Stockholm, Sweden

After finishing up with Switzerland, I headed up to the far north to see the Scandinavean countries a bit. I stopped in Denmark, but I am going to write about that in a later blog because I began and ended my time there. So, I will begin with Stockholm. The hostel that I stayed at there was different than any of the other hostels that I have stayed at because it is actually 2 old ships that are anchored in the harbor that they have converted into a hostel. It was pretty neat to see the way they did this and it made it very cozy inside.

In Stockholm, I went first to see Skansten. This is one of the biggest attractions there. It is on one of the islands that make up the city and what they have done is brought a bunch of old historical buildings to the site and preserved them there. The buildings range in date from the 13th century all the way up to the 20th century. You pay an addmission fee to get into the park and then you can walk around and see all of the different buildings. Usually during the high tourist season, they are all open with people there to explain about them, but since it is low season now, only a few were open so I was content to just walk through and read the descriptions of them that are posted. There are a huge variety of buildings such as windmills, various types of farms, manor houses, schools, gardens, some different businesses like a general store, a blacksmith, a glass blower, a baker, and many other buildings. It was truly remarkable how they have this place arranged and all of the buildings preserved in one area. It was pretty quiet there since it was low season, so I just walked around and enjoyed the buildings while snacking on a piece of fresh made bread from the baker there. This was by far, my favorite part of Stockholm.

I also went to the National Museum where I again saw so many great works of art. It was an interesting museum because they had an area of it that was completely made up of furniture from the early 20th century to the end of it and they explained how different types of art are reflected in the way furniture was made. It was really neat to see because I have never thought of applying something such as postmodernism to furniture. There was also a great exhibition going on there by Rossin that I browsed through and I saw yet more paintings by Van Gogh, Rembrant, Monet, Cezanne and more. It was fabulous.

Around town, there is this old section that has tons of shops and old alleyways and walkways because it was built a hundreds of years ago. This section has old buildings and it looks as if it would have back then, just iwth the addition of cars. Close to this section, there are the old palaces which I opted not to go in because I have seen so many at this poin that I really did not feel I needed to see more.

The weather there was extremely cold (so much for my not being in snow this winter) and windy at points, but it was bearable. The city has a very modern part to it as well with skyscrapers and huge office buildings all consentrated downtown around a big shopping area. This was fun to walk down too.