Swedish Honeymoon
The ice queen. When I first met her, I didn’t know if I could love her.
I was jet-lagged and off-kilter from an uneasy start, arriving without internet on our phones and without a good sense of what to expect of Stockholm. I got my first real view of her just hours into the trip — from a recommended vista point at the end of a narrow cobblestone alley. I rounded a corner and found myself bathed in sun, yet somehow chilled from a dampness coming off of the water. I looked out and saw a rolling river of deep dark blue, and beyond, a sparkling spired city in a wash of sandy pinks, oranges, browns, and grays. She was grand and aloof. She couldn’t so much as bring herself to whisper, “welcome.”
I fell in love the next morning. I usually crave blue skies and sun. I am most content walking and running under the warm embrace of a day. And yet it felt so right to greet our ice queen under the cloak of a gray morning. After our ambitious first Saturday night at a dance club (we couldn’t help ourselves), we required strong black coffee to jolt us out of tired stupors. Sufficiently buzzed, John and I walked over the long pedestrian bridge from Södermalm to Gamla Stan to begin our exploring. Bridges are to Stockholm what subways are to New York City. The city is situated on fourteen islands, connected entirely by a series of bridges of varying sizes and shapes. We traversed these bridges and made our way around a couple of her islands, peaking down narrow streets and walking along the water. Every few minutes we’d pause to study anchored boats and inviting open-air bars. Almost every bar with outdoor seating had fleece or fur-lined blankets draped over their seats and benches. Sunshine in Stockholm is fleeting.
Surely I was flirting with this mysterious city, but the real way to my heart was through my stomach. After walking for hours, John and I were suddenly ravenous. Via Yelp, John found a well-reviewed lunch spot in the heart of well-heeled Östermalm. We quickened our pace and headed towards Nybrogatan 38. I salivate to think of the crown jewel now. We entered into an inviting, warmly-lit restaurant and were shown to a small table by the stairs, with one single white candle in the center, dripping wax. Soon, the waitress brought over a bread basket and a carafe of hot coffee. Oh, the joy! The details! We sampled three types of fresh-baked breads — traditional rye, French, and an aromatic cornmeal. The breads were paired with a churned sweet butter and a flat wooden knife for spreading, and the coffee was served in a modern iteration of a Victorian-era silver kettle. At that very moment, I understood all the hype around Scandinavian design. The tableware was simple yet elegant. Practical but unique. John, usually the ever-conscious consumer, looked at me and said: “I’d buy these for our home.”
The meal unfolded like a pleasing dream. Next came poached eggs and hollandaise sauce on more fresh bread. After came our first taste of small, flavorful Baltic shrimp in a lemon-dill marinade atop a bed of greens. Dill would become my favorite herb over the coming weeks. Bright and subtle. Later came more coffee, deep breaths, and fantasizing about what was next.
The afternoon led us to chai lattes and Swedish Chokladbollen desserts, a visit to Stockholm’s famous Vasa museum to behold a wholly-intact 17th century ship that sank due to poor engineering and male hubris, and an unexpected Ingmar Bergman-influenced modern play at the Royal Opera House. We tuckered ourselves out and slept as soundly as a 9-hour time difference can allow.
After a couple more days in Stockholm, we embarked on my very favorite part of the trip. We loaded up our backpacking gear and boarded a ferry bound for Gotland — Sweden’s largest island, separated from Eastern Europe by the icy Baltic. Swedes adore Gotland, and particularly its flagship city Visby, for its soft light and fairytale churches and cottages. It effortlessly marries the old with the new like so many European cities — Florence, Seville, Paris. But it does so in a smaller, more relaxed way. Even inside the 13th century Medieval walls, there are open squares and yards and spaces between the chaos of civilization. Outside of the walls, unspoiled nature rolls freely.
Every summer, leaders from Sweden’s eight recognized political parties descend on Visby for a week of political bantering and merriment. There are only a couple of hours of darkness during the height of the solstice, so there’s ample time for coalition-building and burning. I imagine the city takes on a whole different life force that week. While we sipped Gotland Brewery’s draft in the city square, sun kissing every inch of our faces, I considered what it would be like to be part of that revelry.
Instead, I was carrying at least 30 pounds of gear on my back, cautiously optimistic about our grand plans to take advantage of Sweden’s “right to roam” laws. In 1994, Sweden codified what was heretofore an implicit way of life — that everyone has recreational access to both public and private land. That means you can pitch a tent just about anywhere that looks comfortable. Music to my ears. My love for camping and hiking swelled when I moved to California a couple of years ago, both because I yearned for respites from my fast-paced political job, and because this type of intimate exploration of landscapes helped me feel less like a foreigner. But I loathed the long waiting lists for California campgrounds. In Sweden, we’d have immediate access to sleeping under the stars.
For our first night, we followed the advice of a native Gotlander we met on the ferry ride and hiked two hours south of Visby to a lake. The “hike” grew more precarious when the walking path ended and we were forced to trudge along the paved road, Volvos zooming past every few minutes. All part of the adventure, we assured ourselves. We arrived at the lake just as the sun was dipping low in the sky. After eating our weight in ramen and brie, we tucked into our tent and listened to birds dive into the placid water.
The next day we hiked back to Visby and refueled at a terraced lunch spot, overlooking what was left of a 13th century cathedral. We explored the walking paths along the sea coast, dropping our heavy backpacks with a thud whenever we saw an inviting slice of grass to lay on, or a public hammock to swing in. That night we dined on a park bench. We ate impossibly fresh, rich lox that we picked up at a corner bodega and sipped whiskey from a flask while the sky turned from blue to pink.
After the light faded, we walked half a mile to a grassy clearing right outside of the medieval walled city. We pitched our tent under a tree and hoped “right to roam” laws extended to historic sites. We slept in fits and starts. Bleary-eyed, we boarded the ferry bound for Stockholm the next morning.
After a couple of days of adventuring, we agreed on an evening of indulgence in one of Stockholm’s posh hotels. We scored a room at the Diplomat, situated along the waterfront in Östermalm. The hotel married vintage cast-iron architecture and ornate stained glass windows with crisp, modern furnishings. Everything in our bedroom was white and the only decoration I can recall is a large circular unframed mirror. Following a delightful nap, we embarked on an urban adventure.
We wandered for a couple of miles, appreciating design-conscious Stockholm in all her Thursday night glory. Swedish women and men favor black clothing and must visit the tailor frequently. Men take the Euro form-fitting suit to the next level and women don black leather and stilettos with pious devotion. The boulevards and alleyways of Stockholm transform into a catwalk for the beautiful.
Intoxicated by our sumptuous surroundings, John and I decided to extend the buzz by beelining to Rolfs Kök, a fashionable restaurant serving modern Nordic cuisine. At this point in our trip, we had already tasted the classic Nordic dishes of pickled herring and elk meatballs with lingonberry sauce, and we were a day away from tasting cold cut Reindeer on smorgas. At Rolfs Kök, we chose seats at the bar that afforded a clear view into the choreography of the kitchen, and ordered another Scandinavian favorite: Akvavit herb liquor. The attentive bartender kept us giggly with a steady flow of akvavit, local dark beer, and neat whiskey. We allayed our stomachs with fresh rolls and escargot.
As the night rolled on, we watched as chefs flambéed desserts and marveled at the various hooks consuming almost all of the restaurant’s wall space. Part clever design choice, part practical space-saver, the hooks held spare chairs, cups, jars, and candles. After the trip, John and I would try to recreate this in San Francisco, albeit imperfectly. Dresses and jeans currently hang from our bedroom wall.
Once we were full on decadence, we paid our check and made our way toward the Swedish burger chain MAX. We ordered vege and chicken burgers and fries, contemplated another night of dancing at a club, and instead submitted to fatigue. We slept soundly in our crisp white room.
The next morning, we were up and at ’em. We made our way across a bridge to another island that housed the Nordic Museum. There, we endeavored to get a better understanding of how Sweden became such a design-conscious, socially liberal mecca. We learned more about the indigenous people who lived in the north of Sweden, Nordic fashion trends through the decades, and the historical context that ultimately birthed Arne Jacobsen, Greta Grossman, and IKEA. I thoroughly enjoyed myself; John could have spent the entire day there.
But we had our penultimate — and whackiest — Swedish adventure waiting for us that evening. Around lunchtime, we hopped into our Volvo and headed Northwest to Sweden’s third largest lake, Lake Mälaren. John would be sleeping with the fishes when he turned thirty at midnight.
Months earlier, I booked us the smallest underwater hotel in the world. The Utter Inn was constructed in 2000 by Mikael Genberg to capture the pastoral ideal of the red Swedish cottage. Our forthcoming road trips would confirm that this ideal is still alive and well Sweden. Virtually without exception, every home we passed in the rural parts of the country was painted red with white trim. Genberg anchored the archetypal cottage in the middle of the lake and built a room below water with panoramic windows. Visitors like us could lay in modest twin beds and yip as the flash of a fish’s tail appeared through the murky water every 30 seconds.
The water was choppy when our host dropped us off via motor boat at the Utter Inn. We spent the afternoon on the deck feeding bread to fishes, playing Gin Rummy, and washing down chicken curry takeout with a bottle of cheap bordeaux. I would recommend a visit to anyone for one night, and one night only. As the cartoon on my Oma’s refrigerator says, it destroys one’s nerves to be amicable to the same person every day — especially when you have less than 100 square feet of operating space.
We spent the next two nights in an airbnb in Malmö. Malmö is a post-industrial city that lacks the prosperity of Stockholm. Yet it is slowly revitalizing, thanks in part to recent waves of immigration, and to a new bridge that now connects it to cosmopolitan Copenhagen. During our time in Malmö, we happened upon one of the best concerts of 2016, complete with dueling fiddles, and later, a drum circle. The next morning we walked around the alternative city center, Möllevång Square, full of bakeries and eateries serving Middle Eastern food. We read that some 43% of Malmö’s 300,000+ population now have a foreign background, many of Syrian descent.
On our last rainy afternoon in Malmö, we treated ourselves to a shockingly reasonably-priced Thai massage. We had learned earlier on the trip that Swedish massages are atypical in Sweden; most massage studios offer the Thai varietal. The elite Swedes winter in Thailand and must have learned the glory of the handiwork there.
We bid adieu to Southern Sweden and passed through the charming university town of Lund, en route to Copenhagen. Our final three honeymooner days in Copenhagen elicited a different kind of love. And that different love deserves a different post. More to come soon.
