Monday August 26, Stockholm
Not a very exciting day, which is just what a cracka needs every once in a while.
I had to do laundry and found a place off of the Odenplan stop. It was 100 kroner for one load of laundry. Holy crap. I decided to do two because the washers were tiny. So I paid 200 crowns for laundry. That's $30 and insane. Insane. It was 50 crowns at the hotel in Gothenburg =/ The older woman was helpful and made a point of having me touch the laundry. That's good, I suppose. Then I found a 1 crown coin in the machine and she said it was an honest machine for giving me my money back.
It was chill waiting for my laundry, though. I found a park and blogged and watched the kids play soccer and some hippie-ish guys play big huge yo-yo with a thick string between handles.
I tried to go take the city hall tour, but just missed the last one because their summer hours were dropping off.
Then I blogged at the city hall grounds/garden before watching a bunch of Dexter at the hotel. I'm not sure there will be a more interesting plot in the series because the first series was so good and could only be done once.
Tuesday August 27, Stockholm
On Tuesday I woke up early (for me) to pack up a bit before heading off to the city hall tour. My guidebook said many cities in Scandinavia have massive, gaudy city hall buildings instead of (or maybe more so than) churches. Plus, the nice Swedish girl working at the hotel said I should definitely do city hall.
It was packed. It is a giant of a building.
The tour was pretty long and well done. The guide was a nice Swedish girl. She was pretty thick, but had a good shape. She had pretty nice hair, too. Bangs with the sides by her ears slightly longer than the back. She had a fun tattoo of a heart and cross bones on her upper inner forearm. The heart was solid ink except for a skull's eyes and teeth (like in the style of a simplified skull from the skull and cross bones). Anyway, it was a good tattoo but didn't feel super professional as she was giving the tour.
It started in the Blue Hall. This is hall used for the Nobel Prize banquet held in Stockholm. The hall is big, but not as big as you'd expect for the 1000 attending guests! She said it is very meticulously planned so that each guest gets 60 centimeters for their table setting. The honored guests get 70. Here is the setting.
The hall looks mostly red from the bricks and greenish gray from the marble floor. She said the architect planned to paint it blue like the ocean, but loved the way it looked. They had been calling the Blue Hall for years before completion so the name stuck.
The big staircase was designed for ease of descending by the architect's wife in her biggest dress and highest heels.
We next saw the actual city council meeting room. Cripes, it looked fancier than some banquet halls. The ceiling supports were not covered but instead painted over. The artist painted part of the roof with stars and the moon to represent the top of Viking long halls. I liked that. The curtains in the room were original from 1921 (date of the opening of the building. The guide said some people guess the building to be 400 years old based on the aging techniques purposely used on the facade to make it appear much older.) and had become worn with all the tourists passing by daily. The bottom portion was replaced and used to make ties for distinguished guests. She liked that diplomats around the world were wearing ties from the Stockholm city hall curtains.
The next room was a very tall tower with 100 arches to represent the 100 city council members. They later had to add one member to break ties, but adding one arch was not so easy.
They did marriages in the next room that had to be booked 8 months in advance. Citizenship, sexual orientation, and wealth are not considered. Anyone can get married for free. She said you can choose between the short and long ceremony. The long ceremony is a whopping 3 minutes. Care to guess the short one? Yes, you're right, 30 seconds!
There were a few more rooms. The architect liked to put a room with a very short ceiling just before a room with a massively high ceiling. She made us pay attention to it and it was very effective. The last hall is the Gold Hall. It is a giant mosaic done in 23 karat gold. They only needed 10 kg of gold; the tiles are very thin and sealed to preserve the art. It should have taken 8 years under normal circumstances, but due to a rush to open during a big city anniversary (I believe), the artist (who was imported from Germany I believe. Sweden was not a country known for its mosaic artists.) was given 10 months. The workers slept in the hall to finish on time. There was one obvious mistake. It seems they forgot about a marble trim on the bottom of the hall and the mosaic cut off St. Eric's head as he rode his horse. The citizens were very upset because St. Eric is the patron saint of Stockholm. The artist protected himself by reminding the citizens of the fact that St. Eric was beheaded and was therefore depicted accurately.
The citizens also did not like the following depiction of the queen of the lake who guards Stockholm.
Her eyes were too big, her hands and feet too manly and her hair was too much like Medusa's snakes. The artist said her eyes were to keep watch, her big hands and feet to protect the city and stand her ground, respectively, and her hair should be wavy since she is queen of the lake.
I met a guy named Travis from Chicago as I was leaving and it was fun to talk to an American again. He was doing a similar trip to mine. I told him I'm flying into Chicago on my way back and he said to enjoy it for him, hahha.
The hotel staff was so relieved to see me back because they were afraid I wasn't going to check out. I read check out was noon and of course, it was 11:00. I packed up and was off to the cruise to Helsinki!
Not a very exciting day, which is just what a cracka needs every once in a while.
I had to do laundry and found a place off of the Odenplan stop. It was 100 kroner for one load of laundry. Holy crap. I decided to do two because the washers were tiny. So I paid 200 crowns for laundry. That's $30 and insane. Insane. It was 50 crowns at the hotel in Gothenburg =/ The older woman was helpful and made a point of having me touch the laundry. That's good, I suppose. Then I found a 1 crown coin in the machine and she said it was an honest machine for giving me my money back.
It was chill waiting for my laundry, though. I found a park and blogged and watched the kids play soccer and some hippie-ish guys play big huge yo-yo with a thick string between handles.
I tried to go take the city hall tour, but just missed the last one because their summer hours were dropping off.
Then I blogged at the city hall grounds/garden before watching a bunch of Dexter at the hotel. I'm not sure there will be a more interesting plot in the series because the first series was so good and could only be done once.
Tuesday August 27, Stockholm
On Tuesday I woke up early (for me) to pack up a bit before heading off to the city hall tour. My guidebook said many cities in Scandinavia have massive, gaudy city hall buildings instead of (or maybe more so than) churches. Plus, the nice Swedish girl working at the hotel said I should definitely do city hall.
It was packed. It is a giant of a building.
The tour was pretty long and well done. The guide was a nice Swedish girl. She was pretty thick, but had a good shape. She had pretty nice hair, too. Bangs with the sides by her ears slightly longer than the back. She had a fun tattoo of a heart and cross bones on her upper inner forearm. The heart was solid ink except for a skull's eyes and teeth (like in the style of a simplified skull from the skull and cross bones). Anyway, it was a good tattoo but didn't feel super professional as she was giving the tour.
It started in the Blue Hall. This is hall used for the Nobel Prize banquet held in Stockholm. The hall is big, but not as big as you'd expect for the 1000 attending guests! She said it is very meticulously planned so that each guest gets 60 centimeters for their table setting. The honored guests get 70. Here is the setting.
The hall looks mostly red from the bricks and greenish gray from the marble floor. She said the architect planned to paint it blue like the ocean, but loved the way it looked. They had been calling the Blue Hall for years before completion so the name stuck.
The big staircase was designed for ease of descending by the architect's wife in her biggest dress and highest heels.
We next saw the actual city council meeting room. Cripes, it looked fancier than some banquet halls. The ceiling supports were not covered but instead painted over. The artist painted part of the roof with stars and the moon to represent the top of Viking long halls. I liked that. The curtains in the room were original from 1921 (date of the opening of the building. The guide said some people guess the building to be 400 years old based on the aging techniques purposely used on the facade to make it appear much older.) and had become worn with all the tourists passing by daily. The bottom portion was replaced and used to make ties for distinguished guests. She liked that diplomats around the world were wearing ties from the Stockholm city hall curtains.
The next room was a very tall tower with 100 arches to represent the 100 city council members. They later had to add one member to break ties, but adding one arch was not so easy.
They did marriages in the next room that had to be booked 8 months in advance. Citizenship, sexual orientation, and wealth are not considered. Anyone can get married for free. She said you can choose between the short and long ceremony. The long ceremony is a whopping 3 minutes. Care to guess the short one? Yes, you're right, 30 seconds!
There were a few more rooms. The architect liked to put a room with a very short ceiling just before a room with a massively high ceiling. She made us pay attention to it and it was very effective. The last hall is the Gold Hall. It is a giant mosaic done in 23 karat gold. They only needed 10 kg of gold; the tiles are very thin and sealed to preserve the art. It should have taken 8 years under normal circumstances, but due to a rush to open during a big city anniversary (I believe), the artist (who was imported from Germany I believe. Sweden was not a country known for its mosaic artists.) was given 10 months. The workers slept in the hall to finish on time. There was one obvious mistake. It seems they forgot about a marble trim on the bottom of the hall and the mosaic cut off St. Eric's head as he rode his horse. The citizens were very upset because St. Eric is the patron saint of Stockholm. The artist protected himself by reminding the citizens of the fact that St. Eric was beheaded and was therefore depicted accurately.
The citizens also did not like the following depiction of the queen of the lake who guards Stockholm.
Her eyes were too big, her hands and feet too manly and her hair was too much like Medusa's snakes. The artist said her eyes were to keep watch, her big hands and feet to protect the city and stand her ground, respectively, and her hair should be wavy since she is queen of the lake.
I met a guy named Travis from Chicago as I was leaving and it was fun to talk to an American again. He was doing a similar trip to mine. I told him I'm flying into Chicago on my way back and he said to enjoy it for him, hahha.
The hotel staff was so relieved to see me back because they were afraid I wasn't going to check out. I read check out was noon and of course, it was 11:00. I packed up and was off to the cruise to Helsinki!
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