The Wayfaring Path

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After our exciting first week in Stockholm and great weekend with the fam, I had a pretty quiet start to week two, doing some writing and movie making. It was the week before payday and I was even more broke than usual (and we all know Sweden ain’t cheap!) so I was being suuuuper careful with money. Happily we had amazing weather so on Tuesday and Wednesday we went walking in parks after work. Stockholm has huge and amazing parks (of course!) and the autumn trees are just so beautiful it makes me want to cry. Lovely dry leaves on the ground, perfect for kicking through in your gumboots. It’s exactly how I imagined a Scandinavian autumn might be.

Tuesday’s visit was to the island of Djurgården, which is central and fun to get to on a ferry. Our amazing SL pass has free ferries, it really is the best public transport system I’ve ever experienced! Djurgården is a bit of a adventure playground, with an amusement park and heaps of museums and fun things to do. We were heading for “Seaglass beach” on the far side of the island, which we got to via a wonderful sculpture garden. There were loads of copies of famous statues, as well as original ones too. The weather was pretty warm and blue and still, just perfect for being outside and by the water.

Havsglasstrand (Seaglass beach) was pretty small but weirdly full of glass – some freshly broken and sharp, mostly worn down and smooth. It was a Regan find and we have no idea why the glass is all there on this little beach and not on the others, but I’m so glad we found it. I think Regan had instant regret as I spent AAAAGES looking for glass and picked up lots of bits that I’ll drag around Sweden and France with me. I have vague ideas of making jewellery with them but they’ll probably just be put in a pretty bottle and live on a windowsill. Either is good!

A big cruise ship went past and I made a timelapse video – I thought it would send a huge wake towards me but it didn’t, it must have been going at a very sedate pace! Reluctantly I left the little beach and we jumped on a tram back to the ferry. We never have to worry about missing the last bus or waiting for ages for something as there’s always a bus or a tram or train or ferry nearby and leaving in three minutes! We’ve ended up travelling at rush hour quite a few times but it’s no drama – there’s hardly any cars on the road, the trains are full but not horribly so, and it’s all very calm and efficient. It’s amazing what you can achieve when you prioritise public transport over building more roads and pandering to petrol companies!

The next day’s garden adventure was Hagaparken, a little bit north of the city. In the 18th century King Gustav III purchased the land to turn it into a magnificent summer palace and gardens. The king was assassinated before it was completed and building work stalled. The gardens are historically significant in their own right, laid out in the “English style” and the whole huge area is now in public ownership.

It was another amazing autumn place to wander and kick leaves around, with wide avenues and small meandering paths through the forest and huge open grassy areas. You’re never far from the water, and there was a jetty to sit on and contemplate life from, and we also had a very nice fika in the “copper tents”, looking down the great lawn to the sea. While we were sitting a Swedish man came towards us, smiling and saying “Juan! Juan!” and heading straight for Regan. It was a case of mistaken identity and all quite lovely, but also very weird as we are now totally attuned to the Stockholm way of basically ignoring everyone around us, so it was kind of shocking to have a stranger come up to us. Now I know why people looked so freaked out when I kept saying hej to them when we first arrived!

Thursday was a trip to Nationalmuseum, the national art and design gallery. Like all the museums we’ve visited here it was huge and full of amazing things, really well displayed. I particularly liked the room full of things the Swedes stole from adversaries during the wars of the 16th and 17th centuries – some of the paintings made in the 1540s were SO vivid and alive! Apart from a few rooms with painting styles I’m not a fan of, everywhere was just incredible – paintings, sculpture, furniture, pottery, jewellery. Plus great fika of course! There was a pianist practicing for a recital that evening, and we realised as we were leaving that it’s open and free on Thursday evenings, as people were queuing out onto the street! And not only is it an amazing gallery, it’s also in a beautiful spot. This city is breathtaking. I could stay here for months or years and never get bored.

On Friday we went to stay with Henri and Ulf again for the weekend. We had another nice dinner together and then had an early night as we had an earlyish start in the morning, to drive to Uppsala. Uppsala is a great wee city, and very old. It was the centre of pagan worship for a long time, and then Christianity as that began to take hold in Scandinavia. We walked around some of the ancient burial mounds – some are pre-Viking, and contrary to assumptions about the gender of the inhabitants, there is at least one woman buried there.

We had the nicest mead I’ve ever tasted and walked some more, around the old church and the surrounding land. There was a small museum explaining the history and showing some of the finds which I enjoyed, but not everyone in the group found it as fascinating as me! It’s always a bit tricky to do things like museums with other people but we did ok! Ooo there was a bit of excitement when people’s phones started pinging with a bomb warning in Uppsala, but happily it came to nothing. There was a marathon being run there too, so it was a big day for Uppsala!

We had dinner and then went to the huge cathedral in the city. There was a wedding about to start, so we didn’t have long before we got kicked out, sadly. What an amazing place to get married! I saw the groom briefly, looking suitably nervous and excited and I hope the wedding (Swedish: brollop) went well and the marriage is a good one. The cathedral is one that feels alive, and is stuffed with art and sculpture. King Vasa is buried there with two of his wives, which prompted a bit of a discussion and research about him – he’s a bit of a legend, and considered by many to be the “Father of Sweden” for many of the laws and systems he developed. He also looks a bit like Father Christmas, which I think is pretty fab.

We had a nice evening chatting (the boys) and doing some yoga (the girls). A plan was hatched to take Regan to a football match the next day, while Henri and I went shopping. Regan loved the match and it was a real experience for him! I’ll leave him to regale you with all the tales from the day 🙂 I was going to do one post for weeks 2 & 3 together but we do so many fun things each week I’ll doing a separate one for week three – another week in wonderful Stockholm and a weekend adventure up to the Arctic Circle!

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