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.

sport in göteborg

Back in Melbourne I don't shy away from playing a bit of sport. Usually tennis, more recently basketball, and when convenient (and not wet!) I'll ride to work.

Before I left for Sweden I was already thinking about Sweden's tennis heritage: Edberg and Björkman are the ones that come to mind. But there have been more recent Swedish players: Johansson won the Aussie in 2002, and Enqvist lost it in 1999. Most famously Björn Borg only played one Aus. Open because he's soft. Anyway... You'd thinking this great tennis playing nation might have a fair bit of tennis at the amateur (or more accurately: hack) level. Nup, it snows here so they play indoors - limiting the number of courts available.

This doesn't matter though as my work mates have taught me another game. Again, it's been influenced by the snow. It's called Innebandy (or Floorball in English), and it's basically indoor hockey, but also influenced by ice hockey too (you can go behind the goals for instance).

We play three on three, and with no goalie either. It's quick and scores come often.

The other sport I've taken up while I'm here is a bit more ridiculous... I've travelled 15,000kms to join a footy club! Mind you, they've got a cool name: The Göteborg Berserkers! Would you want to play a sword wielding Viking berserker? I haven't played footy in a good 8 years, and it's fair to say I haven't got any better since high school. Luckily, they don't seem to be much better ;-)

Funny thing is footy here is played properly: in the mud! No drought to worry about here, there's plenty of soft turf to land in. Mind you I was doing that on my own accord as I don't have studded boots. Volley's don't have much grip in the mud... actually they have none. Might be time for a trip to the shops.

more on rīga

Like any country Latvia and its citizen's had their funny quirks. Most prominently was their Russian influenced accent. This gave us hours of amusement, it was like being stuck in the dodgier scenes of a Bond film (particularly when we went to Voodoo Nightclub!). The currency in Latvia is the Lat. The Lat is an abnormally large amount of money as a single unit. i.e. It's over AU$2.50, around euro1.7, and more than 1GBP. Said with a burly Russian accent, and being such an abrupt word (lat!), we endlessly amused by the demanding sounding way the locals would ask for payment. How much for a coffee? One lat! How much for a beer? Two lats! How much for a bus to the airport? Ten lats!

Early in the trip I was approached by a shady looking character in the street; he was selling postcards. I wanted a postcard, but when I asked how much, it was one lat for 12. I really only wanted one. As I had no idea what a Latvian "cent" was (Lonely Planet informed me later that it's a santīms - which is pretty much French for "cent" but anyway..) I wasn't really in a position to argue him down. Bugger it, one lat it was.

Lonely Planet also says the Latvians can be "standoffish". This was most evident on our last night in town. We were having a few drinks in the hotel bar. When it came to closing time, the bar staff closed the bar and turned off most of the lights. They didn't come over and inform us the bar was closing - they just closed it around us. We couldn't really be bothered moving so we just stayed there talking. After another hour or two of us sitting there and security watching us and saying nothing, security then turned off the rest of the lights. Again they could have just asked us to leave, but no, they didn't. We stayed and kept talking, by about 3 or 4 in the morning the security guards fell asleep watching us! See what I mean about it's like being stuck in the dodgier scenes of a Bond film?

Mind you, if we'd really felt like partying, the Latvian party drink is coffee with balsam (or.. Riga Black Balzams). No sugary red-bull and vodka for them, it's straight out black-as-tar and bitter-as-hell balsam and black coffee. In a word: awful. Though I'm sure like any good alcohol, you'd get used to it pretty quickly ;-)

Oh, and a note of warning to prospective partying tourists. Latvian bars and club impose "Face Control". A very Orwellian of saying, if they don't like your face, you're not getting in. Like normal really, but just a funny way to say it. Face Krontrol!! Far better than unimaginative "members only" anyway.

Finally I'm not sure why, maybe because they knew I was coming in from Sweden by my phone number? Maybe because vikings are cute... err... sort of.. below are the do-not-disturb and please make up my room signs in the Metropole hotel in Rīga! Bizarre.

I quite like the Latvian flag - it's not straight out red and white, it's a dark red or maroon and white. I've heard it called "Latvian Red" too.

easter in latvia

Last Easter I was in Vietnam, which doesn't celebrate it, and so I had a bit of a short long weekend. This year however it's an entirely different proposition. Sweden celebrates Easter with eggs, bunnies and witches and the usual 4-day weekend. (This isn't quite as good as Norway which has a 5-day weekend, but never mind, four days is enough).

After chatting to a friend from work, Feodor, I was invited to go to Rīga, Latvia, with him and a few others. This is very Australian thing to do I think: hit Europe and waste no time in trying to see as much as possible.

A few minutes later I was on airBaltic's site I found what I was looking for: a 5kr flight direct to Rīga. Five krona is around $1, can't do much better than that! We stayed in the "Metropole" hotel, famous in Rīga for being the only hotel that stayed open through-out Soviet and Nazi occupations of Latvia. In fact these occupations of Latvia have not been as disastrous on the local infrastructure as has occurred elsewhere.

Rīga comprises of "Old Rīga" which is pre-1900's and "New Rīga" which is 1900's onwards. Old Rīga is world heritage listed as it has well preserved examples of buildings from the 12th to the 19th century.

After the advent of gun-powder, city walls went out of fashion. In Rīga they turned land freed up by this into a series of canals and parkland. So the old town is now surrounded by wide cobble stoned boulevards with trams rolling along them, parkland and canals. It really was a picturesque town.

Over the canal, and past the freedom monument, is New Rīga, which has it's own architectural delights. In the early 1900's there was an art moment called Art Nouveau, or really when you are talking about the German inspired version it's called Jugendstil. It incorporates lots of long flowing lines, flower-like designs, and in Rīga there are faces incorporated into the designs. An example of this architecture in Melbourne is the City Baths.

The weather went crazy over the weekend too, and put on a real show for us. It snowed like it was the middle of winter.

The snow only served to enhance the city's beauty further. Did it matter that I don't have any clothes suitable for snow? Not really - when the worst of the came we could always pop inside for a beer.

Being a Baltic state, Latvia has a reputation for cheap alcohol. Although it's far cheaper than Sweden (2 pots cost me $20 in Sweden last night!), it isn't any cheaper than Australia. One Latvian lats is equal to $2.5 - not very favourable for the Australian tourist. Not that it deterred us. Some good nights out were had :-)