Stockholm
Interesting place. All built on islands so there's water and air everywhere, but it's not so crowded together as Venice, the city's laid out with a sense of space, with wide streets and plenty of big parks. There's always green spaces and walks by the water nearby.
Rob and Hannah live in a one-bedroom flat about 10 ms drive from the centre. It's a second-floor flat in a low rise development on a kind of council estate, with the blocks set amongst gardens and clumps of slender birch trees, on a steep rise with views over the city on the wide flat coastal plain below. It's a really pleasant environment, shows that social housing doesn't have to be grim (apparently the majority of housing belongs to the state in Sweden but is adminsitered by private companies ...... kind of Scandinavian version of privatisation), rents are cheap and from what we saw the cost of living is no dearer than in BCN. Aidan was very impressed by the cheap PC games he bought, and the price of printers .......... also the quiet, orderly, spacious, unstressful city.
Our first sight of it was at midnight as we drove through on the way to Rob's: twilit sky with ribbons of salmon blushing behind rows of tall, narrow buildings striped with dark windows lining the waterfront. By 4 am a brilliant sun was shining again in the windswept sky, with shadows of birch leaves tossing about on the bedroom walls.
Hannah is the queen of the apartment, with her own room, PC, desk, aquarium, bed with curtains, piles of teddy bears, books, games etc. Rob dosses down on the sofa like a student every night. He's looking for a bigger place but it'll be hard for them I think with only one income. Hannah is very pale with freckles sprinkled over her nose and bright red lips, dark hair and eyes of such pale eggshell blue that you get a shock every time you look at them. Very determined little girl with a sudden, blatantly charming but genuine smile; gets on really well with Aidan I'm happy to say. Rob is as he was and will ever be: a solid chunk of the NY streets.
We went kayaking on the waterways between the houseboats, yachts and islands, biking on the city's parallel system of bike streets, walking round the streets of the old town (once you get off the main tourist drag it has a similar leafy, neglected atmosphere to the quieter parts of Montmartre), played frisbee in the park and watched a posse of balloons with baskets stuffed with passengers take off from a wide park not unlike Hampstead heath ........
One really excellent thing about the city was the absence of advertising in the streets. We saw only one big ad the whole time, the same one distributed at well-spaced-out points through the city, two pictures of naked women of about my age, one white and one black, suitably posed so as to offend nobody's sensibilities, with a line which said something about the beauty of older women. Only on the last day did I spot one which mentioned the product in question: Dove skin care creams. All tasteful and moderate in the extreme.
Which is the general impression you come away with: taste, moderation, orderly and thoughtful urban planning and arrangement of people's lives, absence of excess but also of character. The city has the air of a quiet provincial capital, UK superimposed on France, but without the dynamism of London,the grandeur (and hauteur) of Paris, or the frenetic bustle of Barcelona.
Rob and Hannah live in a one-bedroom flat about 10 ms drive from the centre. It's a second-floor flat in a low rise development on a kind of council estate, with the blocks set amongst gardens and clumps of slender birch trees, on a steep rise with views over the city on the wide flat coastal plain below. It's a really pleasant environment, shows that social housing doesn't have to be grim (apparently the majority of housing belongs to the state in Sweden but is adminsitered by private companies ...... kind of Scandinavian version of privatisation), rents are cheap and from what we saw the cost of living is no dearer than in BCN. Aidan was very impressed by the cheap PC games he bought, and the price of printers .......... also the quiet, orderly, spacious, unstressful city.
Our first sight of it was at midnight as we drove through on the way to Rob's: twilit sky with ribbons of salmon blushing behind rows of tall, narrow buildings striped with dark windows lining the waterfront. By 4 am a brilliant sun was shining again in the windswept sky, with shadows of birch leaves tossing about on the bedroom walls.
Hannah is the queen of the apartment, with her own room, PC, desk, aquarium, bed with curtains, piles of teddy bears, books, games etc. Rob dosses down on the sofa like a student every night. He's looking for a bigger place but it'll be hard for them I think with only one income. Hannah is very pale with freckles sprinkled over her nose and bright red lips, dark hair and eyes of such pale eggshell blue that you get a shock every time you look at them. Very determined little girl with a sudden, blatantly charming but genuine smile; gets on really well with Aidan I'm happy to say. Rob is as he was and will ever be: a solid chunk of the NY streets.
We went kayaking on the waterways between the houseboats, yachts and islands, biking on the city's parallel system of bike streets, walking round the streets of the old town (once you get off the main tourist drag it has a similar leafy, neglected atmosphere to the quieter parts of Montmartre), played frisbee in the park and watched a posse of balloons with baskets stuffed with passengers take off from a wide park not unlike Hampstead heath ........
One really excellent thing about the city was the absence of advertising in the streets. We saw only one big ad the whole time, the same one distributed at well-spaced-out points through the city, two pictures of naked women of about my age, one white and one black, suitably posed so as to offend nobody's sensibilities, with a line which said something about the beauty of older women. Only on the last day did I spot one which mentioned the product in question: Dove skin care creams. All tasteful and moderate in the extreme.
Which is the general impression you come away with: taste, moderation, orderly and thoughtful urban planning and arrangement of people's lives, absence of excess but also of character. The city has the air of a quiet provincial capital, UK superimposed on France, but without the dynamism of London,the grandeur (and hauteur) of Paris, or the frenetic bustle of Barcelona.