A whole year late but I’m finally penning down a post dedicated to my travels in Stockholm. Here goes.
Lonely in a big city - that's what I loved about this place; that vibe.
Maybe that speaks more about me than it does about Stockholm but somehow the memory that left the greatest impression was actually the short walk between our Airbnb to the train station. It was about 10 mins and we often had to trudge a little because it was sloped. We visited in the beginning of winter so the cold air would also make us walk a little faster when our legs and faces start to freeze.
Despite that, it was always a walk that brought me peace. There were tiny offices and supermarkets peppered around these short, dull-coloured European apartment buildings. I loved admiring their exteriors and the spaces within that their windows exposed though. You could see into houses and offices most of the time and they almost always look like what you’d expect to find in an IKEA showroom.
We'd chosen to nestle our temporary home in a residential part of Stockholm called Reimersholme, it was a little island off the main city that only had one entrance & exit via a bridge.
It was quiet, but not silent. People here walked with a conviction, like they had some place to be and it’s easy to feel out of place if you’re just strolling aimlessly towards your next tourist destination.
Somewhere in Stockholm, someone's probably walking their dogs. There’s so many of them everywhere, tiny ones on a leash bunny hopping along the cobblestone streets. People take them everywhere - shopping in malls, dining on the streets, strolling in the parks. It was these little moments of joys that made walking around in the cold more enjoyable.
Public transport was expensive, perhaps it was the fact that we were tourists and weren't able to buy day/week train passes. But that's okay, we'd heard about their unique subway stations designs that made train journeys feel like a walk in the museum. Somewhere in Stockholm, someone had taken the time to colour its interiors to make it look like a beautiful, modern cave. It was pretty novel.
In the city center itself, it was buzzling. It was probably the only place that buzzed with excitement that was close to what we had in our shopping streets here. Maybe it was the fact that it was Christmas, or maybe that’s just what shopping does to people.
Though, if I had to pick my favourite place it would probably be Gamla Stan. As a testament to that, we actually came back to this place 3 times over a period of 5 days. Aestheics wise, it was stunning. The floors were lined with cobblestone and in the epicenter were these vibrant, old-town apartment buildings adjacent to each other that housed a Christmas market as well as a plethora of traditional shops.
There were also plenty more to explore in the tiny streets that branched out into more hideouts, cafes and novelty bookstores. It intrigues me as to how many sides of Stockholm you can find within walking distance of each other, one thing that have in common is that all of them have a tendency to look both modern yet stuck in time (almost, medieval at times).
It was a city with an interesting balance, a city of in-between - lonely but friendly, fast but not too fast, modern but traditional, safe but not comfortable. I can’t quite place my finger on it.
When people ask me now “what’s the first place you’d like to visit once the pandemic is over?”, I can’t help but think “Sweden”. I’m not sure why, at the time I didn’t feel like I was particularly connected to this place. Sure it was beautiful and I think about my time here so much, much more than any other country I’d visited. Perhaps it was the fact that things and places and people always feel a little different in a memory, like its untouchable in a safe bubble inside your head. Or perhaps it was because it’s the last place I’d ever travelled to before the pandemic kicked in.
I do miss Sweden, and just travelling in general too. I’d made it my life goal to travel the world and in everything that I do, whether it’s building my career or planning my life, I havent found anything else that I wanted as much as being able to experience different cultures and lifestyles for extended periods of time. Sometimes, when I talk to my friends who tell me they’ve given up on the idea of travelling because they want to start a family or “settle down in life”, I struggle to understand why it has to be an either-or situation. You can have both and not feel like you have to sacrifice your wants to acheive your goals. Goals change and sometimes they stay dormant until you decide to want it again. It doesn’t always have to be an all-or-nothing situation.
Being in this pandemic has made me realise I can survive without travelling. It’s a little empowering to know that when you lose the thing you want the most and it doesn’t cripple you, maybe then you’re going to be okay. Because you know, you can always try it again someday.
