Not to disparage Sweden too much, because it’s very nice here, but I wouldn’t have come here on this trip, which is meant to be budget, if not for this music festival. It took place on the ferry/cruise from Stockholm, Sweden to Riga, Latvia. One night of music on the way there, one on the way back.
The festival was of bands playing in the neofolk, martial-industrial, and darkwave genres. So dark, gloomy, beautiful music. I mainly came for the band Rome, who are an neofolk band from Luxembourg. They were performing their 2009 album Flowers From Exile, which happens to be among my favourite albums of all time. Click here to listen to a bit, don’t worry, it’s quite pleasant. To hear this live while the Baltic Sea moved the boat beneath my feet was quite an experience. In fact, I think the entire festival was improved by the rocking of the boat on the waves.
The other bands were also very enjoyable, but I know them less well, and they’re unlikely to be of interest to you unless you enjoy this style of music, so I will end this post here. Make sure to read the previous post about the time I spent in Riga mid-festival.
Two days now in Stockholm. Luckily many of the museums are free, because the food is expensive. Groceries are reasonable, but my hostel doesn’t have a proper kitchen, so I’ve been eating out and ruining my budget. I just tell myself that I’ll make up for it once I get to less expensive countries.
I’ve spent my time wandering the streets and visiting museums and libraries. As mentioned above, many of the museums have free entry, so I haven’t bothered with those that expect payment.
The Medieval Museum was right up my alley. It is mostly concerned with medieval Stockholm, and includes a replica of what part of the city may have felt like back then. Not bad.
I stumbled upon The Living History Forum, it looked museum-like, and it looked free, so I stumbled on in. The current exhibition is about freedom of speech and it was ████████████ multimedia, ███████████████ █████████████ virtual reality ████████████████████████████ ██████████████.
The Mediterranean Museum contains a collection of ancient artifacts from Cyprus, much of them Greek and Roman, as well as and ancient Egyptian exhibit.
That was day one. Crazy.
I must say, Stockholm is pretty busy. Pedestrians cross the street with wild abandon, unmindful of traffic. Bicyclists weave between cars. Cars spend a lot of time stopping for people. It’s no large South-East Asian city, but the flow of people seems less calm and collected than I expected from a country known for simple design and a chill way of life.
Today, I spent hours wandering the National Museum and its massive art collection. As well as paintings and sculpture from history, it contained quite a collection of well designed items from the last century or so, most of it Swedish of course. Chairs, telephones, a jackhammer, cutlery sets. Things like that.
I saw that a church was having a free organ recital, so I stopped on in. Turns out the Church is dedicated to St. James, patron saint of travellers. Perfect. Although the church is called St. Jacob’s because in Swedish James and Jacob are the same. The music was quite good, but it was played on a small pipe organ, the size of a large wardrobe, rather than the church sized pipe organ that was available.
Anyhow, those are some highlights. It’s nice here. I fit right in until I can’t speak Swedish.
And whither then? 