Stockholm, one more time (August 24 - 26)

Fjäderholmarna Island - looking south away from Stockholm centre

Hei, Hei from Gudvangen, Norway. As I write, it is August 29 and we are sitting in our motel room waiting for some very heavy rain to end so we can go walking along the fjord. We definitely left the sunshine behind us in Sweden.
 
When I last wrote, we were getting ready to leave Umeå and fly down to Arlanda, Sweden (August 24). (Arlanda is where the airport is. It is its own city, but also a distant suburb of Stockholm.) Karen attended a short workshop at our airport motel on the 24-25th at which she also gave an excellent presentation. I know because I sat in on it. Marshall and I just hung around the motel on the 25th, explored a nearby “nature preserve”, and found our way to another grocery store. (Not eating out in restaurants has been a theme for us this trip and helped provide us with some exercise.)
 

Fjäderholmarna Island - Keeping Stockholm safe

Late in the morning on Wednesday, August 26, we took the express train into Stockholm. From Stockholm Central Station we walked along the waterfront to the Nybroviken/ Strandvägen pier. From there we took a half-hour boat ride out to Fjäderholmarna Island. It is a small island located right in the middle of Saltsjön Bay.  Saltsjön leads from the Baltic Sea through the Stockholm Archipelago (around 30,000 islands) to downtown Stockholm. Fjäderholmarna has a short trail, picnic spots, shops, restaurants, a small boat museum, and a few artisans such as a glass-blowers studio. At one point it was settled with a few families and farms, but now it is a place for Stockholmers (Stockholmians?) to go to on an outing. (The 5 p.m. boat that took us back to downtown Stockholm was packed with people coming to the island for dinner.)
 
Fjäderholmarna Island wasn’t anything special but we had a good afternoon there. One nice thing about the trip was it gave us an excellent chance to view Stockholm from the water. I was/am still taken by the “European-ness” of the Stockholm downtown.
 
After Fjäderholmarna, Marshall and I quickly walked to the Stockholm Technology Musuem (Tekniska Museet), which is open until 8 p.m. on Wednesday evenings for a reduced price. Karen wasn’t as interested in the museum, so she enjoyed a more leisurely stroll to the museum taking in some of the beautiful homes and parks along the Djurgårdenbrunnsviken (vik = bay).
 

Stockholm Technology Museum

The main exhibition at the Technology Museum was “Digital Revolution”. Finally, a museum that Marshall was excited to go to. The exhibition detailed the history of computer/digital graphics and animation. This included old and new video games, including Marshall’s favourite “MineCraft”. (To be fair, in the hands of the creative and talented, calling MineCraft a game is like calling Lego a toy.) There were also displays of cutting edge digital/graphic art. I am not a tech person at all (Marshall says, “Really?”) but some of the art was impressive. I was most taken with “The Treachery of Sanctuary”. In the first panel (Life), you stood in front of a screen and the shadow digital image of you was reduced to nothing as a flock of birds was created and flew away from your body. In the second panel (Death), your digital image was pecked away to nothing by a flock of birds. In the final panel (Rebirth), you flapped your arms and they were transformed to wings and you flew away. Very cool.
 
Once the museum closed, we walked back along Djurgårdenbrunnsviken, then through downtown Stockholm to the train station, stopped at McDonald’s for Marshall (there are lots in Stockholm), and caught the train back to Arlanda. Whew, it was a full day, but a nice way to spend our last day in Stockholm. From there it was onto Bergen, Norway.
 
FINAL THOUGHTS ON STOCKHOLM – As Marshall will agree, for him and me, Stockholm was big, busy, crowded, noisy, and kind of dirty. That being said, neither of us are big city people. However, I have to say that I was quite taken with Stockholm and think that as cities go, people should consider it as a destination itself. The waterfront with its old palaces/homes (now hotels), Gamla Stan, museums, shops, and parks, etc., is quite stunning. What I most liked about Stockholm, particularly in the evening when it was a little less hectic, was its vibrancy. People were living in and using the downtown area all the time, i.e., it had grocery stores (kind of like Osborne Village in Winnipeg, only much bigger, and actually right downtown). I found this very different from many North American cities I have spent time in, where the downtown areas seem sterile and can almost be deserted after the work day ends. I know my travels are not that extensive, but that has been my experience.

Another picture I just like from Fjäderholmarna Island