Easter in Stockholm

Easter is taken very seriously in Norway. Pretty much everything is closed from the Wednesday before Palm Sunday and stay closed through that Monday. The streets in Oslo are completely deserted. Most Norwegians try to get out to the mountains for last minute skiing or travel to visit their families. The majority of Norway's population is rural, and the government has done a lot to help maintain a high quality of life for the rural residents.

Platform 15 at Oslo Central Station

Deciding that we are terrible planners and would likely not buy enough food to sustain ourselves, in addition to an intense lack of motivation to trek it over to the vinmonopolet, Meghan and I decided we'd take off for Sweden for the holiday.

Train tickets to other parts of Scandinavia are ridiculously cheap. We were able to get tickets to Stockholm on SJE for ~190SEK for both of us (that's like 170NOK, or around 35USD). It's six hours on the track and the scenery is really pretty. I will disclaim that I've been told numerous times that this train journey is no where near the most scenic in Norway, but that just makes me more excited to travel to the West.

Old Town Stockholm, Sweden

The border is nonexistent. There's a small mention from the conductor and that's about it. There's water everywhere up here, I had no idea. If only it had been a warmer March, we would have been treated to some gorgeous lake views and deep, green forests. But, as it is Scandinavia, it was still very white and bare.

Stockholm is markedly different than Oslo. The wealth of Sweden throughout the past centuries is immediately apparent. Its an opulent city and the first real European center I've visited. We got in at night and found our way through Old Town from Stockholm S. It was a great introduction to the city because at night the tourists leave and the locals come out to play.

The view from our boat room

We got a room at the Red Boat Hostel, a refurbished steamship docked in Riddarfjärden. Since travel was so cheap, we sprang for a private room, seaside with a view of City Hall. It was an amazing experience and around the same price as a room at the Radisson. Meghan found it online, and I'd definitely say it was a win.

We made it over to Skeppsholmen on Easter morning to see the Modern Art Museum. The museum had a pretty extensive and incredible collection - from Warhol to Matisse, cubism to surrealism to modern performance.

Meghan pissed that I'm taking her picture on the boat

The main curation was an exhibit showing the work of Hilma af Klint, a geometric predecessor of abstract art. I had never seen her work and it was pretty inspiring. I didn't quite understand or appreciate her early work, dealing mostly with obsessive perserverations on a 'seven pointed star' and some overly Christian interpretations of evolution. But, her later geometric work and scientific exploration (like the Atom series) were quite powerful and reminded me of later process artists like Sol LeWitt.

As a gloss, the Modern Art Museum is extremely well curated and hosts many lectures and tours of the galleries. Attached is the Architecture Museum, which is a tremendous disappointment and I would advise skipping its small showroom containing the history of architecture.

The Red Boat Hostel

Meghan saw her first Dali. My first was at the Art Institute in Chicago, and I can empathize with what an interesting, disturbing and powerful painter he was. We also got a glimpse at Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 (on loan from Philadelphia), which was very flat in texture and blurry. It was not at all what I had expected.

Statue in Karl Johan's Palace

We made our way back to Old Town and found what looked to be a little bar on the south side of the island. The security guard out front told us that it was a Viking bar that served traditional mead and Viking fare. The basement was over 400 years old and was charred black from open flame smoke. The staff and most of the patrons dressed in medieval garb - "like pirates," Meghan says - and they sang traditional Swedish music as they drank LOTS of mead.

These kids below were singing drinking songs whilst smashing beers. I caught a verse, but they had ten verses in total. All complete with some ridiculous action or catch phrase and all directed at getting very drunk. "Skål" means "cheers" essentially, the rest I may need some help from Swedish friends to understand.




Needless to say, we went to that bar more than once. All in all, a very enjoyable vacation. We ate Swedish meatballs in this little café behind the Opera house and walked around one of the oldest cities in the world. What more could I ask for?