Stockholm. Bork bork bork.

Whenever we visit a city, Scott and I both instinctively size it up based on whether we would want to live there someday. Stockholm gets a big “yes” from both of us. It’s big, beautiful, and full of stuff to see, do, and eat. Guess I have a thing for cities built on islands. The Swedish-Chefiness of the language is another added bonus (and given its similarity to German, it wouldn’t be too hard to learn).

There was so much going on all around the city. Gamla Stan (the touristy but adorable old town) was hosting a music festival. A Taste of Stockholm offered up culinary delights and live music in a downtown park. On the other end of the city we stumbled upon a small free concert to bring attention to climate change and related issues. Recent graduates were joy-riding in trucks all over the place (wearing fancier sailor hats than their Finnish counterparts).

Vegetarian delights
I don’t know about reindeer mousse and pickled fish bits, but Stockholm’s vegetarian offerings are pretty yummy, not to mention extensive. Hermitage is located in Gamla Stan and offers a great lunch buffet (the vegetable balls were my favorite) for a reasonable price. Lao Wai is a vegetarian Chinese restaurant in a fun northern neighborhood. I wasn’t so sure about the vegetarian ‘shrimp’, but everything else was quite tasty.

Museums
The Nationalmuseum covers the history of Swedish design (yes, including IKEA) as well as a variety of art (Swedish and other, mostly pillaged from other lands according to the audioguide). On a previous trip to Stockholm, I fell in love with the Vasa Museum, which is (literally) built around a ship which sank in Stockholm’s harbor in 1628. It is a tribute to how a well-crafted museum can make me interested in almost anything. I also have fond memories of the Skansen open-air museum, for both its architectural structures and its animals (reindeer!).

We might not ever get a chance to live in Stockholm, but we’ll definitely be back for a few more visits.

Tags: art, Europe, restaurants, travel

Scenes from Tampere and Turku

Still having fun in Finland. The middle tap dispenses something called “Long Drink”. I didn’t try it.

We spent an evening at Vaakahuoneen Paviljonki watching the Siberian Teachers, a jazz band. Not sure where they’re from.

Turku’s castle proved a nice place to hide out from the sun.

When walking down the street in Turku, one needs to watch out for balls, children, and flying cars. Children need to watch out for falling barns.

Graduation day. Sailor hats are worn by partying graduates in both cities.

Industrial Tampere.

Meat sword. At viking-themed restaurant Harald (there’s one in Tampere and one in Turku). My veggie dish was good, too.

Tags: Europe, restaurants, travel

Tar: not just for paving roads anymore

Greetings from Turku, Finland, where we are trying to hide from the hot glowing ball in the sky. Not such an easy task when it is beating down on you for 19 hours a day. Not that I’m really complaining – we are still having a lovely time.

Since arriving in Finland, we have been noticing the word ‘tar’ on English-language menus here and there. “What word could they possibly mean instead?” we kept thinking, until finally we got so curious we looked it up. The Finnish word terva does indeed translate to ‘tar’. We were somewhat relieved to learn that it refers to pine tar, instead of the kind you find in cigarettes or in mammoth-eating pits, and it is used to flavor all kinds of things in Finland. Ice cream, for example, which we tried yesterday.

It tasted kind of like pine needles and mostly like smoke. Not in a delicious-12-year-old-Scotch-whisky way, but more like a get-me-out-of-this-burning-building-before-I-die-from-smoke-inhalation way. Scott and Adam seemed to enjoy it more than I did.

Tags: Europe, food, travel