Sweden: The Land of the Beautiful People

Sweden! Apparently every Swede is 6 foot tall, blonde and impeccably dressed. Can you imagine how Beth and I felt?

Like this. This was us the whole weekend.

For this months excursion I headed to the fair city of Stockholm to visit the darling Katie who has a paid internship at the hospital. And Beth came with me! We had a 6am Ryanair flight from Gatwick so did the sensible thing and didn’t go to sleep the night before.

    

So Stockholm is this incredibly beautiful, efficient, Scandinavian wonderland where there are lots of bikes and islands in fresh, salt and brackish water. Where the coffee is good, the people are happy and everything is SO FREAKING EXPENSIVE. Good golly Miss Molly. Food, transport, hostels, LIFE. Though apparently they earn a higher minimum wage, and if you live there you get all these amazing state perks like – free education! :o And you get to be Swedish, and eat fika everyday. (I’ve probably spelt that wrong but it’s pronounced fee-kah.) Just don’t expect to drink alcohol. Probably the driest weekend holiday I’ve ever had. But still lots of fun! Because look! Gay Pride was on! The Swedish are so cool and liberal and tolerant and open-minded. There were rainbow flags EVERYwhere.

 

We did a lot of walking, as per usual, and explored the old town of Gamla Stan, stayed on Sodermalm, drank lots of coffee, and went to this AWESOME photography gallery – Fotografiska. The weather wasn’t great, but we were determined to get out to the archipelego on a ferry and visit one of the 10,000 islands. We chose a bigger one with the intention of cycling/kayaking/swimming and siteseeing, but the weather was awful (much like London) and we ended up hiding in the cutest little cafe ever on one side of Waxholm where a huge table with every Swedish cake in the world was laid out. And free refills for your filter coffee. Mmmm. It actually reminded me of NZ a little, in terms of the wooden houses everywhere. Katie said that a lot of Swedes have a summer house, hence why Stockholm was so quiet. Everyone heads on holiday.

    

So in my mind, after our brief encounter with Stockholm and very little sleep – Sweden is now associated with rain, amazing photography, cute/practical/sailing-style knitwear, Katie O’Brien, awesome clubs where all the Swedish wear beautiful dresses and scummy old chucks, and islands with the potential for long hot summer days, swimming, cycling, fishing, sailing and other things we saw in brochures. :D

Oh, and H&M. There were five or six H&M stores within two minutes walk of one another. Really weird.