Norse saga. Part II - Stockholm Syndrome

Wednesday 07 August

Church, after the rain.

We pretty much blew the entire day on rail travel. After a leisurely breakfast and post-breakfast siesta, we packed and got ourselves to the station in time for the InterCity High-Speed train departing Copenhagen at 1229. The Øresund bridge crossing into Sweden is spectacular. I think the rail runs below the road deck. The train got to Malmö on time, and then stood in the underground station for an hour and a half.

Subsequent delays, including protracted unexplained waits in rural Sweden and on one occasion actually travelling backwards for several miles, meant that the five hour journey ended up taking almost nine hours. At least, when we eventually rolled into Stockholm, the hotel was close to the station and easy to find.

We crawled into our room and then set off in search of food, eschewing Pizza Hut in favour a local steakhouse chain. The first ATM we tried didn’t want to talk to my card, and as the buttons didn’t respond, I concluded that the machine was FUBAR. Another machine in the railway station was much more sensible: it dispensed cash.

Thursday 08 August

First job after a splendid continental breakfast that included bacon, pork sausages, paté, plus the usual cold cuts, fruit, bread and coffee, was to head to the railway station. Having secured our booking for next Wednesday’s trip to Oslo and paid the booking fee, we headed to the bus station (of all places) to confirm our ferry to and from Helsinki, plus shuttle buses to and from the ferry port.

The bus to Skansen, a kind of outdoor theme park of old buildings, living history, and petting zoo, was parked up outside the bus terminal. Beloved Wife made her Fast Talk when conversing with the bus driver, and we were delivered for free outside Skansen about twenty minutes later.

After admission, we checked out the Tobacco and Matches museum that, curiously, made no mention of the negative health effects of tobacco. There was a video on a loop telling the salutory tale of one Ivar Kreuger who basically created a world monopoly of match manufacturing by buying out all his competitors with other people’s money. It all went wrong with the Wall Street Crash of 1929, but to this day almost all of the world’s matches are from Sweden.

Cigarette-making machines.

Guess one of my favourite brands.

 There were some extremely rare goats at the petting zoo. They looked to me like shaggy Toggenburgs, but are a once common but now an endangered breed, apparently. The adults had proper horns and beards, which was splendid.

Lovely beard you have there, ma'aaam!

Sheltering from the rain. Clearly this goat has more sense than the photographer.

Nineteenth-century Swedish farm cottage.

Nineteenth-century schoolhouse and bell tower.

 The weather deteriorated, and we were glad to be able to hide in various buildings and avail ourselves of Living History and shelter. As the woman spinning wool into yarn confirmed, Sleeping Beauty couldn’t have pricked her finger on a spinning wheel: there’s nothing sharp on the device. In Swedish, ‘spinning’ on a wheel and ‘spinning’ using a drop-spindle have different words and the illustrations in books of fairy tales and cartoons by Walt Disney of the spinning wheel are all wrong. It’s a drop-spindle that has a pointy bit that can put you to sleep for a hundred years. Beloved Wife informs me that a ‘Great Wheel’ spinning wheel does have a finger-pricking spindle, but this looks nothing like the now traditional machine.

No sharp things in evidence.

Wooden church - interior.

All the Living History stuff shut down at 1700, just as the heavens opened. It had been trying to rain on and off all day, but was now persisting down. We took a tram back to town. To my surprise, the conductor simply stood near one of the doors, but made no effort to collect any fares from the heaving multitude packed in like sardines.

Hurling down in stair-rods.

When the tram stopped, we headed into a shopping mall for excellent pizza, and then dodged the rain (which had failed to stop) by hiding under shop canopies all the way back to the hotel. Beneath one of the larger canopies, we encountered “Hoola Schoola UK,” which was representing all things British at a local Arts fair.

A small excerpt from the Hoola Schoola.

An early night, then, and plans for an early breakfast and some more sightseeing before the ferry trip. What we actually did was going to depend on the weather.

Friday 09 August

First task after two Breakfasts of Podium Finish was to check out of our room and drop our bags off at reception. Then we headed out in the general direction of the old town. I spotted a shop selling athletics goods and – long story short – managed to find some Vibram® FiveFinger® hobbit feet that fitted me, an exercise that has proved impossible in Dubai. When I wear them it looks like I’ve got toes and not hooves. An interesting feature of the shop was a treadmill with a video camera, so that the customer could capture his walking or running gait and have a suitable shoe recommended.

We dropped my purchase with the rest of our luggage back at the hotel, all of two doors away, and found our way to the originally medieval church where the Swedish royal family is interred. 

Riddarholmen church. A cast-iron spire replaced the wooden one that was struck by lightning in 1835 and burned.

Dress it up with as much gold as you like; an infant's sarcophagus represents something desperately sad.

And then we ran into the Changing of the Guard. The latter took over an hour, and involved a lot of horses and shiny pickelhelms. The Lifeguards include one of the few mounted military bands, apparently.

Someone's been polishing his helmet.

Enter the mounted Lifeguards' military band.

Everything was going so well, then the horse on our far right unexpectedly spooked, and the entire formation collapsed like a card table during an enthusiastic game of Snap.

Having removed the equine mess, order was quickly restored.

The timpanist has to control his mount without using his hands. And the horse has to be very used to loud drumming just behind its ears.

There was now insufficient time to visit a museum, so we satisfied ourselves with the old town streets. I discovered an ingenious book: ‘Star Wars: A New Hope’ as it might have been written by William Shakespeare.

Then it was beer o’clock, and just time to catch the fun bus from the terminal to the ferry port.

Having got on board the ferry, we discovered a disturbing absence of aircraft-style seats: we were going to have to pay extra for a cabin. At least the tiny, windowless cabin in the orlop was private, and was somewhere to drop off our luggage. I tried to book a cabin for the return trip, but was told this wasn’t possible and I’d have to deal with it at the Helsinki terminal.

The first few hours of the voyage took us past numerous tiny islands comprising part of the Stockholm archipelago. The ferry went disturbingly close to a lot of them. Presumably the navigation channel was originally glacial: vertical sided and deep. The approach to Helsinki was geographically very similar.

View of Skansen from the ferry.

Pendulous, stormy clouds over the Stockholm archipelago.

Waterside residence.

The ferry was crowded, in particular by excessive numbers of boisterous and girlsterous brats. We booked places for the buffet on the third and latest sitting, but still ended up right next to a horde of screaming rugrats. However, the food was plentiful and generally excellent, and beverages including beer and wine were included in the price, so that was a bonus.

We spent the weekend in Helsinki, and caught the overnight ferry back to Stockholm on Monday afternoon.

Tuesday 13 August

The ferry docked on time at around 10am in Stockholm. The fun bus transported us back to the terminal, and we located and checked into our hotel. Then we were off for some Culture.

Palace guard.

No idea who this is, loitering just outside the No Pictures zone.

The Royal Palace admission allows access to four separate exhibitions. Just don’t show up at noon, because that’s when they’ll be Changing the Guard and access to the Palaces will be blocked by horses.

The Treasury is in a dungeon, and contains the Swedish crown jewels. The Royal Apartments are where the Royals used to live, and where they now have banquets and accommodate other Royals who may be visiting. I was completely Baroqued out at the end of that part of the tour, and so it was immediately on to the Three Crowns museum, a tour around the fifteenth-century cellars, two floors below present ground level. This part of the exhibition showed how the royal palace developed from about 1100AD until it burned down in 1697 and was rebuilt to the current layout. The old vaulted arches remain below the new stuff. There are alarming cracks in some of the brickwork.

A final exhibition, King Gustav III’s Museum of Antiquities, houses Roman statues, nicked from Italy in about 1750. This is, apparently, one of the oldest museums in Europe that is open to the public: quite a revolutionary idea when it was introduced in the eighteenth century.

One huge disappointment with the Royal Palace was that photography – not just tripods or flash – was forbidden.

Le déluge

Dodging the heavy rain showers, we made our way back into town. It was well past beer o’clock by the time I spotted The Bishop’s Arms. This is a fake English pub, replete with fake exposed beams and plastered with too many horse brasses, but contained a choice of real English ale on handpull as well as the normal enormous choice of lager, and a massive choice of whiskies. So we stayed for food too. Three 500ml ‘pints’ of Charles Wells Bombardier. Ahhh! And not very much more expensive than a bar in Dubai. I was later assured by a friend on Facebook that I could have done a lot better than Bombardier, had I only looked. Oh well; too late.

Après le déluge

Beer o'clock.

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Norse saga. Part I - Wonderful Copenhagen

Sunday 04 August

We're both happy to be off on our hols.

The news feeds were busy suggesting that there was likely to be chaos at Dubai airport, so we left early. As if the Authorities would ever tell Joe Public that Terry Taliban was actually going to attack. The taxi arrived 15 minutes earlier than requested, so we made a mad rush from the Crumbling Villa, which was followed by long and tedious queue at DXB to check in to Swiss.

The flight was 30 minutes late departing, which is usually a capital offence in Switzerland, but they never found out at Zürich because it arrived on time: disgustingly early on Sunday morning. We had 40 minutes before our connecting flight took off, naturally from the far end of the airport. We had to do the hand-luggage inspection and passport control too, but got into our seats with minutes to spare.

Final approach to Copenhagen – København in the vernacular – and I got my first ever look at Scandinavia. I could see Sweden out of the aircraft window, just over there near Malmö.

Copenhagen central railway station.

Easy train trip into Copenhagen central station. Beloved Wife spotted our hotel from the train window, and we soon found our way there. But first, we reserved our seats on Wednesday’s train to Stockholm. They charge extra for this, which seems disingenuous. After paying for a ScanRail pass, to be told that reservations are compulsory and at additional cost, seems a little unfair. What’s wrong with You Pay What You See? Anyone remember Fascinating Aïda’s “Cheap Flights”?

And then picked up the charge

For using VISA, which was drastic,

‘cos how the feck you s’posed to pay

If not with fecking plastic?

Speaking of VISA, I also discovered that in Denmark, foreign credit cards attract a charge, in addition to my getting screwed by an unfavourable exchange rate. So much for being the international way to pay.

Anyway, we’d arrived before noon and the room wasn’t ready, so we dropped off our bags and went in search of refreshment. Luckily the sun was over the yard-arm, so a litre or so of Carlsberg and a slice of apple tart later, we unpacked in the room and crashed out for three hours.

It was warm and sunny! Pleasantly so. And Copenhagen is a very bicycle-friendly place, with bikes, cycleways, and bike racks everywhere. During the summer, I’m told the Municipality offers free bikes for a returnable deposit. These have to be taken from one official bike rack and dropped off at another.

Sunday afternoon is quiet in Copenhagen city centre, at least as far as shopping is concerned. And museums are shut on Mondays, so tomorrow it’d the shops and maybe a boat trip around the harbour. Tivoli is a park with a hairy-looking funfair.

That looks high and very scary.

We went up the spiral ramp inside the world’s oldest working observatory and, erm, observed. We observed Copenhagen’s rooftops. Later, we ate Japanese food, and I had yet another large beer. The calorie-controlled diet was going to take a pasting over the forthcoming fortnight. I resolved to try and keep track of what I ate and drank.

Observatory tower.

Round and round we go, seven times.

I can see the Øresund bridge from here. And Von Fresler's Kirke with its spiral spire.

Rosenborg Palace, with irritating factory chimneys in the background.

To my irritation, I couldn’t get the hotel’s internet to talk to my computer. A technician turned up at the hotel room, but when the problem turned out not to be a defective LAN cable he was stumped, as was I. No matter what settings I used, how I configured the firewall, whether I used LAN or WiFi, all made no difference. None of my browsers would talk to the internet. Meanwhile, Beloved Wife’s iPad connected and ran just fine.

Monday 05 August

Another sunny day, and a healthy start with a hearty continental breakfast comprising cereal, bread, yoghurt, eggs, and several types of ham. That should stave off the hunger pangs until mid afternoon.

Beloved Wife suggested that we go and see the Crown Jewels in the Rosenborg Palace. This seventeenth-century edifice in the Flemish style was full of, well I described it as ‘Baroque on Crystal Meth’ all on three floors. And the incredibly ornate Crown Jewels were in the basement.

Ridiculously overdecorated ceiling.

Charles I of England.

Christian IV's crown (1596) is an impressive piece of bling. At one point he pawned it.

Small statue of Herakles (Hercules) giving the centaur Nessus a good hiding for running off with Deianeira.

Yay, a satyr! Chasing a scary-looking nymph.

You don't get female satyrs for ages, then several come along at once. 

The park was green with a mixture of sunny spots and shade, so after Rosenborg we paused a little and then headed off to the Nyhavn canal, which is the trendy waterside bit of Copenhagen that adorns the covers of the guide books. On the way we stopped in a pub that was doing a BOGOF offer on bottles of Carlsberg. Huzzah!

Nyhavn.

An excellent alfresco lunch outside one of the buildings on the cover of the guide book later, and having been serenaded by Lord Petyr Baelish on the guitar, we took one of the long, low, wide tourist boats around the harbour and canals for an hour. I hadn’t realised before that the famous Little Mermaid statue was on the sea front; I’d always assumed that she was perched on a little island in the middle of the harbour.

Littlefinger playing the guitar.

The Little Mermaid and some of her fans.

The cake shop that Beloved Wife wanted to visit after the boat trip was disappointing, but another one that we found on our way back through the pedestrianised city area was much better, and they served beer too.

We decided, having got back almost to the hotel, that visiting the Tivoli Gardens was too much. Instead, we’ll go tomorrow. Today I spent 20 minutes on a machine in the gym before meeting Beloved Wife in the pool. Here, I attempted to burn off more Carlsberg.

Ah, the pool. The hotel is part of a sport and leisure complex, and the pools include a 100m circumference oval pool 1.8m deep for swimming distances, and a rectangular exercise pool in the infield. There are also leisure and diving pools, and a Jacuzzi. However, the management throws everybody out at 2130, so I just had time for fifteen minutes of breast stroke. At an average speed of one lap every six minutes (which is 1km/h) I’m not going to break many swimming records.

This evening, the internet had decided to connect sporadically. It wouldn’t do the LAN thing at all, but from time to time I got a slow WiFi connection. The fact that WiFi worked but LAN absolutely refused to remains a mystery.

Tuesday 06 August

Ugh, it was cloudy this morning. When we emerged from breakfast, it was obvious that we’d missed a light shower of rain. Museums all seemed to open at 1100; we hoped that the rain would go away before we hit the streets.

Not only did the rain go away, so did the clouds. Another glorious sunny day, with a cooling breeze.

The first port of call was the Glyptotek museum. Ground floor was full of statues, mostly from ancient Greece and Rome, but also Egypt. And there were Egyptian grave goods too. Cue the inevitable humming of an eighties Bangles song, and I don’t mean ‘Manic Monday.’ Also on view were Danish neoclassical sculptures and stuff by Rodin and related luminaries. Upstairs, there was a lot of nineteenth and early twentieth century art: mostly oil paintings. And then it was beer o’clock.

Walk like an Egyptian.

Gods and heroes.

Unlikely attire for playing the fiddle, but very well executed.

Must be wine o'clock.

Beloved Wife wanted to visit the Museum of Danish Design. This was up at the northern end of the city, past Nyhavn. Unfortunately the museum was undergoing refurbishment when we visited, and half of it was closed. After looking at twentieth century fabric prints and a lot of chairs, it was time to grab a beer.

I should mention the Bumblebee, a 1934 motorcycle officially called the Nimbus, that had an in-line four cylinder engine and shaft drive.

The Nimbus 1934 is both more practical and more comfortable than a Nimbus 2000.

Having walked the length of Copenhagen, it seemed daft not to go and get a look at the bronze mermaid, along with every other tourist. We wandered past St Albans Church, the ‘English Church’ in Victorian Gothic Revival style, that played ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’ (on tubular bells, by computer, apparently) after the 1700 hour bell. After the obligatory photos of the mermaid statue, we headed back to Nyhavn along the quayside and past an enormous moored yacht that I could never ever hope to afford. The 64m Felicita West, the internet asserts, was up for sale two years ago for a mere $40 million.

Felicita West, currently registered in Douglas IOM.

St Albans church.

Dinner at Nyhavn, and then we headed back along our chariot ruts through the pedestrian precinct and were briefly entertained by buskers.

This guy looked and sounded amazing. His musical instrument is inexpensive, but about as portable as a church organ.

The hang is an eerie-sounding percussion instrument.

In Tivoli, an elderly couple prevented us from watching an open-air stage show by persistently moving and standing in front of us, no matter where we moved, so we gave up and went for a walk around the park.

This walk was brought to an abrupt halt by a Bottom Inspector who insisted on throwing me out because I was barefoot. It seems that it’s not necessary to wear shoes, (otherwise about 30% of the patrons would have had to be ejected), but to have some on one’s person. As I’d schlepped my shoes unused around Copenhagen for two days, and had no problems with broken glass, dogshit, or gaining admission to shops, restaurants, museums, and boats, today I left my camera bag with the shoes in it at the hotel. But “Tivoli is private property.” 

Of course I’m not going to sue Tivoli if I stand on a sharp object, but my promising to take responsibility for my actions was not good enough. Not that there’s a sign, and they were happy to take our money. It’s only explicitly obvious from the signage that Dogs, Roller Blades, and Outside Food and Drink are not allowed. At least we got our admission money back.

Screw you, guys; I’m going home. It was too late to hit the pool, so I showered and fell into bed. The following afternoon we were due on board a train to Stockholm.

]}:-{>

On my hols

Normal service, such as it is, will be resumed once the Goat gets back from his summer holiday. He's been travelling, keeping a diary, and taking photographs. The diary will need editing so that it doesn't read like an epic Nordic fantasy, and the photos need to be filed, fiddled with, and finally a selection posted on line.

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