Sell! Sell! Sell!

No stock advice here. Just a few links to some quality advertisements we saw in Sweden. Hope to add some more along the way...

a sign outside a Stockholm Travel Agency

Doesn't everyone love bottoms?

Wonder what the Swedish word is for ye royal tourist trap?

Important things to know to survive here.

Reminder! We are posting multiple posts at a time so make sure and scroll down and see if you've missed anything new!

A Night to Remember

(PICS ARE HERE!)

While in Stockholm, we made the decision to skip Finland and go directly to Tallin, Estonia. Nothing against the Finns; we just decided we wanted to get the Eastern European leg of our trip started post haste (and we had used up extra time in the fjords).

To get there, we had to take a 17 hour boat ride upon the Regina Baltica, a ferry/cruise ship. This is a huge business here, with two huge fancy ships going between Stockholm and Helsinki and then another set of ships going between Stockholm and Tallin. Tallink, the company that runs that route had one boat that matches the Helsinki boat for luxury and then a much, much older one. Given our budget, you can guess which one we chose.

Since we were trying to book cabins two days ahead of time on a weekend, we had to get a lot more expensive cabins than we had wanted (more bread and water for dinner!), but even then, they were steerage class. But more about that later.

Of course getting to the boat itself was the hardest part. We took the metro out to the dock only to find out that we'd gotten off at the wrong dock. Given the fact that we had about 15 minutes before boarding concluded (they shut it down 30 minutes before leaving), we were a little worried. After Becca stopped two separate cars in the middle of the street and got conflicting directions, we happened upon a stroke of good luck. She flagged down a taxi and uttered the magic words "How much would you charge to get us to the Tallink boat on time?" The taxi was off and running. The taxi driver, taking great pity on the two wayward backpackers, gave us the 5 min ride free of charge. We made sure to tip her well and then we were safely aboard the boat.

The boat trip itself was quite an adventure. First of all, Becca discovered that she must have watched Titanic too many times, as she had a total irrational fear for most of the trip (I bet none of you who know her can possibly imagine that). Of couse, this wasn't helped by the location of our cabin.

We were on the first (that is, BOTTOM) deck. That would be under the three levels of cars (as this cruise ship is also a ferry), under the water line, and down in an area where you had to push a button to release the airlocks between compartments (as that is how the ship contains water to avoid sinking in case of accident...unless of course you are the Titanic)

Our cabin itself was probably slightly better than standard issue submarine quarters (we'll have to check with Earl on that). Let's just say that one of us had to stay in the bunk if the other one was up. On the plus side, for the first time in a month we didn't have the problem of light keeping us awake all night, and got a good long night's sleep.

The cruise itself was remarkably uneventful. Though Mogens had helped me get some seasickness patches from a Danish pharmacy and I had duly put one on, the sea really was like glass all the way across the Baltic. The first 4 hours of the trip were the best... For that entire time we were sailing through the Swedish archipeligo (another thing I didn't know about Sweden before this trip.)...just hundreds of small and medium islands with forests and some houses or small communities and occasional harbors. We sat on deck, ate our picnic, and watched the sun set behind the islands. Pretty perfect.

The sun set just as we reached open water, so we went inside to play a couple games of cribbage then crashed for the night. After a long night's sleep, we woke up in time to eat our breakfast on deck and watch Estonia glide by. The trip was capped by a picture perfect parallel parking job by our captain as we entered Tallin's harbor. Pretty impressive.

On to Estonia!

Stockholm

We sadly said goodbye to Balestrand and the fjords and then spent the next 23 hours getting to Stockholm. It felt a little like planes, trains and automobiles, even though it was just boat, train, train and more trains.

We almost didn't come to Stockholm, as we were trying to figure out how to go cheer on Michael and Jannie at the Euro Championships. However the logistics to get down to Rostock were even uglier from the fjords than getting to Stockholm. While we were really disappointed not to be able to spend more time with them and to get to watch them play (especially as Michael's team ended up with Denmark's best ever finish, losing to Clapham, England in the finals. Tilykke, tiklykke! Runner's up across Europe, not bad at all!), we are really glad that we made it to Stockholm.

We had heard that it was a pretty city and that there were a lot of islands, but we really hadn't pictured it correctly at all and had no idea of how nice it was or how much we'd like it. The city is built over a series of islands -- some big, some small -- with canals cutting between them all and bridges across some of them (with ferries going across others). It's kind of like Venice except on a much bigger scale.

The city was a great mix of things to see and enjoy. One of the islands is the old town, with the palace and narrow streets and museums and cobblestones and cafes that you would want to see. Another couple islands are mostly parks and greenspace and museums, some of the others then have the downtown and business and shopping, etc.

We thought it was a great combination of cosmopolitan city and outdoorsy park. We probably wouldn't feel this way visiting in the winter, but in the summer it looked like a place we would enjoy living. Strolling around the city parks and island parks, we passed group after group picnicking, enjoying strawberries and a glass of wine, or beer and a game of boules. In addition to Boules, the other similar game that we saw being played everywhere was called Kubb, and involved knocking down wooden blockes instead of trying to get metal balls close to a target.

It was the first time on the trip that I felt a little lonely or isolated from people, because we so much wanted to be part of a group enjoying the fine evening with friends, drink and games.

We also noted that like Amsterdam, there was a lot of cruising on boats being done after work.

While we visited some sights, we mostly enjoyed walking around. The two touristy things that stood out the most, however, were the Vasa Museum and the changing of the guard.

The Vasa was a 17th century warship that was one of the greatest war flops of Swedish history. Built to be the crown jewel in the war against Poland, it tipped over and sank in a light breeze 20 minutes into its first sail. (It didn't even make it out of the harbor). 350 years later it was rediscovered and salvaged. (The story on that is fascinating). Because of the water temp and low salinity levels, it was extremely well preserved. So it's a great opportunity to imagine yourself back in the 1600s. You see the ship and how ridiculously (it seems to us) top heavy it was and how little ballast it had and you can't believe that this didn't happen more frequently. We highly recommend visiting the museum and seeing the film, taking a tour, and then wandering to explore all the details yourself.

The other thing we liked the most was the changing of the guard. For this we again have to give Mr. Steves a pat on the back. Normally changing of the guards are not things we make much of an effort to see. You usually have throng of tourists all packed around a guard stand where one or a couple of soldiers approach another and they switch out. It's cool, but not that exciting. Well, Rick made enough of a big deal about this one that we decided to check it out. We're really glad we did.

First of all, we liked it because it's an actual CHANGING of the guard. The guard duty switches out between one company, that are sort of the permanent palace guards, and regiments from all over Sweden who get the honor of doing it for (a couple of days? a week?). So you have one company in one color and uniform changing out with another in a different color and uniform.

It starts down by the harbor, where a marching band (navy) leads the company down the middle of the city streets about 15 minutes up to the palace. It has the feel (to us) of a special occasion or parade (since they're stopping traffic, etc) but it happens every day. There's something kind of cool about this traditional march happening in the middle of modern traffic.

Once they reach the courtyard (and the throngs and throngs of tourists) there is a lot of marching, and then an involved ceremony where the flag is handed from one regiment to the other, and the guards at each station are switched, and there is a little bit of crowd pleasing, giggle-inducing running as part of it, and lots of commands and intricate alignments. Then in the middle, once the second company has taken over, you get a full marching band performance from the band, then after that you have the original company being led back out.

All in all, a worthwhile things to go see.

The other cool things about Stockholm for us was the chance to broaden our ultimate connections. One of Brian's WashU teammates had played in Stockholm, and he hooked us up with Andreas Dimberg, one of his teammates there. Andreas was great. He opened up his home to us, showed us around, and took us out with his friends -- giving us a much better look at Swedish life. So another Tak to him...and to ultimate for creating such a cool network of people around the globe.

(I haven't had time to link pics yet. But if you go to the Stockholm tag in flickr, you can browse. One warning: there are a lot of not so good pics there...we haven't culled them down yet or tried to put good explanations on them)