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.

Hi! London is no longer burning

  

So I’m sure you all heard about the four days of rioting in London where the world seemed to have gone a little mad, and 16,000 police were directed to the streets to contain a weird, mainly dysfunctional, under-organised populace from wanton acts of arson and violence and fairly direct acts of looting.

Other than being massively surreal, it didn’t really affect most of London in person. The media coverage was huge and the discourse and debate that it instigated was intense, interesting, mundane, and sometimes completely clueless, but on the whole it just seemed a real mess. The main thing that struck me (other than the fact that the rioters themselves didn’t know what they were rioting for) was how much finger pointing was going on, and how fast the blame game began. It was parent’s faults for not controlling kids, it was society’s fault for marketing/branding, it’s black culture, white culture, it’s people on the dole, it’s kids, it was the recession, it’s the government, it’s police, it’s about respect, money, power, boredom, control, it’s footballers’/celebrities/your mama’s fault. But it was EVERYONE. The judicial system is heaving with the number of people being sent to prison, but the figure show that there was not one certain group – black, white, rich, poor, employed, unemployed. The latest is it was London gangs. I don’t really feel like passing judgement because London doesn’t feel like anywhere else I’ve been in the world. Or maybe it feel’s like everywhere else I’ve been, all in one. The most affluent suburbs are bordered by council estates and desperate people. Employment isn’t exactly spirally upwards, and the government is cutting public spending ‘for the recession’ while a large portion of the population is still angry at last year’s MP spending fiasco, and the bank-bail outs.

I don’t think there was any excuse for the way people behaved. Over 170 police were injured, a few dozen civilians, and 5 people were killed. People lost their homes and livelihoods because a bunch of hooligans were bored.

I just need to point out that the picture of Beth was from our way home Monday night where we were trying to get a taxi, and driving through Camden I snapped some photos while we were waiting for the group of 14-20 year olds to be chased away by riot police. Beth went to the supermarket in Crouch End while I was at work the next day wearing a hoodie and got stopped by police! I guess people were really on edge.

I was never worried, but I could hear sirens all night and Tottenham is just round the corner. I meant to say something a while back but never quite got round to it! I actually wanted to do it after the second Athens’ post but I never managed to find my photos of all the police in Greece. Stay tuned for Venice (I promise) more Athens and Sweden when I get round to it! Long weekend coming up so maybe I’ll get some time :)

Revolt in peace and happiness!

Alex

London

So when we got back from our epic trip, my darling friend Sophia had arrived. She's been here for a month after teaching in a school in Thailand. We wandered around London and entertained couchsurfers. She did a London bus tour and saw all of the tourist sites that I am yet to see(!) and a Jack the Ripper Tour (in the area I live in) and generally made me feel like a bad London visitor! But a very good Londoner...

So I started thinking about all the things that I want to do, and associate London with, and should do while I'm here. TimeOut is a GREAT place to start, because they have a list! I use TimeOut to find out about gigs and restaurants mainly, but it is my favourite London resource. So, while I don't want to do all 101 Things to do in London - Ultimate Guide; I am very willing to get through a fair bit.

I took a long weekend for Sophie's final days here which instigated the making of this The-Tourist-Things-In-London-I-Should-Do.

Museums, Galleries and Exhibits

• British Museum – this might take a day, and it has most of the Acropolis and other countries historical artefacts in, but still amazing things too see.
• British Library
• Charles Dickens Museum – CHARLES DICKENS!
• London's secret galleries – I think I like the idea of this mainly 
• The Tate Britain and Tate Modern  - The Tate modern is my favouritist EVER. Well, maybe not ever, but it is insanely cool on a Friday night when no one is there. (I’m so cool, that’s how I spend MY Friday nights…)
• Natural History Museum – This has real life dinosaur bones.
• Grant Museum of Zoology
• Pollock's Toy Museum – This looks creepy because of all the dolls.
• Saatchi Gallery – Enuff said.
• London's public sculptures – Another Time Out thing
• Wellcome Collection
• London Dungeon – I went to this with Sophie. I think you need to be less hungover than we to fully appreciate this. And possibly less sober.

Historical Places

• Tower of London – I pass this everyday without thinking ‘there is a castle with a moat in the middle of the city, and it holds the crown jewels.’
• Buckingham Palace and the Changing of the Guards
• Royal Observatory – so cool! I haven’t been in but it’s in Greenwich which is looooovely, and I like observatories a lot, so will do this at some point.
• Shakespeare's Globe Theatre
• Big Ben and Westminster

Markets and locals

• Camden Market – famous.
• Greenwich – the whole area is pretty, and park filled, and doesn’t feel like London, and has a market with awesome food.
• Portobello Market – LOVE! Huge, amazing food, antiques, and vintage clothes to spend hours trying on. Almost made me want to live in West London. Maybe when I’m rich.
• Regent's Canal
• London Zoo
• London City Farms – there are farms in London. This is only slightly less weird than the fact that there is a castle in the middle.
• Hampstead Heath and the Lidos – outdoor pools!
• Hyde Park
• Columbia Road Flower Market – my Sunday local.

Other

• Cabaret – I get sent an email from Time Out about cabaret all the time. So I guess this is something I should do.
• Barclay's Bikes – London has this great automated bike hire scheme where you borrow a bike from the side of the road and take it to the next parking spot to drop it off, and it it free for 30 mins, and some amount of money for after.
• Go to the West End to see a musical
• London Eye
• Eat Brick Lane Bagels, Bad British fish and chips, drink pints of warm beer and eat jellied eels from Tubby Isaacs little street cart.
• Have the best Indian meals EVER! Or Pakistani, because Tayyabs rocks my world.

Some of these I may not do, cause I don’t actually care that much about the changing of the guard, or Big Ben, and I really don’t want to eat a jellied eel. Some of these things I do on a regular basis anyway (the other food-related goods, the markets, walking the canal, and others I’ve been there, done that, but figure I’ll make a good big list for all of you who decide to visit me!)