Stockholm

Due to some cheap tickets and the suggestions of a few people who had been there, I decided to check out Stockholm this past weekend. I've never been anywhere in Scandinavia before, so I was excited to check it out. I was expecting bitter cold and wind and snow visiting there in February, but it was actually pretty mild with temps around freezing, not too much different than Amsterdam this time of year.

There were a couple things that really stood out about Stockholm. One was that it was freakin' expensive. Pretty much everything costs an outrageous amount of money, even a short one-way ride on the subway costs about $5. The second was the really varied architecture and coloring of the buildings.Some of them buildings reminded me of Vienna, some of Paris, some of Amsterdam, and some were pretty unique... really all over the map. But it was really cool to see all the variety.

The concerthouse - or Konserthuset - with market in front, otherwise known as the blue one

Jakobs Kyrka (Jacob's Church), otherwise known as the red one

Katarina Kyrka, otherwise known as the yellow one

Street in Gamla Stan, the old city center

Square in Gamla Stan - more crazy colored houses

no clue what this is, but it looked cool...

Cool view of Sodermalm, the southern part of the city, over the frozen river

There's also a ton of museums in Stockholm. I didn't have time to visit many, but I did check out the modern art museum (Moderna Museet) and the architecture museum (Arkitekturmuseet). They had a pretty good collection with some Picasso and Dali and obviously quite a few Swedish artists.

some funky sculptures outside the Moderna Museet

While wandering around the city I also stumbled upon a few military ceremonies/marches, just like in Athens. I was actually taking a picture of the entrance of the Stockholm Palace when a bunch of guards marched right in the middle of my picture, whoops...

Swedish guard at the entrance

Glad I wasn't actually in the way of one of these guys, their knives looked sharp

On Saturday night I met up with Lauren, another BCGer (from Dallas) who's doing the same program as me but in Stockholm, and we went with some other folks to dinner and then out on the town. I got to try my fill of herring and cloudberries (actually a real thing and not something from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory believe it or not) to complement the Swedish meatballs I had for lunch. After dinner we went to a bar where one of the Bulgarian girls knew the bartender, who was also Bulgarian. He played some old school DMB while we were there - I'm not sure if it was because he liked it or because he thought the Americans would like it, but whatever. After that we checked out the Stureplan area (apparently Stockholm's much downsized version of Times Square) where lots of clubs and bars are, before calling it a night.

mmmm, elk meatballs

Stureplan, the poor, homeless, very destitute man's Times Square (it was still very cool though) during the day

Besides meeting a BCGer from Dallas and some others who went to school in the States, I also met a couple Harvard Med School guys at breakfast in the hotel - small world...

All in all, another good weekend in the books. Glad I got to visit Scandinavia while I was over here and check out what Stockholm had to offer. Now it's time to nap so I can watch the Super Bowl (starting at 1am over here). It's gonna be a tired Monday this week...