The Swedish sophistication

Sweden for me meant Ikea, H&M, Volvo (pre-Geely days), Saab Gripen. All signifying  simple designs with supremacy at sophistication. If you want clarity, please check out a simple desk from Ikea - and compare it with an expensive regal furniture in a swanky showroom in your town. The latter: with its over the top design would be expensive as it promises heavy teak to last a lifetime. But you realize you want to dump it when you have it, as it has little to offer on the ergonomics front and at home - doesn't look like the way it did in the catalogue. To understand my point better- drive a Volvo S-60 or fly a Saab Gripen.

So in my mind, it has been etched long ago:  Swedish = clean, simple and classy. One of the reasons why I coaxed Sona into considering a visit. 

To start with, the Swedish simplicity went into an overkill mode. We were silly enough to fly Ryan air, which did get us from Charleroi to Skavsta in one piece each, and then the Skavsta airport welcomed us with its bare bones. Clean, but very skeletal. The bus took around 1.5 hours to get us to Stockholm city center. Moral of the story - (a) Do check with experienced people before planning your trip, your best friend (google.com) cannot advise you on the 'experience' part (b) avoid being Scrooge.

Stockholm turned out to be the biggest surprise for us in Europe. While neither of us can pin point the touristy points (no highest peak, the ancient structures were not the ancient-est, no Paris/ Swiss hypes), the city has a character which triumphs and will always remain stamped in our minds. To make it more interesting, we stayed at the Mosebacke hostel - and that turned out to be an interesting experience as well. Right in the heart of the city, it helped us move around quickly.

The palace, the museums, you could pick anything. If we had the time, we would love do that for a couple of more days - landing in old town/ Gamla Stan in the evening, exploring the alleys, drifting into any of the shops/ buildings (museum or not, all of them have such a rich history - check out this simple pub; the basement was older than several countries) and finally bidding the evening  goodbye in the typical European way - in a pub.

 

One good spooky walking tour we suggest is: https://www.stockholmghostwalk.com/en/

Those words have a new meaning for us post Sweden: class and sophistication. Lets see if anything can dethrone Sweden's place there.

The Nobel prize venue