Over the Oresund link to Sweden today. These great transport links always feel rather less impressive when you're actually on them- maybe in this case it was because the train takes the lower deck.
I arrived in Malmo soon enough, which in times past was considered to be part of Denmark itself (but then, so after a fashion, was England). I had been warned about Malmo, and had steeled myself for the five hours I would be there before my train left. I suppose it was pleasant enough, with a couple of old squares and a smattering of amusing public statuary. There was, however, a thoroughly dull-looking castle, called the Malmohus, which sat looking rather bored in a moat, a short walk from the town centre. I wasn't particularly enthused to visit the museum inside that the Rough Guide had enthused over- most of the buildings looked like a third-rate technical college, to be honest.
The train up to Stockholm rescued me. This is where public transport systems go when they die and are reborn in some nirvana upon rails. Tiltng carriages, first-class-style seats in standard class, everything clean..and very expensive, however. I could almost have got to the capital cheaper by flying back to Stansted from Copenhagen and then flying back to Stockholm. Nonetheless, the scenery ( when I wasn't falling into a tilted-induced sleep) was pleasant , quite flat, green with occasional expanses of water to vary everything; red barns, reminiscent of rural Pennsylvania peppered the countryside.
Arriving, Stockholm impresses with its grandeur far more than its Danish counterpart. Spires seem to jump skywards from every island far more than I found they did in reality. Although past 10 o'clock,the sky was light, and I made a trip down to Gamla Stan and made a quick reconaissance of the medieval streets on the island. I must admit that I had not expected Stockholm to be quite so beautiful- even the shops of the Vasterlanggatan seem to have avoided being too kitsch, although I am probably suffering from selective memory here, There is, however a real sense of the medieval here, although for the full effect, I suppose that begging lepers on street corners, and dodging the contents of gazunders thrown from windows would add a sense of reality. A bit like Brixton's Coldharbour Lane, then.
A late start from the hotel: it finally took the overblown title music of Emmerdale on Swedish TV to get me out of my room. I think I must have been slightly out of my mind yesterday when I failed to notice anything too kitsch in Gamla Stan. The memory of those hideous plastic dolls dressed up in national costume taking up two storeys of a shop has just come flooding back to me. That said, the old centre of Stockholm is wonderful in a Copenhagenless way, and the Sun even let me bask in some rays for the odd minute or two, before the rain sent me off to the departure point for a boat trip to part of the archipelago that guards Stockholm from the open sea.
The trip in a 1903 (former) steamer, which had reassuringly sank in 1964, lasted two and a half hours, although we didn't get to see all the islands. As there are 24, 000 of them ( not counting the small ones) maybe it was just as well.
It was an interesting trip, puttjng Stockholm, as it faded away in an almost Venetian blurr into some kind of geographical context. The islands themselves were pine-clad and mostly looked rather idyllic- 35 000 summer homes populate the archipelago, but there are also 7000 full-time residents here- according to our guide, the internet has opened up more possibilities for remote-working: for example, the emergency services switchboard is located on one of the islands.
I couldn't help thinking that it would be decent of the Swedish government to allow a Christiania-type settlement to germinate on one of the islands, but that would probably be asking too much. On and on went the parade of insularity, many of them tiny with a single house on them proudly displaying the national flag. No man is an island, so it is said, but here it is just about doable.
I wandered for the rest of the day, trying to recapture the sense of confusion that first takes hold on arrival in a new city, until all the towers, vistas and perspectives fall into place.I crossed the bridge to the large island to the south of Gamla Stan, and took a 5 kroner trip up a supremely ugly gondala construction to take a view of the city from somewhere approaching on high. It was a pleasing view as I took the ritual photographs, although some unsympathetic civil engineering marred the effect, in my untutored opinion. |
