Day 79 (Stockholm)

Stockholm. I made it. I'm here. Sweden. This is officially Day 1 of my Spring break travels. I had the intention of going to bed early, rising early and tackling the town; which kinda, happened, actually... no, no it didn't. Amy and I ended up talking for countless hours right before bed about everything from philosophy to anthropology to dreams to art to brains, you name it, it was a great talk though. However, this surely got my brain stimulated, making sleep hard to do. That combined with the freezing freezing cold of night time Stockholm, left me with only a few hours to punch into my sleep card. Yet, we rose around 9AM, left the flat around 10AM to the local grocery store. We got some breakfast and dinner supplies, with a few lunch type foods as well for the rest of our journey. It came out to 180SEK, which is like 18 pounds. Not too bad for 2 people for 4 days! Now if we can only stick to eating just that... Anyway, after we got back to the flat and made/ate breakfast, as well as talked/met all the rest of the people that lived here. Amy, Bjorn and I didn't take off until just after noon.

Our first thing we did was buy a 3-day bus pass (aka: metro, bus, tram... anything-that-moves-pass) for 200SEK. Yeah, I know, but each trip is 30SEK anyway, and we definitely are going to be taking it more than 7 times. Just getting into the city city and back everyday is a total of 6 times. So it was a worthy investment. We made it to Gamlastan, also known as Old Town, an island smack dab in the middle of Stockholm, and walked around for a bit. There were buildings and sights around every corner. It was a nice walk, still a little cold at this time...

After a while of walking around, we found ourselves going into the "Culture House" which is basically a 5-story museum (I might add, amazing; for free too!). I found myself enjoying the 3rd floor the most, it was called "do you know yourself?" and dealt with all sorts of brain functions in relation to perception and emotions. It was pretty cool seeing all this stuff that I have learned about year end and out being brought to life. I especially liked the giant brain we were able to go inside and sit in!!! How cool?! It had tons of lights strum about across the ceiling and walls, which went off in different colors and patterns periodically, supposedly resembling the firing of neurons (no, but cool anyway). Here is a glimpse of it from the inside...

The rest of the exhibit was great as well. From breathing, to mirror neurons, to decision making, the heart and on to dreaming (ironically). What a subject dreaming has been for me in the last few days, it seems to be relentless in popping up and screaming in my face!

The top floor had a Toyko exhibit, which portrayed Toyko life and people in all sorts of different mediums. This was a picture taken out of the window of the square below.

Next we headed back on the walking path. Off to the Nobel museum (I was waiting for this all day!). This is a picture of parliament, a pretty impressive building. Bjorn joked and said I wonder if anyone actually uses this front door anymore... doubtful.

We took a detour when we spotted water. I caught an action shot of some seagulls showing off for me... It was pretty beautiful, especially because the sun decided to come out! YES!

Finally we arrived at the Nobel Museum (also free, thanks Alfred)... Inside had a rich history of how the Nobel prize originated, from Nobel's will, he laid out 5 categories that the prize shall be awarded in... physics, physiology/medicine, chemistry, literature and peace. Now with a technical 6th category of Economics. It was quite interesting. It also had a lot of the nobel prize winners contributions, as well as on-going video of randomly chosen nobel winners. I saw Perutz and his hemoglobin, as Crick and his ever so famous double helix. What a cool place. One day I'll be in there ;).

After that, Bjorn headed off. And Amy and I went exploring in the next part of town. We walked around a while, I picked up some candy, more specifically, swedish fish! I mean, they have to be better here right?! I will give the quality of them a slightly better edge, however, they didn't have any damn red ones! Which everyone knows are the best ones... Regardless, this proved to be the club/pub area, as well as the fashion area. We saw a big white dome far off in the distance. With our unlimited metro passes, we headed toward it. It definitely was farther than expected, as we had to jump back on the metro for a few more stops after incorrectly guessing. When we got there, it turned out to be "skyview", in which you can see that little shiny ball off to the side. People are in that. This takes you up over the dome for an outlook over the city. It closed right before we got there, but for 120SEk, I don't know if a birds-eye view of Stockholm is worth it...

Completely insane and against the odds, we ran into Jordan and Marc nearby here! This is a huge city full of different parts. We had no contact with them all day. And bam, hey guys?! Haha, absolutely ridiculous. We sat down and chatted for an hour or so, told each other about our days so far. They are taking off to Copenhagen in exactly 5 minutes from right now (11PM).

On the metro on the way back, it managed to come above ground just for a second, just long enough for me to snap a picture of the sunset over the river... as you can see, the ice is just starting to melt here.

Well, that's day one for ya, there are still two more full days to come. Then I will have an early 4AM wake up call to hustle to the airport for my flight to Berlin. Traveling, gotta love it...