Foggy Stockholm

Saturday morning early we – almost all exchange students – left to Stockholm. The night before I’ve been dancing at a party at Kåren (the student union) which made it extra early.. but I was mentally prepared.

At the station I bought a Balder (a sandwich with the same name as my brother) as I didn’t had breadfast yet. Than the guides which would take us into the old part of the city came, almost excusing for the fog. When we started walking it was clear what she meant, you could hardly see any building which was further than 100m away :)

But this actually gave pretty nice views of the city. At some places it made me remember of Paris, for example this picture on the right, but also this square and this passage next to the train. Maybe all old cities look alike?

Often, we had to imagine the great view which we would have gotten if there hadn’t been such a heavy fog. But it also gave views for some great photo’s; such as the fairy tail castle on one of the bigger islands, also hosting a lot of museums; our own clothings collecting dew; and the photo below near the royal castle which got me interested on taking photo’s of the people of Stockholm.

Not all creatures in Stockholm are people though, they also have animals there, sitting on lanterns and by the river. And statues, but they’ll get their own story. As well as the interaction design in Stockholm :)

After lunch a we went with four people to the Moderna Museet. Where I finally saw Duchamp’s urinoir after talking about it so often in the Interaction Design lecutres! One artwork was about birth and time. Pictures of a rising belly with poems, one read:

One is born into time. And in time, introduced to language…
Or rather – One is born. And through language, introduced to time…
Perhaps even – One is born, in time, through language.

Further they had a nice tree. Really strange. It was like a tree, cut inside another tree. When I saw the bottom I thought that the outer tree was actually made of two parts.

But upon viewing the other side that was clearly not the case, this made the mystery even bigger.. There you could see how a tree’s branches are branches inside the tree too. Not that strange when you think of it, but that is it with these unconsiousness things, you never think of it.

Or wasn’t it the reality?

After the museum of Modern Art we went to the attached Architectural museum where they had some nice examples of how to build a city. Explaining and showing the different ways of housing and patterns to make the city accessible, explorable, interesting, efficient, quiet or cozy.

As the evening fell I went for some diner for which – after some search – I ended up in a standard Chinese restaurant. It was pretty hard to find something ‘local’, or maybe I was just in thew wrong neighborhood. But maybe you need to be a local – or have one with you – to find the better Swedish restaurants. Well, I want to go to Stockholm again for a few days, so than I’ll go to some more Stockholmish places :)

Stockholm at night

Tags: art, balder, interpretation, museum, people, photographing, reality, stockholm, time, weather

Categories: a cultural journey, an intellectual journey