The amazing world of Selma Øye

As you know, because I've already posted about, I spent some days in Stockholm the last week of October.
My habit is to write a travel book for every trip i took, a short one, to note dates and experiences and names which could fade away from my mind.
Finally, for the first time in my life, i found time (during these days of holiday and illness for me), and feeling of turning this travel book into a post on my blog! Enjoy it and please tell me your impressions!

First Day: 25th of October 2007.

As a good beginning we found that flight from Pisa to Stockholm was really late! Damn Ryanair... But, as we say "Costo poco, godo poco!"
We arrived to Stockholm at around 3.00 a. m.
We were supposed to leave at 8.35, instead we left at 10.40. The flight usually takes around two hours and forty minutes.
Fortunately Swedes are really well organized and there still was a bus to get from Skvasta (the airport in Nyköpig)to the central station in Stockholm. Claudio doesn't speak so much English so I bought tickets for both. In the queue for the tickets Italians were quite hotheaded, one of them minaced to make a big mess if the bus would have left without him... Maybe someone should have made him noticing that the ticket seller was also the driver of the bus so no way for the bus to leave before he had his ticket!
Autobus to Stockholm passes throught a wonderful landscape, unfortunately it was too dark to see it and we were really dead tired.
Johan has been kind enought to come to the station and drive us home through the town, in the meantime showing us some important places we are too sleepy to see. He parked his car a bit far from his house. To get home we passed in front of the Italian-Swedish cultural institute, SVT which is the national television and radio and the American Embassy: the street of the embassy is blocked by renforced concrete blocks, Johan told us they put them there the 12th of September 2001 and they still are there locking the way to everyone who needs to pass there.
When we finally arrived home his family members of course were all sleeping but the cat which said to us "welcome" in a very polite way.
They arranged for us in Karin's room. Karin is Johan's younger sister, she's 23 and lives in Uppsala. We had not chance to meet her unfortunately, but it seems she has the right half of her head black-haired, and the left part red-haired...
We met instead a real swedish cat, the one which said us "welcome": Spokkien, who's half black and half white and not so strange as Karin!


Second day: 26th of october 2007.

We woke up at 10 o'clock. and Johan's mother arranged for us a typical swedish breakfast with salty butter and prästost.
Then we, finally, had the first walk along Stockholm's streets. From Johan's quarter, we went to Djungården, as he wanted to show us Vasamuseet. The Vasa was a warship, made built by king Gustavus Adolphus which sank in 1628 during his maiden voyage. Marine Archaeologists recovered it in 1961 together with a lot of objects and remains of sixteen people (out of one hundred and fifty which probably died in the shipwreck). Impressive in my opinion the quantity of findings perfectly dated, and the ship itself, so well preserved....
...About the mountaing of the exibition: I suggest to many italian scientists of musealization to have a look on this one! Ah Swedes! Better even in museums! eheheh:)

-Johan in front of the museum


-Me doing the italian inside it! (By the way the strange face is the reproduction of one which decorated the ship!)


After having a short walk in Djungården we went by ferry to Slussen and ate there, at a kiosk, Strömming, Johan said it´s a kind of herring which lives only in the Baltic Sea... yum!! I really like it!

-Gamlastan from the ferry boat:


Then we continued the visit of the south part of the town, passing through Götgatsbacken, seing during our walking the mosque and the catholic church: it seems everyone has his space here in Stockholm!
Finally we stopped to have a coffee and a cake in a café (again eating!) which was full of people. I noticed a great deal of places like this one where we stopped, with great windows and people drinking, chatting or studying like showed in a shop-window! Swedes enjoy their breaks and they are proud of it!

-People at the café:



Finally, with the stomach full of sweet food (I tasted a Kanelbullar, Claudio a Morotskaka!) we went to Gamlastan. Unfortunately we had few time to visit it but we planned to go back there again one of the other days. We saw Riddarholmen church and some alleys there while getting to one of the swedish pillars: the Systembuloget (in our case the one into the NK shopping centre.)
Entering I took a free guidebook and having a look on it later i noticed it was full of advices like “are you tired? Come to NK and sit at a cafe drinking a coffee” or “Is it raining? So do shopping in NK!”...
But the systembuloget! Ah the systembuloget!!! Shelves and shelves of wine, spirits and beers, ordered according to kind, origin, price! I think I`ve never seen a so neat wine shop in Italy, not so many information on a shelf, even if these kinds of shops are lacking in the familiar air which a wine shops have in Italy, with the owner suggesting wines with strange names in bottles covered in dust...
Going outside of it, Claudio kept open the door for a man, apparently 50 years old, an act we usually do, he didn`t even notice he did it, but the man almost run after us to say ”Thank you”!!
Ah: Sweeeeeden Sweeeeeden!! To say it with Neil Hannon of Divine Comedy:
” I am gonna live in Sweden
Please don’t ask me why
For if I were to give a reason
It would be a lie
Tall and strong and blonde and blue eyed
Pure and healthy, very wealthy
Sweden, Sweden, Sweden, in Sweden…:
Anyway, booty of our visit into the systembuloget: two bottles of Italian wine Claudio chose and a cherry flavoured swedish ”wine” i firmily wanted to buy (Alcohol with cherry sirup! No one wanted to taste it but me, neither the swedes!)!
We needed to buy all those valuable stuff as we were invited to a real swedish student party! First of it we went to visit Johan`s cousin, Robert, who showed us his house and his great vocals singing loudly while pissing in the bathroom, close to the bedroom/sitting room/dining room where we were waiting for him. He insisted with us on eating again so I had to order a pizza! Fortunately I had eaten so much during the day that it didn’t seem so strange to everyone I ate just a piece of it! Robert`s a nice guy anyway, he studies for being a tenor, in the meanwhile composes piano music and takes interests of american politics… He reminded me a lot of a friend, my collegue on Montescudaio excavation, who had an affair with Ilaria, and we used to call him “Lady D” for his tragic tendecy to call the attenction of people on himself in every situation, even when he wants to be unnoticed!
He told us about an italian girl from Rome, Flaminia, whom he met in Stockholm the past summer. He told us he almost fell in love with her and thought it was exactly the same for the girl but when he went to Rome to visit her, she hid him to his friends and lovers, confessing she was not so ”free”... Eheheh!
The party Robert invited us to was of a girl who used to study together with him, in a student house in the north west area of Stockholm...
Sweden air made me even loose my usual shyness and I talked in English with a lot of people, including a guy from a place I can’t remember the name in Dalarna, Håkan, who, as soon as he discovered I was italian, started to talk about italian football telling me all he thinks about Totti and Del Piero, I managed to stop all this only after an hour, when he said to me he`s a metallurgic engineer so I started to talk about all the friends I have who are engineers too, and he suddenly decided he had to go to see his friends in the room nearby!
Anyway, swedish parties are not so different from the italian ones: tons of alcohol (but in Sweden everyone brings his), tons of people you`ve never met before who infiltrated like spies, loud music (maybe a bit better than the one I usually find at parties in Italy)… Cool!

Third day: 27th of October 2007

We woke up a bit dazed… We had the usal breakfast with Spokkien (the cat!), then we went with the tube to the townhall. Passing on a bridge close to the townhall we saw a couple of fishes doing a sort of ballet in the water… No way to find out which kind of fish they were, maybe two salmons as dazed as us!!

-the fishes in the water


Johan told us about the building, but we had no chance to enter and visit it. One of the most famous places in the world, where every year Nobel prizes are given to the ones who`ve been enough engenious to deserve it!

-the three crowns:



We took some pictures outside on the Mälaren, including the only one I have of us three together, as we asked it to some east asian tourists hanging around there.

-Me,Claudio,Johan:


We spent the hour waiting for the train to Uppsala in a sort of bar which really looked like a cruise boat restaurant: wooden tables and wall-to-wall carpet everywhere, old women in casual Sunday outfit eating things which are surely forbidden to diabetics.
And finally the train: with 58SEK (almost the same price for a Pisa/Florence ticket, quite similar distance) we travelled on a very clean very nice on time train, furnished with a table every four seats (science fiction furniture for a regional train in Italy!): I`m really starting to love Sweden!
We arrived to Uppsala around 4 in the afternoon passing through some nice little settlements, a lot of birches and other kind of trees everywhere, everyone of them with leaves of different colours: finally I managed to see again the coulours of the autumns, as the italian leaves, because of all those hot autumns of the last years, pass straight from the bright green of the summer to the dark brown of the death when finally at the end of november a bit of cold arrives!
First stop in our Uppsala day was the exhibition at the “Carolina Rediviva” library, we did`t even leave our baggage home: together with many edictions of Linneus classification, masterpieces in the collection of the library are the Silver Bible of Wulfila and the Charta Marina by Olaus Magnus, great sources of reminescence of “paleography” and “history of geography and chartography” exams I sat for some time ago. I bought a reproduction of the Charta, which represents the scandinavian area, with all those funny sea monsters with boats in their belly!

- Carolina Rediviva:


We had a walk and a coffee in town, in a place called Hugo, vintage furnished with old swedish newspapers and magazines as decoration all around, then we went to the cinema. That week-end Uppsala put up the “International Short Films festival”.

-Hugo:


-International short film festival:


I have to admit: I mostly can`t understand swedish films!
We saw two sets of shorts. The first one was a selection of fantasy-horror movies from various countries, It was not so bad actually! I enjoyed mostly two cartoons, but the one which I will never forget almost shocked me, it was a story of a man who has a shop of dolls. One day he sees in a circus a girl without spine used by a man, her father maybe, as an attraction. The doll-maker set her free, and everyone thinks that it`s why he fell in love with her, on the contrary, he transforms her in a human gothic doll working on her face with a chain saw: a CHAIN SAW… I wonder why!!
Anyway, the second set was the worst. They were the winners of the prizes, out of four categories, three were won by swedish films. I can`t say which was the plot, nor there was a sort of impressionistic work on scenes… One of them was even made by Kim Hiorthøy, a good electronic musician (norwegian though!) I used to like! What a disappontment! Yeah... I know... It's more probable that it's me who has problems in understanding as all the people there were enjoying the films so much...
Right after the films we went to the party arranged by the organization of the festival, Per and Ebba, Johan's brother and his girlfriend, invited us to go as they are into the organization... But arrived there the bumpkins at the door told us that the place were too full as they counted the people entering and we would be over the largest number good for the place! They invited us to be patient and wait for three people to leave the party!!! WHAT? Another science fiction thing for italian!!!
We decided not to wait so we had the chance to be introduced by Johan to one of the thing i liked more and I would like to import in Italy: the nationer.
Johan told us that as Uppsala is the oldest university in Sweden (in fact it is the oldest in Scandinavian Countries, founded in 1477) so every one who wanted to study had to move there and students most of all in the past centuries, tended to join students from their home region. So slowly they formed some student associations which have the name of the place of origin of the members, called "nationer". It seems the biggest one is the Norrlands nation, which is the one who reunites the regions of the north, as in the past only few people came from there to study, and now that people move from everywhere all the students of more than a region are reunited in this only nation.
The thing I like is their today's organization: they are opened to everyone!
For example, Johan comes from Stockholm which has is own nation but chose to join the Kalmar Nation. One of the former Kalmar nation's student was Astrid Lindgren, the author of Pippi Långstrump. Students have to write in the inscription paper which nation they prefers, before starting the university. And also after the choice of one of them, the nation centres are open to every student of the university of Uppsala. Every nation has many rooms where to study, where on fridays and saturdays parties and concerts are organized, a sort of cheap bar or pub where to eat and drink, and everything is conducted by the student members of the nation.
So, instead of waiting we went to the Kalmar nation to drink a beer and Johan told us about what all i've just written.

-Me and Johan outside the Kalmar Nation:


Fourth day: 28th october 2007

After a good sleep in Johan's student room and another swedish breakfast, at late time I have to admit, we went out to do a tour of the town:
we went to

-the botanic garden


I expected something more from the town where Carl Linnaeus studied and worked, but it could be that the best things were at the Linneaus garden which is closed during autumns and winters.
We saw the castle too and the nice view of the town from this top place with the Domkyrka in the foreground








Domkyrka that we also visited inside, seeing the grave of Gustav I Vasa and above-mentioned Carl Linnaeus...



After all this intensive program we went to Kalmar nation to eat: I have to admit I had lunch with a piece of morotskaka and one of a chocolate cake!!
We decided then to go to Gamla Uppsala. Our little absent minded Johan forgot the right bus to get there so we decided to try the swedish taxis: wrong move!!! 12€ for 5km!!! But it's been a good experience anyway.
Gamla Uppsala seems to be the former site of Uppsala, where nordic Kinges used to live in pre-historic period. Of course the museum which shows findings of the several excavation in the area had just closed when we arrived.
So we had a walk in the middle of the hills which actually are a lot of basoons of pre-historic age.



Right in front of this area there's a large space which, the tradition says, was used to celebrate sacrifices. In the middle of it a stone to remember the fact... But at a closer sight:

...the infesting papacy ruined the memory of the past here too!
We visited also the church in Gamla Uppsala, few steps far from the graves. While getting there we crossed the path of an old man, almost 80 years old, with a walking stick and a coat too large for him. He asked Johan in Swedish if we were tourist, he answered that we were from Italy, so the old man suggested us to visit the curch adding some info about it in a perfect Italian!
There was a service inside the curch, with a female minister. I decided to remain outside while Claudio and Johan entered...
In the church, as a remployment, there was a runic stone with written on “Siguiðr [ræist] i stæin þenna ænglandsfari æftir vidiarf faður”... Not ideologically so different from roman columns on the façade of Pisa's Santa Maria!!



The curch is of XIII century, but it is built over the remains of a XI century
stavkyrka which probably was on an old pagan temple, or anyway and older building...

-two friends very interested in such historical notes


As it was the coldest day so far, we decided to go somewhere to dring something. There's a bar very close to the museum which sells Mjöd, a drink which is made i don't know with, following a recipe of XVIII century, pretending to reproduce the original traditional drink of vikings!! Eheheh: disgusting cinnamon scented "bacardi breeze" but at least served into "real" viking horn!!! We were tourist: forgive us!!

-Akta Miöd från Odinsborg, Gamla Uppsala!


On the bus coming back to Uppsala we asked to Johan the reason of something we already noticed the days before: every window in private house has a light, a candle or an electric light, which becomes switched onas soon as the dark arrives. According to Johan it's a matter of public spirit: keeping the light on in front of the window contributes to light up the streets having a bit more of light during the dark nights, and days, of the winter...

At home Johan cooked for us: rotmos (mashed "roots" litterally) and meatballs of elk!!
Poooooooooor Elk!!! ...But it tasted good!

And after our abundant dinner guess what? Again to the cinema to see other short films!!! Yuppieeeee!
We didn't have the heart to tell Johan it was an awful program for us... Well, it gave us the opportunity to see the Slottsbiografen, the cinema where Ingmar Bergman used to go during his youth...
We chose a set of classic short movies and this allowed us to survive! There were a couple of animation films very nice including a one from former Czechoslovakia of 1989 called "Darkness-Light-Darkness", made with plasticine technique, in which a huge body of a mand slowly recomposed in a small room, one piece at the time...



Fifth day: 29th october 2007

We left Uppsala, going back to Stockholm!
We went straight to Slussen to eat a souovasrolle, a sort of Kebab made with meat of reindeer...
Like the elk: poor poor reindeer! Eheheheh...
We had no particular plan for today... Just wanted to spend a bit of time hanging around!
So we went to do a bit of shopping, we liked in particular a shop called "Designtorget" with a lot of useless funny design object, like a banana-shaped-box to take your banana safely in you bag or a gum octopus to hang shower foam bottles... if you are curious you can see them here!!
Anyway my favourite objects were them:


-Kiss


-and Bajs



litterally "pee & poo": divine!!! Unfortunately they costed more than 30€ so i decided to leave them on the shelf... But sometimes i still think to them and sob!
We also visited Johan's grandma. She lives in a luxury old people's house in the centre of the town. We went to visit her because she felt over in the street and broke her wrist: at more than 80 she was running back to an autobus... Running!!!
She arranged an "italian cocktail" rolling up some Parma ham slices to breadsticks and talked to us in a perfect english (my 81 years old granma sometimes has little difficulties with italian words too). When Claudio told her he comes from Lucca she interrupted the conversation suddenly and made a phone call, then came back to the sitting room and announced us that we were invited to the little aparment of another guest of the house who comes from Lucca too!!!!
How small is the world!!
So we knew Donella. She moved to Stockholm in 1937 together with her family. Her father worked in the building of the Blue Hall of the Stadhuset, then he came back there with all the family.
She talked about her life there, she comes back to Italy every summer but she wants to remain there, where her son lives too and where she feels that home is... She got married with an italian man. They bought an house near Lucca because they planned to come back to Italy... Unfortunately her husband got ill and died after a few time. So she decided to remained in Sweden, where her son wanted to stay, but she goes to the house she still owns to spend the summer in Lucca every year.
After this amazing meeting we went back to Johan's home.
His parents invited us for the last evening of our holiday.
Johan's mother, Elisabeth, cooked for us reindeer and roast vegetables and a cake of meringue and artic blackberry (litteral translation from the italian name i know... I ignore the name in Swedish: shame on me!!!) and we ate all together while his father, Stefan, dazed us with 3 hours of monologue about computer science (he's a professor of theoretical computer science at the universtity of Stockholm).
Our evening ended with a monopoly game: instead of the usual Parco dei Giardini or Vicolo Corto, there were the names of the most famous places in Stockholm. Spokkien played too!!!



Last day: 30th of october 2007
It's our last day here. Johan cooked for us a special breakfast this morning, a sort of pudding made of rice and milk which traditionally children leave on the Christmas eve in front of the window for Santa Claus... Unfurtunately again i don't remember the name!
Our last walk in Stockholm was to go the Nobel museum. Actually I think it's been the less interesting thing we saw in all the trip. The main room houses a temporary exhibition of a famous photographer of whose (guess!) i don't remember the name, nothing to share with the Nobel subject though!
The rest was a couple of showcase with objects formerly owned by famous nobel prize winners. I have to admit i was thrilled by the shoe of Selma Lagerlöf...
Then we went back to the Slussen to eat strömming again. I had a meeting there with a canadian guy who's been living in Stockholm for some years, Kevin. I met him on mylanguageexchange some months ago, when i was still trying to learn some words of Swedish; as he is interested in learning Italian we started to write each other sometimes. While waiting for him we took these images from the top of a building in front of the area:





Kevin was so late that we had to go to the station without meeting him, but he was also so kind and reached us there, only ten minutes before our bus left.
This allowed me to do not get extremely sad at the moment of saying goodbye to Johan...

At the airport there was already an italian air: we met the same belligerent italian man of the outward journey... His wife was running after one of the autobus: she left her bag on it!
Eheheheheheheheh

Labels: journey