Stockholm, Venice of the North

Stockholm, Sweden - View from Skeppsholmen island

Ever since I first visited Stockolm back in the mid nineties I've been in love with this city. In fact it's one of my favorite cities in the world. Actually this journey wasn't planned so far in advance, since my real destination was Tallinn, Estonia, across the Baltic Sea to the east. Nonetheless I found a really cheap flight to Stockholm from Prague and I couldn't resist the chance of spending a few days in this great city and checking in with some old friends whom I hadn't seen in years. Tallinn is only an overnight boat trip away and as I write this I'm sitting in an internet cafe in Tallinn, but more about that in a later post.

One of the first things a visitor to Stockholm realizes about this city, besides its cleanliness and general civility is how good looking and well dressed everyone is. If you're a ragtag sandal wearing backpacker, you'll quickly feel out of place here just like you will if you don't look like Dolph Lundgren or Hannah Graaf. This town has STYLE and people really go out of their way to look good (not that they look so bad in the first place). But I must say that coming from a place like Prague, where people are equally (dare I say more?) attractive, I did find Stockholm a bit stuck up at times. There's something to be said about the innocence of the Czech people who are every bit as stunning physically, yet who generally don't know the difference between Prada and JL Linderg.

On one of my first trips here years ago, I met a fellow web developer named Micke Wehner who was working for Spray at the time, one of Sweden's largest web design companies. Micke and I have stayed good friends over the years and we've visited and stayed with each other many times in both the US and Sweden. This time I stayed with Micke at his home in Telefonplan (just south of the city center). Telefonplan used to be a bit of a boring semi-suburb but in the last few years has become somewhat of a "hip" place to be, thanks to the nearby Konstfack art school, where there just happened to be a party and fashion show the same night that I arrived. This started a three day drinking and partying binge that I'm still recovering from...

Micke and I at Konstfack Fashion Party - Night 1

Stocking the fridge before the party - Night 2

Aside from all the partying and drinking, I did manage to do some sightseeing and visit a few places I hadn't been before, such as the Modern Museum on Skepssholmen island where the extremely controversial American artist Paul McCarthy has a huge exhibit. McCarthy is from Los Angeles and is known for his "scatological" art, evidenced by his obsession with sex, genitalia, Santa Claus, and feces (in the form of Hershey's syrup). Clearly this guy has some issues he's expressing through his art instead of dealing with it through therapy (or perhaps his art is his therapy?) While I can't say it's the kind of art that really makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, it's cool to see an artist with such a strongly controversial point of view get a forum for his work. Three cheers for the Swedes; this kind of art would probably be banned in Amerikkka.

An art exhibit that I did vibe with was the photography show by Antanas Sutkus, displayed at the photo gallery on Skeppsholmen island, just near the Modern Museum. Sutkus is a photojournalist who has been chronicling life in Lithuania for many years and is considered Lithuania's best photographer. This was an exhibit devoted entirely to his work and I really enjoyed it, highly recommended!

Cleaning Lady, by Antanas Sutkus

Photos by Antanas Sutkus

My last night in Stockholm saw yet another party and drinking binge, though I managed to stay a little more sober this time, as my liver feebly recovered. This time it was a private party at the home of Henrik Karlsson, who's the head designer for Sweden's leading web design company Doberman. I met Henrik several years ago when he was interning at Method in San Francisco and we were working together on a project for Adobe. It had been many years since I had seen Henrik so it was great to see him again and see how well he was doing. He now has girlfriend, a young daughter and lives in a stylish flat in Södermalm. Doberman was also recently voted Sweden's best design agency, quite an accomplishment for the hard-working Karlsson and his team of savvy designers and programmers.


Henrik had a party for his company the night I saw him and it was great to meet all his coworkers from Doberman. Aside from drinking some genuine Absinthe, one of the highlights of the night was when this guy named Per showed up at around 2am in the morning after randomly stumbling down the steet and finding our party. Per is a Blues guitar player who went to live in New Orleans back in 1966 and studied Blues music with a bunch of the locals back then. He learned all these great Blues songs, like stuff from Barbecue Bob, and he serenaded us for about an hour with some great old time, New Orleans Blues music. He didn't have the greatest voice in the world but he really played with heart - it was really enjoyable. Who would of ever expected hearing New Orleans Blues in Stockholm of all place? The next day I was off to Tallinn aboard the Tallink cruise ship.

Me with Henrik and Micke - Night 3

Technorati Tags: Antanas Sutkus, Stockholm, Sweden

Mmmmmm, Beer....

Staropramen Brewery, Praha, Czech Republic

Before moving to Prague I'd never been much of a beer drinker. Sure I'd indulge in the occasional Dutch beer or a Newcastle Brown Ale, but not all that often. 3 weeks have gone by though since I arrived here and I've gained a new appreciation for this amazing human invention called BEER (or Pivo, as they say in Czech). If you've never had the privilege of drinking Czech beer in the Czech Republic, do yourself a favor and come and taste what REAL beer tastes like. My friend warned me when I got here: she wasn't a beer drinker either, but when living in Prague one quickly learns that Czech beer is unlike any beer anywhere else in the world (well, save for some parts of Germany and a few abbeys in Belgium). I mean, it is so good it's scary... I mean, you can drink it all day, huge mugs, and you never get tired... You just want more. In fact, you really don't get very drunk either. Czech beer seems to have a fairly low alcohol content, but it has an extremely high delicious content. It's like food. I've been drinking as much as possible everyday and trying to taste all the wonderful different varieties at the same time, like a kid in a candy shop. They're all good - Staropramen, Gambrinus, Budvar (Budweiser, no the REAL Budweiser), Bernard, Braník, Pilsner Urquell, and my favorite so far: Kozel Dark. Most of the others I've tried in Prague are light beers, but Kozel Dark is dark as molasses, and it is GOOOOOOD! The first time I tried it and couldn't believe that a beer could taste that good. Nowadays, I don't think a meal goes by here that I don't drink some kind of Czech beer (or two, or three).

Another amazing thing about Czech beer is the way it's served. In the US, bartenders try and avoid pouring too quickly to prevent working up a big head. Here in Prague, they do it the right way and pour the whole mug quickly so that you get a big head right from the beginning. Then you let it sit for a couple of minutes so the froth dies down before you drink it. This gives the beer just the right amount of aeration and it just slides down your palette...

Now, did I mention that Czech beer is cheap too! A half liter, which is quite large goes for for about 50 crowns, around $2. Sometimes you can get it for less and if you go to a tourist spot and get ripped off, you might pay as much as $3 or $4. At the supermarket you can pay as little as 40 cents for a bottle of beer, and we're not talking cheap stuff either. Indeed, the Czech Republic is a beer lover's heaven, and unfortunately I'm ruined for life- I'll never be able to drink another Corona or Heineken again.

Technorati Tags: Beer, Czech Republic, Kozel, Prague

Wacky Weather Continues...

Well it's a been a little more than a week since I arrived in Prague and the wacky weather continues. The first week I got here there was a massive heat wave which broke a nearly 150 year record for high temperatures in Prague. The next week, while most of the USA suffered through a record heat wave and even a bridge in Ohio closed down because the steel was coming apart, the weather in Prague had suddenly become cold and fall-like. This was a week after California suffered record high temps, as did the rest of Europe. El Paso, Texas was even flooded and received twice its yearly normal amount of rainfall in only a few days. But who's keeping track of all this stuff? I mean that would require admitting that the earth's climate has been altered and we'd have to stop driving SUVs and give up our glutonous ways of consuming fossil fuels. And I don't even have to mention the wars that are going on right now, in lands that sit on top of or adjacent to those big reserves of fossil fuels... Is it all worth it?

Well the rain and cool weather in Prague continue as I write this. It's been raining almost constantly for a week and I'm left with that "it's fall already and where has the summer gone?" kind of feeling. I spent most of yesterday shopping for a jacket and long sleeve shirts, since I only brought summer clothes. My Spanish tan is rapidly fading, and I find myself longing for the sun and warmth that only a week ago I was cursing. Something tells me though that things could change again next week... Well if there's anything predictable about the weather nowadays, it's that it is UNPREDICTABLE.

In the meantime, I've been shooting lots of photos and set up a Prague art and architecture gallery over at Zenfolio. Most of these were taken before the rains came. Well the one good thing about cold, rainy weather is that it affords you lots of time to sit in a cafe and work on your blogs.

Technorati Tags: Climate Change, Global Warming