Ödds & Södra

 

Suitably refreshed from my disco nap, I returned to T-Centralen and got the train to Gamla Stan.  The station's a weird hybrid, both underground and open air, accessed by tunnels and by a bridge.  A dual carriageway passes by on one side.  I left the station with dozens of excitable visitors; even though it was early evening by now, it was still busy.  

Gamla Stan means Old Town, and it's the ancient heart of Stockholm.  What this actually translates to is "tourist trap".  After a day in mostly quiet residential streets, it came as something of a shock.  Suddenly there were people everywhere, darting in and out of the cobbled streets, pushing down alleyways.  The shops and restaurants were angled to foreigners, with price boards outside that definitely reflected that "overpriced Sweden" I'd been hearing about but hadn't really noticed.  I walked without real purpose, trying to explore, but it didn't open itself up to me.  All I saw was the tackiness - the Irish pubs, the Japanese sushi bars, the British store with Union Jacks on every surface.  I'm not sure why you'd go to Sweden and then buy a load of British tat; perhaps it's for Americans who are making a trip to only one European country and decided to buy something from all the others while they're here.

A police car cruised by at low speed, making sure everyone was behaving themselves.  Some of the bars had signs up advertising they were open for the Euros, but Sweden hadn't qualified for the competition so enthusiasm was tepid.  It actually meant I got a week away from the football, which was delightful, although I paid for it when I returned to England and the BF wouldn't talk about anything else.  

Without really meaning to, I realised I'd stumbled on the Kungliga slottet: the Royal Palace.  I walked into the semi-circular parade ground where a board encouraged me to visit the Royal Gift Shop.  It was almost deserted, though there were a couple of guards on show.  The palace was simultaneously disappointing and impressive.  Disappointing, because I'm used to British palaces, enormous and overbearing and glitzy.  Impressive, for the simple reason that it wasn't enormous and overbearing and glitzy.  It felt smaller and more intimate, like the royals were close and part of the city, rather than locked away behind metal and guns.

I'm really not sure how we deal with royals in the 21st century.  They're a ridiculous anachronism and a drain on the public purse, but on the other hand, removing them from power would seem sort of... rude?  The European countries that have still got royals - Britain, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian threesome, Belgium - they're all quite boringly sensible nations who'd never have anything as vulgar or hot-blooded as a revolution.  Chopping the crowned head off would be terribly gauche.  The Spanish got the closest - fiery Mediterranean types, you see - but then they brought the King back once Franco popped it, to remind them of the good times.  Really, what we need them to do is politely accept for themselves that they're a relic and retire gracefully.  Charles won't do it, of course, because he's thrilled he's finally got his sausage fingers on the crown, and it's increasingly looking like William's as much of a traditionalist as his dad.  Perhaps George VII will abdicate to Balmoral or Sandringham and Buckingham Palace can be turned into a hotel.

 

I emerged onto the Slottsbacken, Stockholm's version of The Mall, a wide avenue that sloped down to the quayside.  There was an obelisk and a statue of a long dead king (Gustav III) plus a mix of royal buildings and nationally important churches and cathedrals.

It was all very pretty, which I know sounds like the faintest of praise, but I mean it sincerely.  There was unifying style of architecture and design throughout this part of Gamla Stan which meant every view seemed to have a focal point or a quirk that called out to you.  It was all well-preserved and well-maintained and hadn't been knocked about by ambitious town planners or wrecked by 1960s road schemes.  The tackiness was largely absent too, though I did spy a dreaded street "entertainer".  It was a pleasing spot to look round, although I was glad it was later in the day, when the crowds had largely dispersed.

I walked down to the quay, where the traffic was crawling along at a snail's pace.  I assumed it was the usual rush hour crush, but when I got to the head of the queue, I found the world's smallest pro-Palestinian protest chanting and singing.  There were literally nine people on it, but there were still two police cars behind holding up traffic for them to march.  It was delightfully respectful; none of the cars behind honked their horns or tried to speed past.  In the UK someone would've definitely got out to shout at them by this point.

I followed the road round, then crossed the Slussbron to leave the island, all the time hoping that the girl who seemed to match my pace exactly didn't think I was a mad rapist or something.  Ahead was the vast building site that would form the New Slussen.  

This was always an big interchange area for the city; major roads, the railways, ferries and a bus terminal all met here.  With land at a premium and the city growing all the time a radical plan was formed to get more desirable building plots while also improving lives for the residents.  The highway and the bus station are being put underground so that plazas and a new park can be built on top.  Links to the Tunnelbana station will thread throughout.  There will be new bridges across to Gamla Stan, along with new locks to allow a greater flow of water from the lake to the bay and minimise flooding in the area.  Office buildings, cafes, and shops will, obviously, fill the new plots to pay for it all.

It's a massive project that's still years off completion and should be admired.  The problem is of course that it means the area around Slussen is a mess.  I knew there was a station in there somewhere - I'd changed trains there earlier that day, twice in fact - but finding the entrance was difficult.  I thought if I followed the crowds they might take me there, but they all seemed to branch off into different directions, and they walked with the purpose of commuters and were hard to track.

Google Maps was no use, sending me in completely the wrong direction so that I had to double back on myself, and signage seemed to be at a minimum.  I got the impression that SL would really prefer it if you didn't use Slussen station at all.  Eventually I found it, a temporary silver box that I had in fact walked round the back of earlier, but I'm obviously blaming the Swedish people for their lack of clear wayfinding rather than acknowledging I might be a bit thick.

The Red Line platform was heaving.  If you can cast your mind back to my very first Stockholm blog, you might remember that Slussen was a change point as the tunnel through the city was closed.  Everyone had to wait for the shuttle to Mariatorget, and by "everyone", I mean a lot of grumpy, tired, commuters, sweating through their crumpled clothes in the baking July heat.

Slussen is the zero point for the entire Tunnelbana.  It originally opened as the terminus of a tram tunnel, and the northern Green Line largely follows this old network.  It was converted into a metro in the 1930s however, and then expanded to the south of the city, meaning that distances from Slussen rise in both directions.  If you board a Red Line train at Norsberg, the official distances count down until you reach zero at Slussen, and then they count up again on their way to Ropsten.  Well, I found it interesting.

There's art at both Gamla Stan and Slussen, but my photos of them were absolutely dreadful.  They're not that amazing anyway.  At Gamla Stan it's some tilework in the ground and on one wall to represent woven fabrics.  At Slussen there are a few different parts, but the only one I managed to successfully capture was the one above: steel screens with triangular cut outs by Bernt Rafael Sundberg.  To be honest, I was mainly trying to take a picture of the blue tiles on the wall at that point - I thought they were lovely, and reminded me of the East Berlin sections of the U-Bahn that were largely ignored over the decades.

The Art at Mariatorget is similarly minimalist.  When the station was planned, in the 1960s, it was decided that this would be one where there would be a fair amount of advertising on the track walls, rather than it simply being a haven for namby pamby artistic nonsense.  They did, however, allow Karin Björquist to design the tiles for the walls, and she came up with a far more interesting concept than she needed to.  Ceramic rods make the tiles 3-D and that orangey-brown is warm against the chilly white concrete of the rest of the platform.

The architecture as art theme continues with metal gates, used to close off an exit, but designed by Britt-Louise Sundell to look like a piece of delicate sculpture in their own right.

I stepped out onto a back street, the sun sparkling in my eyes.  There was a police station further down with idling patrol cars.  A moment to applaud the Swedish police uniforms, by the way, which include a gloriously camp hat that makes them all look like they've got pointy heads.

I walked past some building sites and restaurants that hadn't yet opened for the evening custom.  One street was being prepared for filming of some sort, and a couple of elderly gentlemen stood and watched as cables were unrolled.  It was too early for anyone of importance to have turned up though, so I missed out on a glimpse of the Swedish Julia Roberts.

I passed Teater Tre, which, based on the noticeboard advertising its coming attractions, I unfairly judged as a horribly pretentious experimental theatre.  The pictures were lots of people in garish costumes pulling odd faces.  They looked like the shows you get at the Edinburgh Festival that "hilariously" combined politics with humour: a journey through an alternate Britain where Tony Blair became emperor or a thought provoking dance and mime experience reflecting on the horrors of the Corn Laws.  I'm a puritan when it comes to theatre; I want a nice set with some good actors delivering dialogue, not a confrontational experience designed to make me rethink my very self.  And don't get me started on one-man plays, which are the absolute worst.  Anyway, it turns out Teater Tre is a specialist theatre aimed squarely at young children, so you can basically ignore all of the last paragraph.

I turned right at the Zinkensdamm Stadium, home to the Hammarby Bandy team.  Bandy is a sort of cross between ice hockey and football, in which a ball is knocked around by skaters on a rink using sticks.  Surprisingly, it's an English game, with the rules based on ones codified by us in the nineteenth century; its name, bandy, means "to knock back and forth," as in when the British bandy ideas about.  Bandy is now almost exclusively a Scandinavian sport, with a bit of Russia as well (when they're not invading other countries, obviously), though the international federation has 27 teams and there's a Great Britain Bandy Association.  

Zinkensdamm station was accessed via a small pavilion at the side of the road, which I always like because it feels properly "big city" to me.  I descended to the platform level and encountered a wall of Pop Art.  The SL has a policy of commissioning temporary pieces for some of their stations, as well as the permanent ones, and at Zinkensdamm it's currently work by Marie-Louise Ekman.  On the northbound platform it's a piece called A Thousandth of a Second.

When Hornstull station was constructed, it was thought that the shops on the streets above would pay to display goods down on the platform, so a series of glass cases were built into the wall.  It turned out nobody was interested, so instead they've filled it with art and, in one of them, a display for a children's theatre production called Who Will Comfort Toffle?, based on the book by Tove Jansson, better known as the creator of the Moomins.  I'm afraid this is where I admit I really hate the Moomins.  (You'll note I waited until I was safely out of Sweden before I confessed this).  There's something about their stupid faces that really rubs me up the wrong way.  Their big noses and their piggy eyes and their awful podgy hands - can't stand them.

Far more up my street was The Art at Hornstull, red and black bricks on the platform walls with a pattern cut into them by Berndt Helleberg.  It was very Goth and dramatic.  

There was even more art in the shopping centre that the station is incorporated into, with one of the columns turned organic, like an Ent was here to hold the roof up.

I walked, blinking, into the sunlight, and took the sign pic.  They're not as much fun when they're not totems, can I say?

What a twat.  That was the BEST of the three pictures I took at Hornstull.  Can you imagine?

I was headed off the island of Södermalm now, and to do that I needed to use the Lijleholmsbron, a cantilevered bridge that arcs high above the water.  The world seemed to change once I stepped on it.  The oppressive heat of the city vanished to be replaced by a breeze on the water.  I was looking down at a park beneath me then, beyond that, a marina with a busy waterfront bar.

It's incredible how a glimpse of water can make your day so much better.  I once read a psychological theory that it's because we evolved from the water, that there's a deeply buried primitive instinct to return there, which is of course nonsense.  But as I paused on the bridge to look at it below me I did feel a real sense of calm and contentment.

Liljeholmen is a district that's getting a significant upgrade; it's another transport interchange, with the Red Line meeting the Tvärbanen, a long tram line that loops round the city and lets you get to different networks without having to go all the way into the centre and out again.  There were new apartment blocks and offices springing up everywhere I looked.

I kept my eye out for a tram, excitedly, but none showed up.  It was curious but I didn't think much of it.  I have a habit of turning up at exactly the wrong moment to see stuff.

There isn't so much one piece of art at Liljeholmen, more that the whole station is the work of an artist.  Leif Bolter worked with the Reinius-Sporrong architecture practice when it was rebuilt in the 2000s.  It was a real collaboration and it means that it's hard to tell what was art and what was building.

Liljeholmen sits underneath a bus exchange so they tried to introduce as much natural light as possible.  One way was glass picture windows so that you could see out into the park next door; the outside effectively became the platform art.

This was the last Red Line station south of T-Centralen I needed to visit; I'd crossed all twenty-five off my list now.  From here it was a trip back to my hotel in the city centre, but the thought of that awful Mariatorget-Slussen shuttle, followed by the crush of everyone changing to the Green Line, depressed me.  I wondered if there was a different way to go.  I had to get a train out of Liljeholmen, those were the rules, so I couldn't go up to the tram stop and take that across town.  I looked at the map on the wall - not the Tunnelbana only one I'd been using, but SL's Rail Network Map, which covered all their services.

On this map, Mariatorget was marked as an interchange, with Stockholm Södra commuter station within walking distance.  That went straight into T-Centraalen, or rather, into Stockholm City station, which is a separate stop in the same place (I'll get into it later).  

It meant that while most of the train shuffled off and headed for the shuttle, I went up to the surface.  I was back in the same district I'd been in an hour before, but now I turned in the opposite direction, and I soon found myself on a delicious street.

Swedenborgsgatan - named after a scientist called Emanuel Swedenborg, and nothing to do with the country - is a long straight street that heads directly south and is lined with some of the tastiest smelling restaurants and cafes I'd encountered in a long time.  Admittedly, it was about dinner time, so my stomach was doing a lot of the thinking for me, but everywhere I walked I was hit with the scent of onions, or bread, or garlic.  My mouth became wet with saliva as I passed yet another trattoria pumping out a heady mix of flavours.

In the summer, Swedensborgsgatan is pedestrianised so that the restaurants can put tables out in the street.  It was lively and exciting, as Stockholmers knocked back glasses of wine and tucked into plates.  I wished I was brave enough to join them, to take a seat on a bistro chair and enjoy a glass of something cold, but I didn't dare.  I can't dine alone in a restaurant; I feel like I'm taking up space, that the staff are looking at me and wishing I was a nice drunken table for four who wanted starters and dessert and coffees.  I'm fat but not fat enough to spend that kind of money, and I wouldn't be able to relax.  I shuffled by and tried to get excited about the sandwich I had waiting for me in my hotel room.

The area around Stockholm Södra (Stockholm South) station had been comprehensively rebuilt in the late eighties and early 90s and it showed.  It had post modernism leaking out of every window and door, out of every pediment and curved glass roof.  It was like Canary Wharf or the World Financial Center in Manhattan, with soft pastels and odd detailing. 

Because I'd not planned on visiting Södra, I'd not done any research into it (yes folks, I do actually do research for this old nonsense).  It meant I didn't know what I'd be walking into.  Which is why I got down to the platform and said, out loud, "fuck me!"

The island platform was covered by a barrel-vaulted roof held up on brick columns and it was stunning.  It was like walking into a long, narrow corridor, but the high ceiling made it feel epic.  I walked down the centre, mouth agape, loving every inch of it.

It didn't need to be this good.  Södra's tracks had once been open to the elements, but they got rafted over to enable apartments to be built on top.  If you've been to, say, Birmingham New Street or London Victoria, you'll know how over-track developments can make a station feel dark and dingy.  Like the ceiling is about to come down on you.

Södra felt open and bright.  Even the fact that two of the platforms were out of use and unlit didn't make it oppressive.  It was big and bright and even the very 1980s pink and grey floor didn't make it feel dated.  

I was finishing my day with a delightful surprise.  Ok, so it wasn't a Tunnelbana station, but still.  It was great to end with a smile.

That's the end of Day One, and here's what's still to be visited on the Tunnelbana.  Thanks for sticking with it.