Pretending to be a Tour Guide

My mother is visiting (hi, Mom!), which means that now I get to act like I know all about Stockholm, even though I still haven't been to the Vasa Museum or seen the changing of the guard at the palace. Today we did a very uninformative walking tour of the city, led by me, full of useful facts like "this is the grocery store with the best candy bins" and "this place has the best hot chocolate and the mug is practically a bowl - but you still need a kanelbulle, obviously" and "this store has a ton of poorly-supervised samples of fancy licorice" (see a theme?). We earned our food, though. Stockholm isn't huge, but a walk from the north side of the city - where I live - to the south side of the city is a few miles in each direction.

Well, my mom just stuck her nail file into my junky-but-still-functioning little adapter in hopes that it would somehow fix it (???), but now it just sparks when I plug it into the wall. Which is to say, I need to conserve my battery until I can get a new adapter after work tomorrow. More stories and pictures soon to come, though!

Excuses from a Procrastinator

It is graduate school application season and, as a somewhat extreme procrastinator, I have managed to put off a painful amount of my upcoming fellowship application until the couple of days before it is due. This, coupled with a supposedly non-stressful presentation at work tomorrow, means that this week's blog post is mostly just an excuse for the lack of an actual blog post. Once my application is submitted, I'll return to normal human functioning.

Tourist-ing in Uppsala

I've spent a couple weekends in Uppsala, but this was the first that I did actual Tripadvisor-reccommended sightseeing. Uppsala is Sweden's fourth largest city, though it feels much more like a large town than an actual city. It does have everything you could want from a city - plenty of great food options (I recommend Churchill Arms for anyone who visits, though it's not exactly Swedish), the "standard" options for shopping (all of the popular Swedish brands are here, plus a few decent thrift stores and boutiques), interesting museums and landmarks to visit, fantastic (if a bit expensive) public transportation if you don't feel like walking, and an overall very cute setting for a weekend trip.

The Fyris River runs through Uppsala, which makes for some very charming walking paths.

The public transportation may be good, but by far the best way to get around in Uppsala (and Stockholm) is biking. Bike paths are ubiquitous and there are plenty of places to park your bike. Be warned, though: a bike that is not securely chained may be tossed into the river by unruly college students on Saturday nights.

The biggest problem with Uppsala, and Stockholm, too, is that anything even remotely touristy, from museums to the islands of the Stockholm archipelago, becomes much harder to visit in the off-season. Almost everywhere has more limited hours, and a surprising amount of attractions just close altogether once September rolls around. Still, there was plenty to do and I had a nice weekend just sightseeing at some of the more popular attractions here.

A short ride away from town is Gamla Uppsala, a mind-blowing old settlement that was once an important economic and political center and, according to some myths, the residence of Odin. Today, it is mostly just for sightseeing. The most obvious is attraction is three large burial mounds, which have generated some controversy as far as who, exactly, is buried there, though the consensus now seems to be that it's some sort of royalty.

The mounds are basically just some relatively tall hills on an otherwise flat landscape, so the main attraction here is the view.

That smidgen of blue is the first hint of non-cloud-covered sky that I've seen in more than a week. Fall in Sweden is quite gray, to say the least.

The town center can be seen in the distance, marked by the towering spires of the Uppsala Cathedral and the large, pink castle.

There is also a centuries-old church, surrounded by a mix of old and quite new gravestones. The interior is fairly plain, but certainly worth a look.

There is also a museum, a visit to which might have bolstered my ability to narrate the history in any sort of detail, but it was close to closing and rather expensive, so I cannot offer much insight into that attraction. One final note on Gamla Uppsala is that the restaurant near the museum is absolutely worth a visit for lunch. The lunch specials, which are quite good, come with as much coffee and fresh, warm bread as you want, and may actually qualify as reasonably-priced, a first for my visit to Sweden (I may be a little bitter about to exorbitant price of eating out... One of very few gripes I have about the country).

After Gamla Uppsala, we headed back to town to see the castle and the nearby botanical gardens. We didn't actually go in the castle, as it was closed, and many parts of the gardens were closed for the season or under construction, but it was quite nice to just walk around and enjoy the autumn colors - fall in Sweden may be just as good as it is in New England.

That is indeed a pink church.

The view Uppsala Cathedral from the hill on which the castle sits.

Turns out, the best views of the castle itself are from a little farther away. Still, going up close is a great way to fully appreciate the pink-ness.

Cannons pointing directly at the cathedral. A feud? Symbolism? Ill-planned decorating? Not a castle employee in sight on an off-season Sunday afternoon, so I'll have to find out another day.

The path from the castle to the botanical gardens.

A perk of sightseeing during the off-season is that there are fewer people around to scoff when the American college kids start sliding down the railings.

I'm starting to think that the warm colored buildings all over Sweden may be a way of counteracting the depressing, gray sky that sets in around late September.

Those are indeed cats on the sign. No real cats in sight, though.

A Not at All Comprehensive Photo Tour of Stockholm

As someone who hasn't biked much since elementary school, I have been happily surprised by how easy everything is when you have a bike. Stockholm isn't a huge city, necessarily, but you are pretty limited in what you can see if you want to just walk, or you have to deal with the prices for the rather expensive (but also quite good) public transportation. With a bike, everything from grocery shopping to commuting to getting to a nice nature reserve outside the city is wonderfully simple. The bike lanes here are absolutely amazing by Boston standards (though people here actually still have the gall to complain about them sometimes) and the city is also easily navigable, with a generally reliable grid system, as well as great landmarks that make it difficult to get completely lost.

All of this is to say, I have been having a fantastic time exploring Stockholm. Sometimes after work I just hop on my bike and wander around. Without fail, I stumble upon something exciting, whether it's a beautiful and historical building, an interesting store, or a massive, prairie-like park full of trails, a nice forested area, and even paddocks with horses, all right in central Stockholm. Stockholm is actually extremely good about making sure that you are never very far from nature. There are the usual parks and tree-lined streets, but also areas right in the middle of the city that feel quite wild. The island of Djurgården, in particular, is covered in forest and even has cattle and horses in some parts, in spite of also housing some of the most tourist-y sights in Stockholm. So, for anyone planning a trip to Stockholm, renting a bike is the way to do it (there are even city bikes similar to Hubway all over the city).

If you need further convincing, some of the pictures from my adventures are below.

Stockholm is quite the hub for cruise ships. You can also see bits of Gamla Stan, Östermalm, and Skeppsholmen in the background.

A deer on Djurgården, an island that also houses the Vasa Museum, ABBA The Museum, an amusement park, and a smattering of extremely wealthy people.

There are lots of swans around Djurgården in particular. 

A view of Södermalm from the bridge to Gamla Stan. A motorcycle caught fire below the church, making for some pretty cool pictures (don't worry, nobody was hurt).

The view of Gamla Stan from the bridge. 

Stockholms Stadhus

Evert Taubes Terass on Riddarholmen offers some great views.

Bikes, cobblestones, and warm-colored buildings are almost ubiquitous here (also note the "no bikes" sign directly behind the bike).

Riddarholmen in the late afternoon (also, nothing like funky lighting to hide the construction and tour bus).

One of the many narrow, cobblestoned streets on Gamla Stan. This island is one of the best preserved medieval city centers in Europe and is absolutely one of the most charming and intriguing places I've visited. Be forewarned, though: even on a dreary, off-season day like today, there are some impressively large crowds of tourists. 

The central square in Gamla Stan. Makes for some entertaining people (and dog) watching.

More of Gamla Stan's unbelievably quaint streets. People do actually live on the island and it's fairly easy to stay here through Airbnb or the like.

One more picture of Gamla Stan from that bridge. Trying to bike across near sunset is difficult because plenty of people stop to enjoy the view and it's hard to resist joining them.

Gamla Stan from a wonderful little path called Monteliusvägen on Södermalm. A strömmingsrulle, which is about the most Swedish food you'll find anywhere, from Nystekt Strömming makes for a pretty good accompaniment for watching the sunset.

Foraging

When I left Wales, I was especially sad to leave the easy access to wonderful, free blackberries. Whenever I went hiking, my pace would be significantly slower than usual because I couldn't help but stop every few feet to pick some of the blackberries that quite literally lined the path. To the locals, the berries are just commonplace and viewed almost as weeds, albeit delicious ones. Compared to buying overpriced and not especially good grocery store blackberries in Boston, simply going to the blackberry bush next to the front door and picking some for my breakfast felt quite luxurious.

Turns out, I need not have worried. Sweden has berries, too! Not blackberries, but at the moment, blueberries and lingonberries are in season, in addition to apples and mushrooms and, no doubt, other delicious things I don't know about yet. Here, there's Allemansrätten, which allows anyone to pick flowers, mushrooms, and berries on just about any land (with some caveats - which can be perused here - but not ones that are particularly limiting).

Today I got to take advantage of that, on a supposed mushroom picking outing in Uppsala. There weren't a whole lot of edible mushrooms - only two left the forest with us - but nobody particularly cared because as soon as we started walking, we realized that blueberries and lingonberries were everywhere. I spent the next few hours wandering around the forest filling the container that had been intended for mushrooms with berries.

As I write this, apple-lingon-blueberry jam is bubbling away on the stove with the berries from earlier and apples picked from a tree nearby. Is it too much to ask for this free wild berry thing to come to the U.S.?

I leave you with some pictures from today, though I didn't actually take pictures in the forest because I was too busy staring at the ground and shoveling berries into my mouth.

I have an almost identical picture from somewhere in the White Mountains. A nice reminder, since fall hikes around New England are one of the rings I miss most about the U.S.

An old mill.

I took a tree selfie. Undignified and unflattering, yet here I am posting it on the Internet.

My foraging companions (taking pictures of me as I took pictures of them).

A wonderful picnic spot at the top of a hill somewhere in Uppsala.