Sweden
Friday 22nd September
Got to Heathrow airport about lunchtime. Was hugely excited about going to Sweden, and seeing all the stunning blonde women! After a tasty airport burger and a glass of wine, I discovered that the flight had been delayed by two hours.Oh well, I had bought a couple of books to read anyway, so I settled down in the airport pub and prepared for the wait. The two hours didn't take too long to pass, but after finding that the flight was then delayed by ANOTHER two hours, I was starting to get frustrated. Was quite pissed by the time I got on the plane.
However, my fear of flying had completely gone, thanks to my state of drunkenness, so I really enjoyed the flight. Don't remember landing, but I do remember getting a bus into downtown Stockholm. I got chatting to a couple of Swedish girls on the bus, they thought my attempts to speak broken Icelandic-Swedish were hilarious and said I should come for a drink. So I got off the bus with them, not knowing where I was. Now looking back on this, I made a very stupid decision. But at the time I was drunk and not thinking straight. Basically I just wanted to get to my hotel, and on finding that I was nowhere near it (the bus driver told me), I got back on the bus to leave the two Swedish girls alone. Yes, it was stupid wasn't it!!!
Anyway, I found the hotel somehow and checked in. Got a nice little room in the Rica hotel, it was fairly cosy but without windows. Had a shower and in my still-drunken state, I couldn't work out how to switch it off. I had to call room service with the very dubious-sounding request 'excuse me, could you help me turn off the water in my shower?' Fortunately I was fully dressed by the time the receptionist arrived and simply turned the tap in the opposite direction to which I had been turning it.
A friend of mine called to ask if we could meet in town for a drink, but had no idea how to get there. I had arrived by bus when it was dark, so I had seen very little of the town yet. Stockholm is built on a number of islands connected by bridges, and you really see it when you wander around. My friend was on a neighbouring island but I couldn't find the right bridge to take so in the end I got a taxi. The taxi driver asked where I was going, so I told her 'Ole Ole'. That was the name of the place, but she'd never heard of it. So I had to try to say the name of the street - Hantverkagatan - which was not easy! Somehow we found the place and I had a nice few expensive drinks.
Later that evening, I realised that I had left my mobile phone in the taxi back to my hotel. So I asked the hotel staff what to do. They called my phone and it was answered by the taxi driver. He said he'd deliver the phone to the hotel next time he was in the area but that I'd have to pay 300 crowns - about £25 - just for the privelege. Now I've never been in this situation in the UK, so I don't know what people do here, but that sounds like a lot of money, especially since the taxi would have been in the area.
I was also shocked by the price of the beer. It is well known that it is more expensive over there but how much more is surprising. I paid about 400-500 crowns for a beer. That's about £3.50-£4.50. BUT, it's not a full pint, it's only 400ml, which is 2/3 of a pint. So I'm actually paying £5-£7 a pint!!! And I was drinking like I would here!
Saturday 23rd September
Decided to explore the town on foot in daylight. I finally got to see what the place and the people looked like. The city looked like any other Scandinavian city - clean, modern, with funny coloured brick buildings - and the old town is very nice. The women are stunning. I would say that if you're a woman and you're an '8' in London, then you're only a '7' in Stockholm. The proportion of the population who are stunningly attractive, or blonde, or both, is a lot higher than probably anywhere else in the world, barring possibly South California. But there's nothing fake about these girls. They are hot! As for the men, I can't really comment on them but they just look like normal (but very lucky) blokes.
Because there are so many islands around Stockholm, I thought I'd have a look around one of the ones covered in trees, Langholmen. It looked quite wild and I wondered what it would be like. Oh, if only I'd known!
I wandered round the island, through a nice forest never far from the water's edge. Out at sea (sea? what do you call it?) there were hundreds of boats of all different types. You don't realise what a big boating place Stockholm is, but of course being built on islands it must be. Didn't see any Viking longboats sadly. I hear that the blonde hermit-woman who used to be in Abba lives on one of the islands around Stockholm but I don't think I would have recognised her anyway.
As I turned a corner, there were some very strange looking scenery, these huge house-sized chunks of rock that looked very out of place. I had a climb up and a wander around, when I saw the strangest thing. A naked man walked right past me. I looked away, and walked in the opposite direction, but then there was another one. Lying down reading a newspaper as if this was a normal Saturday afternoon thing to do. Then there was another. And a woman sunbathing on top of a rock, but I couldn't get a good look at her because she was so high up. I felt out of place there, as the only fully dressed man on the whole island, seemingly. How was I to know there was a nudist colony in the centre of Stockholm!!
That evening, I was in an area of town south of the centre - Sodermalm. It seemed like a nice part of town, there were plenty of bars there. But on walking down one side street, I heard the sound of a woman screaming. It sounded as though someone was being attacked. I hurried on and turned the corner where the sound was coming from but there was nothing there but people walking up and down the street. Then the scream came again. That wasn't the sound of a woman being attacked, it was the sound of a woman being ***ked. I looked up, there was a flat with the windows wide open, and what must have been an adult film playing at full volume. Did they have no shame? I couldn't see anything, but in a neighbouring flat I'm sure I saw someone naked from the back. What was it about this city? Were they all sex and nudity mad?
I had noticed a tendency for the ladies of the city to have extremely revealing cleavage-wear, one girl looked as though she was wearing a small tight jacket which covered her nipples but not much in between.
But it was Saturday night. It was time to hit the town.
Except it wasn't. It was only 7.30 and the Swedes don't go out until midnight, because it's so expensive. Now this might sound like a bad thing for a tourist - all those hours of drinking to fill before everyone else comes out to party. But one advantage is that it's possible to get into any bar in town (even the really exclusive trendy ones that have huge queues by 1 o'clock) as long as you get there early enough. Get there about 10-11, that should do it.
I visited Laroy, previously called the Spy bar, on Stureplan. There are various articles on the internet about how hard it is to get it, so just walking straight in felt pretty good until I realised it was empty. I kept my ticket and asked if I could get back in with it later on. I then tried East across the road, which was much nicer. Both horrendously expensive, but both full of very attractive women - after midnight at least.
Sadly there's not much to say about my night on the town in Stockholm, except that I got very drunk, chatted to a lot of random people, including some very nice girls. One of which was very angry about the fact that I even dared to speak to her - apparently being a drunken Brit in Stockholm is in no way cool and doesn't endear you to the locals much. Still it was fun. And expensive.
Sunday 24th September
Had a horrible hangover the next day, which was eased by a few beers at the airport. It took me 4 days to fully recover. I shall be returning next year I think.
If you have any comments on this page, then you can email me at
marekarmstrong@hotmail.com.