When we woke up this morning we were in Sweden! Country number 3. We landed and for a bus to our hostel. We dumped our stuff and set out to the old town to explore Stockholm. We started with a Viking walking tour. Obviously the focus was on Vikings (for instance did you know that didn't actually have horns on their helmets? They found horns in the graves of the Vikings and assumed they went on the helmets but they were actually for drinking out of) but we also had a bit of modern day knowledge and some history incorporated.
We saw the royal palace and heard about the king, queen, prince and princesses and how they are token rulers now.
We heard about the executioner of mediaeval times usually a condemned man who is given the option of this job or death. If he chooses the job then they dress him in a red vest so everyone knows who he is, tattoo the city seal on his forehead and cut off his ears in case he thinks about escaping. However he is allowed still to go to the pub but no one sits with him.
Stockholm is an island with a few surrounding ones and they used to hang the condemned on one of these islands. They would wait until they had 9 condemned and do them all at once. Once they were dead the local brewery masters would go over and chop off a bit of the bodies and stir into the next brew of beer to give it more 'body' (ewwww).
Modern day Sweden however is very progressive. They have 46% of the parliament as women (the second highest in the world). All the political parties are varying degrees of lefties described as mostly left to extreme left. They have the most impressive parental leave, 480 days of paid leave at 80% of wage (that is week days they also get weekends off). 2 months is allocated for women only and 2 months for men only -which is a brilliant concept. Other parts of there socialist welfare state includes free kinder from age 3 months (all day) and free education. However there are downsides to Sweden. Everything is terribly expensive and winter lasts 6 months and they only a few hours of sunlight per day during it.
Luckily for us it was a glorious sunny day so we saw the best of Stockholm. After the tour one of the Megan's and I went off and had hot dogs (invented in Sweden) and took a boat trip around the islands.
Then we met the others and did the most Swedish thing we could do in Stockholm. We went to IKEA! They have a free bus!! We went there for dinner. We had Swedish meatballs and IKEA brewed beer (of course they have their own beer!). A quick explore of the oldest and biggest IKEA in the world and then back to the city with ice creams. The whole meal was incredibly cheap! Only €7.
After that to a funky coffee house, Sweden is even only with Denmark with the reputation as the biggest coffee drinkers in the world. On average they'll have 4-5 cups per day. So we tried the coffee (well the others did) and apparently it was excellent.
(There are no photos with this blog my phone battery has died)
No comments:
Post a Comment