Stockholm: Art Cuts and Top Knots Over Easy

Do yourself a favor, right before an international flight, stop by an AT&T store and get some quickie help on switching data plans. Do yourself another favor. Put all the raspberries you couldn't eat that week into a zip loc bag and gamble with how long it takes before it leaks on you on the way to the airport. Oh, pre-trip bullshit, how we love you.

Anyway, I was pretty excited to abandon everything at home (⌘Q) and go on my trip.

We arrived at Stockholm in the morning, disoriented and groggy from back to back movies and no sleep on the flight over. (Manchester by the Sea, GRIM).

Our airbnb was in Södermalm (metro stop: Mariatorget) in a quiet, leafy, residential. Our host was a no nonsense older lady, she was headed out the door for Swedish Mother’s Day when we arrived. We were up on the 6th floor. Outside our kitchen window I spied people sun-bathing and a bored looking man chain smoking on his patio.

We couldn't have chosen a prettier time to visit Sweden. Everything was so verdant and there were flowers in bloom at every corner. Fragrant lilac trees, giant cherry blossoms, flowering trees of all kinds, really. I love tulips, and they were everywhere! Tall and bright, they lined pathways and were scattered throughout the city. The overall effect was so beautiful, made me really happy 😀

Dreamy

Mariatorget in Södermalm

😍

It took us a while to get used to the long summer days. It was great for traveling because we felt like we were on some sort of extended borrowed time, but it was maddening in the mornings when my eyes would just flutter open with the sunrise at 4am. The sun would eventually set around 10:30, but the light outside was like 6pm in CA. Even at midnight, it felt like dusk, the night sky never turned completely dark.

We spent all our late nights eating candy and watching trashy British reality tv (Geordie Shores, and Tatoo of Us).

Jokes on us

Mjölk

I'd been longing for Scandinavian yogurt since my last trip. I'd never had anything remotely close to it since and I've had to accept that I needed to stop looking for the holy grail of yogurt and just have it again at its point of origin.

The consistency is a lot thinner than the ones we have. Taste: clean and milky, slightly tart without all the cloying sweetness of artificial flavors, and an absence of gelatinous sheen. I think I prefer it because overall it's just more natural tasting and milder.

I was surprised (but it makes perfect sense!) to find that they come in pourable tetra cartons, instead of the traditional tub. I also tried out some of their skyr yogurts. Skyr is thicker and closer to Greek yogurt. They were all delicious and I was back in yogurt heaven.

Envious selection of Wasa crackers and crispbreads.

En route to the Vasa Museum

Serious lakrit action

There was a day we went to check out some hipstery outdoor market going on in Hornstull, (verdict: junk is junk is junk no matter where it's from) when we came across this guy selling thick ropes of licorice. Katee chose a sour watermelon rope...Brian went for it and got the one touted as the most saltiest one. It wasn't like the other black ones on the table, it was extremely matte, and had an unappetizing, grey-green cast to it. I took a bite of it, and immediately spit it out a la Ugly American. A shocking jolt of salt? acid? accosted the tip of my tongue. It was like biting into some rubber hosing that had been dragged around by a whale for a year. It was like gnawing on a scrap of wet suit...it was like...well no matter, because we all acquired a sick taste for it and Brian eventually ate the whole thing.

Salty licorice (salmiak) I learned later, comes from ammonium chloride, which gives it that astringent, tongue numbing salty taste. When you abandon the notion that it's candy, it starts to grow on you, strangely enough.

My favorite, the sour raspberry + licorice coins

We found this incredible licorice store that sold only licorice. Lakrits Roten. It was bourgie salmiak heaven. They had everything from sour, sweet, salty black licorice, soft, hard, brittle, chewy, logs, caramels...to licorice powers and extracts for cooking and baking. There were licorice potato chips (take a moment to wrap your head around that) licorice salt and pepper, most importantly the thing that made my eyes glow–SPRINKLES. I batted around a few of the packages and left store without buying anything because of sensory overload. I regret not purchasing some because I could have had some fun experimenting with licorice cupcakes or something.

Licorice katjes gaurding the door with the world's shortest red carpet

Pièce de résistance

Lest you think we went around only eating candy, we went to the Östermalms Saluhall and ate our first Toast Skaagen at the popular Lisa Elmqvist. Toast Skaggen, basically shrimp salad. Tiny coldwater prawns mixed with mayonnaise, gräddfil (a bit like soured cream) and some seasoning on triangles of toast, topped with a heap of roe. It was really light, fresh, with hints of dill. Just really delicious. I ate an awful lot of fish while I was in Stockholm.

An assortment of pickled herring at Pelikan

Delicious char at Nytorget 6

Still there's always room for the lewd looking French Hot Dogs. Brian started eating them on the streets to stave off hanger and incidently discovered, they are pretty damn good. I guess the reason why they're French, is because they're encased in a baguette. I don't know why the baguettes can't be an inch or two longer though...

Just the tip

Across the street from Drop Coffee, this strangely modern twist

Our airbnb was conveniently close to two places in Stockholm that I wanted to check out. Drop Coffee, and Sandqvist. Drop Coffee was really cute, and served up excellent capuccinos.

The Sandqvist store was really cool. They had a great selection of understated and nicely designed bags and backpacks for every occasion.

Wasted a lot of Katee's time in here as I hemmed and hawed

Cardamom roll from Mellqvist Kaffebar

Do you know the Grandpa Man? Annoying song set to the tune of Muffin Man, that haunted us all trip.

Muted colors of Stockhom–pistachio, ochre, cream and peach

Unlike the yogurt, the ice cream was t-h-i-c-k, son

Minimal fuss and ornamentation

I see stars

We went to the Nordiska Kompaniet department store, and Illums Bollighus (more on this magical place on the Copenhagen post) on our shopping day, and I got really excited about Copenhagen because we were getting a preview of what was ahead of us in terms of beautifully designed home goods, as a lot of of the brands were Danish. I bought a set of beautiful brass candlestick and tealight holders by Klong. It came with the option to buy a set of what could best be described as brass stars, to slip over the candles as added decor and perhaps to serve a function to catch dripping wax. It also came with an optional tiny glass vase in case you didn't want a tealight candle in the brass holder, and I'm so excited to set it up at home because it's so pretty. 

You have to admit IKEA has some good branding

It started to drizzle on our last day in Stockholm. We checked out the Vasa Museum. It was really awesome. The world's only preserved Viking ship from the 17th century...The sheer scale of the thing was impressive, and to know you were looking at a piece of history, that old, it was really incredible. God bless conservationists. It was still an ongoing work of painstaking detail and accuracy. Apparently the ship capsized on its maiden voyage and spent 300 so years in the sea until it was lifted out in the 60s over several years. Photographs don't do justice to the ship, it's one of those things that you just have to be there to fully understand how crazy it is. 

This was also the day I had a meltdown because I had left the house without an umbrella and eventually started getting soaked by the rain. I went from casually keeping an eye open for a drug store that sold a cheap plastic poncho to cover myself in (nowhere to be seen)--to desperately searching for a store that I could just buy an actual raincoat from (nowhere to be seen, only tasteful home decor stores)--to needing a towel, really. There's nothing more undignified than scurrying around in the rain sans umbrella, having to duck into random stores and being held hostage by any awning available to you, as you Super Mario Brother it across town as a sad, wet rat with limp bangs.

On a random note, I noticed that the cars in Stockhom were all normal sized. Usually when you go to Europe, the cars are all miniature, but Sweden kept it real with their full sized Volvos and Peugeots.

Hyggelig view from our windows. Made me wish I had a reading nook like this.

I had a different experience of Stockholm than I did back in 2012. Back then I was busy observing the culture as a bystander, delighting in the different aesthetics, and things that were so different to me (I barely registered all the bicycles this time around). Maybe it was the sense of familiarity or having had five years to appreciate certain things, I felt more present and able to enjoy the moments as they came.

On my first trip, I also recall feeling like Sweden was a bit quiet and dare I say, boring compared to Denmark, (the more mature older sibling to the fun and playful Copenhagen) but I left Stockholm with a different feeling. It's more quiet and understated, yes. Definitely takes the cake for Impossibly Cool––but it's not too cool for school and I left it with a renewed sense of curiousity and love.

Souvenirs:

Lots of black licorice

Stig Lindstrom Bersa plates

Klong candle holder

Sandqvist bags

Drop Coffee 

Next stop: Copenhagen!