Tracking down the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The next day we visited the Nobel Museum to learn about the Nobel Prize and its founder, as well as the Nobel Laureates and their creative endeavours. We learnt that Alfred Nobel invented dynamite and got very rich in the process. Apparently he wanted to leave a better legacy behind rather than being known as the inventor of dynamite and thus established the Nobel Prizes which were to be given annually in the areas of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace. However as he wasn’t very clear in his will regarding how the prizes will be given as well as the criteria for some of the prizes, there were some controversies such as how Tolstoy never won the prize, amongst others. More than 800 Laureates have since been awarded the Nobel Prize and from the ceiling of the museum, visitors can see all the Laureates along a cableway. The museum guide was fairly informative though he seemed pretty new to the tour guide thing. We also learnt that Alfred Nobel wrote a book, Nemesis, however the entire stock except for three copies, was destroyed immediately after his death. Kind of make you wonder exactly what the book is about, and whether it was so bad that they destroyed it so as not to stain his legacy.

Fried herring... A swedish classic.

We went for a walking tour after that which was short but very enjoyable. There was a changing of the guards ceremony at the Royal Palace and we managed to catch the ending bits of it. To our surprise, they played some ABBA songs, I always thought they will play more stately songs at these type of events but apparently not. We learnt that the Royal Palace has 1430 rooms so even though Buckingham may occupy more space (77,000 m² versues 61,210 m²), they have more rooms, lol… We also visited the smallest public sculpture in Sweden, Olle, which was a major tourist attraction! We had to wait our turn as tourist after tourist went to touch its head, which apparently gives good luck.

We dropped by the Historiska Museum as we thought we could learn about the Vikings but there wasn’t much to it, so it was a bit of a disappointment actually. Instead, the exhibits mentioned how the Nazis used the Vikings in their propaganda and some educational stuff about the daily life of a Viking. We left after a short while and went over to Skansen Open Air Museum, which also turned out to be a bad idea. Perhaps due to the off-season, a lot of the places were rather empty and there wasn’t much to see. One of the more interesting shops/ places we visited was a hardware store where the man looked like he has been working there since forever. He had a really ancient cash register that still works! That was pretty cool honestly. However the rest of the place was kind of deserted and we got bored after a while.

Skansen Open Air Museum

After that, we went for our ‘Millennium tour – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’. I’ve watched all three movies but not read the book whereas CS has only watched the first movie so our knowledge was kind of limited. Still the tour was fairly interesting and it does let you see Stockholm through the author’s eyes. Walking up and down the various streets, I almost felt like I was in the movie!

Wandering around Gamla Stan

According to our guide, Daniel Craig was filming a few streets away the week before or something like that. He didn’t catch him and the producers seemed to keeping it rather secretive. 

With that, we ended our trip in Stockholm and headed to Goteborg. I guess the only thing we didn’t do in Stockholm was to visit the world's largest Ikea store, but we'll save that for some other time.

Money, money, money, must be funny, in a rich man’s world

After visiting Sweden, I think I can understand why ABBA had a song like that. Sweden is seriously not a cheap place to visit, though I do have friends who told us Norway is worse. While we have generally avoided staying in the city centre since hotels there tend to be expensive, we were relegated to staying near an industrial area in Stockholm since hotels were just ridiculously expensive almost everywhere.

Somehow the sun seems to be shining brighter in Scandinavia

Vasa Museum was the first place we visited. Just like Titanic, Vasa sanked on its maiden voyage, however the reasons it sank was completely different from that of Titanic. Titanic sank as it departed without the binoculars to permit an early sighting of the iceberg which caused its doom, whereas Vasa sank as it was too top heavy and unstable. Now that the history lesson is over, back to the museum. The piece de la resistance was obviously the reconstructed vessel of Vasa, most of which was salvaged in 1961 after lying in the sea for 333 years. The reconstructed vessel is 95% original,ad since there were no plans or contemporary pictures of the ship, they were basically fixing a giant jigsaw puzzle without a picture to refer to. The museum also contained eleven permanent exhibits which examine the ship, the time in which she was built and her recent history. We both quite enjoyed the one about the salvaging of the ship as visitors can try the diving gear which they wore while doing the salvaging. The diving gear was quite claustrophobic and I really can’t imagine how people can do it for a living then. The exhibition regarding what the different colors and sculptures symbolize was also rather educational. They actually have guided tours for visitors however we missed the English speaking tour so we had to walk around ourselves.

Amazing how they pieced it back together

As it sails off into the sea... literally...

We ended the day with a dinner of Swedish meatballs and some yummy raw salmon, which was kind of like sashimi without the wasabi or soy sauce. The service there weren’t the greatest though and we felt a bit discriminated against. It would not be the first time we feel that way in Sweden. With that unpleasant note, we ended our day and headed back to our hotel for some sleep before hitting the streets again the next day.

Ending the day tired...