beautiful European cities have a compatability problem. It’s not them, it’s me 😉