Stockholm: A Tidy City

I am sitting here watching the Swedish Hockey team punish Latvia and thinking about my recent trip to Stockholm, Sweden. I also took a lot of pictures, and I feel the need to share them, so enjoy a little travelogue. This was a short Friday-Sunday getaway for the May 4th Holiday in Latvia. It was my first time in Sweden, and before I went, the only thing anyone would ever say about Sweden is, “it is expensive.”

From Riga to Stockholm

I am not a frequent traveler, or, I should say, not as frequent as some of my friends. People here in Latvia seem to just go wherever on a whim and it is no big deal. I grew up taking very few trips, and if we went, we drove. So airports are not instinctual for me. There is always a feeling of impending oppression and doom when I have to get on a plane.

However, this trip went more smoothly than any trip that I can remember. I give credit to Baiba who arranged for travel, and with her considerable experience, getting from place to place felt super easy. The Riga Airport is also one of the easiest airports that I have ever been to. It reminds me a bit of Eppley Airfield in Omaha because of its small size and simple layout.

We arrived in Stockholm and then had to find our way to the Arlanda Express which would take us quickly from the airport to the city center in less than 20 minutes. I love when cities make it easy to get to and from the airport.

Fika

I booked our lodging using booking.com (apparently Airbnb is no longer en vogue?). We stayed at a cute little hotel called the Birka near the center. The location was great, but if you stay there make sure to get a room on an upper floor. One big complaint is that the hotel has a certain smell, but we didn’t notice on the 3rd floor.

We walked to the hotel from the central station; it was only a few blocks away. This part of the city was bustling with tourists, shops, and restaurants. The main street to walk is Drottninggatan, which is closed to traffic making it a wonderful walkway with lots of places to go and things to do.

Baiba’s main goal on this trip was to have a wonderful Fika experience. Fika is basically this coffee break in the middle of the day when people stop working and worrying and just hang out with friends. A big part of it is pastries and sweets, and we were on a mission to find the best cardamom and cinnamon buns in the city. I just realized that I have never, ever said nor spelled CARDAMOM correctly until just now. Thank you Sweden!

Baiba actually researched the top Fika places in Stockholm, and on Saturday we made it our mission to walk around the city to end up at the perfect Fika spot at some point in the afternoon. We walked from one island to the next where we saw the Old Town where the government buildings are, and then across another bridge to the hipster part of town.

“If you can, do!”

Here, Baiba found our first coffee shop destination, but it was too early to eat, so we passed and decided to keep walking, hoping for Fika later. Which brings up a cardinal rule of travel for me: If you can, do. When you have the chance, take it. Do not pass up an opportunity because you just don’t know when it will come around again.

Obviously, this happens most often with bathrooms. I have learned to always use a bathroom when it is available because as soon as you head out into the world in a strange city, you have no idea when the next bathroom will appear. This is also true for food and shops. If you see something in a shop you like when traveling, buy it! If you think, “I will get it when I see it again,” you will never, ever see it again. And the same is true for food. If that ice cream looks good now, it is going to be a sad memory when you realize you could have had it but thought that you should wait for whatever reason. Vacation is about indulging and enjoying. You can put off the fun stuff when you go back to work, but when you are supposed to be savoring life, then do it. Don’t wait!

But we waited, and then Baiba found out that in Stockholm, everything closes at 3 p.m. on Saturday. That is a bit of an exaggeration, but most places were scheduled to close in the afternoon. This also goes for the one wine shop in the city which we never made it to. Don’t even get me started on Sweden’s overly strict liquor laws!

So we walked and walked until we finally found the Komet Cafe, almost by accident. Baiba ordered our perfect Fika, two coffees with a cinnamon and cardamom bun. I have to say that these were the best tasting baked good at a coffee shop that I have ever had. Maybe it was because we had been walking for several hours in the hot sun of Stockholm, but the crisp exterior with the moist, flaky crust combined with the sweet, spicy taste of cardamom and cinnamon was just divine. It was so amazing that I ordered a 3rd pasty, a rhubarb tart which was also complex and wonderful.

Stockholm Coffee… do better

This brings me to the most disappointing part of our little getaway, and that was the coffee situation. If you go to any coffee shop in Riga and order a “black coffee” or “melnu kafiju” you will get a freshly made cup of black coffee. In Sweden, despite the Komet Cafe’s incredible pastries, we were served brewed coffee from a carafe.

Baiba was so disappointed by the coffee, in fact, that we went to a second place, a chain restaurant to get another coffee. As he was making it, I asked, “Is it fresh?” and he replied, “Yes.” But it wasn’t. It was again served from a carafe.

Ask for Americano!

It wasn’t until Sunday that we finally ordered right and made sure that we got Americano, fresh espresso with hot water, in order to assure that we were getting freshly made coffee.

This is just a little learning lesson for those of you who don’t know. We had heard that Sweden was a great city for coffee, but in my opinion, Riga is better. I also like the more lax liquor laws of Latvian. Good luck finding off-sale booze anywhere in Sweden. Maybe that is why it is such a nice place to live… or maybe they are living in a nanny state. It’s hard to say.

Other Things in Stockholm

The whole trip was not only focused on Fika, of course. We saw shops and had some nice dinners. I tried Japanese whisky for the first time, and was very impressed.

We had supper at a Persian restaurant called Malakeh, which was very nice. The meat was some of the tenderest and tastiest that I have had, and the prices were not as dangerously expensive as we had been warned.

Our trip was capped off by an impromptu visit to a burlesque show at the Melt bar just up the stairs from our hotel. We had a little lunch across the street from the bar, and when we walked over to check it out, it was closed but one of the bartenders was outside smoking. He spoke with a perfect American accent and told us about the burlesque show, inviting us to come back when it opened. I asked where he was from and he said, “Wyoming,” and I told him I was from Nebraska to which he replied, “square state sisters!” making a square shape with his hands. I told him about the Nebraska panhandle, and he said it was close enough.

The show was like an open mic, but for strippers who performed 3-minute sets to a variety of songs. We shared a drink, and enjoyed an hour of entertainment before retiring back to our hotel for a night of peaceful sleep.

Sunday in Stockholm

The previous two days had blessed us with gloriously sunny, warm weather, but we awoke Sunday to rain. This was okay because we had done our sunset picnic in the park and enjoyed the rooftop bar when the weather was perfect. The only thing on our radar this day was the Viking museum. It isn’t actually the “Viking museum”, but rather the Swedish History Museum, and its main theme just happened to be Vikings.

The rain subsided allowing us to walk across town from the hotel to the museum with a stop for morning Fika along the way. We stopped at the beautiful Saturnus cafe where we had lovely cardamom and cinnamon buns with freshly brewed Americano coffee.

Then we finished our walk to the museum just as it started sprinkling. The museum itself was fairly impressive and led me down all kinds of roads about why we have forgotten our history. I kept thinking about all these viking artifacts that they dug up which were over a thousand years old. I thought, but the Swedish people today all come from the people of that time… why is it that no one has Viking swords or other artifacts in their homes? Why wasn’t any of this passed down? When did the Swedish people forget that they were Vikings only to rediscover it through archeology?

It made me think of the difference between Sweden and Latvia. How I don’t think Sweden has ever had a major upheaval or historical trauma like Latvia has. How some countries have developed over time relatively unscathed, while others have gone through a lot of scathing.

Who were the Vikings?

What were my Latvian ancestors doing during the time of the Vikings? Where did we all come from, and why was our history forgotten somewhere along the way?

With that said, I also would have liked more context for the treasures of the Vikings that were on display. Where did they come from? What did they use these things for? I was most impressed by Persian glass. To imagine Viking traders exchanging with Persian traders so long ago. It was mind-blowing.

After the museum, we had to get back to the central station for our Arlanda express train back to the airport. It had started raining, and so I made the executive decision to try public transportation. We walked to the nearest bus stop. I gave Baiba a rain jacket that had been in my backpack since my last trip to Boston. We found the bus and it took us straight to the station without any trouble. I love figuring out public transportation in new places. They took credit card payments, and I think it was 30 SEK (about 3 euros) for the both of us.

No SEKs in Sweden!

Don’t bother getting SEKs if you travel to Sweden, no one takes cash. I came home with just about as much cash as I brought.

The flight home was just as simple and easy as the flight there, and we even took Bus 22 back home from the Riga Airport. Public transportation really can make life easier.

Here are some photos from the trip

Side note:

I had brought along a hat which had been purchased in Berlin some years ago. It was weathered and a bit dirty, so I bought myself a new black ball cap. Baiba suggested that I say goodbye to the trusty German cap, and so I left it on the bus for some stranger to find. I hope it has found a good home or a quick death.