Stockholm Syndrome

I have to say that Sweden lived up to just about every stereotype that I expected. Everything is ultra modern (you return your used glass containers to a machine that automatically calculates your refund), the people are beautiful and really tall (this was a different experience for me), and they really love to follow rules (they even wait at crosswalks... I mean, who does that?). Overall, Stockholm is a beautiful city, I can't imagine how nice it is in the summertime. Everybody does in fact speak English, or at least everybody I encountered. And it was really really expensive. To ride the metro 3 stops down I paid $4.50. Needless to say I didn't take the metro that often, and when I did I didn't pay.

So there wasn't a whole lot of daylight and it rained just about every day but I suppose I managed to take a few decent pictures. And here they are.

A nice church in the middle of a cemetery.

A Christmas market downtown- a pretty happening place.

A central square with lots of lights.

A skating rink in the center of town.

I think this shot is pretty representative of what most of the city looks like.

Some nice architecture, not sure what this building is used for.

The Vasa Museet, which houses a 16th century war ship that sank in the harbour and was recovered a few decades ago, restored, and made the center piece of a museum. An extremely interesting and well designed museum.

I took this picture in a part of the museum because I thought it was pretty funny. As I am sure many of you don't know, Scandinavia (and Stockholm) is world famous for the quantity and style of death metal that it produces. When you see that they have a history like this, it makes sense that Swedish musicians are able to produce such brutal tunes.

I liked how the architecture just cuts through the sky, much more impressive in person.

Speaks for itself.

I went for a cold walk along the edge of island where the old town is situated and saw this.

A typical evening scene.

Here is a picture of my host Leif (in the center), and Hubert, a fellow traveller from France. The success of my trip was made possible by the former and further enhanced while wandering around with the latter. Cool guys no doubt, I hope our paths will cross again in the future.