Stockholm: City of My Dreams

 

Per Anders Fogelström called his first book on the stories of Stockholm - City of My Dreams. Perhaps for me it might be called City of my imagination as long before I arrived in this City I seem to know it. 

Beck

I loved the Martin Beck novels of husband and wife, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, when I first read them in the 00s. Though one of the ten is set in the South of Sweden (Malmo) all of the others are based in Stockholm and its surroundings and the authors make good use of the city, its layout, the metro and tram networks, as well as the boats, to engage Martin and his team with more and more complex stories.

What I love about the books, as well as their description of the locations, are the focus on the investigators and their lives, rather than on the crimes. You feel like you have met the people concerned and could walk with them from the nearest metro stations to their homes. Radio 4 dramatized all ten novels in their Foreign Bodies series celebrating European detectives, and they did it really well.

Later BBC4 has shown all nine (yes nine, way more than the original) series of the TV production with Peter Haber and Ingvar Hirdwall, who died in April this year, both natives of the city appearing in all 50 episodes. Indeed, I think the idea to come to Stockholm has always felt like a homage to Sjöwall and Wahlöö and their wonderful, moaning, enigmatic creation.

Other Inspirations 

Beck might have been the primary reason I know about and love this city so much, but Henning Mankell's Wallander books, though set in Ystad in the south, often have links to Stockholm. Then there are the wonderful 'Millennium Books' by Stieg Larsson; I've also enjoyed Jan Arnald's work, he, under the penname Arne Dahl, writes about the police in the city. I've mentioned already in the blog that Joona Linna has been one of my more recent favourites, he is the work of Alexandra and Alexander Ahndoril writing as Lars Kepler and is again centre on Stockholm. 

So, yes, perhaps I may have become a bit obsessed with the imaginary people who live in this city. 

TV

Stockholm also appears in many TV programmes which we've watched since Covid began, not paying for TV, other than the Licence. There are of course the ones based on the books above, but also many others. Clearly, I've been watching to much TV since the first lockdown!! The ones I've watched that I know are set in Stockholm include our favourite - Before We Die (called in our house, the Crippin show as it turns out the Crippin is short for Christian, the name of one of the key characters) plus Modus, The Advocate, Stockholm Requiem, Grayzone, Snow Angels and Top Dog. Each of them shows aspects of the city, which is why it looks so familiar this morning as we sail into port.

Arrival

We arrive at 10am and disembark from the floor our room/cabin was on. It takes us about 8 minutes [Co-Pilot's Note: 8 minutes, dear readers, in which he had to be poked at least four times to stop him humming Abba!!] to clear the ship and a three minute walk following Google's excellent directions gets us to the bus stop at 10:12am. We are amused that the street the bus stop is on is Londonviadukten - a bit of the UK in Stockholm.

We get on the number 53 bus to the Central Station (Stockholms centralstation) and I'm really in Joona Linna land as the bus destination is the Karolinska Institue, where Joona's friend and key character in the first novel, The Hypnotist, Erik, does his work. 

The bus, running to its Sunday timetable will arrive in 11 minutes at 10.23am. A very busy bus makes its way through Slussen and Gamla Stan (old town) to Centralen.

From the bus stop it is a short walk to our hotel - the Hotel Kungsbron - the walk is somewhat confused by google maps inability to know what level you are walking on. We had to go up a flight of stairs to get to the level of the road the hotel is on, having been caught out by this when getting to our hotel in Chicago some years ago - I worked it out, found the stairs and walked up where we could see the hotel sign.

We arrive at 11am and put our bags in the locked luggage room and head out into the city. 

Travel in Stockholm

I realise at this point that I have not mentioned paying for travel in the city. This morning while in the cabin of the ship we had used our SL app to buy 72 hour tickets for the city. These will cover all the days we are here. The offer is 72 hours for 330 Swedish Kroner (£23.77) compared to 165SK for one day - as we are staying for more than 48 hours this will be a bargain for us, and even more so for me as the over 65 price is 220SK (£15.84) and 110 respectively.

Something we notice straight away is that Stockholm has a different approach to using the tickets than other places we have visited. In Berlin, Warsaw, Vilnius and Helsinki the point is having the ticket on your mobile (or on your person if you have a physical version). The tickets aren't checked on the bus/metro unless an inspector comes onto the vehicle. So on the buses you can get on any of the three doors and on the metro just walk down to the platform. In fact, during our travel only on Friday morning in Helsinki did we actually see an inspector and had to show our tickets. Stockholm's approach is like that in the UK (and Brussels), i.e. you have to show your ticket (or more specifically your QR code) to a machine to get on a bus, tram or down to the subway. We had our mobile ticket and it worked on the bus entry with no problem.

Heading to Gamla Stan - Old Town

We walked the 100 meters from the front of the hotel to Central Station, in the spirit of European integrated transport the station has trains at ground level; subway trains underneath; tram and buses outside the front of the station and the coach station across the road - but linked by underground tunnel to the rest of the transportation. 

In an efficient Swedish way the subway/metro here is called the Tunnelbana - tunnel path would be the closest English translation. The T before the number subway train we needed had confused me until we walked to the station, I'd assumed T meant tram. But all now clear we went towards the station. 

Drew says that he is locationally challenged, but I defy anyone to work out where the platform for the T10 was. We walked down to the platform for the T17/T18, walked back out to the station level, looked around, saw the signs went back in. After three attempts of doing this I went to speak to a friendly guy at the information desk who explained that the T10 was on the platform three layers down. We had gone down and back up not knowing the logic was to keep going down. 

Accounting note: The three times we entered and twice we exited the barrier only counts as one trip for comparison purposes at the end of our time in Stockholm as us being lost doesn't impact on cost, though we would have lost our tickets if we were using individual ones!

We walked along the T17 platform and then saw the next set of escalators, between the second and third level down there was a walking pavement and a slight up escalator. Very logical if not immediately accessible to strangers! 

The no 10 tunnelbana arrived on time, we got on board. The metros are very clean and well kept. 

St. Eugenia's Church

We travelled to Kungsträdgården, one stop from central and as we exit the metro, I see two Vatican flags, one with a IHS symbol and the other with a cross. It turns out that this happens to be the church I was planning to attend Mass at this evening!!

As well as a church bookshop the parish of St. Eugenia has a very tasteful cafe on the premises called Cafe Eugenia.

Drew exercised his Swedish, which he has been learning on Duolingo and successfully receives a latte and a bryggekaffe (filter coffee). I'd read that Sweden tended to have filer rather than espresso coffee, so I thought I'd live like a native.

Kungsträdgården 

We leave the cafe and walk across the road to Kungsträdgården - this is a public park close to the centre of the city, built in the 15th century as, you guessed it, an ornemental garden for the King, whose palace is just across the river in Gamla Stan. 

The park is an attractive place with lots of events, statues and flowers. Also on this Sunday morning it had radio-controlled boats, which very politely came to allow us to photograph them.

Riksdagshuset

Between the Kungsträdgården and the Castle we cross one of Stockholm's famous bridges - Strömbron - and from here we get a great view of the Riksdagshuset, the Parliament House.

The Castle

We arrive at the Royal Castle (KungaHuset) and begin to view it from the front. As we walk up the side of the Palace we come to a series of photos which are celebrating the fiftieth year of the accession of King Carl XVI Gustaf, with the king as he is now and as he was when he succeeded his grandfather 50 years ago.

We walked further up the hill beside the palace and got quite excited wehn we saw a Polis car coming towards us. Given my comments about TV programmes, above, actually seeing a Swedish Polis car with the right colouring and word - Polis was really exciting. It was therefore a bit more of a surprise when coming up the hill behind the Polis car was a military band, marching and playing  tunes. We had accidentally arrived at the Changing of the Guard! 

The Inner Court of the Castle

After the 25 minutes of fine entertainment the bands had put on for us we went into the inner courtyard of the castle, which is also very impressive.

Cathedral

Our next stop was Stockholm Cathedral, this Medieval Building is only a few meters from the Castle and is used for many national and royal events. Originally a Catholic building it is now very firmly a Lutheran Church. Those who want to see the inside can view it on Flickr here. This is how it looks outside:

Back to the Hotel

We completed our sroll through Gamla Stan and found ourselves at Gamla Stan station.

We caught the T15 from Gama Stan station to Central and made the short walk to the hotel. The route of the day looked like this

We arrived at 3pm and checked in, we picked up our luggage and settled in to the room. After a short siesta it was time to head back out to Mass.

Heading to Mass

I made this journey on my own, meeting Drew later to go our for dinner. I caught Bus 65 from Blekholmsterrassen to Kungstradgarten. The bus stops right across the road from to St Eugenia's Church, I arrive at 5.30pm for the 6pm Mass. The Mass at 6pm is an English Mass. So I don't need to buy a Swedish Mass book as I did a Latvian one. 

Given the age of the congregation, largely people in their 20s or 30s, I'd assume the Church has some link with the University here. I was amazed to see the Mass with 500 to 600 people in attendance. Sweden is a Lutheran country, but tonight this place is very Catholic.

The priest, a Jesuit, concelebrated with two visiting priests, one of whom spoke English and the other who didn't. There was enthusastic singing led by an organist, three of the four hymns were familier to me, including the famous 'Let all Mortal Flesh keep Silence'. The parts of the Mass were sung too in English to a latin setting - Missa de Angelis. 

Given the numbers in attendance communion took quite some time with Mass ending at 7.15pm. Drew, who was going to meet me in the Cafe, was stood outside the church, isn't it lucky he is patient! As the cafe was occupied by a group of Italian people watching a football match! 

Dinner

Drew had read about the restuaturant we visited tonight this afternoon and liked the sound of it. It is called The Hairy Pig and is in the network of streets in Gamla Stan. We booked a table for 7.45pm, which was lucky given the length of Mass, and we arrived on time.

Drew began with Rencarpaccio med Blåmögelost och Hasselnötter (Carpaccio of Reineer with Blue cheese and hazelnuts) - he made the usual joke about it not being very well cooked 😁 [Co-pilot's note: It's a classic, dear reader, a classic!!]

I opted for the dish called Klassisk skagenröra med bröd Classic (Swedish Skagen mix with prawns and bread) - the flavours were of onion, dill, creme fraiche and mayonnaise along with the prawns, with a rye bread underneath and lettuce wrapped around - gentle flavours, yet tasty.

For mains Drew had the house special, the Hairy Pig - a moose sausage in a brioche bun, peppercorn mayonnaise, reindeer taco with lingonberries, peppercorn fries and coleslaw

I had the dish called the Swedish Holiday Classics with wild boar mini sausages, moose meatballs with lingonberries and pickled cucumber, Swedish ham, Swedish beetroot salad and mashed potatoes. It was a meat feast with each meat having a distinctive flavour, a clever combination that worked really well for me.

We caught the Tunnelbana back to the hotel and arrived at 9.30pm and were soon in bed after a lovely, busy day. Unbelievably it seems we have walked 7.5 miles during the day, it is hard to believe we have been so active!