Annas Studiereise i Norge
 Stockholm Last Friday morning I left Bø for Stockholm, Sweden. Stockholm is "the capital of Scandinavia" with 1.5 million people- the largest city in all of scandinavia. It is also incredibly diverse. We must have heard 15 different languages in the short time we were there. The city is actually a series of many islands. A lady we met on the bus said she heard Stockholm was composed of 300 islands. The biggest islands have bridges connecting them to other islands. I met one of my best friends from high school, Briana, who had been studying in Austria, at the airport. It was wonderful to see a face from home! We started our adventure right away. We bussed into downtown Stockholm, wandered around a bit lost, and found the tourist center where we learned that all the hostels in the city were booked for Friday and Saturday nights. We ended up booking at a hotel outside the city. By the time we figured out how to manage the subway system and make it to our hotel, we were pretty tired from walking and hauling our luggage. We explored the area around the hotel, ate at a pizzaria, and chatted about our study abroad experiences in our room the rest of the night. On Saturday, we started downtown and walked to Gamla Stan, the old part of town. There was plenty of shopping to keep us busy for a large portion of the day, but we also went to a few museums. We saw the Kungliga Myntkabinettet, the royal collection of various coins and moneys from ages ago and all around the world, the Royal Apartments, the Royal Palace, and the Tre Kronor museum. The Apartments and the Palace showcased the very royal life of past kings and queens in Sweden. I have never seen so many jewel encrusted items in my life! It was extravegant and very cool to see. The Tre Konor museum was the home to the original foundation of the royal palace from the 1300`s, which has since burned down. As we walked out of the musuem, we caught the changing of the guards and a little ceremony outside with all sorts of guards to the King and cannons. We continued on from Gamla Stan to another island, Sodermalm, which was mostly residential. We peeked inside the gigantic Katrina Church and saw part of a Christmas program going on. Afterwards, we headed back to the hotel and watched good old Harry Potter on tv. On Sunday, we hit up yet another island, Djurgården. We poked around in the Nordiska Museum, which housed a pretty random collection of Swedish things, from dollhouses to funeral accessories to table settings from a hundred years ago. It was kind of odd, but free of charge. We then visited Grona Lund, which we thought was a Christmas market, but turned out to be a carnival, complete with rides and games and prizes. To complete the experience, Briana and I ate some mini doughnuts. Satisfied, we moved on from the carnival to Skansen, which is a huge outdoor museum on the island. We arrived an hour and a half before it closed, so we didn`t have time for the zoo or many other attractions in Skansen. We did, however, go to their Christmas market, which was great. Every person that was a part of the museum wore traditional Swedish garb from the 1700 and 1800`s. We went into the glass making building, where we watched two glass blowers make vases. That was really sweet. Briana and I made a few purchases in the market and bussed back to downtown and walked to the hostel we booked for that night. Our hostel experience on Sunday night was an interesting one. The room we stayed in was unfortuantely mixed-sex. And of course, Briana and I were the only females to be found in the whole damn hostel. We ended up with four Italian guys and two other random guys in our room. Oh, the Italian boys... Briana and I were woken up in the middle of the night by these four mid-twenty Italians burping and farting. They were burping and farting on purpose, because they thought it was hilarious and giggled all night long. We got the heck out of there asap the next morning. On Monday, we went to the airport, shopped duty free, and both flew back to Norway. Stockholm is surprizingly different that Olso and other parts of Norway. Stockholm had fabulous huge old buildings with great architechture. I could tell it is a wealthy, old city. Since Norway was quite poor until they found oil in 1969, they really don`t have rich old towns like Stockholm. For this reason, it was really neat to see. I thought all of scandinavia would be the same, but I am pleasently wrong.
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Diary Photos
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Stockholm |
 Crossing onto Gamla Stan |
 Another view of Stockholm |
 Nordiska Museum |
 Grona Lund (the Swedish carnival) |
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