John was definitely feeling better this morning, and that made me feel much better, too. We talked about plans for the day, and we decided that we would do different spiritual things on this Sunday morning. He found an English-speaking meeting and we figured out the location using Google maps. I decided that after having been AWOL for the last couple Sundays, I wanted to go to Mass today. I looked for an English service, but nothing was either close or at a workable time. So I noticed Saint Eric's, the Catholic cathedral in Stockholm, had a Swedish-Latin Mass at 9:45, just about the same time as John's meeting. I can follow Mass in Latin, and the readings would be the same ones everywhere else in the world today, so I decided to check it out.
I also decided that I would try to figure out the Stockholm subway system. The ticket machine was a bit stubborn, but after endless pressing the screen I somehow made it spit out a ticket. At that point, I just had to figure out which train to take and what side of the platform would take me in the right direction. I am usually pretty good at public transportation, but the problem here is that all the Swedish names sort of look and sound alike to me. So, I was forced to do what I hate to do most in the world — ask directions! People, of course, were quite helpful. It was only three short stops away. Leaving the subway, I walked a two or three blocks and found the church.
Like England, Sweden has a national Protestant church that retained many of the features of pre-Reformation Christianity. The church has archbishops and bishops and is divided into dioceses; the priests wear chasubles and there are crucifixes on the altars; the principal Sunday service in Swedish churches is still known as "High Mass." Yet the Church of Sweden, like the Church of England, has lost its hold on the people of the nation, and only a tiny percentage of Swedes attend its services on Sunday mornings. In contrast, the Roman Catholic Church in Sweden is growing. Much of this is the result of immigration to Sweden from historically Catholic countries like Italy or Poland. But the Catholic church has also been making converts from native Swedes as well. Pope Francis recently gave a red hat to the Archbishop of Stockholm, the first time in history that a Swede has been a member of the College of Cardinals. All of this also made me interested in checking out Saint Eric's.
The building is not an architectural jewel. It is divided into to sections, one small and dating from the nineteenth century, the other somewhat larger, and dating from the nineteen sixties.
It is an odd arrangement both artistically and liturgically. The church was not full, but it was not embarrassingly empty, either. As expected, most of the service was in Swedish. I used my phone to follow the readings and prayers in English. The ordinary of the Mass, that is the Kyrie, the Gloria, the Credo, the Sanctus, and the Agnus Dei, were sung in Latin with organ and cantor. This is probably the best part of it for me. Musicologists have argued for some time now that plainsong was originally quite rhythmic and even percussive. Yet in most places in the United State it is sung, when it is sung at all, just as they did in the nineteenth century in France, slowly, evenly, tediously. Not so at Saint Eric's. The chant was lively and at times almost danceable. Would that somebody could offer their music director a job in Los Angeles!
After Mass, I took the subway home. As expected, John was still at his meeting. I finished packing and cleaned up the room. At noon, I checked out of the hotel and put our luggage in storage. John and I texted back and forth and decided that we would meet somewhat around one o'clock. I had about an hour and I walked down the waterfront towards Gamla Stan, the old historic center of Stockholm.
John and I had been here about fifteen years ago. We were on a Baltic cruise, and we stopped for one day in Stockholm. I think that may have been a Sunday as well. We left the ship quite early that day, and we were charmed by the empty streets of the old city. We returned later in the day when it was flooded with tourists and were less charmed. I had more or less the same reaction today. Every once and a while, as I walked through Gamla Stan, I found a reasonably empty picturesque street. But most of the time the streets were jammed with tourists and the shops were filled with cheap tourist junk. It was still not quite as bad as Prague where the historic center of the city had been turned into a kind of open-pit tourist mine. But it was close.
John was doing his own exploring on his way back from the meeting.
By this time it was raining and John had not yet shown up at the place I had suggested for our meeting. He finally called me and I figure out he was nowhere close. He was frustrated trying to find me, so he suggested I try to find him instead. That was also frustrating. He told me that he was at H&M. When I made it to the central shopping area I found an intersection with an H&M on each of the three corners. Cheap clothes are almost as ubiquitous in the world as tourists. After a couple more calls, we finally met up. I was relieved!
But not all the clothes were cheap. At his meeting this morning, John talked to a guy from San Diego who is living here. When he told him our plans to cycle the archipelago, the guy asked him if he had brought along some seriously warm and waterproof clothes. John indicated what he had on. "You'll need warmer stuff than that," he was warned. And he was told to check out a couple REI-like places in Stockholm. We found one of them, a place called Intersport. Like a lot of things in Sweden, having a name in English, or something that passes as English, is hip even if it does not make much sense. What exactly would "intersport" mean anyhow? But it sounds good, I guess. John found a jacket he really liked. At over 3000 kroner (a little over 300 dollars) I told him that he really needed to like it a lot. He said he did. We bought it.
We decided to have a late lunch. After John's bad experience with meatballs on the ferry, we thought it would be great to go to a place with really good Swedish meatballs. According to Conde Nast, the honors here go to a place called "Meatballs for the People." Once again, a vaguely hip English name which ultimately makes no sense. What else are the meatballs for? Horses? Oh well, whatever…. It was about two kilometers away, so we decided to take a cab. Getting around Stockholm is not cheap. A metro ride costs about 45 kroner or about 5 dollars. A simple taxi ride like this ended up costing over 20 dollars. And when we arrived at "Meatballs for the People" we found it was closed! Not just closed for Sunday — unlike Germany, shops and restaurants in Sweden are all open on Sunday — but closed rather permanently. I checked on TripAdvisor for the best nearby restaurant and found a recommendation for Nytoget 6, a trendy bistro which takes its name from its address.
It was a good choice. We looked over the menu and discovered that "Meatballs for the People" was on its menu. We took the last outdoor table and a handsome young waiter who spoke perfect English took our order. We asked for the meatballs, of course.
While we waited, he delivered our bread. I have noticed in a couple restaurants here that bread comes in bags. I suppose the idea is that not only will the bags keep the bread fresher, but since they cannot reuse the bread for other customers, you can take it home with you in the bag. The Swedes can be remarkably practical people. The meatballs were astonishingly good, and they came in on a bed of very creamy mashed potatoes covered with the richest-tasting gravy you can imagine.
All I could think was, "Dorothy, we're not in IKEA any more!" As we were leaving John asked the waiter about the other restaurant. "Oh, it is still open," he said. "And we make their meatballs in our kitchen."
Returning to the hotel, we took our luggage from the baggage room and found a taxi. We are starting the very last part of our trip, a bicycle journey around the Stockholm archipelago. As part of this package, we had a hotel set up for the first evening. Our taxi took us a couple kilometers from the center of town to the Malmgard district. The hotel we are staying at tonight is a converted eighteenth century house, allegedly Queen Christina's hunting lodge. At that time, this part of Stockholm was still very much countryside. The place is not easy to find as it at the end of a street behind trees and a wall. I was looking forward to staying here, perhaps imagining I might see Garbo wandering about in her Queen Christina garb, but it was actually a little disappointing. The closest we came to that was the 100 kronor note!
The rooms were never large, and adding an en-suite bath to them reduced them to tiny. The common areas are adequate, but not particularly inviting. Neither John nor I wanted to stay in our room, so we decided to take a walk.
The weather was lovely when we left. We had read that there was a good walk around the waterfront with views of Gamla Stan, the old city.
We saw some very charming older homes, and indeed after we walked through a little park we did indeed have a great view of Stockholm.
We walked through a complex of rather forbidding nineteenth century buildings. I could not tell if this had been a factory, a prison, or some kind of military facility. It was none of those things now. Part of the building was being used as the school of the Royal Swedish Ballet; I am sure that the other parts are used for similarly high-minded pursuits.
By the time we reached the bridge to Gamla Stan we noticed some dark clouds. We probably should have turned and gone back to the hotel, but we pressed on as it was such a pretty time of day to take pictures. After we crossed the bridge, it started to rain quite steadily. We went over to the City Hall, one of Stockholm's most famous buildings.
All the Scandinavian cities built city halls in the early twentieth century. This was the time when the "goo goo's" — Progressive advocates of "good government" — were running America, and as Scandinavian countries seem to have an almost genetic predisposition to a goo-goo frame of mind, I suppose they were doing the same here. The Stockholm building is clearly inspired by the Doge's palace in Venice with a tower, pointed windows, and a colonnade opening up to the water. We spent about a half hour there until the rain had subsided to a mere drizzle. We walked towards the train terminal. On our way we saw this building. We are not sure if it is part of the hotel behind it or a separate building.
I suggested that we take a cab home and John hardly fought the idea.
Tomorrow we will meet up with our tour. We know that there are two other people on the tour, Stephen and John, staying here tonight. We have not yet met them, but we are supposed all take a cab tomorrow to meet up with Carmen, the local tour operator, and to start our first ride.
