What We Did This Weekend

We continue our progress round the tourist sites of Stockholm, normally just squeezing in one site a day. Saturday's visit was to the Kaknästornet, which is a 1960s concrete TV tower in a large park near the city centre. Very fine view but also quite cold up in the wind.
Nerd point - Admire the simplicity of the form (square tower with larger square rotated to form the platforms) and the pattern formed by the different colour of the different concrete pours.
Then today we went on a very interesting guided tour of the parliament building. This might sound slightly nerdy but was very interesting. Lots of examples of swedish consensus-based politics and cooperation. Speaker gets chosen by parliament and then they propose a Prime Minister to the house. MPs seats are decided by constituency rather than by party, so your neighbour might be your deadly political rival - but this is Sweden so they'll get along. Charlotte realised at some point that we were the oldest people on the tour - very strange thought - where were all the sensible grown-ups?
Cultural note - people have just taken down their christmas lights now - must be a sign that the days are getting longer. They certainly feel like they are - even light on the way home from work now.
Still plenty of snow and ice around - weather now between -5 and 0 so not as cold as it was a fortnight ago. Forecast for some even warmer weather in a week's time.

Photos of both on flickr (www.flickr.com/charlotteandnick).

BANDY!!! Part III

BANDY!!! Part II

We are back and we can now feel our toes again. Tonight's game was a glorious success - starting from pre-game supper and drinks at Rosen. This is our local pub from work - we went there one Friday evening and got a free shot of whisky and amaretto each because the owner liked our faces. We went there for a drink before the game and discovered they had a very good value special pre-bandy menu - 139 kroner for supper which includes a pint (normally 50 kroner) and a double shot of whisky (about 100 kroner. The game was a glorious victory for Hammaby Sirius . 4-4 at the end of the 90 minutes, they managed to get an injury-time winner with the clock at 90 mins & 4 seconds. Sorry the pictures are poor quality - camera phone is not up to much.Other photo is the half-time beer tent. We didn't need any more drink, but it was warmer than waiting around on the stand in -10 for 15 mins. This game was 1st of 5 for the play-offs for the league - Hammarby's opponents are probably favourites since they've won the league 5 times in the last 10 years; so tonight was a good result. I suspect we might be back for another game at some point.

BANDY!!!

Tomorrow we're going to watch our local bandy team in action against the best team in the world. Bandy is like ice-hockey but non-contact, on a larger pitch and much more graceful. Invented by an Englishman, it is now only played by countries around the Baltic and Russia. The weather forecast for tomorrow is -9 or -10 with light snow, but not too much wind. Did I mention that we'll be standing outside watching this? Here is the website of the team will be following http://www.hammarbybandy.se/index.php - once we've thawed out we'll let you know how it went.

Here's a photo...

Saturday morning.

No Pictures This Time - Sorry

So what have we been up to recently? Well today we went to Stockholm's main library which is a superb building (http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholms_stadsbibliotek has better pictures than english wikipedia) and also has loads of great books. The central rotunda is the most photographed room and probably also the hardest to really show in a photo. The main entrance to the building is a tall narrow space with dark stone walls and rock reliefs. This then flows into a staircase which takes you into the rotunda. We'll certainly be back there since we've only brought 5 books each with us.
After this we went onto the Architecture Museum which was very interesting - back there when we have more energy to finish it off. It's full of models of various buildings to show the development of architecture in Sweden and typical Swedish styles. We're probably going to settle down in front of Melodifesten on TV - this is heats for Sweden's Eurovision entry. Interestingly they take Eurovision very seriously here with proper stars representing them.
As another interesting social difference - at office drinks yesterday, I was explaining to someone the idea of going out for a quiet drink on a weeknight. He was surprised that we'd go out for a drink on a weeknight - I explained that you'd just go out for one drink, not a whole session - it wasn't really a concept he was familiar with.
It is obviously still really quite cold - going for a run this morning was hard work. It's generally between -5 and -10 and no sign of getting any warmer. -18 tonight is forecast. Brrrrr.

We live pretty much at the tip of the red arrow on the map opposite. Gamla Stan is the historic heart of the city, full of narrow streets and touristy shops. The main shopping areas and most tourist attractions are to the north of there. The island we live on is called Södermalm - it was traditionally the working class part of town but has been gentrified to some extent.and has plenty of kids with tight jeans and undercuts. It's got a reputation as one of the cooler sides of town which is probably why work put us here.

What more can I say? Thermals and as much woolliness as you can wear!

And this is the Baltic Sea. Which appeared to be steaming this morning.

No Penny Farthings!

I haven't noticed a plague of poorly parked penny-farthings in Stockholm, but maybe it's a summer-time problem since the bikes lanes are full of ice and snow at the moment. Anyway, this building owner might have fine taste in tiles but he's not so friendly towards old.school bicycle technology. Boo! Hiss!

System Bolaget

Check out these opening hours; 10am to 7pm Monday to Friday, 10am to 3pm Saturday (closed sunday). If you want to buy alcohol stronger than 3.5% outside these hours, you've got to go to the pub.
Taking a bottle of wine round a friend's house on Saturday night? Hope you remembered to get it sometime that morning.
A beer in the evening after supper? Only if you remember in time.
This is the state run off-license; they are the only people allowed to sell stronger beers, wines & spirits. Prices are high - generally £1.50-£2 a bottle of beer, but not as painfully high as pubs. The cheapest pub drink was just under £5 (for 500ml, not even a pint!) and we paid £7 the other day in a pretty normal pub. So the idea of going for a quick pint doesn't really seem to happen because it's really quite expensive.

It's a bit snowy....

 











Continuing the theme of being excited about snow (don't worry, I'm sure we'll get bored soon!)...this is what our kitchen window looks like at the moment.

Looking the other way...

Here is screenshot of the weather forecast for the next few days in Stockholm. -15 for the walk to work in a few days time - yikes.

Culturally Appropriate Snacks

We've now been here long enough to be fully domesticated and so Charlotte baked some lovely biscuits using our authentic swedish cookie cutters bought from the world's largest IKEA in Skärholmen. Elk, bear and wolf I can accept as being typically swedish but the snail?

I also feel a bit concerned about the snail on the left who doesn't look as perky as the others.

Winter Trip to Skansen

 Yesterday we went to Skansen, which is Stockholm's version of Weald & Downland Museum / Beamish (delete depending on whether you are from south or north). It has a huge selection of old swedish buildings which have been dismantled and moved there. It's one of Stockholm's main tourst spots and apparently very popular with the locals too for Walpurgis & Midsummer. Wandering around outdoors in Sweden in the winter for several hours is not the most sensible of options, but it was good to see trees and countryside rather than just more city. No bears in the zoo bit they have, because they are sensible and were hibernating. Nor did we get a chance to visit the petting zoo and stroke the hedgehogs - (interesting choice of not very stroke-able animal that one).

As you would imagine, the material of choice for traditional swedish buildings is timber, often with a chunky stone plinth to keep the timber off the wet ground. This rather romantic looking building is one of the oldest buildings there - an old storehouse from the 16th century. Most farms had a seperate store for all their tools and valubles - then if they had a fire and burnt the house down, at least the store would be OK.




This exotic looking rocket ship is simply a bell-tower for a church - the church burnt down and the bell-tower was shipped off to Skansen. The legs are covered with timber shingles - I guess to protect the legs and lengthen their lifespan.


Anyway, enough of the nerdy building stuff - I'll try to get Charlotte to write the next post.

The Beginning

We have moved to Stockholm for 6 months with Nick's work.His company is working on a large hospital in Stockholm and needed some more help - so here we are. We've now been here for 3 weeks and are getting settled - we now have internet in our flat so are actually able to get going with this blog.

This pretty picture is from a park near our flat - that's a frozen river; in the summer we'll be swimming here.