Stockholm by night

Stockholm is big (geographically) and there are many places that are probably technically "Stockholm" where there is no one in sight. I took a few photos when walking around in the dark.

Deer in the neighborhood

My parents live near some woods. There are lots of animals living there, and sometimes you see hedgehogs, rabbits, or deer. You can also see badgers and foxes, but not so often. I saw lots of deer during my trip to Sweden, here is one that I spotted from the bus.

Söderbärke Station

To get home from Dalarna I took the train from Söderbärke station. I had never even heard of this place, but there were trains fairly frequently that went all the way to Stockholm, and that even stopped at a smaller station in the suburbs of Stockholm close to where my parents live.

Apart from the station house, Söderbärke station was fairly empty.

The location is very beautiful, though.

Visiting Dalarna

During my trip to Sweden I had the chance to meet one of my friends from high school. He joined the class I was in when we were in 8th grade, and then we had two years of junior high together. We ended up in the same class in high school too, so we had another three years together there. We were pretty good friends then, and did a lot of the pair work assignments (chemistry, physics, etc.) together.

I was served Swedish style tacos, which is very common food to eat at home in Sweden. Very nice.

Then we went to different universities and did not meet for 10 years, until we met once at our 10 year high school graduation reunion. And then another 9 years passed until we met again now. So we had a lot to talk about, haha.

He has done a lot of exciting stuff. He bought a really nice place in Dalarna, where he lives with his family now. They have several buildings and lots of beautiful land. There are lakes and forests around them, and the place is very quiet. There are only 40 or so other people living in the same village.

One of the buildings they have have been made into a bar, where they have parties when they have guests over.

He also won the "Gotland Runt" ("Round Gotland Race") sailing competition, and he had many other sailing stories too. Now he has become engaged in playing table hockey, so I was drawn into playing this game. It is fun, but I only played it a little bit when I was around 10 years old, so of course I lost. He is also a whisky nerd, and he even had whisky from Yoichi, which is right around the corner from Sapporo. I have been to Yoichi, but only to go to the beach and swim, not to take the tour of the whisky factory (which I am told is quite nice, though).

They grow their own habaneros (or whatever this may be). I was given one and it was quite spicy.

An old but nice stove

Leaving Sweden

Last breakfast, egg served in a viking ship

On Friday morning I flew back to Japan. By then, the cherry blossoms were gone from the airport.

Arriving in Sweden

Leaving Sweden

Not midnight sun

The dark Swedish nights

If you go to the far north of Sweden, during parts of the summer you can experience the Midnight Sun. That means that the sun never sets, so you have 24 hours of daylight. This looks pretty much like a normal noon, and is not that much to see, though tourists do go to the north to see the midnight sun.

In the winter, you have the opposite; the sun sets and then never comes up again. You can have one month of night. This is somewhat depressing. There was a funny Swedish vampire movie made using this as the gimmick  Since vampires are sensitive to sun, if you can hide until dawn you are then safe for the day. But in northern Sweden, dawn may be one month away, so a vampire outbreak would be very bad. There was later an American remake (or more like a new movie inspired by the Swedish one or possibly just stealing the good ideas from the Swedish one) placed in Alaska, which has the same properties.

Anyway, here in Stockholm we do not get the midnight sun, and the longest day of the year is still about a month or so away. But the days are pretty long. This photo was taken at around 10 p.m. Night is not that dark.

Flying to Sweden

The in flight food included a cute little tai-yaki-waffle

I got up at 6 A.M., after a whopping 3 hours of sleep, and went to the Kansai International Airport to check into my flight to Stockholm (via Helsinki). I wore a t-shirt saying: "I am not Japanese" in Japanese, and the girl at the check in counter asked me: "What on earth is up with your t-shirt?" The girls at the next counter were looking at me and laughing too.  So the shirt was a success, but I did not know what to reply, since there is nothing special about the t-shirt. It is just stating a fact about me. Like the sign above the check in counter that says "Check in" even though it is obvious to everyone that that is what it is.

Finnair always gives out Geisha chocolate on the flights to/from Japan

The first flight was only 10 hours, so it was not that long. The selection of new movies in the Finnair plane was quite impressive too, so I did not sleep at all during the flight.

After a very short stop in Helsinki, which is stressful since you have to go through security again and then through the immigration too, I was on a very short flight to Stockholm. The new automated passport controls are very fast, which helped (scan passport, wait for automatic door to open, look into camera, wait for next door to open, finished).

Cherry trees at the Arlanda airport in Stockholm

In Stockholm, the cherry blossoms were in full bloom even at the airport.

Nature

Sweden is larger than Japan but has a population that is about one third of the population of Tokyo. This means Sweden has a lot of nature that is not touched very much by humans. We took a trip to a nearby lake and spent the afternoon walking around there with by brother, his girlfriend, and their dog.

Common cows

A sudden rain came and went, so we, and people we do not know, hid under  trees.

Un-common cows

The calves came and ate out of our hands.

My brother's dog was a bit worried about the cows from time to time.

The cows started peeing everywhere and we left.