Tag Archives: Stockholm

Jun24

A ferry ride to Finland

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Friday and Saturday, 31-May-2024 and 01-June-2024


I left May, and entered June, on my first cruise.


True story – going on a cruise has never been a goal of mine. I can see the attraction, logically, but they just don’t quite do it for me for one reason or another. Both “one reason” and “another” generally being the fact that I get seasick, and don’t like being stuck in one area without the option to just kinda wander off like a weirdo. I mean, I guess technically I COULD wander off like a weirdo on a cruise ship… but chucking myself overboard doesn’t feel like a good career advancement move.

All of which is to say – My first cruise was one of necessity.

When I first planned this trip across Europe, I used the Eurail map to chart my general course. A map showing a connection between Stockholm and Helsinki. I, obviously incorrectly in retrospect, assumed that meant a train. Why I thought a train could go across the Baltic Sea, I couldn’t say. I trusted the Eurail Map, and didn’t think more of it.

When I went to book the tickets, the Eurail system noted that there was no connection via Eurail, but that I could book an overnight cruise instead… for a significant fee on top of my Eurail pass, of course. Without diving into my frustrations with the Eurail system, suffice it to say that I found myself unexpectedly booking a cruise.



That’s a bit of backstory.

For the cruise itself, it went simply and cleanly. I scouted out the terminal the day before, checked with the docents about how boarding would go, and then arrived the day of departure. I left my bags in a locker, explored Stockholm one last time (Ed Note: This is Ben was at the Nobel Prize Museum!) and then arrived back about 30min before boarding. I had learned that, while the ships listed departure was 4:30, boarding actually began around 1:30, and was a sort of “at your leisure” anytime until 4:10. I arrived, grabbed my bags out of the locker, boarded through security, and was happily ensconced in my room by 2:30… with, of course, a good dosage of 24-hour Dramamine in my system.


From there, I explored a cruise ship for the first time in my life. It was… eerily similar to exploring a new town – I wandered through the decks, looked at restaurants and shops, saw empty dancefloors and casinos, and finally found myself a seat on the top deck in the sun. I edited some photos, relaxed, and soon enough the ship was on its way to Helsinki.




This was an overnight cruise, which meant I had a lovely cabin about halfway up the ship, with a nice view and a “cozy” bed. To be frank, it was tiny… but then again, it was more luxurious than I was expecting, and far nicer than anything on an equivalent overnight train.

It also meant that I’d be having two meals aboard – a buffet dinner, and a table-service breakfast. Both of which ended up being absolutely excellent! The buffet dinner was my first exposure to pickled herring, which I absolutely (and unexpectedly) adore! The buffet dinner was also my (not first) exposure to all-you-can-pour wine… which I sampled very sparingly, to avoid seasickness. The combination of wine and good food did set me pretty well sleepy, though, which I took full advantage of to sleep quite a bit earlier than normal as a way to limit the risk of any vertigo.


I slept well… surprisingly well, for how bad my motion sickness had been on the train from Oslo to Stockholm. The Dramamine was doing its job, I guess, and I was able to get a good 10hours of sleep … just enough to give me time to shower, wander the top deck and enjoy the sun, and then make it back belowdecks in time for breakfast.



Which was, similarly to the dinner buffet, excellent. And, thankfully, well-received by my stomach… so well that I was able to get some more time editing the last of my Sweden pictures! I enjoyed the sun, took some photos of the islands passing by as we entered Helsinki Harbor, and before I knew it I found myself walking back down the gangway into Finland!

Jun23

The Nobel Prize Museum

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Friday, 31-May-2024


On my last day in Stockholm, I went to the first museum that I saw when I originally opened Google Maps to look at Stockholm.

I’d actually picked my apartment because of how close it was to the Nobel Prize Museum – Maps showed the museum front and center, and it just seemed like such a cool place to center my adventures on that I didn’t think twice.

For one reason or another, though, it fell off the priority list once I was in Stockholm. It’s not like I went, and it didn’t look interesting… I mean, I think I walked past it once or twice? For some reason that I couldn’t say, it just didn’t excite me as much as the art museum, the Vasa, or the Djurgården did.

Maybe it’s that the Nobel Prize has been… tainted a bit in recent years, thanks to some high-profile Peace Price recipients taking the prize and immediately starting in on their own murdering spree… but whatever the reason, I found myself on my last morning in town having never stepped foot into the museum.

I also found myself, on my last morning in town, with almost three hours extra.

Hmm.



I took those three hours, and checked out the museum.


It was smaller than I expected, firstly – but absolutely PACKED with memorabilia and informational placards (<sigh> my favorite…). There were test sets, beakers, pens and pipes. Clothing, animatronic figures, and suitcases from refugees. Each recipient is asked to donate some interesting object, ideally connected to their prize, to the museum… and the width and breadth of donations was simply jawdropping.

I wandered, took a tour, and even heard a discussion about why the committee has declined to take away prizes after they’ve been awarded. It makes sense; it was something I’d heard before, of course, but hearing it in the museum was a nice addition to the tour – it’s a challenging situation, and hearing them address it front-and-center was appreciated.

Alongside, the history of the prize was a neat thing to learn about – I knew it was founded privately by Alfred Nobel, of course, and that the fortune that powered it was based on the invention of dynamite, but learning the details was really neat. Specifically that explosives weren’t rare at all prior to Dynamite – what Nobel invented was, instead, a way to store and detonate them safely and consistently.

Prior to Nobel, people would just kinda… set up nitroglycerine, and then it’d explode at some point. Probably vaguely when they wanted it to, even! Nobel’s detonator allowed them to trigger the explosion specifically when they wanted to – reducing the number of accidental deaths significantly. Then, Dynamite itself, allowed the Nitroglycerine to be transported safely with significantly less fear of randomly exploding in the train or carriage because you hit a bump. Which, for me at least, would be a really big advantage.

So… good museum. I’m very glad I made time for it, in the end!




As an aside, specifically to the voracious readers among my readers, I got a new book to read out of this! Klara and the Sun, written by a Nobel Literature Prize recipient, seems really interesting… and I’m definitely excited to dive into it! Mainly because it sounds neat and pertinent to the contemporary explosion of AI, but also because the Animatronic sculpture in the museum was really neat.

Jun22

A Viking dinner at Aifur

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A Viking dinner at Aifur

Thursday, 30-May-2024


While wandering around Gamla Stan, the old-city part of Stockholm, one comes across quite a few tourist destinations. Souvenir shops, tours, events, everything is calling your name (primarily your wallet). I avoided most of them, as a general rule – stopping into some shops to buy interesting postcards, or into a particularly appealing looking cafe when hunger starts gnawing at me.

I have an interesting relationship with Tourist Restaurants. On the one hand, I don’t like “tourist” things… in general, I prefer seeing a bit more of the truly native experience of a city. That being said, I also want to experience the traditional culture of a city. And, as I learned in Greenland, most “native” restaurants don’t really serve traditional food, since people would normally just cook that for themselves at home.

Connected to that… I am, at the end of the day, a tourist. I am touring. Sometimes the best way to see the traditional culture of a place is, simply, to be a tourist.


Aifur is an example of me diving into my role as a tourist head-first, full power.

It’s a tourist destination, no two ways about it. In the center of Gamla Stan, with big signs hawking a “Viking Experience”, and a wait-list at least a day long, it’s absolutely targeted toward people who don’t live in Stockholm.



And you know what? That’s great, and I had a blast!

I was announced as a I walked in, and sat at a table with two whole people who spoke English, out of maybe 8 or 10 total. We communicated out best, shared a bottle of mead, and took silly pictures with a Viking helmet, sword, and axe. I ate Pike, which I don’t think I’ve ever had, and devoured a glorious berry tart. I learned the correct way to pronounce “Wieliczka”, a place I’ll be visiting in Poland, and failed miserably at pronouncing many other Polish words.

It was ridiculous, silly, delicious, and fun. In my mind, a good tourist experience!