IF THIS IS LIFE

You might think, looking at the photos I've just posted, what a lovely scene of a lazy Sunday afternoon in beautiful Stockholm. And then cold reality will hit you when I tell you that I shot both photos on a Tuesday, sometime around 2 or 3pm in the afternoon and you're going to think as I did, "Aaaah, how come the Swedes don't have to work?!".

I've no answer to that too. These were taken at Nytorget Square, the bohemian part of Sodermalm (I'm going to have to rave about it for at least a few more posts so bear with me). I was sitting for a good bit at a bench, the only Asian among the blue-eyed, golden haired crowd. Some people did look at me with interest, but the Swedes were just too nice and politically correct to stare.

A little girl with golden ringlets came skipping along a while later and sat down beside me. Her father had bought her an ice cream cone. She spoke no English. I spoke no Swedish. But the instant she sat down she turned to me with a big smile and pointed to her ice cream, and I didn't leave until she had waved and skipped away again.

JUST A FEW MORE

I promise, these are the last. Fjallgatan, taken on the same day.

THE GLASS CAFE

The Glass cafe is one of the few cafes in Fjallgatan, I think the name probably came about owing to its glass walls on 3 sides. It's a great place to sit, space out a little and enjoy the city view. I think I spent some time snap snapping away, and then some more feeling happy that I don't have to work, before eventually spending the rest of my time there mindlessly staring at the Star Cruise looking ships docked down at the waters below. 

In short a perfectly blissful day.

A BIT ABOUT FJALLGATAN

And so Sunday passed lazily without me uploading a single photo, ended up having waffles with my friends and playing with my cat, ha!

Anyway about Stockholm. It's an interesting place to be as it's actually a city of islands joined up by many many bridges. The islands naturally form different districts, and Soldermalm district or the Soder is easily one of my favourites. I liked it so much that I went back again the following week just to hang out (one of those HC-in-office days). There's such a nice vibe about the place, you get the SoFo stretch that is all bohemian and happening and yet there are also lots of peaceful quiet corners to be found.

If you walk along Folkungagatan, and turn round a corner, you'll find this long flight of wooden steps leading up to some kind of hilly looking area, and that's where you'll find Fjallgatan, a small old residential street with lots of cute-looking houses dating back to the 18th century. The streets were quite empty the first time I was there, so my ugly Singaporean instinct kicked in and I actually stuck my face into quite a few of the low-lying windows. 

Only later then I found out from a book that Swedish people actually enjoy letting people look into their beautiful homes. It must be sort of like those "I know your home looks nothing like mine, so go on look in and go green with envy" kind of thing.

AND WHAT HAPPENED WAS

For those who don't already know the story, HC and I hadn't planned on making this trip to Sweden.

He was suddenly told to fly to his head office and get some training done, and I wasn't going to let up on such a great opportunity (see free hotel lodging), so a few days after he left, I also packed up my bags and made the 13-hour trip to join him there.

I was pretty much on my own the first few days in Stockholm, wandering around the pretty cobblestone streets with my lonely planet and happily taking long hot chocolate breaks in between, reading or stoning while poor HC was cooped up in the office.

It was early summer where the sun didn't set until ten at night, but temperatures were still hovering between 9 to 15C at best, enough to make me shiver when the wind gets strong.

All in all we spent around 2 weeks there. A lot of friends kept asking why we didn't max out the time to hop over to Denmark or Finland. The truth is our idea of travel will probably drive most Singaporeans crazy. We would sleep late, wake up, talk briefly over breakfast (brunch?) the plan for the day, check out a place, maybe two, detour if something looks interesting, make scandalously frequent stops to sit, eat, drink or people-watch. We like spending time to get to know the train system, how people live and what makes them tick. In short, your exact antithesis of a 7-day 3-countries Chan Brothers tour.

In fact, Sweden was so big and there are still so many places we wanted to see that we're sure we'll find our way back there again someday.

Will spend sometime tomorrow to upload more photos. Til then.

THEY SAY VALKOMMEN

Hello!

I didn't want to scare anyone, least of all myself, but I shot 16 rolls during my 2 weeks in Sweden, so I'll be slowly uploading them along the way. Maybe add some captions here and there. I'm quite bad at keeping up with this blog thing, let's hope you're still here by the time I'm done. 

Välkommen, welcome!