stockholm revisited

On her last weekend in Sweden, I took Belle to glamorous Stockholm. It was a scorcher of a weekend. No rain in sight - and this time, we were wondering where the air conditioners were.

We caught the high-speed train service across to Stockholm. It was equally as fast as flying and probably a little cheaper. Best of all, however, it put us right in the heart of Stockholm when we arrived. I'm tempted to try out the high-speed train to Ballarat when I get back home to see if the Victorian services are as good as the Swedish ones.

Since I'd been to Stockholm before, this trip involved a mixture of what I thought the best sights were when I visited last time, plus some I missed out on, plus some Belle thought sounded good.

First up was a visit to Gamla Stan - the old town of Stockholm. Stockholm used to fit all on one island, and this is where Galma Stan is. It's a nice walk down from the CBD to the island. Everything quickly transforms from modern city to cobble stone streets and wonky old buildings. We made a quick visit to the palace. Note to potential jewel thieves: the British have way more crown jewels than the Swedes. After, we made a more extensive visit to the Nobel Prize museum around the corner.

It was perfect weather for walking out in the sunshine. This put grabbing some ice cream and having a laid back afternoon firmly on the agenda.

The sunshine, lasting well into the evening, ensured that Saturday was perfect for heading out in trending Östermalm. After some mighty fine Lebanese cuisine, we headed to a great cocktail bar. It stocked Tanqueray Ten gin, so I was a big fan. (My wallet may have whimpered in pain, but I duly ignored it ;)

Stockholm is deserted on Sunday mornings. And surprisingly, brunch is a bit difficult to find. Pushing on, we headed to the next item on our list: the History Museum. I was quite surprised at how interesting it was. The prehistoric display was well set up, with sounds, video, stories, and exhibits of bones, clothing, etc.

The museum was setup so that it posed questions back at the visitors instead of dictating the museums' point of view. As an example, there was a cloak that dated back thousands of years. It was found in a bog, with similarly aged knife. This cloak had knife holes in it. Of course no one knows the true story of the cloak and the knife - so the museum presents some plausible situations and throws it back to you to imagine. Was it the cloak of a murdered victim? Where's the body then? Maybe it's the cloak of someone who was in a fight - they had been stabbed, but ultimately won. Why throw away the cloak then? To hide the evidence from a worried girlfriend? Who really knows?

Sunday was also a great day to be outdoors. We ate lunch next to the water and watched the yachts pass us by. We paid a quick visit to Vasa museum, which didn't seem as good as I remembered it, and then we headed back to the hotel for our bathers.

We were on a mission to find a beach (or at least I was!). However, with hindsight I can give this warning: do not attempt to find a beach in Stockholm. Yes, it's on the water. No, there's no where good to swim. Probably if we had a boat and headed out to the archipelago there might have been better beaches. But near the city - and for a city on the water it's surprising - no good beaches. We went to one, and had our swim, but it was pretty crap.

The sun set on our weekend in Stockholm, and alas, Monday morning came around too soon. It was time for Belle to head back home. We said our sad goodbyes at central station and that's that for another 60 days.

soaking in oslo

Summer time is a time for most Scandinavians to take a vacation. Most... but not all. Construction workers kick into overdrive over summer, building new roads, tram tracks, and unfortunately for us, performing train track maintenance on the route from Göteborg to Oslo. After an increasingly confused 10 to 15 minutes at Göteborg Central. Wondering where in the hell train platform 54 is? We was decided that perhaps "buss" actually did mean a bus, despite our train tickets definitely saying "tåg" (train).

No problem, replacement coaches were taking us to somewhere in the country where the train would meet us. Belle and I were off to Oslo for the weekend!

We arrived in Oslo around lunch time. After checking in, we went to the restaurant next door which advertised traditional Norwegian cuisine. Whale was on the menu... and I ate it. A tough meat, I think it's kind of like kangaroo (if kangaroo was tough, which it's not), but doesn't taste as good.

After lunch we headed out to explore Oslo. It's a compact city, which makes it perfect for tourism on foot. The main street, Karl Johans gate was packed full of people and street performers. I was reminded again how much Scandinavians celebrate summer compared to Australians. Then again, Australians never have to suffer through Scandinavian winters. It does make the cities have a great vibe in summer.

We were able to check out Central Oslo's main sights in one afternoon. The old castle / fortress, Akershus Festning, provided a good vantage point to look over the city and the harbour. We also were able to get a crash course in Norwegian history.

Wandering back down the hill we visited the Nobel Peace Prize museum. It currently has a thought provoking exhibition about slums. It was a multimedia display where you could "walk into" various slum houses. These houses were projected onto blank walls. Audio recordings would play and the inhabitants would tell their stories.

It was quite interesting; some who were interviewed had always lived in the slum area, and enjoyed life there. These people were usually disappointed that their slums were always slated for demolition. Others were educated people who couldn't get jobs. They were justifiably annoyed at the prejudice against them just for where they live; it makes it harder to get a job.

In Jakarta, entire families live under bridges and have to be careful not to fall into the rivers below. These families tell their cousins in the country: don't visit me, my house is small and very far away. I'll visit you.

It was also interesting because these people don't have any property rights. While the slum areas aren't a good way for people to live, at the same time, when governments are encouraged to do something about it, it usually means ignoring the people inside the slum areas. The lack of property rights, leads to a lack of any opportunity to claim compensation for the dislocation they will endure.

The slums outside Mumbai have a gross economic output at around $1 billion a year - including an impressive plastic recycling industry. Yes, of course, it has significant water supply and public health issues too, but it will be interesting to see how the Indian government handles improving the area, as well as maintaining the industry.

Also at the Nobel Prize museum, there was a display on global warming, with an inventive way to visualise it: a model of Oslo with a melting ice block suspended above it, slowly drowning the city. It seemed only appropriate that after that, we visit Oslo's newly redeveloped docklands area, right on the water, and have a coffee - and to marvel at the price of steak in the steak houses. About $60 for the cheapest. Well over $100 for the most expensive! We finished off the day with a walk up to the Royal Palace (very nice) and cocktails and dinner down town (also... very nice).

What did the next day have in store for us? In one word: rain.

What the hell? It's summer damn it!

The rain was here to stay. Like in Copenhagen - there's no such thing as a passing shower in Scandinavia. It just kept getting heavier and heavier. Should we have brought wet weather gear? Maybe. Should we have at least bought an umbrella that morning? Definitely.

It didn't stop us though. First thing on the "Oslo Plan" for Sunday - our handwritten scrap of paper with sights to see - was a trip to Frognerseteren. Almost 500-metres above Oslo, at the end of the #1 metro line. The plan was to hike to the TV tower, and get the view from there. As you can see from the photo above, there was no good view to be seen on this day.

We abandoned that plan, and took the metro down a few stations to Holmenkollen. This is home to Oslo's most famous sight: the Holmenkollen Ski Jump. Again, it would have been a lot better with some visibility of the city below. We climbed to the top, and it's quite horrid inside. Graffitied. Rusty. Leaking.

The current jump is slated for demolition, and a newer, bigger, and hopefully nicer, one will be built in time for the world championships in a few years.

After stopping for coffee - with the wishful thought that maybe if we give it 20 minutes, it'll stop raining - we pressed on. All the way back down the mountain to Vigeland sculpture park. The brain child of Gustav Vigeland and the Oslo city council, the park is full of Vigeland's naked statues. There are people in all sorts of poses, of all sorts of ages, and of both sexes. Kind of like an older version of the Bodies exhibition. You might realise by now that the weather was oppressive, so we made a quick decision to head for cover in the near by museum dedicated to Vigeland.

The decision was a good one. I thought it was a lot more interesting to know a bit of history about the statues than to be oblivious of the stories behind them if we'd simply wandered in the park. For instance, he was well known before 1905, but when Norway gained its independence, he was in a fortunate position to be able to accept a number of grants from the newly independent government looking to establish Norwegian identity. The park itself was guaranteed after the Oslo city council wanted to demolish his house to make way for a library. He argued to have the city give him a brand new studio, and a section of Frogner park. In return, the city owns all his works, sketches, models, etc.

The sculptures are quite evocative - showing all emotions and stages of life. His most famous sculpture is one of a toddler throwing a tantrum. I'd recommend a visit if in Oslo.

We couldn't stay at the museum all day, nor could we stay in Oslo forever, so it was back into the rain for us. Jealous of umbrella carrying sensible people. Annoyed at wet feet, soaking jeans, but all in all... having a great time.

pining for the fjords

What better to do on Sweden Day long weekend, than to bugger off to Norway. Land of fjords, and the lovely Norwegian Blue parrot. My plan was to hitch a ride to Oslo, catch the train to Flåm, then a ferry to Gudvangen, a bus to Voss, and a train to Bergen. Stay a couple of nights in Bergen, fly back to Oslo, and then hitch a ride home again. Nice plan, but I had to make a few alterations along the way.

A friend from Swedish language classes, Marcos, works as an engineer for Volvo. He was visiting some friends near Oslo, and offered to drive me up there. Either half of Oslo commutes to Göteborg, or there quite a few others had the same idea. The traffic was quite heavy crossing the border.

We got to Oslo about an hour later than predicted by the Portuguese speaking GPS receiver. The awesome thing about Scandinavian summer is, however, it was only just dusk; at 11pm! I checked into my hostel and hit the sack, I was getting the early train to Bergen.

The next morning I had breakfast with some Norwegian troops who were also staying at the hostel. Breakfast was very Nordic: boiled eggs, cheese, ham and bread.

As I settled in on the train, I realised that I should travel this way more often. The train station was in the centre of town, only a short walk away from the hostel. There was no stringent security, the seat was large and comfortable, and of course the window is massive compared to an aeroplane!

Soon we were scooting through scenery that later, when showing Carmen the photos, she exclaimed that it must be fake, as if I'd made the photo up! I assure you it's real :-)

Unfortunately my pleasant train journey was interrupted by an announcement: The train is cancelled between Gol and Bergen due to fires in the mountains. This threw a spanner in the works!

The train company organised bus replacements, and gladly it was quite well organised. The buses were at the station waiting for us. Sadly I didn't get to the descend from Myrdal to Flåm, which is reported to have wonderful views, and for an interested engineer like me, also some interesting engineering to get the train down the steep decent. However, the bus ride did have it's highlights with some impressive hairpin bends in the road, and similarly steep descents. There were also a very long road tunnel. Twenty-four kilometres long. Until I just looked it up on Wikipedia then, I didn't realise that it is the worlds longest road tunnel! It's called Lærdalstunnelen.

Flåm was tourist central. Lunch was very expensive (but then, so was the rest of Norway). Surrounded by a number of snow capped mountains, and positioned on the edge of the water, it was very pretty.

I would have liked to spend more time there to climb a mountain or two. Instead I had to make a detour to a tourist office overrun by people from the cancelled train. The train wasn't running from Myrdal, or Voss, so no one could go to Oslo or Bergen from Flåm without catching a ferry or a bus. I opted to catch the "express" ferry to Bergen.

While it was labelled "express", the ferry still stopped at a few villages along the way, and took five hours to reach Bergen. When the countryside is as beautiful as World Heritage Aurlandsfjorden and Sognefjorden, there's no need to rush. Below is one of the villages we stopped at:

As you can see I fluked a sunny day. Western Norway is a bit like Tasmania: expect around 280 days of rain a year, and many more cloudy days on top of that. While it was a bit chilly in the wind outside on the boat, the days were warm and calm, with great visibility.

After a while I went inside and had a nap. At this time of year in Bergen, the sun sets at 11pm, and dusk lasts well past midnight, so I needed a daytime nap! Here's the view we were leaving behind:

No matter, Bergen was equally as good... but more on that later.

sydney take #2

I'm back on the road (or rather... in the sky). This past week I've been in Sydney again. This time the trip is a bit longer - at least until the end of next week. Unfortunately some of the equipment I need to use has been playing up, so the project is a bit behind. Hence Sydney might be graced with my presence even longer than expected!

Work this time around is out at Parramatta, but the hotel I'm staying in is in the CBD. So I've been catching the train out to work. The nice thing is there are plenty of express trains; strangely though the express trains don't seem to go as fast as express trains in Melbourne. (Nothing beats a 280km/h train trip in Japan though!)

Once back in Sydney, I couldn't resist heading back to Captain Torres for another batch of pan-fried flounder : ) This time I tried some Portuguese beers, which were very nice. For the home-brew enthusiasts the Portuguese beer even had the original gravity listed on the back label. (Gravity is the measure of the density of unfermented beer). My phone is fixed now, so I've uploaded photo's of various beers for the beer competition, such as the one below:

Wednesday night I had the worst Thai meal ever! I was wandering around the city looking for dinner, and found a place that looked good. What should have alerted me to the fact that it wasn't good at all, was the large bain-marie at the back of the restaurant. When I asked for the menu I was told there is none, you just pick your meal out from the bain-marie. Suspiciously all the meals were in take away containers... Being naïve I thought maybe this was just for take-away customers, so I asked for the Pad Thai. The waitress opened a take away container of Pad Thai and emptied it on to a plate for me. It was the worst tasting meal ever!! I gave up after a couple of mouthfuls, and went back to the hotel.

The French Open is on at the moment, and even better the hotel has "Fox Sports 2" in every room. Fox Sports has 24 hour coverage of the open : ) There is also a "sports" bar in the hotel, with a couple of big TV screens. After my Thai horror dinner, I retired to the sports bar to have a better meal, a local beer, and to watch Marat Safin bomb out of the open in the second round.

Tomorrow I'll head to The Rocks and Circular Quay and check out the famous sights (and pubs) of Sydney.