I should've known this because, by the time I left Örnsberg station, I was already beginning to flag a little. It was my thirteenth station of the day and the pace was beginning to get to me. The baking hot sun didn't help, and the deserted streets added to an air of general exhaustion. It felt like the locals were sensibly inside while only Mad Dogs and Englishmen were out.
I took advantage of a route between apartments to get a bit of shade, and then passed a neat square where a mum played with her toddler in a fountain. It brought me out on a long straight road of commercial buildings, shops and cafes and hair salons wedged into the base of old homes, before a side turn into a pedestrian precinct for my next stop.
The pavement cafes were starting to fill up with customers for lunch. These weren't the chic bistros we always imagine when we think of European street dining though, but more rough and ready cafes, with builders and workmen sat in groups tucking into pizzas and burgers. Two young children tackled massive slabs of meat and bread while their mum leaned back and checked her phone.
"Aspudden" sounds like a euphemism for a sexual act I won't mention here because sometimes my mum reads this blog. But you know what I'm talking about, you filthy article.
The Art at Aspudden had become something of a mascot for the area itself.
It's a bronze penguin with a box on its chest. Why the box? You'll have to ask the artist PG Thelander, though I think his answer would be along the lines of "why not the box?" which is no help to anyone. It's certainly arresting to come to the foot of the escalators and have a penguin staring at you, unblinking. For a brief moment, I was Gromit.
Rather than continue down the line and exit the station at Liljeholmen, I instead used it as a transfer spot. The Red Line splits there and, having now completed the Norsborg branch, I thought I should polish off the Fruängen spur while I was here. I swapped platforms and got the train right to the end of the line.
It's time for another apology, but for those of you who are of a rolling stock inclination. In 2020, SL introduced a new class of trains, the C30, and for the time being they run exclusively on the Red Line. I tried taking a picture of its front - an excitingly lit LED cabin that came bursting out of the dark - on several occasions, but it never came out as anything other than a blurry mess. On top of that, when I was onboard, I idly checked out the ventilation grilles in search of the Easter Eggs the builders put in them. In various places, the boring dots of the design have been replaced with Pac Man, or crowns, or hearts. I never actually found any, but I thought, that's ok, I've got another day on the Red Line later in the week to have a look.
I'd not realised, however, that the engineering works that closed the Red Line between Slussen and T-Centralen had also broken the connection between the two sides for rolling stock purposes. The northern branches were using the older C20 stock which, while very nice and all, didn't have the same futuristic feel of the C30s. I can only apologise for the oversight of not getting any decent pictures of the trains on a train-themed blog, though in my defence I will point out that I've always maintained this is a blog about train stations, so really you should manage your expectations.
Fruängen's contribution to The Art programme is a pixelated mosaic of a child over the escalators. To quote the artist, Fredrik Landergen: "I wanted us to remember that we all have a childhood within us. But I also want to remind people that children are fragile and need someone to really love and care for them." Perhaps it's because I'm not a parent, but my main train of thought was, why is that giant child staring at me and why won't he stop.
I enjoyed that Station Fruängen sign on the exterior, even if it did constitute yet another style and typeface.
I got a little disoriented leaving Fruängen's precinct, and walked in completely the wrong direction until I returned to Google Maps and reoriented myself. The town lies to the south of the E20 motorway and I could only see one way of crossing it, which made going in the right direction kind of important. I walked round the backs of the shops, onto a road that was being retarmacced (theoretically; as with all road projects across the world, the fences were in place, but there wasn't a single actual worker), then ducked into a hedge to find a footbridge.
Normally this is where I get creative with my writing as I try to convey the sense of terror as my vertigo kicks in while I use a footbridge. It didn't happen at all here, because the bridge was generously proportioned with plenty of room to move about. It seems my vertigo only kicks in when I'm on a very narrow bridge, which may be related to my claustrophobia; I tell you, I'm a petri dish of neuroses and an absolute joy to live with.
Almost immediately I was at Västertorp. Like many of the stations, it's double ended, and while there's a larger entrance for the commercial district, this little back way had been provided for the residential district.
I will say that my efforts to take the picture below greatly amused some teenage girls who were going into the station. Presumably they can set up an impeccably lit selfie without even having to think about it; phone out, fingers in a V, pout and you're done. Some of us of a more elderly persuasion need a couple of tries to get it right. Even if we have been taking selfies for longer than those girls have been on this earth.
This is also why I missed The Art at Västertorp. It's some painted tile work at the passageway to the main entrance, and if you thought I was going to humiliate myself further in front of those girls by taking pictures of the wall in their vicinity you're very much mistaken. They are vicious creatures. Also, I was very tired by that point, and couldn't be bothered walking all the way to other end of the station. I had a bleeding blister by now, though in fairness, I'd picked that up from wandering around Manchester Airport for two hours searching in vain for a seat that didn't come with an obligation to buy something.
Hägerstensåsen has a tremendous name which has allowed me to put my growing Alt code knowledge to full use, but, sadly, it has no art. To symbolise this I have enclosed a picture of an empty platform which is, perhaps, art in itself, and SL should probably pay me for it.
The station is at the foot of a hill, and the next one, Telefonplan, is on the other side of the hill. The Tunnelbana does a swift bit of tunnelling between the two, but us foolish bloggers who want to walk between them are forced to go up the hill and back down it again. I paused outside for a Google Translate-assisted look at a noticeboard; there were a lot of ads for summer clubs for children, with handball and swimming, and a poster for a Language Cafe that was all in English so presumably if you didn't have a basic grasp you wouldn't even know where to go to practice. There was also a missing cat, Tusse, though my sympathy for his owner was sadly undermined by the fact that they had put the Swedish for "runaway!" in big letters at the top, and the Swedish for "runaway!" is BORTSPRUNGEN. I will now be using the word bortsprungen as an exclamation in my daily life because it is a superb word.
I walked through the quiet residential streets and ended up in a stretch of parkland with an amazing playground; lots of things to crawl and jump off. Kids were using it enthusiastically while tired-looking relatives watched from benches. Some giant red and orange eggs looked incongruous among the grasses, until I spotted a fallen tree had been carved into the shape of a crocodile, a little bit of imagination-sparking that I'm sure thrilled the children.
A set of metal steps took me down, down, down the far side of the hill, so low in fact that I ended up below the railway line. The tracks came out of the hill on a viaduct and a skate park had been wedged into the gap beneath. It had only one patron that day, a man who I would've politely said was old enough to know better; once you start going thin on top I think it's time to tuck the board away. Skateboarding has never appealed to me because I am an extremely impatient person who hates the "learning" part of any skill. It's bad enough having to put in hours and hours of effort to get a new talent without adding in the danger of cuts, grazes and fractured limbs every time you go wrong. I'll stay at home with a nice book, thanks.
The area I was in now was called Telefonplan as this was the former home of the Ericsson corporation - yes, that one. LM Ericsson was a pioneer in the construction of telephone equipment, starting in Sweden then moving to supply across the rest of the world. This was where the company built a state of the art factory, opening in 1941. Alongside was a town for its workers, known as LM City.
The tower of the factory still remains but, as you'd expect in the 21st century, it no longer operates. Ericsson has experienced ups and downs over the decades; it was one of the earliest makers of mobiles (I was a huge fan, and the earliest pics on this blog were all taken with Sony Ericsson phones) but the smartphone era caught them out and they've retreated to technology research and networking. They also own Red Bee Media, which you might recognise as the organisation responsible for getting television broadcasts into your home.
Telefonplan is now a massive redevelopment project with the industrial lands being covered with new apartment blocks. The factory has been converted too, with a university moving into some of it, and it's a little disappointing. It clearly had some style to it when it was built but now it looks mangled, like they forced it to acquiesce to something it didn't want. It's obviously difficult to find new purposes for buildings that had one specific reason for existing, but I feel like this could've been executed with a bit more style.
The station itself isn't much longer for this world. The city council already has a scheme to deck over the tracks to provide more building space; the plan is for offices and apartments to fill the space above. This might provide some animation for the square opposite, which is currently an extremely bland square of nothing. It looks like an architect's drawing only without the smiling ethnically diverse clientele and child holding a balloon. Why is there always a child holding a balloon?
Bo Samuelson's artwork for the station is a lot of yellow tiles with pictures of local residents transferred onto the side. I'm not a fan, though I admit it deserves better than this really terrible photograph.
Secondly, The Art at Midsommarkransen is spectacular. The station name literally means Midsummer Wreath, and so they constructed a large wooden garland suspended from the ceiling. It was built by students Anna Flemström, Stina Zetterman and Hans Nilsson, with the help of local residents.
We're all thinking the same thing now, aren't we?
Midsommar is a fine and ancient Swedish custom that has been forever tainted by the American film industry; ironically, this is a fine and ancient custom of the American film industry. I hope they laughed it off and didn't consider it a terrible afront or anything. Although I couldn't decide if the gigantic wooden wreath was sinister simply because I'd once seen a horror film, or if it really did have a dark vibe to it. It had folk nightmare overtones that I couldn't shake off.
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