A Day in Stockholm

We managed to meet up minutes before our train left for Stockholm and 40 minutes later, there we were.  In Stockholm.  We went first to an English tour of the city hall.  In many European cities, the city hall is a beautiful building because it shows the strength and beauty of the city.  Stockholm’s is no exception.  We hadn’t visited it when we were there as a family, but it was great.  It was built in the 1920s to resemble an old building.  One hallway, in fact, has old wooden floors that were meant to be creaky.  The architect went and looked at the remains of the old 15^th century castle (it had burnt down) and pictures of it and built the city hall to resemble it, so that there would be two castles, one on each side of the water (though the new castle does not look like a castle).  The first room we went into is the Blue Hall.  It is the hall that they use for the Nobel Prize dinner for 1300 guests.  It was made with specially-made bricks, each brick weighing 7 kilos (over 15 pounds) and they had to be carried up the hill from the boat that brought them.  The floor is blue to resemble the water and it was supposed to be an open-ceilinged courtyard, but that is not practical in Sweden, so they had to put a ceiling in.   Then into many rooms including a small round one designed for a French tapestry with multiple panels.  Then the city council meeting chambers.  The desks are arranged in three rows in a semicircle.  The left-wing members are on the left side from the “people’s point of view” (instead of from the chairman’s point of view) and the right wing on the right side with the moderates in the middle.  The candidates of each that received the most votes are seated at the front.  The chairman originally had been situated on the floor in the center (symbolically not raised above everyone else), but no one could hear or see him, so they put a ledge above him to bounce his voice and put him on a raised platform so that they could see him (the council seats are all flat on the floor, not in raised steps).  There are galleries for both public and special guests.  The meetings are always open.  Many times the council members will bring their children because they all have other jobs and in between work and a city council meeting is the only time they get to see them.  The city council room has a vaulted ceiling that was originally meant to be flat, but the architect liked the look of the celing beams so they painted them.  He also thought that they looked like the bottom of a ship and back in Viking times, at night, the smaller ships might be brought on land and turned over for the leaders to meet underneath them (like the city council).  Then, reminiscent of the old Viking meeting halls where there were holes in the ceiling for the smoke to go out, they painted the flat parts of the ceiling between the beams with dark blue paint and stars to look like the night sky. One hall, designed for one long table the length of the hall (thus cutting off the need for a head table), had windows on one side that led out to the balcony above the Blue Hall).  The other side only looked onto another building so they decided to paint a mural on the wall of the wall view.  Prince Erik had volunteered his services to paint, so he got the job.  The Gold Hall was all done in mosaic, mostly gold (22 carat) tiles.  The craftsman told the architect it would take about 10 years and the architect said that it needed to be completed in one year for the grand opening.  So the architect went to the factory in Europe that was making the tiles and laid them out, then glued them in one meter sections, then rolled up each section.  He brought them back, then had a huge team put them all up, even eating and sleeping there to get it done.  One small problem was when the artist had forgotten about the marble benches on one end of the hall which caused the tiles to go up too high and cut off the head of the king.  Oooops.  (As a side note, that king was beheaded at a later date).  When they were making the stairs of the blue room, they were worried about women walking down them in high heels and people being nervous being watched as they walked down the stairs, so one of the team was a woman and put on high heels to walk down sample stairs of different dimensions to see which worked better.  And they put a star on the wall opposite the stairs for the people to look at so that they wouldn’t get nervous seeing people staring at them, but still allowing them to be seen and televised.  Great building!

Then, after fika, we split up into groups for walking and shopping in the Old Town (Gamla Stan) and in Stockholm before meeting at the performance hall by the Haymarket to go to lunch.  After lunch, we split up again to go to different museums.  I went to the Prince Eugene museum (yes, the same one that painted the mural).  After walking back to the tram, Karin (a Swedish host) and Carly (who was staying with Karin in Stockholm) and I got off at at a central tram stop and, after I assured them that I could find the train station all by myself if they would call Gunnar to tell him when to pick me up at the train station in Uppsala, I walked to the train station (only one or two miles away.  I had a ticket for the 4:14 train, but Gunnar had paid extra so that I could change the time because we weren’t sure what time we were heading back.  But (you knew there was a but), I found out at 5:00 when I went to change my ticket (which, by the way, was never asked for) that the time of the ticket needs to be changed prior to the time of the ticket (which the machine did not say).  So I needed to buy a new ticket!  Arrrrrgh. 

This is Lars and I with a tomte.

This is part of our group in the most narrow street in Stockholm. 

Oh, fika needs to be briefly explained.  It is a very important part of Swedish life.  Fika is a time to take a break and share time away from work and responsibilities with friends, family, colleagues, etc.  It is usually strong coffee (or tea) and pastry.  The only reason the Swedish are so fit is because they work all of those calories away by walking and exercising—sometimes multiple times a day.  Articles, books, and you tube videos can be found about fika.  Even children celebrate fika with milk, juice, or hot chocolate.  Fika is usually about every two hours (including after each meal).  

Tomorrow are more school visits and a meal that we Americans put on to thank our Swedish Hosts.  We all make a different dish.  I am bringing a green salad, so I will have time tomorrow to wash and cut the vegetables prior to the party.  Our planned activities will be charades of ABBA songs and Minnesota trivia.  (They weren’t my ideas!)