Some of Stockholm 2

I tried but failed to put this 2nd bit of Stockholm, first in terms of the backwards time order that the blog is listed in. Looks like I'll even have to create the draft of the end first. Anyhow, continuing...

The Vasa museum is about the grand ship Vasa that set sail in 1628 and got only a couple of hundred meters before toppling over and sinking. Apparently no-one could say no the King when he said he wanted more cannons, despite making the thing top-heavy. It was salvaged in the late 1960's, having been well preserved in the waters that are free woodworm. It was ornately decorated with carved and garishly painted statues.

A model, in front of the real thing

We were also staying on a boat, the Mälaren Den Röda Båten, which as the name says, is a red boat. Fortunately it didn't sink, or even rock. We were on the edge of Södermalm, which is becoming a trendy part of town
Södermalm has a traiditional hilly, cobblestoned, European feel

This tree fascinated me for some reason. Something about the way it just stood there, alone, all silvery in the snow. Perhaps I'd been reading too much Harry Potter recently, and it reminded me of some fantasy book or chinese sword epic that I've seen, where there are silver trees standing in courtyards.

Tree detail

Swedes won't always confront you about something. But when they do, they can be quite direct. Good to know.

I found an entry in the What's on about a free concert of Scandanavian organ music and soup lunch, so I went. It was quite a modern church, and this was the organ.

The concert was good, and free, but the lunch wasn't (who said there's no such thing as a...)! But for a couple of dollars i got a typical Christmas rice pudding with cinammon, and had a chat to the organist and others, almost entirely in Swedish, which was good for the ego.

The NK shop window - Stockholm's Myer equivalent



The snow fell all day long which was kinda nice, but kinda annoying when I got to the airport for my 10:30pm flight home, and didn't leave till after midnight because the airport can't cope with something that happens occasionally... occasionally several times every single year.


And lastly, my brain still sees processes words in English first, and Swedish maybe second. So when I saw this sign, I wondered why skrotums got so much attention, and why they would need to be douched...