Sweden may lack important things America has come to expect from it, such as the Swedish Chef (of Muppet Show fame), Swedish Meatballs (I swear we'll find some eventually), and Swedish Fish (the... interesting... red gummy candy), but what it lacks in stereotypes, it makes up for in character.
Stockholm can trace its roots as a city to the 13th century, but there's not a lot of that still evident. Aside from one island that was preserved in old(er) style, much of the city was modernized in the second half of the 20th century, a task that was accomplished by knocking a lot of stuff down and rebuilding. Thus, we see an interesting mix of architecture, from classical buildings here and there, to the boring people-boxes of the 1960s, to ultramodern office buildings that seem to be made entirely of glass and stainless steel.
In addition to all that, Stockholm is a very cool city. It's another quiet, progressive Scandanavian with a high standard of living and an even higher cost of living. We didn't do much on our first day in the city, since we were all exhausted from the sheer effort of waking up at 5:30 AM to catch our flight out of Berlin. We arrived at the hostel, napped, then went to [pay outrageous prices in order to] get dinner from the grocery store. Luckily the hostel has a nice kitchen, so we made ourselves our usual pasta meal and relazxed some more. After dinner, Marc and I took a walk around the city to see what we could see. We stayed out past midnight, and there was still light in the sky even after 11:00 PM! We certainly are mighty far North here. Imagine how long the days must've been even a month ago, right around the time of the Summer Solstice!
Today we woke up to some issues. Marc had accidentally left his daybag (complete with expensive camera and iPod) in the kitchen after we returned from our walk. Sadly, it was gone. After enquiring with the hostel staff if anybody had seen it, he began to assume the worst. STA, the travel company with whom we purchased insurance, has a location in Stockholm, so Marc went to visit them to explore his options for replacement/reimbursement. That took quite a chunk of time, but all hope is not yet lost. Hopefully his things will turn up, but we're not expecting it. Luckily, Michael has a spare point-and-shoot camera that Marc could use if he so desires, so perhaps he'll still be able to capture some memories of our last two cities on... silicon.
After that got as sorted as we could get it for the time being, we headed out to do our usual first full day wander-around-and-look-at-the-cool-sights excursion. We wandered all throughout the main section of the city, seeing what there was to see for a good six hours or so (we walk a LOT- for example, we walk at a conservative average of 2 miles/hour, thus covered 12 miles today, on what was a shorter-than-usual day!). Part of this excursion was centered around finding somewhere that featured Swedish meatballs on the menu, but the complete lack of such places is what gave rise to our eventual conclusion that Swedish meatballs are not, in fact, Swedish, and are, in fact, a clever ruse designed to elevate my hopes of national cuisine into the stratusphere, then dash them on one of Sweden's many rocky cliffs. Maybe we'll manage to come across some when I'm less starving. Maybe I should just search online for "Where to eat Swedish meatballs in Stockholm."
Well, tomorrow's another day!
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