New Years in Stockholm!

When sitting around, twiddling my thumbs sometime in November, my friend (let's call her... Alpha) said, "Let's go somewhere for New Years?" and I responded, "Okay!"

And, somehow, we wound up in Sweden.

We let RyanAir pick where we went by means of setting a budget, and so we booked flights from Glasgow-Prestwick to Stockholm-Svaska for the holiday. From there on out, it was decided. For those of you who haven't had the luck to fly from Glasgow, the motto for the airport, as plastered in huge letters across the front of the building, is "Pure Dead Brilliant!" I understand it's a bit of a regional phrase, but I'm not really okay with the word 'dead' in the slogan for my choice of transportation, sorry. Regardless, we got out just fine, and arrived in the land of the Swedes unharmed. After a bus ride of 80 minutes, as the Stockholm airport we flew into isn't actually anywhere near Stockholm, we legged it to our hostel, Langholmen.


Now, when I say hostel, what comes to your mind? I was thinking something along the lines of what I'd encountered in Montreal-- rooms with lots of bunks, maybe a partially furnished kitchen, institutional bathrooms and cold showers. This one? Nothing like that. It's actually a converted prison, and it's the poshest place I've ever stayed as a young adult. The "cells" had two bunk beds apiece, televisions, a desk and wardrobe, and a private tiled bathroom with a nicer shower than I've ever encountered. No joke. It was beautiful.

Alpha and I met up with a friend of hers from her undergraduate days, Face, and Face's sister, Page. Introductions were made, and then we hit the streets in search of dinner... at 11:00 pm. After a vain search for a pub that still had the kitchen open and wandering all over the city center, we finally buckled and at at... I can hardly bring myself to say it... McDonalds. *shudders* It was wretched, but we were also starving. Even with that, I couldn't bring myself to finish the chicken sandwich that I'd ordered, and they'd drowned in a uniform inch-thick layer of yellow mayo. Deeply unfortunate. However, post-dinner we did a bit of pub-crawling and chatted, the girls catching up and myself occasionally learning a bit of lingo. The pick-up of the night was definitely 'to pash'-- it's equivalent to 'snogging' or 'making out' or 'eating face', but comes from the root 'passionately kissing' so it seems perhaps a bit less carnal, and I always thought that snogging sounded like something you did when you went fishing, I don't know why.

Day 2 was New Years Eve itself, and we visited Gamla Stan, the Old Town, and walked perhaps hundreds of impossibly narrow cobbled streets laid out like a spiderweb over the island.

When we started out, the street were totally deserted, but then we turned a corner and it was literally wall-to-wall people. Oh! and I almost forgot-- upon waking up that morning, Alpha and I stumbled upon the Sweden-Russia hockey game, but I only got to watch the second period. And just so you know, 'power play' is the same in any language. It was good times. Anyways, we saw the changing of the guard at the Royal Palace, which was complete with a marching band which played the appropriate sounding yet unfamiliar marches, a lovely rendition of their national anthem which the guards sang in incredible harmony, then an ABBA medley. Yes, ABBA... but, well-- when in Sweden...?

We lunched at a lovely little underground cafe, CafeArt, which lived entirely in a medieval cellar but sold sandwiches, foiccacia, wraps and really horrible hot chocolate which was more like tepid chocolate. However, my food was good and the ambiance amazing...

The old city of Stockholm, perhaps learning from incidents in Paris and London, outlawed construction with wood, and so the whole city was built of stone and brick. The massive cellars still exist and are havens for these little shops and restaurants. It was a tad chilly, but enjoyable. We wandered on, eventually leaving the island of Gamla Stan (all of Stockholm is a series of different islands all huddled together along the shore) and made for the shopping district. Down by the waterfront we stumbled on an open-air photo gallery which I'm sure would have made a lot more sense if we could read the textual bits, but they were all in Swedish. There was also a chronic shortage of handsome Swedish interpreters at our disposal, but we muddled through. The images seemed a tad random, but some were really beautiful and you knew they wer epoingant but you couldn't have said why... I was actually trying to take a picture of the waterfront, but the giant picture of the Governor of California snuck into the frame all the same. He was one of the random, not-so-poignant ones.

"Ah-nold endorses the city of Stockholm"

Eventually, after running out of other options for dining reservation-free on NYE, we got a table at a Pizza Hut. American-owned food that I ate in Sweden that I wouldn't have had in its native land: count 2. Regardless, it served the purpose and we high-tailed it back to the hostel to get suited and booted for the evening of clubbing and general debauchery.

We'd pre-booked tickets to a place called Le Roi. Somebody, I think it might have been Face, said that occasionally the young Swedish nobles had been spotted there... yeah, okay. We got there, got in after being eyed coldly in the que by a fleet of bouncers, and managed to get in at 11:45. Alpha bought the first round of drinks as Face checked our coats and then, "five, four, three, two, ONE!"

And so the New Year dawned.

The rest of the night was a tad downhill from there, to be honest. On the plus side, depending on your standpoint, it was easily 5 men to every girl in the club, and each of us, for various reasons and with various judgement, ended up pashing someone at sone point. Face, Page and myself all got picked up by Italians, who seemed to make up the majority of the crowd, and Face certainly won that race-- 'Davide' was apparently an architect/model, and had the business cards and chiseled looks to back it up. He also spoke very, very little english. But, as Face put it, "He didn't need to, we were speaking the language of lurve!" Alpha got a bit bent out of shape, as is her wont, when the American she pashed drifted away from her before she drifted away from him, and there was a small bout of tears. I attempted to remedy this by buying shots. Shots make me feel better, why wouldn't this work?? Eventually she did buck up and we wound up dancing with two germans who were either from Frankfurt or Hamburg, none of us can remember save for that it was one of the german cities that sounds like a food. Yeah, we're citizens of the world. It was at this point where Face handed Alpha a can of Carlsberg, and as soon as she cracked it, a female bouncer came up, grabbed me by the wrist, and threw both of us out of the club, screaming about how we'd not bought that can from the bar and where were out tickets (which they took at the door) and so on. Alpha puffed up her chest and said something, I don't know what, and then a GIANT man-bouncer stepped up and she stepped down. "But we don't have our coats!" I tried to reason, "Our friend, who is still in there, has the tickets in her purse." The lady-bouncer grabbed Alpha again by the wrist and escorted her back into the club to find Face and grab the coats, leaving me on the street, were I quickly made friends with an exceptionally tall, dark-haired Parisian who said I looked cold and decided the best way to remedy this was a posh... okay. Alpha came back with the coats, all of them, and in a high temper. Tall-dark-Parisian and his friend tried to reason with her, but she was of like a bolt for the underground, and I attempted to follow. One lass kiss and a well-meaning wish for a nice life, I left him and tried to follow Alpha, carrying Face's vintage fur coat in my arms and tottering along in the black heels where were previously pictured on here.

Now, the adventure really began.

I just missed the train she caught, so I sat down on the bench to await the next one. And was immediately joined by a man in a turban and full beard who kept telling me how much of a shame it was for him to be alone in his hotel room on New Years. He inched closer and closer until I couldn't laugh it off anymore, pretended to see someone in the crown, and bolted to the other side of the platform. I got on the very next arriving train, heading along the right track but in the opposite direction of the hostle. Oops. Once seated, I was found by a man who said he was from Ghana and kept touching my knees... Apparently the look on my face read in any language, and at the next stop a group of Greek youths pretended to know me and swept me away into a different part of the train. Unfortunately, my newfound friends weren't a whole lot better-- the one was apparently an auto mechanic and wanted to know if he'd be able to find work and how hard was it to get a visa? What is Boston like? Is New York a good place to live? Does it get cold in Miami or is it more like Greece? Another one kept stroking Face's coat and asking me how much I wanted for it. A third kept trying to run his fingers through my hair: not a good scene. Eventually I was able to tear myself away and bound off the train... and found myself back at Ostermalmgatan, where's I'd gotten on to escape creepy turban-man. Oh well, just await the next train, right? I flopped down and realized I was still a bit more than a bit tipsy.

I took a picture of the subway grafitti... those are caricatures of Einstein and Sartre in black spray paint on the walls of the underground... I love it.

I also realized that the sign was telling me that the next train would be through at 6:06, and it was only 4:05... I'd just gotten off the last train of the night. Damn... but maybe I could just stay on the bench, sober up, wait for the train to take me home... no, security was through two minutes later, telling me to get a bus or a cab, they didn't care, I just had to leave. I eventually made it up to the street and hailed a cab, but, you see my dear reader, Swedish is not my native tongue. I know I butchered the pronounciation the entire trip. But this particular episode, I went one better. The train station where I would have gotten off to walk the rest of the way to the hostel was called Hornstull. The hostel was Langholmen. When asking the cabbie for a ride, I said I needed to get to Langstull, and they looked at me like I was out of my mind. Apparently it doesn't exist, and they pulled up to the next group and took their money instead. On about the fourth try, I just said, "I need to get back to a hostle, it used to be a prison?" and the cabbie told me to get in. As my luck would have it, my cabbie was a displaced Iraqi refugee and called me out on my American accent immediately. He, for one, was in favor of getting rid of Saddam, and peppered me with questions about US Foreign Policy and the conflict in the Middle East and we sped along darkened streets and I felt the streetlights swim past in the river. He then told me the fare would be 500 kronars. For those of you playing the homegame, that is (according to current exchange rates) $77. I told him that I only had 220 kronars on me and that was all I had the possibility of getting, but if he would just take me as far as the money got me and then point me in the direction I should head, I'd appreciate it. Funny enough, he took the money but never dropped the hammer on the tab. I kept complimenting him on his driving and his english, which really wasn't all that broken, and he took a shine to me. Yes, I stroked the cabbie's ego and he actually took me to the right island. The problem came when he dropped me off at an unfamiliar bridge and I jumped out, thinking I knew where I was. After he pulled away, I wandered around a little bit, suddenly realizing that I had NO IDEA where I was, I had NO MONEY, no working cell phone, no pepper spray, no map, and no companion. I whimpered a bit and spun around in circles, trying to think of a plan when a friendly group of natives wandered down the sidewalk. After frantically explaining where I wanted to go, they pointed down the road to the left and told me to take that road to the end and I should recognize where I was. I told them I could have kissed them in my gratitude and ran down the street. Five minutes later, I was on familiar ground with tears of relief in my eyes. I walked up to the rooms, knocked on Face and Page's door and told Face I had her coat. She threw open the door and pulled me inside. Apparently, the two german boys Alpha and I had been dancing with at the very end had accompanied Face and Page back to their room, then proceeded to get sick, and so the girls had removed them down to the lounge, were they were currently wretching into the potted plants. I guess they'd turned up in Stockholm with nowhere to stay and had expected to hop into some girl's bed along the way. Not quite how it turned out. I related the tale of my quest to get back to the room, and they were both appalled that Alpha had bailed, but none of us were particularly surprised-- it's what she does. It seems like I'm destined to have friends to, when drunk, bail. And I guess I'm just supposed to be the sober chaser. I collapsed on my bunk, sans shoes but still in the dress, at 6:00 and passed out to Alpha's snores.

New Years Day I spent in bed. I didn't think my feet would ever be the same. The other girls were leaving that day, and had to check out by 11:00, so they came over and we all chatted about the night and compared notes and in general were hungover. The two took off, Alpha and I took turns hauling ourselves into the shower, and eventually went out to find food... eventually settling on another pizza place, but his one was at least family owned, and Alpha got a banana, curry and leek pizza... she said it was good and I did have a pleasant bite, but I stuck with cheese and onion. After a stretch of the legs and some fresh air, we walked back to the hostle and, despite our intentions of finishing off the copious amounts of yagermeister that we had left, we both fell asleep to a Billy Crystal/Robert DeNiro movie neither of us could remember the title of... yeah, we were uncommonly lame.

The last day we were there, the 2nd, Alpha and I checked out and decided that we needed at least a little bit of culture while we were there, so we trucked off to the nationalmuseum. Yes, all one word: nationalmuseum. There were a number of really interesting exhibits, but all the information and tags were in Swedish, so we saw a lot of really cool stuff but have no idea what it was. There was a huge wing devoted to really super-ornate urns and other decorative pottery. Someone had donated an absurd number of medieval russian holy icons to the museum recently, so those were all on display. There was a pop-art-esque exhibit which looked like they'd just pulled things out of the local Ikea. There was a large conglomerate sculpture-type-thing suspended from the ceiling and made mostly of lamps, and upon closer inspection several of the small lamps still had their Ikea price tags on them. I wasn't so much a fan, but the nationalmuseum more than made up for it with these:

Portrait of an Old Man and Portrait of an Old Woman by Rembrandt.

By Rembrandt. F-ing REMBRANDT. I sat down in the available chair and just gazed at them. I've always loved portraits of non-traditionally beautiful people. Pictures of the elderly, the poor, the dirty, the un-Roslin, if you will. And I've always been fond of Rembrandt in particular-- his use of dark light, of shadow in the wrinkles on the faces of his subjects, the dark backgrounds, the expressions in their eyes... I got a little choked up, just sitting there and looking at them.

I was actually quite surprised at how many of the piece in the museum I had been made to memorize for my HU 251 exams... and then to see them in person, to see the flow of the granite, the brush strokes... my education was totally inadequate. One of the portraits really did take me by surprise, and I said out loud: "George Washington? What are you doing in Sweden?"

Among the legions of amazing, beautiful paintings we saw, there was one that stood out for another reason... ridiculously inappropriate facial expressions on the subjects. It's called The Lamentation, I don't remember the name of the artist. Regardless, it's a fairly standard topic for a painting-- Christ has just been pulled down off the cross and is obviously dead with the look of agony still on his face. Supposedly his body is laid into the arms of his grieving followers, but look at their faces:

MAYBE youcould make a case for the floating face all the way to the right being passable, but the rest of them?? What the hell? The one in the dark clothing three in from the left looks like she's doing her best Billy Idol impression! It's insane!

And then there's this one, from the free exhibit on illustrations from Ovid... this one is of Perecles (or is it Percius?) turning his enemies to stone with the severed head of Medusa:

His facial expression clearly says, "Heeeeeeey, guys, duuuuuuhhhh, look what I got!" I like it. :) I'm also an ass. I don't think we were allowed to take pictures of any of these things, but I chanced it. I had to have something of those Rembrandt paintings, and I nabbed a handful of others, getting a bit bolder as I went. It was worth it.

After the museum we walked a bit more, got a hot chocolate, and headed back to the luggage room of the hostle to grab our bags. We arrived at the T-Centralen just a breath too late to catch the 7:00 bus back out to Svaska. There was quite the que of us, the fellow behind us a mix of Scot and Kiwi. The 7:20 bus arrived and filled, but there were still easily 30 people who were still in line. "We're sending for more buses," they said. Okay. But no buses showed up. I was getting a little anxious, seeing as I still had to check in at the airport (RyanAir won't let you check in online if you have a US Passport... EU Passports are fine, but not mine, oh no) and we had the last flight out of the night. As it was, the bus company hired a bunch of taxis, and we threw our bags into the first one to pull up in front of us, que be damned. As it was, we got to the airport in time, everything worked out, and despite a delay in takeoff for deicing, we were back tha through customs by 12:30... unfortunately, we still had to catch the shuttle to the carpark and drive back from Glasgow, but Alpha was a CHAMP. We got back at 4 am in the pouring freezing rain, and in the time it took me to walk from the car to my building I was soaked through. I looked up and muttered, "Thanks, Aberdeen, I missed you, too."

The end.