Tradie Pants

No blog about Sweden would be complete without an entry about tradies' pants. "What are tradies' pants?" you may ask. Tradie Pants (as named by Dr M) are the pants worn by just about every industrial type worker in Stockholm.

They are like cargo pants, but extreme cargo pants. They have pockets all over them. What takes them to the next level beyond cargo pants are the outside pockets. They also have pockets in the knee so that you can slip you knee pads in them. they come in several lengths (long, 3/4, and shorts). They come in all different colours/fabrics - hi-vis, denim, white, blues, camo etc. There is even a matching vest (I've only seen one of them though - in white on a builder).

These pants are worn by so many people - gardeners, street cleaners, surveyors, construction workers, garbage collectors, builders, electricians, - really anyone in a job that involves some kind of tool or getting dirty. Females wear them too (there are a lot more female tradies in Sweden than at home). Apparently when you go to a hardware shop everyone checks out everyone else's pants to see how they utilise their many pockets. 

Even visiting engineering professionals wear them - yes, Dr M has a pair to wear to work.

Millesgarden (or Lost in Lidingo)

Friday I jumped on the bike to head for Millesgarden - the home and sculpture garden of the acclaimed Swedish artist Carl Milles. Millesgarden is on the island of Lidingo - and unfortunately I had a lot of trouble finding it! I made it to Lidingo in about 25 minutes - then spent an hour trying to get across/around major roads and railway lines.

When I finally made it, on of the first sculptures I saw illustrated how I felt while looking for the garden.

I did not know much about Carl Milles before, but having perused his work, I can confidently say that his main inspirations were nudity, angels, nudity, religion, nudity, greek mythology, nudity, christianity and nudity. Apparently many of his sculptures back in the day offended and many were 'modified' after completion (fig leaves, removal of offensively large male organs even though in scale with rest of sculture etc).

As well as walking around the sculture garden which had numerous statues and fountains, you could see inside his house including his studio. It was decorated through out with sculptures, mosaics, hand painted tiles and other artists work.

An unexpected bonus was being able to view his collection of ancient Roman marble carvings - some 2000 years old. Quite amazing.

It took 35 minutes to get home in the Fri arvo crazy traffic - in comparison to the 90 minutes it took for me to find it.

The Archipelago

Last night we went on an archipelago dinner cruise. The boat was a ferry for some of the islands, but with a nice restaurant on board. It's not marketed as a tourist tour so it was mainly locals on the way home to their islands.

Stockholm city is spread across 14 islands - but the greater archipelago consists of over 40,000 islands (there is disagreement over the total number - some say there are as many as 80,000 islands). Many of the islands are dotted with summer houses, while others are not much more than a pile of rocks with some vegetation. Some of the islands are quite large with castles, hotels and permanent residents.

For about 4 hours the boat threaded its way through many of the islands and we were able to look at the summer houses. All the summer houses are either red or yellow.

The red is the traditional colour - the paint is made from a byproduct of copper mining and has a natural preservative that protects the wood. It was favoured by poorer people as it was cheap and as it protected the wood so well they wouldn't have to repaint or make repairs that they could not afford. It works very well - some of the summer homes are hundreds of years old.

The yellow houses were for the rich. They could afford the more expensive paint (and the repairs).

It was a very relaxing evening, but it is difficult to get used to the idea of putting on sunscreen before a night out.

"The Skyview"

After all of my travels my feet needed a rest from walking (those cobblestones are murder!) so nothing of note happened on Wednesday, hence today's post is about something that we did last week.

This is "the skyview" - a ride in a glass gondola up the outside of the largest spherical building in the world. 

The building itself is "the globe" - a massive arena that hosts some of Stockholm's biggest concerts and events. The building is so important that the train station and adjacent shopping centre are name after it (Globen).

The ride takes you up the curve of the building right to the top which is 130m above ground level. You get to stop here for a bit and look around at the horizon.

It's a nice little ride that takes about 20 minutes. It's next to a sports stadium where there was a soccer game on the night we went - you could hear the fans quite clearly up where we were!

Underground

Yesterday I visited Dr M's workplace to see what he has been up to. First we were taken on a tour of the visitor's area then we visited the part of the mine that they have been practicing blowing things up.

The visitor's area was extensive with info boards, equipment - and it was all within the mine! They even have a full lecture theatre (seats 80) plus entertaining area (available for external hire) carved out of the tunnels.  The visitors area is mainly for customers of atlas copco, as this is where they would come to see demonstrations of equipment, commission sold bits of mining gear and conduct training.
Swedish miner Per showed us around his domain, including a full demo of the drilling machine which drills the holes where the charges are to be placed.

We then went down to the work area of the mine where Dr M explained how they place the detonators. The work he is doing here is towards improving tunneling.

The mine in general is where they practice drilling holes, each wall looks like that face to the right with lots of little holes.

I've been riding on the railroads (and terrorising tourists, again)

I started yesterday with a bike ride - with the intention of extending out from yesterday's walking route. It didn't go quite to plan as I had difficultly reading the road signs - so I didn't make it out to the next island along. I did manage to ride along a few new areas of Swedish suburbia and coped quite well (especially for my first solo bike ride in Sweden). I am not used to riding with traffic, traffic lights or on that side of the road, so occasionally it was a bit of a challenge. I had decided that about 2 hours was the limit, so I headed for home - and I managed to further damage the American relations. I hit one of them with the bike. He was in the wrong place (ie the road) and I gave him fair warning (shouting "hey, hey, hey" - and braking sharply) but he didn't pay attention so I ran into him (not hard as I had almost stopped at the time I hit him, no one fell over). He apologised (American accent) and I took it like a Swede (didn't say anything, just rode on - to the pedestrian crossing 5m away where I think his fellow travelers were crossing). I think that the man knew that he was in the wrong place (threading his way through traffic) and I couldn't have done any further measures to avoid hitting him (no room to swerve due to parked cars and traffic).

After that incident I thought it best that I spend the rest of the day on public transport and decided to ride the trains to check out the art that is Stockholm train stations.

All stations are different, and a number of them are decorated quite elaborately. Some have murals, some are painted and some have sculptures throughout. To the left is one of the tiled murals decorating Akalla station - huge, about 7ft tall and quite wide - one of several depicting "life" (or something like that).  

Several of the underground stations are cavernous - massive cavelike tunnels. One of these was painted all in red and green - red skies and green fields - with scenes of foresty industry (trucks, loggers, people) plus some animals. The artist might have been making a statement about deforestation, or maybe they thought looked pretty!

Every part of the walls and roof were in the red/green - which with the size of the place the end result to me looked a little like a bloodbath in a cave. Or like a science fiction film where the characters have been swallowed by a giant monster.

Massive yes? (that's a triple set of escalators over there) So much red paint. You can't say it's boring.

Several of these stations have little scenes or similar in display windows (one of the stations was nautical themed and had a row boat in a window - others had little houses or tractors or three dimensional art). Worth a few hours of train hopping (and the longest you ever have to wait for a train is 10 minutes) although those big caves are pretty cold.

Waterfront Wanderings

Yesterday I explored some new territory with a loop walk that included the waterfront of several of the Stockholm islands. It was a little overcast, which was a change from the blistering blue skies that I have been experiencing so far.

I love those apartment blocks across the water. I walked along in front of them - it is all parklike with the occasional floating restaurant.

In all I walked on 4 of the islands - one of them (Langholmen) is almost completely park - it had kids playgrounds, an ampitheatre, pathways and bench seats - and it was almost completely deserted. The only people I saw were these German tourists on a segue-way tour. One person on a segue-way looks funny - a whole group looks perfectly ridiculous.

I think that I have been on about 7 of the Stockholm Islands so far - which is about half of them. I'll try to add another one to the list today.

A short post today - the computer is running a bit slow.

Terrorising Tourists (and the Changing of the Guard)

I managed to trick a tourist yesterday. It was quite accidental, even though what happened was something that I hoped to do. I was standing at an intersection when someone spoke to me. I didn't understand what they'd said, so I assumed that they were speaking in Swedish. I turned to them and meant to say "I don't speak Swedish" (in Swedish) but managed instead to say "I speak Swedish". The person then garbled some english about how they were just looking for the main train station - so I pointed in the right direction (it was not very far away) without speaking. That night some poor American tourist must have been wondering how they managed to ask directions of one of the few non-english speaking Swedes in Stockholm. Hee hee. I did at least point him in the right direction.

While not misleading tourists, I was watching the Changing of the Royal Swedish Guard at the Palace. There were shiny helmets, there was marching, there were bayonets and there was a band. 

My favourite part was the ceremonial handing over of the walkie-talkie when the guard in the guard house changed over.

My second favourite bit was when the naval band planned the theme form the TV series 'Jag' - sounded very impressive.

It went for quite a long time, and there are at least two different 'changes' as the one Dr M saw was different.  I wonder how many different ones there are. I might go back another time to find out.

Jag vill köpa talk pouder (I want to buy talcum powder).

Yesterday was a triumph for the Svenksa lessons. I left my talcum power at home so the first day I was here I tried to buy some in one of the tiny supermarkets - without the Swedish translation for talcum powder - no luck (and it's quite hard to describe if the word powder is not understood!). I learnt & practiced my pronunciation of 'talk pouder' (t-aaaaa-k p-door) over the weekend and when the big shops reopened yesterday I went looking.  I ended up having to go to a pharmacy (apotek) where I used my Sveksa - and I was understood - hooray! I don't know what the Swedish grandmothers get for Christmas as talc seems like a rare commodity (and not available in florally, grandmother scents). I also managed to refuse coffee at breakfast and buy a tea towel and a chocolate bar (separate transactions) without using any English. (I also bought cycling gloves but I used English for that)

Yesterday was for checking out the big shops - I liked the foodhall/supermarket down in the basement.

This food hall is amazing - every time you think you have explored the whole thing you find another section. The counter to the left - 'ost' means cheese. this is by no means the only cheese display in the shop. To the right - one of those fresh bread & pastry selections.

Left - salmon. See the size of the knife handle? That gives you an idea about how big that piece of salmon is.

Reindeer meat selection to the right (they put out a set of antlers so you don't get confused and think you are buying beef).

When you buy something, they change gets handed to you if it is a note, but the coins come out of a machine. I bought a chocky bar here - but it didn't turn out to be very exotic - it was just like a mars bar.

Apart from the foods hall, there are floors of fashion (full of linen and other light soft materials but mainly in white & beige) and furniture - some of it is right out there) but I'll write about those another time.

After a day of wandering and dinner at the apartment, we went to a jazz club. The roof was hung with all manner of bits and pieces. I tried out aquavit, the Swedish spirit (it was not to my taste) and another variety of local pear cider (which was). It was strange walking out of a pub at 11pm at night and it was still light out!

Cycle Sunday

I tested out my new bike yesterday with a group bike ride. This required a big effort - it was the first real exercise since my teeth came out. The new bike is the cheapest geared bike that Dr M could find - so it is functional, but nowhere near as comfortable as my bike at home (which has mountain bike tires, front shocks and comfort handle grips) - particularly over the cobblestone streets! I did go looking for some cycle gloves over the weekend, but as every shop was shut for midsommar, I was out of luck. (It is weird to have a city shut down completely for 3 days - DJs & Myer can barely cope with being shut for one day at Christmas!)

We rode out of the city and (like the locals) enjoyed the beautiful day with a picnic. I have no idea where we were, but we were on a lawn area between a manor house (built in 1775) and the water.

We ate our picnic on the grass, had a relax, then headed into the manor house for a hot chocolate (wrong weather for it, but it went well with the cake).

The house was beautiful and one of the staff brought us a photo album which showed the house as it used to be - not much had changed!




The ride home was a real struggle! I ran out of puff, my legs gave up and my hands cramped up. All up we did about 33km, so it was a reasonable ride after such a long period of inactivity/convalescence! No bike riding today - I'm going to rest and buy some cycling gloves to make tomorrow's ride more comfortable.

Midsommar Munchies

Breakfast:
A Scandinavian breakfast is very different to what I'm used to. This is what I had yesterday:

Bread
The thing that looks like a slice of chocolate is dark rye bread. This is vastly different to previous rye breads I have tasted. It is soft and slightly sweet and very tasty. The breakfast buffet has about 8 types of breads each day, including hard breads, rolls and sliced bread. My favourite bread looks like a flattened crumpet (it doesn't taste like one though).

Sliced meats
This day I had ham (slinka). I could have had salami, or two other kinds of ham. There might have been turkey available.

Fruits & Vegetables
There's always some fruits - apple, orange, kiwi fruit, melon etc. You can have tomato and capsicum too.

Fish
Salmon is everywhere - there is some Gravad Lax on my plate (cured salmon, not smoked - tastes different)
Pickled fish is popular - this day I tried some tinned sprats (not to my liking). I could also have tried pickled herring, or onion herring.
The stuff that looks like smoosh is seafood mix - my favourite thing. I don't know what is in it apart from prawns & dill, but it is delish.

Cheese
Oh the cheese! At breakfast you get a selection of 4 types - this day I had some brie and some provost (chedder-like). I have never had so much variety of cheeses. (yesterday, across the entire day I would have had 6 types of cheese - the two mentioned above plus gorgonzola, motzerella, fetta & parmesan).

Cookies
yes - those things that look like cookies down the bottom right corner are cookies. It's breakfast dessert.

Drinks
I have had a freshly made berry smoothie each day. If I didn't want this, or the standard tea/coffee/juice, I could have a choice of about 5 different milks and drinking yoghurts (including soured milk - not ready to try this - yet!).

Also on offer - blend your own cereal (different grains with all the trimming to mix together), pickles, mustards, radishes, eggs, pastries, spreads, pate....

Snacks
The Svensk love their hotdogs. There are hotdog stands (grillen) everywhere. It's more about the sausage than the bun as you can see from the picture.

(in the backgound - delicious pear cider, could make you fall off your chair - very easy drinking and reasonably alcoholic)

Cakes and pastries are just as, if not more popular. Self serve is common (even to the point of sometimes you cut your own slice). This is the selection that we picked our Midsommar Eve afternoon tea from:

The cakes are all fabulous. There are a few traditional cakes that you see frequently, but each place always has something a bit new and different to the last. Chocolate, macaroons, berries, meringue, almonds, pistachios and apples all appear in cake displays. It is going to be very hard to return to regular cakeage after this.  Even the supermarkets have displays of fresh pastries - the smell is enough to make me dizzy it all smells so good. I had to send Dr M to get the bread when we were in there today - I couldn't trust myself to get close to the cabinet without selecting a few sticky, warm pastries.

Glad Midsommar (Happy Midsummer)!

Yesterday was Midsommar's Eve - the second biggest event in the Swedish calender (behind Christmas). Businesses, boats, vehicles and of course the Maypoles are decorated with green branches.

We (myself, Dr M, and 3 others here for the same reason we are) joined in with many other local people from Stockholm and visited "Skansen" - an open air museum. Skansen is part zoo, part parklands and part historic site representing a complete picture of Swedish culture, history and nature. We wandered around and saw a few native animals in the zoo:

This here is a moose. He & his wife just had two baby mooses. Most of the animals looked really hot and were lying down panting - the elks, the brown bears, the moose (as illustrated right) - while the wolverine, wolf & otter were hiding out in a cave or similar (and were not visible). In general, early afternoon in midsummer is not the best time to look at arctic animals. On the plus side, just about all of them had recently calved so there were lots of babies to look at.

Tougher animals who were out moving around included the reindeer (that's him on the left), the grey seals (who look quite different to the seals down our way of the world), the European bison and the lynx.

That reindeer is big - those antlers are huge! 

We didn't bother looking at the horses and goats, but I was excited to see a wild red squirrel hopping around - it was tiny, a bit smaller than I would have expected one to be.

We looked through some of the historic buildings (but not all 150 of them) and talked to some of the people dressed up in traditional garb. The locals were all over the park, seated where ever they could put out their picnic blanket. Many people carried their eskies on little carts (which later in the afternoon could be used to transport tired toddlers).

In the early afternoon we watched (and joined in) with the Maypole dancing. I had thought that it would be just a demonstration, but instead everyone joins in - a band plays, there is singing and a few people lead the dance - and whoever wants jumps in and joins the fun. It is literally on for young and old - even young adult/old teenage men/boys join in with the kids, the grandparents, and everyone else. Many people wore wreaths on their heads. The dances are fairly short and tell a simple story.

Dr M & I joined in for a few dances - we think (it was all in Swedish) we danced about sports (kicking balls, waving ice hockey sticks and high jumping), animals (cats, dogs and roosters), and one which we had no idea but had us running in circles, clapping and laughing (actually, we laughed all the time). We then watched other dances about pigs, little frogs, elephants, the days of the week, love dances and one about candy (maybe?). We joined back in for the last dance  which is to 'send' the maypole up and away for good fortune (in the tradition of this kind of thing, we had to do this three times before the dance leader decided that we had done it properly).

After this we headed home and attempted to find somewhere to eat some dinner. This is very difficult in Midsommar - nothing was open! Eventually we found an open restaurant - Japanese. We were presented in Swedish menus, so we had to figure out what was what with a double language barrier. We managed this well and had a delicious dinner - then home to bed. I stayed awake until about 10pm which was not bad for my jetlagged state with a very active day!

Waking up in Stockholm

First morning. Early start due to mild jet lag (5.30am - not so bad, some people get up at that time normally - just not me). I've been out for a stroll around Gamla Stan (Old Town) where our apartment is located. It is the oldest past and the most touristy part of Stockholm - which means lots of tourists, tourist prices, but also lots to look at. This morning it is almost deserted - it is a public holiday for Midsummer - and even tourist places and bakeries don't open today.

Stockholm is part of an archipelago - Gamla Stan is one island. This photo is looking south east towards the island of Sodermalm (at about 6am in the morning). The water is flat here - that's just a little bend put in from panoramicing my photos.

The deserted streets of Gamla Stan. This is the widest street! All street and lane are surfaced in old cobblestones (which you become very aware of when you hear a wheeled suitcase being dragged down the street), the shops are your usual mix of what you would find in any tourist type place - but filled with viking helmets, dala horses, pippi longstocking dolls and traditional Swedish sweets. You could find just about any kind of cuisine here - tapas bars, mexican, thai, chinese, italian... it's all here. We feasted last night at two of Michael's favorite places that he has found so far - a vegetarian buffet place followed by a hot chocolate in one of the chocolate cafes (both very good). Shortly we are going to breakfast in the hotel - it doesn't start until 8am (which seems very late to my stomach as dinner was at 5pm yesterday). This afternoon we are headed out to experience Midsummers Eve.

Hej Sverige (Hello Sweden)!

I have arrived!

The flight from Bangkok went well - I managed a reasonable amount of sleep (due largely to my surprise upgrade to first class which meant that I had a lie flat seat). It was an older plane, so it wasn't very flash first class (ie no entertainment on demand - how old fashioned!) but as I just wanted to sleep having a chair upgrade was fantastic, as was having an empty seat next to me (it felt very private). Don't ask me the trick to getting first class, it just happened - I didn't do or say anything. It's just my lucky week - first the meat tray win and then the upgrade! I should go and see if I can buy a Swedish lottery ticket.

I am very tired now. We have been walking around town a bit with me just trying to stay awake as long as possible. It all feels very unreal - it is unlike anything I have ever seen before. From what I have seen, I think I am going to like it a lot. And not just because you can't go 5m without running into an icecream vendor, chocolate cafe or lolly shop.

I've already seen many amazing sights, but due to being too tired to hold the camera steady I am going to wait for another day before I go crazy with the pictures. One thing worth shooting today was some of these market stalls.



Strawberries for miles. There is a much heavier reliance on seasonal produce here - and right now, strawberries are in season - on these market stalls, a good 1/3 of the display area was taken up with strawberries - very good ones at that.I bought a giant punnet for my afternoon tea.