Day 22 (28 June): Enjoying the (almost) Midnight Sun
I began the day by exploring Old Town area of Stockholm (Gama Stala) with a first stop at the Royal Palace and its three related museums. It has to be one of the nicest I have ever seen. From there I went to the Nobel (Prize) Museum which was housed in the old stock exchange. They had a brief exhibit on Clive Granger who won shared the 2003 economics prize and who was one of my Professors at UCSD in addition to a lot of other neat things on Economics and the Sciences. (I also saw the hotel where they put up prize winners and the Palace dining room where they have a reception dinner for winners, which more than explains the glow Prof. Granger had on his face when he returned to San Diego.) I continued around the old town and government areas, seeing the parliament building and some other things.
In the evening, I met up with a Swedish friend, Tove, who did a year long exchange at UCSD and moved to Stockholm in the winter for work. She showed me around the shopping area (filled with stores that had lots of unmistakably Swedish furniture and clothing design stores along the lines of Ikea and H&M) and one of the fanciest residential area. From there we continued into a large outdoor park called Skagen that has a farm filled with Scandanavian animals like Elk, Reindeer, etc. and a number of old houses brought from around Sweden and reassembled in the park. On this night was the largest event at the park all summer, celebrating Swedish heritage, so there were a number of people dressed up doing traditional Swedish dances and songs. Also there was a very, very large outdoor stadium that had a free concert with both modern and traditional Swedish music in it. (Tove thinks I might have been the only American in attendance and she was probably right.)
After the concert we went to a water side, floating bar in the fancy residential neighborhood for some people watching. Interestingly, as an outdoor venue it came with blankets for patrons, since even in the summer with 22 hours of sunlight every day, it still gets chilly at night.
Economic observations:
1) From my conversation with Tove, we agreed that jobs almost universally sound cooler before you start doing them. Julian in Berlin had the same observation.
2) Saving money is always good. In the Royal Palace, a number of columns were painted to look like marble rather than being marble. The Swedish King who did this is credited with running the country better than any other Swedish King as he could use the money for other more important things.
3) Sweden is probably more Socialist than any of the former Communist countries I went to. According to Tove, however, the socialist institutions are starting to be abused and it looks likely that the socialist party will be stripped of power soon. As an example of the system unwinding, she told me that she recently purchased private health insurance because she did not fell she could trust the government health system any longer (after it took three years for her grandmother to get a knee operation done limiting her from being able to get around outside the house for nearly three years.)
4) High taxes explain why everything in Sweden seems so expensive to me because like in other European countries tax is included in the quoted prices of things. This does not seem like so big of a problem if you are Swedish and receive benefits from the government, but if you are not it is offputting.
5) Food in Sweden is taxed at over 25% and they are thinking about raising that tax. It seems like a silly tax to raise since food is a necessity. Alcohol is very highly taxed; the glasses of average wine we had cost nearly USD 20 each which puts them at least three times the prices you would find in the US.
6) Bikes are also very popular in Sweden. Where there are stairs, they actually put a small ramp that is just wider than a bike tire to make Stockholm more bike accessible. I thought this was very cool and would be a good addition in US cities.
7) Most foreign banks charge a USD 5 transaction fee for withdrawing money in another currency. This makes me feel very lucky to have a bank that just charges the spot rate. I wonder how they can afford to do that when Swedish, German, and Australian banks, to my understanding, have this high fee.
Quote of the day (by Einstein at the Nobel Musuem):
The mere formulation of a problem is often far more essential than its solution, which may be a mere matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilites, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative immagination and marks real advance.
In the evening, I met up with a Swedish friend, Tove, who did a year long exchange at UCSD and moved to Stockholm in the winter for work. She showed me around the shopping area (filled with stores that had lots of unmistakably Swedish furniture and clothing design stores along the lines of Ikea and H&M) and one of the fanciest residential area. From there we continued into a large outdoor park called Skagen that has a farm filled with Scandanavian animals like Elk, Reindeer, etc. and a number of old houses brought from around Sweden and reassembled in the park. On this night was the largest event at the park all summer, celebrating Swedish heritage, so there were a number of people dressed up doing traditional Swedish dances and songs. Also there was a very, very large outdoor stadium that had a free concert with both modern and traditional Swedish music in it. (Tove thinks I might have been the only American in attendance and she was probably right.)
After the concert we went to a water side, floating bar in the fancy residential neighborhood for some people watching. Interestingly, as an outdoor venue it came with blankets for patrons, since even in the summer with 22 hours of sunlight every day, it still gets chilly at night.
Economic observations:
1) From my conversation with Tove, we agreed that jobs almost universally sound cooler before you start doing them. Julian in Berlin had the same observation.
2) Saving money is always good. In the Royal Palace, a number of columns were painted to look like marble rather than being marble. The Swedish King who did this is credited with running the country better than any other Swedish King as he could use the money for other more important things.
3) Sweden is probably more Socialist than any of the former Communist countries I went to. According to Tove, however, the socialist institutions are starting to be abused and it looks likely that the socialist party will be stripped of power soon. As an example of the system unwinding, she told me that she recently purchased private health insurance because she did not fell she could trust the government health system any longer (after it took three years for her grandmother to get a knee operation done limiting her from being able to get around outside the house for nearly three years.)
4) High taxes explain why everything in Sweden seems so expensive to me because like in other European countries tax is included in the quoted prices of things. This does not seem like so big of a problem if you are Swedish and receive benefits from the government, but if you are not it is offputting.
5) Food in Sweden is taxed at over 25% and they are thinking about raising that tax. It seems like a silly tax to raise since food is a necessity. Alcohol is very highly taxed; the glasses of average wine we had cost nearly USD 20 each which puts them at least three times the prices you would find in the US.
6) Bikes are also very popular in Sweden. Where there are stairs, they actually put a small ramp that is just wider than a bike tire to make Stockholm more bike accessible. I thought this was very cool and would be a good addition in US cities.
7) Most foreign banks charge a USD 5 transaction fee for withdrawing money in another currency. This makes me feel very lucky to have a bank that just charges the spot rate. I wonder how they can afford to do that when Swedish, German, and Australian banks, to my understanding, have this high fee.
Quote of the day (by Einstein at the Nobel Musuem):
The mere formulation of a problem is often far more essential than its solution, which may be a mere matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilites, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative immagination and marks real advance.
posted by Traveling Brian at 8:58 AM
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