stockholm in a weekend

Not last weekend, but the weekend before, I went and visited Stockholm; Sweden's largest city and capital. From my Australian perspective it's funny that the largest city is the capital - seems like it's getting everything its own way. Makes you realise Canberra is an anomaly, but we already knew that right? :-) Anyway, the Swede's are quite generous when it comes to "the youth". In Sweden you are a youth until you are 25, which means that I get discounted public transport tickets - and even better: discounted airfares with some of the Swedish airlines. Invited to a party in Stockholm, I checked the airfare, and it's less than $200.00 Australian. Going to Stockholm for the weekend was a no brainer.

Another thing an Melbourne native should get used to overseas is most big cities have a rail-link from the airport to the centre of town (Melbourne doesn't!). It shouldn't be a cause for excitement, but hell, I was anyway: the Arlanda Express took 20 minutes to hit Stockholm Central (40km away), and most of the way it was travelling at around 185km/h. (Possibly the fastest I've been on land?..)

The party was fun. Met a bunch of people from work and elsewhere - both Australian and Swedish. And also an Aussie couple that had become Swedes! There was plenty of discussion, nachos, music and red wine. The low down is that you need to visit the Vasa and Gamla Stan when in Stockholm.

The weather gods have been favouring me so far. Awesome snow on arrival, and now only a couple of weeks later Stockholm produced a sunny Saturday for all to enjoy.

First stop when exploring Stockholm is the tourist bureau. Purchasing the Stockholm card seems to be the sensible thing to do for a weekend - it allows unlimited use of the public transport system and entry to all the museums and other attractions. It's a short walk from there to Gamla Stan - otherwise known as "Old Town". Gamla Stan exists completely on the island of Stadsholmen (literally: City Island), and until the 19th century the Stockholm was contained on the island. Given medieval towns were prone to burning down, Gamla Stan contains architecture from the 17th century onwards. This includes the Swedish royal palace which burnt down in 1697 and had to be rebuilt. The palace is still in use today as the official residence of the head of state, and it's open to visitors. It wasn't that interesting however. I should have visited the Swedish parliament (the Riksdag) instead, but I didn't know I was looking at it, even when I took a photo of it! Ooops, haha.

Stockholm city hall is an impressive brick building on the corner of one of the islands. Unfortunately the hall was closed for a function on the weekend I visited.


Wandering back out onto the streets, I almost missed the Nobel Prize museum. Don't miss it though - it is really interesting! Over head is a rail which constantly rotates profiles of each of the winners, down the middle you can read about the things that have been "prize worthy" through-out the years and the social and political context these have fitted into. To one side there is a theatrette showing 3 minute interviews with the prize winners - explaining their inventions, discoveries, or contributions in their own words.

At the back there is a space for temporary exhibitions. Currently the museum is hosting "Design4Science", an exhibition dedicated to the sculptures, illustrations, sketches and models that have helped advance molecular biology. For example the structure of haemoglobin was not known until Max Perutz built a model of it from x-ray images he'd taken. Some of the most complex ideas can be simplified by models, such as Ahmed Zewail's 1999 prize winning invention, a method to photograph chemical reactions. The video below demonstrates the concept: a laser is broken by a spinning disc with slots in it, this is aimed at a fast moving 'thing' (i.e. a chemical reaction).

Not content with finishing a day of tourism just yet, I headed to the Armémuseum. Yup, that's a funky Swedish spelling of Army. The museum documents military history in general as well as specific Swedish history. Unfortunately all the information is in Swedish! I got by, but I'm sure it's a lot more interesting if you know the language ;-)

A quintessential Swedish military innovation is moving their bicycle infantry around not by marching, and not even by the soldiers peddling their bikes, but instead the bicycles were towed by a tractor!

That's enough science, culture, and history to work up an apetite! So that night I met up with Shona, a friend from university and work, and one of her colleagues for dinner. We had Indian, and after joking with the waiter that Swede's can't eat hot food, they served up the hottest vindaloo you've ever had! We barely got through it alive. It had to be washed down with beer - of course! After a false start in a crappy bar (though it was cheap), we then hit the suggestively named Berns Salonger. Berns' is quite fancy, and with fancy came the famous Swedish alcohol prices (i.e. expensive!), but it was fun.

Sunday brought an overcast day, but that didn't matter too much, I headed indoors to check out the massive Vasa. The Vasa is a 17th century warship that the Swede's built, and then it promptly sank on its maiden voyage. In fact it didn't even get out of Stockholm! Why? This is a classic study into not being able to say "No" to a demanding customer. The King demanded a massive ship: it was to carry 64 guns, all to be heavy artillery, and 300 soldiers. Ship design in those days usually had one gun-deck, but to accommodate 64 guns the Vasa had two. Putting heavy artillery on the upper deck made the ship unstable and top heavy. The ship was to be manoeuvrable, and so it was built too narrow to support its weight. A stability test (30 men running from side to side) showed that it was unstable, but the Admiral ignored the results because the King was fighting a war in Poland and needed it immediately.

Can anyone see the parallels in software engineering here? Customer demands every feature, plus a few more; testing shows its got bugs but the customer needs the software today; deliver the software and then watch it crash!

Given that it sank, you'd expect this all to be history, but the Baltic Sea isn't as salty as other seas. The ship was well preserved in these waters, and in the 1960's it was found, lifted, sealed with plastic, and then put in a museum. It's all quite impressive and well worth a visit. It's so big that I couldn't get far enough away from it to get a good overall photo of it.

Just down the road from the Vasa is Skansen - a Swedish version of Soveriegn Hill. I was mainly attracted by the promise of seeing some bears. The promise was fulfilled: they had recently woken up from hibernation and were roaming around their enclosure, and even play fighting a bit.

There were an array of other Swedish animals from wild wolves, wolverines, elk, otters and seals, to domesticated horses, ponies, sheep and goats. The main purpose to Skansen is to preserve what life was like in Sweden before and during the early parts of the industrial age. Not that thrilling really.

After Skansen it was time to get back on the Arlanda express, head to the airport, and get whisked back to Göteborg and work for another week.