To take off from where I last
left you, some time ago.
I was about to return to Sweden via Paris to resume the travels proper. It was
discovered in Havana airport that the supposedly connecting ticket I was
supposed to have from Paris to Stockholm was actually a day later than it should
have been. This meant that I could not check in all the way through in Havana
and that there was going to be running around needed in Paris. When I arrived I
began explaining to the Air France people what the problem was and that their
employee had cocked up so they had to rectify it - unsurprisingly I was met with
the look of contempt that the French seem to take such pride in perfecting. The
argument continued and my method of counteracting their contemptuous expressions
was to explain to them the utter dislike I had for them, their country and
particularly Paris, and that I would not wish to spend more than the minimum
amount of time there before moving on to less hostile climbs. This strategy
seemed to pay off as my non-transferable ticket was finally transferred and I
boarded the plane back to Stockholm. When there I got the "sharp
implements" that I had been forced to leave off the plane and headed back
to the hostel I had previously stayed in, my warm weather clothes and a good
nights sleep.
Back in Stockholm I thought I should get to know a bit more about the Vikings,
and the most pressing of questions - were the horns on their heads or the
helmets? So off I went to the Nordic museum which I thought would tell me all I
wanted to know about the Norsemen, I was wrong. It turned out that the Nordic
museum housed exhibits on style through the ages with exhibits on shoes,
clothing and my favourite table settings through the ages. The closest I came to
learning anything about the actual people was a small display about the Sami or
Lappish people of the far north. Right then, if the Nordic museum wasn't going
to tell me obviously the National Museum would. Wrong again, the National Museum
actually turned out to be more of a gallery, housing some nice paintings by
European masters such as Monet and Van Dyck and what appeared to be part of an
IKEA showroom. These Swedes really need to try and get more to the point with
what they call things, I should have known though after all at MFI a bookcase
will be called 'bookcase' sometimes 'bookcase with mahogany veneer' or something
along those lines. At IKEA they call it Bert or something equally as useful, I
was learning don't trust names here.
After some intensive and misguided museuming it was time for recreation so with
a group from the hostel I was staying at we went to a Thai bar for some drinks
and then onto a bad club. Thankfully I had managed to get us all in cheaper than
should have been the case, with my bogus press card. The nights revelling led to
an uneventful next day and in the evening I met up with Mikko, my drinking
companion on the boat from Helsinki to Stockholm to resume unfinished drinking,
something we managed to do rather well, which meant that the next day was wasted
again. The following evening Magnus, a roommate at the hostel invited me to the
bar where he was working for a drink or two 'on the house' so off I went and it
turned out to be following a certain theme - good nights and very little day,
exacerbated by the early nights.
After quite a late night and far too much drink again (this time thankfully free
due to Magnus' bartending), Magnus and I made a determined effort to do
something, so off I went to the Royal Armouries. Unlike the other places, this
actually did seem to fit its name, however most of the exhibits weren't arms but
more a collection of Royal clothing carriages and other such paraphernalia. The
Swedish kings seem to have been either very poor but enthusiastic warriors or
very unlucky as on display are the clothes in which a whole succession of
Swedish kings were killed on the battlefield, complete with bullet holes and
blood stains. From the Armouries I went to the Swedish Parliament building for a
tour. The main chamber of the parliament looks like the boys from IKEA designed
it. There are only three things with any colour in the whole chamber, the
Swedish Flag, a board that displays how each of the MPs voted and a blue vase
that is for secret ballots, but has never been used. The guide proudly told us
how the huge picture that hangs behind the speakers chair contains over two
hundred shades of grey. I felt like asking why they made such a concerted effort
to make the room as dull as possible but couldn't think of a way of asking the
question without it sounding like the criticism it is so didn't bother. Some of
the older rooms were slightly more colourful but it wasn't somewhere one would
necessarily be artistically inspired. It was all becoming more and more clear.
The Swedes who are a generally pleasant people if not particularly gregarious
had done all in their power to become inoffensive. One can walk around Stockholm
without hearing more than a murmur from the crowds of people, nobody shouts. The
dogs don't bark, the Volvos and Saabs noiselessly glide past stopping
immediately if it appears that one is considering actually putting ones foot on
the tarmac. Even the bus drivers are polite and the buses lower on the kerbside
to make it easier for people to get on and off. Even the bouncers in the bars
and clubs were very polite. The whole thing has, in my opinion, an unhealthy
cleanliness and quietness to it. The most graphic example of how this sickly
inoffensiveness manifests itself is snus. Snus is a wet snuff that is
essentially a way that the Swedes have developed of getting their
tobacco/nicotine fix without any of the socially undesirable aspects such as
smoke or ash, it is all most bizarre.
Over the next couple of days in Stockholm I visited the Palace, including the
Crown Jewels exhibit, which was nice but doesn't really compare with those of
many other monarchies; The Antiques Museum, a collection of second century Roman
sculpture collected by the Royals during the eighteenth century; The Tre Kronor
museum which gives a background to the history of the palace itself and previous
castles etc. on the site; Finally to the State Apartments, most of which were
not open for view as they were being prepared for the Nobel Prize dinners on the
eleventh of December, it obviously takes some time to get the place settings
right. On show were the throne room and a couple of other rooms, pleasant but
somehow not particularly regal feeling - at least not to me.
My final intellectual excursion in Stockholm was to the History museum, a museum
about the history of Sweden. There were some great displays about all the stone
age, iron age, bronze age and Viking ages in Sweden but still did not mention
where the horns were attached. There were also some displays from the middle
ages, but these were almost entirely religious, so better viewed in a church.
The most interesting bit was a surprise though, I noticed an exhibit called
"Dialogues in the Dark" which turned out to be a guided tour through
various environments in pitch black. This was to give an appreciation of
sightlessness and the senses one has. It was quite interesting to see how one
can cope with being blind and I found myself surprisingly comfortable with the
whole thing, although that is easy to say when one knows it will only last about
an hour.
Feeling that I was done with Stockholm for the foreseeable future, I got a boat
to Estonia. The journey is seventeen hours overnight and gives the Swedes a
chance to do some cheap drinking and pick up cheap booze and cigs in Estonia.
The boat itself did not have the greatest range of facilities but it was
pleasant enough and after a bizarre show which involved people dressed up as
pigs dancing, a spoon dancer and various other dance numbers myself and some
locals managed to have a good time, once again drinking too much and generally
being sociable. This meant that I arrived in Tallinn, the capita of Estonia
without as much sleep as I would have liked and so after getting through
immigration into a cab and to my hostel I rectified that immediately.
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