Smiles on a Summer Night

Our last day in Stockholm, our last day of vacation! In so many ways it seems sad to have to go back to home. We have had such a lovely time here on this trip and some of the things that await us when we return home are much less interesting than riding bicycles over picturesque islands or touring museums filled with ancient art and artifacts. But I do miss Edie and part of me would like to go back to a bit of a routine as well. Still, there is no choice either way. Home we go tomorrow. 

We decided to see as much as we could on our last day here. We began with breakfast at the Radisson. I may have eaten more bacon and eggs on in the last month than in all my the previous years of my life combined. I just find it hard to turn down the "included" food in the morning when I know I will need to pay for breakfast and lunch. I am sure that I will "pay for" this the next time I weight myself. I am definitely looking forward to getting back to a normal light meal in the morning! While we ate, John and I identified what we wanted to see and do in our last day. We both wanted to see some more of the cultural attractions of the city on our last day while avoiding the tour bus and boat people as much as possible. So we highlighted a few places that seemed interesting, yet a bit off the beaten track.

But before going sightseeing, John wanted to go shopping. He noticed in one of the guidebooks that Stockholm has Europe's largest flea market. This sounded like absolute torture to me, but I agreed to go along. I used Google Maps to try to find the address, and it was not far away. Unfortunately, apparently there are placed with almost identical names in Stockholm, and the place where my phone took us was a pleasant neighborhood indeed … but not the location of a flea market. We used a bit more cellular data to try to figure out the problem, but discovered that the place we really wanted to be was quite far out, probably not worth the time it would take to go there and come back. 

Fortunately, there was a subway stop nearby and John and I took the train towards downtown. Stockholm likes to boast that each of its subway stations is a work of art and that the whole system is a giant museum. That seems a bit of a stretch to me. Certainly, each station is decorated in some way and has a theme. But I am not sure that making a subway stop look like it is a cave really reaches beyond cute design into the realm of art. It is a philosophical discussion, I know, and I will not be, in an unusual change of attitude, dogmatic about this point. 

Once out of the subway, the phone guided us to the Hallwylska Museet. Built in the last decade of the nineteenth century, this was the home of Count Walther von Hallwyl and his wife, Wilhelmina. Or perhaps it might be more accurate to stay that it was the home of Wilhelmina and her husband Walter. She was the daughter of one of Sweden's most important timber barons, and she brought the money to the marriage. He had a title from an ancient Swiss family and little more. Even though this was before the time of women's rights movement in Sweden, money was still power. He moved to Stockholm and became a Swede. 

Wilhelmina had several country estates in addition to her town home in Stockholm. But this house was clearly built to impress the local Stockholm gentry with both her wealth and sophistication, to let them know that the von Hallwyls were not gauche, nouveau-riche parvenues, but  one of the first families of the Swedish nation.

There is an amazing courtyard that must have been the scene of some stunning parties. 

 

The rooms are decorated in high Gilded Age excess. 

There are the usual drawing rooms for the ladies, smoking rooms for the men, and, of course, a billiards room. 

There was a huge collection of porcelain by various manufacturers although it was nothing compared to what we saw in Dresden — or for that matter, in Natchez. 

A few pieces seemed to date from a less multi-cultural Sweden.

The bedrooms on the second floor were private and therefore less ostentatious. But the notes pointed out that Wilhelmina and Walter actually shared a bedroom, quite unusual for the wealthy in that era. 

After Walter's death, Wilhelmina willed it to the Swedish government as a museum. It is today a monument to the Golden Age in Scandinavia, a reminder of a time before the pretense of equality became the norm in Swedish society. 

After leaving the mansion, we walked down towards the Moderna Museet, the Museum of Modern Art. We were relying on some guidebooks here, taking it on faith that this was an interesting place. As a general rule, neither of us is particularly a fan of a great deal of modern art. That is not to dismiss all the work done in the last century at all. It simply means that along with many works of extraordinarily powerful and brilliant works there is are many pieces we find tedious and pretentious such as white canvasses covered in white paint and labeled "Untitled (1965)." We did find some interesting things there, but on the whole we were disappointed. We loved the self-portrait by Munch, of course.

The extensive collection of Stalinist posters was as visually appealing as it was morally appalling.

I love to find inspiration for art projects in  these museums. My children cannot paint anything like the works of Caravaggio or David, but they can certain do cut out collages or just splatter some paint about. And I can always talk about form, medium, and color and squeeze some measure of art instruction out of the project as well. 

We took a break after this and went to have some lunch. It had been sprinkling a bit while we were in the museum, but it had cleared up and the sun was glistening on the water. The Moderna Museet is located on a small island which used to be a military base. It is, I suppose, Stockholm's version of The Presidio in San Francisco. And some of the former military barracks have been preserved and turned into an expensive hotel. We had lunch there in the middle of a charming garden overlooking the harbor. 

After that, we went back to the same building to look at the Architecture and Design Museum. This was not as large as the modern art collection. Much of it appeared to be taken up with a library  and offices. There was a largish temporary exhibition space devoted to a  Swedish designer we did not know. We decided to just look at the permanent  collection. We discovered that this was basically just one large room with a couple dozen scale models of important buildings in Sweden and around the world.

The extensive interpretive material was in both Swedish and English. As I read it, I rather wanted to hear the commentary from my sister. All the material seemed to discuss the importance of creating a harmonious environment where buildings help create community and enable a more humane society. It certainly did not seem like the "starchitect" mentality that seems to prevail in the United States.

At this point, John was tired and we went back to the hotel.

We had been a bit disappointed by the view from our room the previous day, so John had chatted up the nice blonde people at the reception desk and convinced them to change our room so we could see the water. His efforts were rewarded with a room which may not have given the panoramic view of the harbor he wanted, but at least allowed us to see the famous City Hall Tower.

In the evening we went out again. John wanted to go shopping, and although that did not much interest me I did not have any other ideas. As we walked toward the street where all the department stores seem to be found, we passed Ste Klara Kyrka, a big Gothic brick structure I had seen several times before. I noticed that the doors were open and that there was a poster advertising an organ concert this evening. I have to say that this seemed like much more fun than shopping to me, so I went to the concert while John looked for shirts on sale. 

I read up a bit on the church. The Swedish monarchs, unlike the British, were not motivated by theology when they severed the historic ties between the Church of Sweden and Rome. The church was the largest landowner in the country, and the king wanted land and the money. This convent of the Poor Clares which had stood here for century was torn down. When the crown decided to build a Protestant church on the site several decades later, the name of the previous church was retained even if monasticism, particularly communities of religious women, was not at all a part of the Lutheran ideal. The church is a good piece of late Northern Renaissance architecture, and it was interesting to see that the Swedes painted all the ceiling and wall frescoes that the English were busy destroying inspired by Calvinistic iconoclasm.

But back to the organ. When I saw it, it looked to me like a late nineteenth century instrument. When I heard it, I knew I was right.

The concert began with the Bach Toccata in D-minor. While the organist’s command of Baroque performance technique was impeccable, the organ itself was clearly not simply Romantic but French Romantic, something like the great instruments Cavaille-Coll built in Paris about the same time. All mordants, trills, and other Baroque flourishes were lost amid the sixteen foot stops and the reeds. However, the rest of the concert worked more effectively with the instrument. John joined me halfway though the concert and at least he heard a rousing performance of Boëlmann's Suite Gothique. "Real monster movie music," John commented as we left.

We walked down towards Gamla Stan, the old city, for a last look around.

John had brought the Rick Steves guidebook, and he had a walking tour with commentary of Gamla Stan. 

It was surprisingly quite good taking us to some places we would otherwise have never seen and explaining the significance of things we had seen before. For instance, we went into the courtyard of the Finnish Church and saw Stockholm's smallest statue.  

Knitting a cab for "Iron Boy" is a popular pastime, and rubbing his head is supposed to be good luck. We went down nearly deserted alleys that paralleled streets thick with tourists.

We saw where the shoreline had once been when all of Stockholm's residents lived within the walls of the city. We observed the locks which had replace the falls that once separated the fresh water of Lake Malmara from the brackish water of the Baltic Sea. And we stopped by the statue of Queen Christina to pay homage to Garbo!

John read about a restaurant that appealed to him a little out of the center of town. We found a bus that took us there relatively quickly. It was located on the water. Part of the restaurant was the "boat," actually a floating dock.

It had wonderful views of the water and the city, but also it was crowded and disco music from the seventies blared. And it was a bit cold there, too, right on the water. But Swedes know how to deal with that.

We chose a seat in the garden on land. John had a burger — he tends more and more towards comfort food — while I had the Swedish version of Belgian mussels. They were delicious!

We have to get up early tomorrow to catch the train back home. I have really enjoyed our time in Sweden, and I hope to come back again and see more of the country. 

Stockholm Attractions

This morning, as I stumbled around all our bags in the hotel room, I felt like I was some modern version of the character in an E. M. Forrester novel traveling around the Continent with steamer trunks. And yet, although tourists are always told to "pack light", there are limits to what can be left home. You have to deal with cool, rainy days as well as hot weather. The are beach and bike days, but there are also more concerts and more formal restaurants. Buying things when you need them may sound good, but it is not always possible to find the stuff you need. And sometimes, like John's swim trunks in Dubrovnik, it is way more expensive than at home. 

The Rex Hotel is not a bad place. The rooms are clean and the neighborhood is safe. But I also think that in Europe there is this sense that unless you are paying a great deal for a room, you should be slightly uncomfortable. Things are deliberately spartan in a vaguely military or monastic way. It cannot be significantly more expensive to make a soft bed than a hard one. An extra pillow would hardly break the hotel budget. Yet you begin to feel after a while, I only paid 100 Euro for this. I do not deserve two pillows. Or a comforter that actually fits on the bed. Long after sin has been dismissed as an archaic notion, Northern Europeans still cling to asceticism and self-denial. Just ask the Greeks about that. 

At breakfast — one where I felt that we really did not deserve to have more than two choices of marmalade — John and I planned the day. We looked over the starred recommendations in Rick Steves. He almost dismissed the Royal Palace and Gamla Stan, and said that Skandia and the Vasa ship were the must-see sights in Stockholm. Skandia is a collection of historic houses rather like Sturbridge Village. John was pretty sure that we had seen Skandia and loved it on our last trip to Stockholm many years ago. I did not recall that, although I remembered a similar place is Oslo. Either way, we decided to go there. We packed up our stuff and put it in storage. We will be changing hotels today — but more on that later. 

I suggested that we take a bus to Skandia as it was farther than John wanted to walk and the subway did not come close. He was skeptical, but agreed. Most of the busses I have seen in Stockholm have been at least half empty. This one, unfortunately, was the exception. I suppose it was because it was heading towards the amusement park on a warm July day, but it was packed with families. And it was slow as well. John does not do well standing for long periods, but at least he found a spot where the bus flexes so he could try to sit. 

When we entered the park it not only did not seem familiar to me but did not to John either. "Maybe we didn't come here," he said. "I don't remember any of this." Skandia does contain historic village structures and people are there dressed in period clothes to provide some background in Swedish and English. But it also has a wide array of children's attractions. There are endless places to buy food. About a third of the grounds are devoted to a small zoo with Scandinavian animals. It is interesting, but somehow the history gets a little lost in all the other stuff. 

But we still had a pretty good time and saw some really interesting things. There were these old “allotment” cottages. After people had moved to the city, they still wanted to grow their own food. So they were given tiny plots of land in the suburbs where they put not only farmed but had a one room house for weekends.

The two old gals who were the docents here were having their lunch break among the flowers and vegetable of their plots.

There were lots of old farmsteads.

and old church,

and a bakery where John bought a couple pastries that looked and smelled better than they tasted.

Some of the farm houses had a special section used only when there was a wedding or a funeral.

These also contained guest accommodations.

On many of the farms, women spun wool and died yarn.

In the “town” section, we had an interesting chat with the docent at the printer’s house.

We were fascinated to learn that they nailed the wallpaper on so that if they moved they could take it with them!

The city workingman’s house was pretty spartan, and apparently a dozen people were probably crammed into two or three small rooms. The only source of heat in the winter was this tiny stove that also was used for cooking.

We were fascinated to see the Temperance Hall. Apparently the Swedes declared war on drinking about the same time Americans did with about the same level of success.

There were gardens both rustic

and formal.

We love all the hollyhocks in Sweden. They really do not grow well in Southern California.

The industrialist who had helped create Skandia moved his childhood home there.

We were not as fascinated by the nordic animals on display, but we were fascinated by the lynx

and the wild boar.

I think this was a wolverine, or maybe it was a ferret. Why can’t these animals wear name tags?

There were birds everywhere.

This stork had no children in tow.

But I think this goose might have had a family.

We decided to have lunch at the first and only place we have seen in Sweden that advertised itself as a smorgasbord. It was not an expensive place, just it was just a little pricier than most of the other offerings, enough that John assumed, quite correctly, that families would go elsewhere. Neither of us dislike children, but teachers on vacation would just as soon spend time with adults. In fact, at times watching the kids was quite entertaining.

After that, we went down to see the Vasa. This is clearly the biggest tourist attraction in Stockholm and it probably should be. The Vasa is the most perfectly preserved seventeenth century ship. King Gustav wanted to have the biggest and most powerful navy in the Baltic. AS part of that program, he spent an enormous amount on a new warship, one designed to have an unprecedented two full canon decks. The ship was to be the pride of the navy. But a few minutes after it was launched the ship listed to the side in the wind and began to take on water through the lower canon deck. Within minutes, the ship had sunk to the bottom of the harbor. The pride of the Swedish navy had never even left Stockholm.  Dozens of men were killed.

Around 1960, Swedish archeologists wondered if they could find the remains of the Vasa. They did so without much problem, and to their surprise they discovered that the soil and the minimal salinity of the water had almost perfectly preserved the ship. It took years, but they raised the ship, cleaned and preserved it, and then built an enormous building around the ship. It is an amazing sight. Some of the ropes are even original, knots almost four hundred years old. 

The color was a big surprise to the historians. Examining the wood they discovered little bits of paint throughout. It turns out that these ships were painted bright colors, almost gaudy to modern eyes. We take color for granted. But when I talked to people in Eastern Europe who had lived under socialism, all of them commented on how everything back then was gray. The buildings were gray, the clothes were gray, the smoky skies were gray. And when they experienced the West, the first thing that struck all of them was how colorful it was. It was an overpowering experience for many. I am sure that this is what the seventeenth-century world was as well. Most people lived in a dull gray world. And there was something almost overwhelming about seeing color. We forget that the Baroque era was obsessed with power. And ornament and color was that era's version of "shock and awe." 

So here is the wood as it appears today

and as it was originally painted.

John was feeling quite tired at this point and he did not want to deal with the bus again. I agreed we should take a taxi. I have since learned more about Swedish taxis. The government issues taxi licenses as it does in other cities. It limits competition from ride-sharing apps. But it does not actually regulate the fare as happens in most of the rest of the world. Before taking a taxi, the passenger is supposed to read the posted fare chart and make an informed decision. In practice, this is almost impossible. We certainly had no idea that we were supposed to do this. And we paid for it — a fifteen minute cab ride with a driver who really had no idea where he was going ended up costing us well over fifty dollars! I was livid, but there was not much I could do. 

We picked up our bags from the storage room. We are changing hotels tonight. The Rex was part of the package deal with the bicycle tour. But for the last couple nights I wanted to stay at a big, modern American hotel. I had thought that the accommodations on trip might be less the comfortable, and I wanted something spacious with comfortable beds and a big bathroom for our last couple days. So we are staying at the Radisson Blu Waterfront, a stylish modern building right by city hall. It is probably the most architecturally interesting hotel in Sweden. 

The desk at the Rex offered to call a cab for us. I somehow figured that hotels had a better idea of who the good guys and the bad guys were in the cab business. And I should be grateful for that as this time our ten minute ride was a fairly reasonable twelve dollars. 

The Radisson was everything we expected it would be with one exception. We had a miserable view. Instead of looking out on the waterfront, our spacious comfortable room faced an office tower, one of those depressing structures from the eighties that Skidmore, Owens, and Merrill built all over the world. John went down to the desk to see if the charming young man who had checked us in could give us a better room. He explained that the hotel was full that evening — one of the larger Viking cruise ships had taken most of the rooms for their guests — but promised see what he could do tomorrow. Ah well, at least the bed was comfortable and I had two pillows. 

We spent a quiet evening. Tomorrow will be our last full day in Sweden and we plan to do serious sightseeing.