Back to the story of yesterday! In Gamla Stan, Stockholm we started by wandering around the little shops and cafes, poking our heads into a few, but also enjoying the people watching. As we wandered around, we accidentally bumped into the Royal Palace (which is hard not to do in Gamla Stan) and began walking around it, appreciating the architecture, but also the incredible views available from its dominant position on the island. In the process of circumnavigating the palace we discovered an entrance to the Royal Treasury, which is where the official regalia of Sweden's royal family is kept- things like the crowns, scepters, orbs, keys, ermine cloaks, and other treasures. No photographs were allowed in the display area, but I can testify to the very impressive oppulance of the items. Each item, whether sword or shoe was inlaid with countless gems, perls, and precious metals; all of the finest handicraft, and perhaps most shockingly of all, not gaudily. Seeing these crowns was an almost cartoon-like experience, because the royal crowns look exactly like what one would think of when they think of a royal crown- opulent, but also elegent. One thing of particular note that I appreciated was noticing that one of the royal orbs was etched with the features of the globe, as it was known at the time. The symbolism is obviuous: the monarch literally holds the world in their hand. Nick made a good observation on this point, of considering how repeated exposure to such symbolism would impact the worldview of the monarch themselves- such as the pressure to perform things that would register on the world stage; but also including the conviction it would build inside of them that they had a right to rule, and even to invade foreign lands as they would believe the world was really meant for them anyway.
After visiting the Treasury we began working our way southward, out of Gamla Stan and into Sodermalm. Each district of the city certainly had a distinctive feel, and Sodermalm was evidently the hip part of town. We made our way all the way down to the Ringencentrum mall to meet with a friend of a friend, Oskar Olai, whom I had gotten in contact with prior to our trip. Oskar had provided some really excellent advice via email about what to see and do, and offered to take us to the Teatern food court at Ringencentrum to get to know each other better and give us a chance to ask as many questions about Sweden as our hearts desired. The Teatern food court is not just any food court, however. It is actually an incredible dining experience where people can try food from some truly world-class chefs without all of the expense that normally comes with that. The dining area is like a «theater in the round» where stadium seating surrounds a central «stage» if you will, except the center of that stage is a large circular building with at least eight different kiosk fronts facing outward towards the diners. Each one of these fronts is run by a different top-chef, some of whom apparently have multiple Michelin stars in their primary restaurants. Diners then have the opportunity to walk in a circle around the central structure, and consider the unique and delicious sounding options each chef is advertising at this location. You place your order, and then find seating in the stadium which allows you to watch your cooks in action as they prepare your meal per the chef's signature recipe. Oskar told us that this is a great way to give famous chefs a «test run» before committing to the extreme expense of attending one of their flagship restaurants. Also unlike American food courts, craft beer and wine are available for purchase, which is exciting for craft beer fans such as ourselves. Oskar, Nick, and Patrick all opted for the ramen kiosk, which offered some really fancy looking Japanese style gourmet ramen bowls, while I got my lunch from a kiosk that claimed its artistic focus as being «functional food». My order was a pastrami sandwich with pesto sauce, but the pastrami was unlike any I had ever had in the U.S. as it was a densly packed patty of pastrami, rather than thin slices of it. It reminded me slightly of a falafel burger, and ultimately it was delecious.
Oskar was great to talk to while we had our lunch, explaining to us many fascinating elements of Swedish culture. We talked about Swedish security issues, the Swedish educational system, what sort of economic difficulties young Swedes face when they graduate university, the social structure, recreation and sports, customs and traditions, and more. After lunch, Oskar offered to give us our ride to our next destination, which with his help, we had identified as the National Historical Museum, in the Ostermalm district. We really appreciated his generosity, but especially appreciated his company- part of why we're on this trip is to gain deeper appreciations and understandings of foreign cultures, and being able to spend time with locals, picking their brains with all our questions is a great experience for us- not to mention far more memorable than just souvenir shopping. Also worth mentioning at this point was that there was a young family seated next to us with twin boys and a younger boy as well, and the youngest boy decided almost instantly that Nick was his new friend, and proceeded to show off all of his toys to him. The older twins also thought Nick was sooo cool when I told them that Nick was in the Army, because they were wearing camoflauge sweaters. Super cute.
We said goodbye to Oskar who had to get home to his wife and kids, and made a beeline for the extensive Viking section of the history museum. There we were deeply impressed by the thoughtful approach the currators had taken to tackling the subject. Before even entering into the exhibit there was a large printed statement about the reasons for studying history and its importance in understanding who we are today. Then almost immediately afterwards was an interesting section describing the historical cooption of the Viking past to justify a very wide and diverse set of idealogies, social, and political movements over the generations. It showed how depictions of Vikings have shifted over time to conform to the social mores of the day, and challenged the museum goer to consider how current depictions of Viking people may be ignoring factual history in favor of advancing certain agendas. Then the museum proceeded to display a wealth of information, artifacts, and models covering every element of Viking society. One thing we were particularly excited to see were more runestones, like the ones we had visited the previous day with our tour guide Jonathan, but some of them having been faithfully repainted to look like how they would've looked anciently. This, and several other things in the museum did a remarkable job of bringing to life both small and large elements of what we had learned from talking with Jonathan, which was quite exciting.
By the time we finished our tour of the museum's Viking sectiuon (sadly, we did not have time to see the other exhibits) we had to rush to the subway to make our way back to the central station to recover our backpacks, and then return on the same train line past the history museum and out to the deep water port near Ropstan. After getting directions from a fellow transit user, we walked along a long, dark industrial road, hoping to find the seaport and dock for the overnight trip to Tallinn we had booked a few weeks previously. The road continued on, and on, and on though- making us quite nervous eventually that we might not make it to the boat on time before it departed. We started running, which is when we noticed a Pakistani man running through a giant abandoned industrial park, clearly looking for an entrance to a building that had the logo of our cruise line on it, but as far as we could tell had no available entrances to it. We caught up to him, and sure enough he was in the same metaphorical boat (and same absence of not being in a physical boat) as we were; where he knew that the seaport was somewhere in this part of town, but exactly where was anyone's guess. We saw a long, LONG skybridge stretching from the building we were near, all the way through the industrial park, and decided we would try to follow that skybridge to its other end. We started running again, and after quite a ways we found a staircase that led up to the skybridge. Now we had to run through the skybridge, back the way we had came, but 10 meters above the ground now. Finally it reached the logo'd building, only to make a sharp turn to the right, and stretch off at least a kilometer into the distance! Despite how tired we were having done as much walking as we had all day, and now all the running we had done with our backpacks on, we were running dangerously low on time until our boat departed, and we still couldn't even see our boat. So we ran. And then we ran some more. Finally we came close to the boat, but still we weren't done as we had to run through several hundred meters more of zig-zagging ramps that got us to the boarding level for our massive cruise ship, the Victoria, run by Tallink lines. Thankfully we made it, as did the Pakistani fellow we had bumped into earlier, but it was uncomfortably close!
As the boat pulled away, we found our way to our private cabin and cleaned ourselves up from our little workout. Putting on the sharper clothes we had available to us (out of the small selection we managed to bring in our single bag each) we stepped out to explore the ship. The first order of business was food, which led us to nice restaurant with a professional pianist playing in the corner. Patrick and Nick ordered veggie burgers while I ordered BBQ ribs, all of which was great. During our dinner we noticed advertisements for a fancy cognac apertif served with capiccinos and a swanky chocolate candy. The cognac was Remy Martin, which normally is way, WAY beyond the price range of students like ourselves- but evidently the cruise line did a «cognac of the month» for these apertifs and this month it was the Remy Martin, meaning we could each have a glass (plus the capiccino and chocolate) for only 15 Euros each. Considering that sometimes a regular cocktail in the U.S. can cost that much at some bars, we decided that we should spring for it- when else would we have the opportunity to try something so exclusive? It was absolutely very enjoyable. If I can be completely frank, it's not my personal favorite cognac I've ever tried, and so even if I could afford a bottle of it I don't think I would buy one, but it's great to have had a chance to figure that out, and it was still a very, very good drink. The chocolate was scrumptious too!
We considered going to one of the bars aboard ship, but realized that they would likely charge us an arm and a leg for each drink, and we were in the mood to party it up having successfuly made it aboard and having enjoyed our trip so much so far. We decided then that instead of going to the bar, we would go to the tax free shop aboard the ship and purchase some alcohol at a better price per unit ratio. The tax free shop was incredibly low cost, and so we acquired the fixings to make both screwdrivers and mudslides, and returned to the room to mix them up. After serving ourselves a couple rounds, we remembered that there was supposedly a caberet show that would happen that evening in the ship's theater, so we wandered down that direction (a somewhat tricky task given the very noticable rolling action the ship had picked up in the choppy waves, combined with our medium level of intoxication) and found ourselves decent seats shortly before the show began. A dance troupe led by both a male singer/dancer and a female singer came out on stage in stunning Las Vegas style costumes, performing routines to covers of classic American music sang by the leads. They started off a little rocky, to be honest (though they also had to combat the rolling ship) but as the show went on it only got better and better as the dancers and singers gained confidence in their act. Reguiar quick costume changes and fantastic technical direction in both lighting and sound helped round out the show, for a very entertaining hour, even if some of the dancers were a bit on the inexperienced side.
After the show we thought we would head back to the room for another drink and then investigate the dance club aboard, but one drink turned into a few as we got caught up talking, laughing, and even fighting about a variety of interesting topics. Finally, we realized that it was getting quite late, but that none of us were really feeling very sleepy yet, so now was the time to go check out the dance club (the time now being 0245h, haha!) Predictably, we were a bit late to find much of a dance scene- mostly it appeared to be a bunch of late-teens who had snuck out of their family's cabins who were hanging around the dance floor, looking bored. Patrick, who had quite a bit more to drink than either Nick or myself, was pretty determined to dance anyway, but I wasn't particularly feeling it and was about to walk away when the DJ managed to start playing more interesting dance music than the mediocre material that had been thumping when we first arrived, so I relented and agreed to help Patrick get the club hopping once more. Our presence on the dance floor helped break the spell for the others, and soon the dance floor began to get crowded despite the late hour. Patrick had gotten several young men to start pantomiming passing an energy ball back and forth amongst the dancers on the floor (including myself) and the energy ball got larger and «heavier» with each pass, until the participants were pretending they could barely move it and needed the assistance of nearly everyone around just to pass it off- until someone would finally collapse under the weight and drop the ball, and Patrick would promptly start the whole process over again with a new, but smaller imaginary energy ball. We finally managed to get to sleep shortly before 0400h.
When we awoke at 0830h we showered and went to have breakfast at the same restaurant where we had dinner the previous night, which was now a buffet. Nick and Patrick both got lox, and Patrick got caviar as well, while I, not being able to stand the taste of fish, got crepes with yogurt and jam, pumpernickle bread with cottage cheese and a sliced and salted tomato, and some bacon. We cleaned up the room, went to go outside on the deck to see the Baltic Sea for ourselves, and then I sat down to try writing a bit but was interrupted by our ship pulling into our next destination: Tallinn, Estonia!