When you arrive somewhere late at night after travelling all day, who really cares what the place looks like. As long as there is a bed and I can make a cup of tea, I don’t care where I am. In the morning, however, I get a bit fussier. Waking up in Stockholm on the first morning was a rather drawn out affair owing to the bells which insist on ringing every fifteen minutes (did I mention that already? 62 times?) and the daycare. But once I was up and could take a good look around the apartment, I fell in love with its funky charm.
My bed. The duvet is a huge sheepskin. Big sheep they have here…
Love this spice cabinet with little glass drawers…haven’t seen this at IKEA.
Freezer on the bottom, Fridge in the middle, and Vodka up top!
The view out the kitchen window across the courtyard.
Looking down into the courtyard. I can’t believe I took this picture. Some of you may recall I have a bit of a fear of heights. So even looking out from the 3rd floor I feel like I’m going to toss myself over the edge.I did envision myself bleeding on the flagstones, and I did have to stretch my arm out and take the picture without knowing what I was taking a picture of, but I still did it! I will not, however, let Zoe go anywhere near the windows, even though the sill is a foot thick, without snapping at her to Stay Back! and Be Careful! and Don’t Hurl Yourself out the Window! like she was going to but won’t now that I have told her not to. She just sighs and Jacob tells me to settle down.
The window sill.
How about this for a fireplace! I can’t imagine getting this up the stairs…
Scenes from the kitchen.
This is the washer, which, like all washers over here, takes forever and a day to finish a cycle. What is going on in there? Just fill the thing up with water, swish it around for a while, drain rinse spin and let’s all move on. Civilisations could rise and fall while I’m waiting for my underwear to come out of the wash.
Anyway – this one doesn’t actually have a dryer in it, instead you must hang your clothes on the heated rack above the washer. So today it was 33 degrees in Stockholm, and as I don’t know how to turn this rack off, it is approximately 52 degrees in the bathroom. At least the clothes will dry quickly.
Once we were able to drag ourselves out the door, we went for a walk through the old town.
The daycare on our ‘street'. Such great toys for the kids – so those must have been screams of joy.
It didn’t take long for us to find the ice cream. Love this picture.
Or a fishing store, for that matter. This one was founded in 1862 or something like that. Jacob loved it.
Next was the most wonderfully bizarre store I have ever been in. The owner is obviously a collector, although one is hard pressed to determine exactly what he collects. One whole wall of the store was divided into little shelves, each shelf filled with some random article.
Did you need a couch? Book about Shirley Temple?
Then there was the huge box of eggcups…
And the Abba record…
Jacob preferred Bruce Springsteen.
We then happened upon a lovely little chocolate store (how do these things happen?)
Stanger, you ask? Yes, I answer!
I have not learned one single word of Swedish since I’ve been here and this is because EVERYONE here speaks impeccable English. Seriously they are better than most Canadians. And possibly better than the Welsh. In fact, the only Swedish I do know, I have learned from the Swedish Chef on the muppets and sounds something like “hurnch ty berndy boop de booby do, hurnch shmerndy bunder be do smork smork smork!” This is entirely phonetic, of course. If it was written in Swedish, there would be lots of those letters with lines through them and ‘sm’ and ‘ss’ and everything would end in ‘ham’ or ‘fenker’ or something like that.
Anyway. We spent the rest of the day on the hop-on hop-off bus which would, I am sure, have been much more interesting if we weren’t all falling asleep, and also stuck in a traffic jam in the burning heat. I wanted to hop-off alright. Right off the top deck of the bus and into the closest fountain would have been preferable.
I did, however, spend my time looking for Eric from True Blood but nothing yet. Disappointing, but there are many many people here who look a lot like Eric from True Blood and so that’s Ok too. Yep. Sure is fine.
I don’t even really remember the bells that night. Ok that’s not true. I did hear them once or twice. Or 62 times. But it was a good sleep.
Thanks for reading - more tomorrow.
Cheers,
Jane
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