The Archive

Notes on a Scando

Right, where were we?

Ah yes, on our way to Stockholm.

The flight came in successfully, despite taunting us with further bad weather and a hilarious suggestions that we might have to put down in Denmark instead.

That didn't bother us – we’d been faced with the threat of Milton Keynes – Denmark would be no problem.

Fortunately none of that was necessary and we arrived in lovely Stockholm airport (about 150 miles outside Stockholm, incidentally) at about 9-ish. In other words, in time to not pace ourselves and have a big night out.

Now it may surprise you to learn that one of the appeals that Stockholm was the thought that Swedish women were likely to be so much better looking than ‘our lot’.
But we forgot the necessary corollary to this – that Swedish maledom also consisted of nothing but Calvin Klein models.

This disastrous realisation was confirmed when the first guy we see in the airport getting off some other flight looked like a bloody movie star.

“Oh my God,” declared Wig, worriedly, “They’re much better looking than us.”
This was not looking good.

Then, as we emerged at the same time as Handsome Man, into arrivals, he was set upon by a camera crew, a microphone shoved in his face and an interview commenced.

He was a movie star or something. Thank God. Perhaps there was hope after all.

We cabbed it to the hotel (the first of many painful taxi fares) and headed immediately out into the Stockholm night.

There are, in Stockholm, 2 key areas for bars, clubs and such. The first is Stureplan which is the high end, swanky area. The other is Sodermalm, which is Southern Stockholm and considered more bohemian and studenty.

Oddly, our hotel was in the heart of Stureplan, which explains why the hotel bar was one of the coolest, Scando-styled lounge bar I’ve ever been in.

We stayed there for one drink before heading down the road to a local restaurant where we enjoyed a Swedish extravaganza (although not, stricltly speaking, a smorgasbord), including 5 (five) types of herring for starter and where Pellet, being on holiday and therefore relieved of all vegetarian responsibilities, enjoyed a delicious reindeer steak. Conclusion – Rudolph is yummy.

To finish, we decided to have a nice, traditional liquer. We spotted a ‘traditional’ Swedish drink – schnapps made from asparagus.

That’s right. Asparagus.

Concluding that ‘when in Rome’ and all that, we ordered four.

The first surprising thing about this drink was that it did indeed actually taste of asparagus. This was in no sense a good thing. In fact, the four of us (all fairly proficient drinkers) struggled to keep the disgustingly unpleasant, burning vileness down. It was truly one of the worst things I have ever drunk.

Still, now we know eh? As did, apparently, the Swedes, not one of whom in the restaurant had ordered the drink, we now noticed. And there was dust on the bottle, come to think of it. And maybe the waitress asking ‘are you sure?’ with a sceptical look should have tipped us off too.

Ah well. On to a nice bar down the road, where we had further drinks, a bit of a chat with a lovely lady (who left the bar almost immediately afterwards) and a near-fight (someone threw a champagne glass, words were exchanged, everyone calmed down. Leave it Lee, he’s not worth it).

And on to the next club – Cafe Opera. Allegedly a highly swanky bar full of gorgeous people.

Not it wasn't. It was a nearly empty restaurant with a tiny dance floor.

So back to the street where it all began, where we discovered some kind of ‘happening’ that appeared to be sponsored by Cosmopolitan.

One of our number working for a national newspaper in London, we led with the business card in an attempt to get into the event under cover of journalism.

Although a really good journalist would probably have arrived before the event had finished. Unlike us.

Still, we tried the club next door for a bit (full of men, empty dance floor) and had a couple of drinks.

After this, Pellet and I decided to leave and make our first attempt to get into the swanky and exclusive Spy Bar.

We walked up to the door.

“You can’t come in,” said the bouncers.

“Why not?” I asked.

“You’re too drunk,” they replied.

I looked at Rob, he was swaying. He looked at me, I was swaying too.

Simultaneously, we both said, “You’re quite right. Goodnight,” and went home.

Meanwhile, 10 minutes later, who should stagger up to the very same bar and attempt entry, with much the same result?

That’s right, Adamski and Wig.
I can only imagine the bouncers looking to one another afterwards and declaiming, “Blimey, they’re all out tonight aren’t they?”

Yes they were. But now we were safely tucked up in bed, resting up for another day of Swedish adventures.

To be continued...

incidetentally, this is the 500th post on this blog, an event I shall celebrate appropriately when I'm done telling Swedish Tales.

posted by Peter The Great @ 10:24 AM