Stockholm and ...Salsa Classes?
"Why?" was the question I got asked most frequently when people found out about my upcoming trip to Stockholm. Without a specific list of countries I want to see, I generally look at all the random flights that fit with my schedule and pick the one that hits the perfect combination of interesting and relatively affordable; hence my choice to go to Sweden. I found a friend who also wanted to cross Sweden off her list of countries and we booked the trip without a second thought.
Three days after buying our tickets the news of a terrorist attack in Stockholm's main shopping center was broadcast throughout the world, causing more doubt in an already tense Europe. Thought to be one of the safest, most neutral countries in Europe, the attack on Sweden seemed to cause some questions in the minds of even the calmest people as to where is actually "safe." However, I'm nothing if not stubborn, and I refuse to let a little fear keep me from doing what I want, so I packed my bags and got ready for a new adventure.
My friend and I arrived on a Thursday night to a balmy 36 degrees and walked to our CouchSurfing accommodations. For those of you not familiar with the concept, CouchSurfing is a website wherein people offer up their spare bed (or in most cases their living room couch) and allow travelers to stay in their apartment free of charge. Is it the safest thing one can do? No. But having waited to book a hotel room for the last minute we were left with the choice of paying a lot to stay an hour outside of the city or sleeping for free in a central neighborhood. We rolled the dice and it thankfully turned out in our favor.
The trip of a million funny occurrences, the misadventures got off to an early start during our first foray to a grocery store. Going to self-checkout instead of waiting in line (don't ask me why we weren't more patient) we fumbled our way through finding the barcode for our various frukts and bröd before pressing random buttons on the Swedish credit card reader. We finally finished and made our way to the exit, where we were stuck behind automated gates. As it turns out, you have to scan your receipt before being allowed to exit, and waving your hands while trying to trigger a nonexistent sensor doesn't actually do anything — who knew?
We found a park on the waterfront from which we enjoyed our hard-earned grocery store purchases and watched a million nordic models go jogging past. A tour of the "hipster" part of town and a fika later, we were very cold but charmed by how polite everyone was. Having blue eyes meant that people always approached me in Swedish, but they were more than happy to switch to English when my immediate confusion was apparent. In the most agreeable and non-condescending way possible, everyone was incredibly willing to help us with whatever it was we needed, for which we were incredibly thankful.
The highlight of the day ended up being our trip to Stockholm's crown jewel: the world's largest Ikea. Our CouchSurfing host assured me that Swedish people do actually love the furniture store, so much so that there's a shuttle every hour to bring people to and from the building. The restaurant is so popular amongst local families that there was actually a very long line of blonde-haired, blue-eyed patrons waiting patiently for their meatballs and lingonberry jam. I'm not gonna lie, it was delicious and I would highly recommend a fine dining experience at Ikea if you find yourself with some time to kill in Stockholm.
After dinner it was time to catch the last shuttle of the day so we started to leave, only to discover that all those lovely showrooms make it quite difficult to escape. We very quickly turned into the panicked girls running through the store, following those endless little arrows pointing to the exit. The swearing started flowing in no less than 4 different languages until we emerged from the store, slightly crazed and with only a couple minutes to spare until the bus' departure.
Laughing about the fact that we almost got trapped overnight in the world's largest Ikea, we got off the shuttle when it was back in town — the wrong side of town. Without the slightest clue of how the metro functions and not a taxi in sight, we wrapped our scarves as tightly as possible and walked several kilometers back to the apartment (there may have been some multilingual swearing at this point as well).
Saturday morning we returned to the self-checkout lane at the grocery store, fully prepared to purchase our produce & scan our receipts. I'm very happy to say that this time we breezed on through all that elementary level vocabulary.
Saturday was coincidentally Culture Night, meaning we got to enter several of the city's museums for free until midnight. After visiting the Nobel museum and listening to some Swedish opera we stumbled upon what was to become my favorite anecdote from the trip: salsa classes in the neighborhood of Gamla Stan (or Gangnam Style as we took to calling it). The teacher was a man in his sixties (with absolutely no latin blood to speak of) who was doling out instructions in Swedish to our completely blank faces. We have since shown off our newfound dance skills in a few clubs and I must say that we're quite good considering we couldn't understand a word that was said and were distracted from laughing the whole time.
Our last day in Stockholm meant we got to splurge and go souvenir shopping - arguably biggest guilty pleasure and favorite part of any trip, as much as I hate to admit it. By this point not only were we experts at Swedish grocery shopping but we had mastered the local greeting of "Hey" and could surprisingly find our way around the city pretty well. Even though the trip was incredibly cold and had some hiccups, it's quickly become one of my favorite trips to talk about. After all, how many people can say that they took salsa lessons in Sweden?
