Stockholm

March 20–23, 2008

Stockholm charms you from the very first second (just as Oslo puts you off from the very first second).

It’s like a Scandinavian San Francisco.

Or a Scandinavian Venice.

It’s clear where the Riga cityscape came from.

Stockholm is magical.

It feels cozy everywhere here.

The temperature is around freezing, but there are tables set up on the sidewalk. The chairs are covered with sheepskins so that people can comfortably enjoy their coffee outside.

Although it’s not warm out, everyone’s walking around completely unbuttoned (I saw the same thing in the northern US—it could be minus twenty outside, and an office worker would be running out to the store in his dress shirt.)

You walk into a random café and see chairs with axe handles for legs and backs made of pitchforks. Design thought has been put into literally everything here.

The Swedes love to organize, arrange and neatly pack up everything. That’s how come a store right in the center of town manages to stay in business selling nothing but containers and boxes.

Even construction debris is piled into special bags.

Everything is orderly, but the order is unobtrusive. For instance, the swing set is enclosed with a fence simply for the sake of neatness, not to prevent anyone from hopping the fence.

A trash can on a historical street has a lid (with a name plate, no less) to protect innocent bystanders from odors.

A kitchen sink and washer in one, for fans of ultra-compact living.

In what other country would people start a tradition of knitting wool cozies for street poles?

The handicapped parking symbol is laid out in white stone.

Some local nonconformists have thoughtfully humanized the people on the signs.

I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that camouflage was invented by the Swedes as a result of experiments on becoming one with nature.

Building corners that come out onto an intersection are all beveled to avoid any right angles at pedestrian level.

When you walk through the neighborhoods, you really notice the variety of methods used to get rid of the feeling of boxiness.

Many houses have lonely bay windows.

In modern buildings, they try to make the windows as open as possible—without any crossbeams.

The highway lights have minimalist latticework masts that look absolutely ethereal.

All the traffic lights have a slanted back; they’re all from one manufacturer. The pedestrian on the left is lit by a bulb, the one on the right is LEDs.

Axle load limit signs can be seen even in Russia. But the wheel pair load limit is a local invention.

The word bankomat, which simply means ATM in Russian, is a registered trademark here. And there are special bumps around the keypad and cash dispenser slot, evidently to combat skimmers.

Practically the only non-architectural detail on the buildings is a sign indicating the distance in meters to a hatch marked SV (in the lower right corner).

They try to avoid attaching anything else to building walls. That’s why the traffic sign poles really stand out—they’re placed as close as possible to the wall, and the signs themselves are always mounted on an elbow.

If there’s no wall, and there are two signs, they’re still positioned at the same level.

Post boxes:

A city that has so much love and respect for the № symbol simply can’t be bad.

Night falls. No one tries to hide the interior of their apartments, on the contrary—they want passers by to look in and appreciate the coziness.

Even being dead is great in Sweden: you get a personal candle to quietly twinkle in your memory.

And speaking of being underground: the sight of the Stockholm metro will make a passenger’s jaw slowly drop all the way to the ground, leaving him with no ability to comment on any of it.