Venice of the North

Venice of the North? Venice is in the south, isn’t it? It would be difficult to find a person who has not heard about this Italian town. On the one hand, Venice gives an impression to grow up directly out of water. But, on the other hand, it looks like something temporary, threat to be swallowed by cold water. Water is all over there. The town is famous for its canal system and vehicles used to transport people and goods.

According to Wikipedia, description “Venice of the North” can be applied to the northern European cities that contain canals like Italian Venice does. Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, is one of them. In opposite to Italian Venice, Stockholm, surprisingly, does not give an impression of threat because of water. To be honest, “surprise” is a word that I connect to this city.

First of all, I was surprised about the weather there. It was the beginning of May when I visited Stockholm. I was lucky to have only sunshine and warm temperatures there, though I had expected to be ugly rainy days. Secondly, the warmness behind the cold walls of the houses astonished me. The building façade in the old town did not impress me too much. Solid, stable walls and small windows were not inviting. But I changed my mind when I visited one small tea and chocolate shop in the old town. On the one hand modest, unremarkable entrance looked like others all around. But on the other hand cosy too-table room with a friendly saleswoman, who offered delicious sweets and teas, invited me to stay there longer. Teas sold there were mainly interesting mixtures of herbs I have not seen before, for instance green tea and eucalyptus. Because of sincere friendliness of the saleswoman and impressive atmosphere I decided to rest my legs right there and enjoyed a cup of tea.

When I was walking along a small street of the old town, I have noticed this strange piece of plaster on the exterior wall of an old house. I think it is written in runes. I saw a few runestones in Uppsala (north from Stockholm), but I have not expected to see such signs on the wall of an old house in the middle of the city. And this was another surprise. Actually, the Rune alphabet, as I discovered later, has been used in Scandinavia up to sixteenth century, in parallel to the Latin alphabet.

Stockholm has a high number of various museums. Skansen is one of them. It is an open-air museum and a zoo in one place. Visitors get to know history of Sweden in real sense by visiting buildings, talking with inhabitants of the houses who are dressed according to the character they play and the period they represent. The inhabitants talk English and Swedish, tell about their role, the house and furniture, the items and even show how everything works. For example, when I was visiting the house of a young teacher, she showed me a coffee grinder she owned as one of the wealthiest person in the community. There is even an old bakery where the visitors can buy fresh pastries.  By the way, for the goods there visitors can be pay with Visa as everywhere else in Sweden.  The zoo is more an attraction for children. But I was surprised (again) by the fact that visitors are allowed to go into the cage, for example, to lemurs, of course, for an extra admission and with the attendant.

Has anybody heard about a ship, which sank on its maiden voyage? I guess there are a few ships in the human history, which did not arrive to the destination harbour on their very first journey. There is a museum in Stockholm for the Vasa ship which sank in 1628in the near from Stockholm harbour. A few construction problems and insufficient ballast were the reasons for the misfortune. The museum has smaller exhibitions with archaeological findings, detailed description of the ship and even people who perished. In the computer room visitors can even try to load the ship so it would not sink. Or they can watch a movie about the recovery of the ship. There are lots of spectacular points in this museum to experience. It does not surprise me that it is the most visited museum in Scandinavia (according to Wikipedia).

Stockholm has impressed me and surprised. There are still a few places I would like to see. For instance, I have heard that every Metro station in Stockholm is a masterpiece. I think the underground-tour might be fascinating. And this is the reason I would like to visit Stockholm once more.