Sweden
A few random travel notes:
- Sweden is astonishingly clean and litter-free. And Swedish street-sweepers are frighteningly efficient, making use of a sort of external rotating arm with extra cleaning brush.
- Besides being clean, the Stockholm tunnelbana (metro system) is light, bright, modern, and, yes, designed to within an inch of its life. Many stations are individually designed by artists.
- Marinated herring: tasty, tasty fish. Pale pinkish brown in colour; fresh, sweet and light in taste.
- Skansen: you have to go. It's a 19th-century open air museum that's a temple to folk culture, and also now includes a zoo with a significant conservation programme (elk! grey owls! European bison! ). Original wooden buildings were brought from all over the country and positioned in order to illustrate key aspects of traditional agriculture, craft traditions, and rural life. I don't think it diminishes the place to say it feels a bit like the quaintest, most 'tasteful' theme park ever. In a lovely wooded setting, with trees, hills, and views over the city's islands.
- Södermalm: funky neighbourhood south of central Stockholm, with interesting little shops, cafes, record stores, clubs, bars, street markets. Oh, the haircuts!
- Swedes are tall, neat, and groomed. This sort of enhances the first impression that they are all very good-looking. I'm not sure they are -- but they are very groomed, even in holiday mode.
- Water, water, everywhere. Enjoy a Nils Oscar beer before you get on the ferry.
- Bathroom break: the flush mechanism on Swedish WCs is usually activated by pulling the flush button (located on top of the cistern) up, rather than pressing it downwards. Maybe this is a Scandinavian thing? I haven't met it elsewhere.
- Perhaps it's politically incorrect to say this, but a lot of Swedish words remind me of German, at least in written form. Spoken Swedish though is a lot softer than German, with a distinctive rising and falling intonation, and with mid-word 'G' sounds that almost disappear or are reduced to quasi-glottal stops.
- The archipelago: I'd wanted to visit ever since watching Bergman's film 'Summer Interlude'. It is exactly like it is in the film: little wooden cabins, people cycling around in sandals and shorts on old-fashioned bikes, picking wild berries, swimming and sunning on (clean) rocks. The only downside was the midges - resistant even to my 'tropical strength' repellant spray. Long twilights followed by the reddest of red sunsets. I wanted to stay longer.