Mojito

Shouldn't have used lemon instead of lime, but we have economical crisis after all =)

Stockholm, jag älskar dig. Part three

Singing
There were more than one best moment.
- When Swedish conductor Karin taught us pronunciation and tried to make us reproduce necessary expression:  "Men ut av alla... du... kärast mig är" - because prior to that moment we had been singing tender love song as a march =)
- When we sang Swedish folk songs together with kids at Music Gymnasium. It was really fun!
- And, of course, rehearsal at wonderful Sofia kyrkan: in its acoustics our voices sounded so heavenly (despite high notes gave the ringing in my ears).

Places
We visited 3 museums, although only one of them is the museum in full meaning of this word.
Vasa - the museum of Epic Fail: the 17th century ship had drowned during its first voyage, then was lifted, restored and now successfully contributes money to Swedish economics.

Skansen - open-air museum of authentic architecture and fauna.

Fotografiska - not a museum at all, just an excellent photo exhibition.

A real museum is its shop: sooo much to look at, everything at completely unaffordable prices. There I drooled over Anton Corbijn's In Control and many other books and albums.

Stadhuset (City hall) - most popular way to look at Gamla Stan (Old town) from above. Usually tourists shoot from the tower photos like these (I wasn't an exception):

Gröna lund - amusement park which we hadn't visited, just looked at it from outside. But, as it has 80 meter free-fall ride, I plan to visit it next time :)

Next time, huh... Damn I want to live there!

to be continued...

Stockholm, jag älskar dig. Part two

Weather 
We arrived by boat, and all I can say - we were really, really COLD.

We didn't get to see all the spectacular beauty of skärgarden (Stockholm archipelago), cause it was covered with a thick layer of fog. And it was SNOWING! On the 3rd of MAY! Probably, I have never taken such gray and cheerless photos:

 Situation with the weather changed in three days, and it changed drastically.  It looked like evil joke - sun came out in the end of our stay. However, I couldn't feel offended.

Accomodation
On arrival to Interhostel, we were shocked to get the rooms approximately the size of our boat cabins. They didn't have windows either!

The place was indeed international. All rooms were occupied, the kitchen was always crowded.
But, the hostel was clean, had free Internet, tea&coffee, and, more important, was located right in the city center. So, after all I can recommend it as the cheapest accomodation in Stockholm (which, as we all know, is a very expensive city). By the way, all the staff comes from Russia and Belarus.

People
So nice and polite. But could it be the other way in highly developed, social-oriented country?
And, for all the tall-and-blond-guy lovers out there: the guys are really tall and blond, although, to my regret, I don't have photo evidence of that fact. However, overall height of the population is not that giant as I had expected. It's just few certain ones that stand out :)
Almost everyone has at least one (considering amount of clothes at the moment) tattoo.
I liked very much the relaxed, casual style of Stockholm girls and women. You don't see them wearing high heels, but if you do, of course she's Russian (and you meet Russian speaking people very often in the streets).

to be continued...  

'cause I'm for real
are you for real?
I can't help myself
it's the way I feel
when you look me in the eyes like you did last night
I can't stand to hear you say goodbye
when it feels so right
'cause it feels so right just to have you standing by my side
so don't let me go
cause you have my soul

and I just wanted you to know...

Stockholm, jag älskar dig. Part one - Intro

It was impossible for me not to fall in love with this city, and it happened so easily.

Important remark - we came there not as just tourists, but as culture bearers of our country. There was a negative side to it - we had much less time for sightseeing than we wanted. But cultural exchange, in my opinion, was quite successful, and of course gave us a great experience.

Nordic character of the city shows in pictures. Spring looks more like autumn there.

Weather might not be the best, but the atmosphere was incredibly warm anyway.

 

I started to learn Swedish before the journey. My knowledge was enough to find out, for example, that the name of the street on the picture below is Big New Street - very appropriate:

 


































to be continued...