Mopping Up

 I've been on holiday.

Don't panic; this isn't the beginning of an eighteen part series on the underground stations of Buenos Aires.  (Although if anyone would like to give me the money to go to Argentina to write an eighteen part series on Buenos Aires, feel free.  I've been watching Celebrity Race Across The World and Argentina looks amazing).  No, this was a holiday with the BF in France, and it mostly involved doing this:

However, the trip to Nice meant I didn't finish the Sweden trip write up. Oh yes, there's more!  Try to conceal your excitement.  On my last day in Stockholm, my flight back to Manchester wasn't until the evening, so obviously I had to lark about on the railways for a bit until it was time to go home.  I'll try and keep this brief.

The Roslagsbanan: Stockholms Östra to Vallentuna

Stockholms Östra is the terminus of the Roslagsbanan, the light railway that goes through the north-east of the city region and which I previously yammered on about in the post about Universitetet.  One look at the station and you know that this is the unwanted child of the SL network; it's been done up recently, apparently, but it was still basically a few platforms behind a building with very little in the way of facilities or excitement.  (I will emphasise I was there on a Sunday morning, so maybe it's a throbbing hotspot on a Monday).

With it being the weekend, I expected it to be relatively peaceful there, but actually the station was abuzz with Gentlemen Of A Certain Type.  I'd followed two of them out of the Tengiska högskolan tunnelbana station, a pair of excitable teen boys who were definitely not the type to smoke fags and drink Mad Dog 20/20 on their lunch hour.  They had backpacks and big headphones and were chatting away to one another, almost over one another, and I recognised them as Railway Fans.

It seemed I'd arrived at Östra on a day when there was going to be heritage trains running, and an unfair part of me would say, "how can they tell?"  That rickety thing on the platform above is the normal engine for the service and it looks like it should be carrying a worried defector to the Russian border in a Cold War drama.  

In fairness, when my train turned up, it was a much newer model, with decent suspension and a less rickety air.  It was soundly ignored by the Men Who Like Trains, who were dashing down the platform in search of more niche thrills.  Good luck to you, fellas.

I took the train to Vallentuna, towards the top of the Karsta line (number 27).  Why did I pick this particular spot?  It was as good as any, I suppose.  It was a small suburb.  It had a bus that would take me away from the Roslagsbanan to my next station.  Why not?

Actually the main reason I went there was so I could make this joke on Twitter.

One like.  You people don't deserve me.

A brief turn around the block revealed a small pedestrianised shopping centre with a Coop and a library, a fire station, and some teenagers being dead excitable as they headed into town for hi-jinks.  Meanwhile, I waited at a bus stop for my ride.

Upplands Väsby

This is a commuter station and is in an area that felt distinctly down at heel.  I'm probably going to get a bunch of comments from irate Swedes telling me that this is in fact Stockholm's version of Hampstead but the buildings we passed on the bus looked tired and unedifying, and the people waiting with me on the platform had a vaguely grimy air to them.

The Pendeltåg is the heavy rail network around the city, the one that descends into a tunnel to go to Stockholm City and out the other side.  It was particularly well patronised that day, as I was about to discover.

Solna

I'd planned a little trip to Solna because it's fast developing into the Stratford of Stockholm.  What was just a single stop on the Pendeltåg has been joined in recent years by the terminus of the Tvärbanan, the cross-city tram line, and is about to get the end of the Green Line extension too.

One of the main reasons for this significant upgrade in facilities was the construction of what is currently known (for sponsorship reasons) as the Strawberry Arena.  This is the Swedish FA's new national stadium (which is why the new Green Line station will be called Arenastaden rather than Solna).  It's also the home of the AIK football team and, as it turned out, they were having a match not long after I arrived at the station, meaning there were crowds of people in scarves heading that way.  I decided to skip having a look at the arena and instead went into the nearby Mall of Scandinavia to find myself a sandwich.

It's a Westfield Mall and if you told me they'd copied and pasted the plans for Westfield Stratford and added Swedish subtitles I'd have believed you.  Inside it was the same copy book of dark malls constantly curving around on themselves so you couldn't see what was ahead, facilities hidden to the side, pointless kiosks getting in your way.  Lots of glowing lights and not much actual substance.

I ate my sandwich on the plaza outside, watching the crowds push by, then walked round the block to the back entrance to Solna.  This was a lot quieter, as it opened out into a residential district, and the only excitement here was some lads with backpacks being dropped off by a very battered car.

But wait!  There is a little more.  I couldn't let my final post about Stockholm go by without mentioning The Art.

By Olle Brand, it's this odd bronze shape on the platform.  It can't compete with the magnificence of Solna Centrum... but let's face it, what can?