Day 23 (29 June): Island Hopping
Today I took a couple of different boats around the Stockholm Archipelago which are islands that are between the city and the Baltic. The only real town on any of the islands in the Archipelago is called Vaxholm where I stopped and had a very nice lunch of locally caught fish. On other islands in the Archipelago were old forts used by the Swedish and by the Vikings to protect the city, some public parks (e.g. empty islands with just beaches and trees), and some vacation houses for the ultra rich. All of the islands had a very New England like feel to them.
Upon my return to Stockholm, I took in other parts of the city and visited the Vassa Museum which has a recovered ship in it that sunk in Stockholm harbor on its maiden voyage; legend has it that the King at the time wanted it to be the most spectacular ship to date covering it with very heavy ornamentation and weapons that due to their weight made it unseaworthy. Nonetheless, it was quite a spectacular site.
Economic observations:
1) Shipping networks. The Swedes get creative with this as they ship supplies (including what looked like a box of Ikea furniture) out to the Archipelago islands via passenger ferries. I actually noticed a similar shipping method on the bus between Slovenia and Croatia where people were shipping boxes to friends at the other end of bus routes. I don't think I've seen this in the US, but it should happen at some level because it should keep costs down.
2) Fresh fish is infinitely better than day old fish. The fish I had for lunch, while I don't know what type, was excellent mostly because it had come just out of the sea.
3) Bilingualism. Almost everyone is Sweden is perfectly bilingual in English with an accent much like American English (with a slight British one for certain words.) Nonetheless, everyone seems to think I must be Swedish because that is the language they try speaking to me in first whereas in all of the other countries I've been to so far with the exception of Germany everyone I've run into starts out in English immediately.
4) Currency units. The smallest unit of the Swedish currency is 1 Korna which is equivalent to about 0.12USD. This makes prices for goods and services seem very odd, since the lowest price for anything tends to be at least 5 Korna or nearly 0.60 USD even if its something very cheap or very small. Likewise the unit by which prices tend to increase by is usually 5 Korna, so things get expensive quickly.
5) Sweden or at least its Archipelago must not get very much tourism. from the US. I had a conversation with a guy who lived year round on the archipelago who thought it was very strange that anyone from the US would want to go visit the Archipelago.
Upon my return to Stockholm, I took in other parts of the city and visited the Vassa Museum which has a recovered ship in it that sunk in Stockholm harbor on its maiden voyage; legend has it that the King at the time wanted it to be the most spectacular ship to date covering it with very heavy ornamentation and weapons that due to their weight made it unseaworthy. Nonetheless, it was quite a spectacular site.
Economic observations:
1) Shipping networks. The Swedes get creative with this as they ship supplies (including what looked like a box of Ikea furniture) out to the Archipelago islands via passenger ferries. I actually noticed a similar shipping method on the bus between Slovenia and Croatia where people were shipping boxes to friends at the other end of bus routes. I don't think I've seen this in the US, but it should happen at some level because it should keep costs down.
2) Fresh fish is infinitely better than day old fish. The fish I had for lunch, while I don't know what type, was excellent mostly because it had come just out of the sea.
3) Bilingualism. Almost everyone is Sweden is perfectly bilingual in English with an accent much like American English (with a slight British one for certain words.) Nonetheless, everyone seems to think I must be Swedish because that is the language they try speaking to me in first whereas in all of the other countries I've been to so far with the exception of Germany everyone I've run into starts out in English immediately.
4) Currency units. The smallest unit of the Swedish currency is 1 Korna which is equivalent to about 0.12USD. This makes prices for goods and services seem very odd, since the lowest price for anything tends to be at least 5 Korna or nearly 0.60 USD even if its something very cheap or very small. Likewise the unit by which prices tend to increase by is usually 5 Korna, so things get expensive quickly.
5) Sweden or at least its Archipelago must not get very much tourism. from the US. I had a conversation with a guy who lived year round on the archipelago who thought it was very strange that anyone from the US would want to go visit the Archipelago.
posted by Traveling Brian at 4:15 AM
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