The Thawing of the Swedes
June 1-4, 2018
We love visiting friends who are living abroad, and we'd been looking for an excuse to visit our friend Falconer in Sweden. She had been living in Stockholm for almost a year when she made her way down to visit us in Berlin in the spring of 2018. She was shocked by how cheap everything was in our city; Scandinavia is notoriously expensive and Berlin is surprisingly not. We were ready for sticker shock when we went north to visit her, but the fact that we found round trip plane tickets for €40 and had a place to stay made the impending price tag seem less daunting.
Mazz didn't eat any food before heading off to the airport, so by the time we landed in Stockholm she was the sort of hangry where you can't make decisions and everything seems hopeless. We hopped off the airport bus a stop early and ducked into the nearest eatery for some restorative tacos. There's always the hope that you're going to stumble into a taqueria in Europe that actually knows what they're doing. Despite all evidence to the contrary that this is a real possibility, we keep on hoping. At the very least, Mazz regained her faculties and we were able to spend the early evening catching up and drinking box wine in Falconer's living room without Mazz detaching from her corporeal form.
Even the inflated beer prices at the Berlin airport were about half as much as a beer costs at a trendy bar in Stockholm, so we didn't plan on spending too much time out in the nightlife. There was one bar that Falconer particularly liked though, a centuries-old cellar bar called Sjätte Tunnan that specialized in medieval food and drinks. When we got off the train at 11:30pm the sky was still illuminated in twilight. Though Sjätte Tunnan offered many tempting varieties of mead, we opted for Swedish beers instead, except Mazz, who accidentally ordered an American gose made by Sierra Nevada. People at the bar were friendly and talkative, and it seemed like every other person was wearing an Iron Maiden t-shirt due to their concert in town that evening. After a few beers Kirb joked that he wished some Swedes would drive him around listening to Iron Maiden and giving him a tour of the city. Upon hearing this rhetorical request, Falconer proceeded to walk around the bar asking strangers if they were willing to chauffeur us around Stockholm blasting hair metal. Unsurprisingly, none of them were.
Falconer could hardly believe how extroverted and talkative the Swedes had been with us in the bar. She had warned us that people in Stockholm were cold and unfriendly, but the people at Sjätte Tunnan seemed to actively want to interact with us. This was likely due to the fact that this was the first warm, sunny week of the year in Stockholm. After a long and grueling winter, the sunshine seemed to improve everyone's mood and melt their otherwise icy façade, something we from the Pacific Northwest are quite familiar with. Whereas most of the year in Stockholm is dark and bitter cold, the summers are long and full of light. When we left the bar at 2:30am it was still twilight but in a different part of the sky - the sun was already starting to come up.
Because the city is frozen and desolate so much of the year, Falconer hadn't spent a whole lot of time exploring Stockholm during her stay there. She was excited to show us around, but also excited that we came prepared with things to do she hadn't already done herself. When we took off in the morning to load up on groceries and boxed wine for the rest of the weekend, we found our path blocked by the Stockholm Marathon. We found a gap to cross easily enough after the race leaders passed, but on the way back across after shopping we were forced to weave through and jog alongside the runners while holding grocery bags full of clinking beer bottles, much to the chagrin and displeasure of the people cheering on the street.
When we looked into good places to eat in Stockholm we found that the majority of popular spots were upscale and quite expensive, which wasn't what we were looking for on this trip. The place that seemed to best line up with what we wanted was a food court in the Ringen Shopping Center that was operated by some of the best chefs in Sweden who were attempting to create high-quality fast food. Each stand in the Teatern Food Court had the chef's name front and center on their kiosk and specialized in a specific type of food. When the project started there was a hot dog stand operated by Magnus Nilsson of Fäviken, the most acclaimed restaurant in the country. We were slightly deflated when we showed up and found that it was no longer running, but there were still plenty of great options, though we didn't know who any of the other chefs were by name. We chose some tonkatsu ramen and a slow-cooked pancetta sandwich, both of which were quite good and moderately priced at around €10-12 each, quite affordable for Stockholm.
With temperatures in the mid 80s, it was an uncharacteristically warm Saturday for the beginning of June, and it seemed like everyone in the city was outside in their bathing suits soaking it up. The hottest month of the year in Sweden is July, and even then the average temperature is only 64°F (18°C), so the Swedes were taking full advantage of the abnormal heat. We meandered through the street vendors along the water in Hornstull, making our way through the crowded park until we found a nice swing bench to sit on and drink beers while observing the crowds. Swedish people are an attractive lot.
The old town of Stockholm is called Gamla stan, an island in the center of the city with medieval alleyways and cobbled streets that date back to the 13th century. There are endless tourist trap restaurants and souvenir shops, which peddle stereotypical Nordic items like reindeer pelts, crap emblazoned with Vikings, and Moomin merch. One particular store had an assortment of t-shirts with outrageous prints, and Kirb spent a significant amount of time trying to decide between a wizard and a pile of dogs before eventually coming to grips with the fact he wasn't going to spend €25 on a gag shirt, no matter how good the gag was.
With a full day of sightseeing behind us, it was time for some box wine and weird Swedish beers back at the apartment. Kirb had picked out a variety of cans at the liquor store based on their labels. He bought nothing with English on it, and prioritized good label design, like a beer that had a crest with otters on it. Falconer's roommate also had some friends visiting from America for the weekend, so the apartment was bustling with sightseeing chatter and glasses of rosé.
When the sun doesn't go down at a proper time, it's surprisingly easy to lose track of the evening. It was our rumbling tums that eventually let us know we'd drank way past our standard dinnertime. Luckily, the spot we wanted to go was just a few blocks away from the apartment. Tennstopet is a Stockholm institution, having existed in various locales in the city for more than 100 years. The inside had the same feel as a timeless American steakhouse, with deep burgundy vinyl booths, a massive crystal chandelier, and walls adorned with taxidermy elk. We ordered a classic Swedish spread of pickled herring with cheese and butter, meatballs with lingonberries and mashed potatoes, Swedish hash with fried egg and pickled beetroot, and steak tartar with accompaniments. We hungrily obliterated every morsel of that delicious Swedish comfort food and then went home and drank more box wine and listened to 90s pop punk until the sun came up.
We were happy to splurge on a dinner of traditional Swedish fare while we were in the country, but in the interest of frugality we made breakfast for ourselves each morning before heading out into the world. An egg scramble full of vegetables with some bacon, avocado toast, and a cup of coffee will fill you up proper so you can last a long while without eating again. Though we didn't have a food destination for this excursion, we were interested in exploring the Nordic fascination with hot dogs we'd heard so much about, especially since we didn't get to eat a Fäviken dog the day before.
The city of Stockholm is made of 14 islands. To the east is a large island called Djurgården, which is home to an amusement park and a sizable nature preserve. Our metro cards for the subway conveniently also worked for the ferry to the island, which was only around a 10-minute trip. After strolling around and deciding against actually going into the amusement park, we found a food truck near the water and decided to stop for lunch. The limited menu was in Swedish, but enough of the words were similar to either English or German that we assumed we were ordering Italian sausage hot dogs. They came out in a tray with no bun, served with a cold potato salad and garlic mayo dip that was quite good. It wasn't the hot dog we were looking for, but we weren't sad about it. We were sure there would be plenty more opportunities to eat hot dogs.
We walked off our pork calories through the nature preserve, which had a series of trails that lead along the water and through the woods. It was pleasant, if a little boring. We got the feeling this might be the way one would describe Sweden in general.
When we got back into town we bought some souvenirs we'd had a day to stew on (Kirb was still really debating on those dog and wizard shirts) and stopped in a quaint square in the old town for iced coffees and glasses of water. It had been hot, and we were parched from walking all day. It was sunny and beautiful when we sat down, and the moment we left the café it started pouring rain. We attempted to wait it out under an eave before realizing it wasn't going to stop anytime soon and huffed it on foot to the nearest subway. Pizza was a clear group consensus for dinner, so we found a Neapolitan-style pizzeria not far from Falconer's house and gave it a try. It was good pizza, and Falconer wondered how she had lived in the neighborhood for so long without having any idea it existed.
We had tried unsuccessfully on Sunday to catch a ferry out to Vaxholm Island, which we had been told from multiple sources was quite nice. Falconer had taken her parents there and they had loved it, and her roommate had taken his Americans there, and they seemed to like it about as much as they seemed to like anything (barely perceptibly). We showed up at the ferry at the exact wrong time in the day, so we put it off for our Monday activity when Falconer would be at work since she'd already seen it. It was about an hour-long boat ride from downtown, so we made sure to set off early with a ferry schedule in hand so we didn't blow it for a second straight day. We were surprised and pleased to find that the waterways and islands surrounding Stockholm weren't so dissimilar from the Puget Sound in Washington State. It made us wish we were able to spend some of our summer time in the Northwest.
Once we arrived on Vaxholm we didn't have much of an idea what there was to do, so we started walking along the water until we were stopped by a guy who asked if we wanted to take a little boat over to the castle. We shrugged and agreed, paying a few Euros each to get on the electric-powered cable ferry that towed passengers across the 100-meter stretch of water. There were few other people at the "castle," which had been used historically to defend Stockholm from invading navies. We walked around the perimeter and up to the top of the tower, where you could see all the way from one end of Vaxholm to the other. It was still sort of early, so the museum wasn't open yet. There was a large group of Swedish children on one end of the island, and they were all loudly and aggressively screaming at birds. We took the ferry back to the mainland and left that lame-ass castle in the rearview.
Vaxholms Hembygdsgårds Café is situated directly on the water in a classic building, staffed by young women in traditional Swedish garb that looked similar to what you'd see in an episode of Little House on the Prairie. When you walk inside you are greeted by a massive spread of baked goods, as well as a refrigerated case full of open-faced fish and shrimp sandwiches. We ordered a salmon and a shrimp and found a nice place to sit on the water. As Kirb attempted to take a picture of the food with the beautiful surroundings, a bird swooped down in a flash and stole the entire salmon sandwich, knocking it into the water and gulping it down in one fluid motion. Kirb sheepishly brought the empty plate inside and told them his food was stolen by a bird, and the prairie girls took pity on him and gave him another sandwich. Mostly, Kirb was just upset he didn't snap the picture in time to catch the moment the bird grabbed his goods.
Though tasty, the expensive sandwiches were hardly filling, so we bought too many pastries and continued to sit by the water in the sunshine, though we moved to the other side of the building where there seemed to be less chance of bird theft. Having already wandered around the city a bit, we weren't sure exactly what we were supposed to do with our day here on Vaxholm. There were some mom stores selling pillows and candles. There were some nice paths around the water. The options were once again pleasant, and boring. It didn't seem possible to be displeased by this place, but it also didn't seem possible to be excited by it. Was this the existential dread of Socialism that plagues the minds of American conservatives?
We stopped back by Falconer's place to grab our things and say our thanks and goodbyes, and just like when we arrived, we were left with timing issues for feeding ourselves and catching the airport bus. Somehow after a whole weekend of attempts we still hadn't eaten a hot dog these Swedes were so crazy about, and we knew there was a good chance we weren't going to get one if we left it up to finding it in the airport. We were running out of time, and we didn't have the option any more to go and get the hot dogs we wanted because we wasted all day at Pleasant Mom Island, so we decided to just get moving to the airport. As luck would have it, there was a store directly outside of the bus terminal that was selling hot dogs, so we ordered one and quickly scarfed it down before getting on the shuttle bus. It came with fried onions on top. Otherwise, it did not taste any different than any other cheap hot dog you would buy at a convenience store. We got on a bus, then a plane, then a subway, and then we were home.
Stockholm is like if a J. Crew catalog were an entire city. It's like a friend of a friend who you meet at the bar and have a perfectly nice conversation with about clouds and grass and then you can't remember their name at the end of the night and you're like, "Oh well." Stockholm is like when you go out to dinner and the restaurant puts cucumber in the water and you ask yourself, "Is this better than regular water?" Even after they've refilled your glass three times you're still not entirely sure, but you think it might be. And then dinner costs 80 bucks. We liked Stockholm. We're probably never going back.