Stockholm

Today Kathleen and I were determined to see as much of Stockholm as possible.  We woke up early, had breakfast and went for a walk.  Kathleen had bought a Scandinavia book by Rick Steves and it had a walking tour of Gamla Stan (the old city) so we decided to follow it.  We started at the Royal Palace, which we later found out is not where the current King and Queen live.  After the palace we saw the Obelisk and Iron Boy statues.  We then saw Sortorget, which is Stockholm's oldest square and home to the Stockholm Bloodbath that occurred in the 1500's.  Next was the Sorkyrhan Cathedral.  We walked inside and there as a sign with a box under it that said the entrance fee was 40 krona unless you were going to pray.  Kathleen and I looked at each other and paid - we felt like it would be bad karma to lie at the church!  The inside was really cool, the floor was made up of tombstones of all those buried under the church.  We both left saying that if churches were this cool looking in America we would probably go more often!  We continued down some of the small narrow streets and just looked around before heading back to the hotel.  One interesting thing that we found in the book - some of the homes had a phoenix design above the doors.  This was a sign to the fire department that the owners had paid their insurance and it should be saved in the event of a fire.  How crazy is that?

After we got back to the hotel we grabbed our stuff to store at the front desk and caught up with Malin.  Malin is a referee who I met in China and worked with again in Czech who live in Stockholm.  She came down to Malmo to see some of the games and when I told her I would be visiting Stockholm she offered to show me around.  The first thing she suggested we do is visit the Vasa Museum.  All of the tour books and websites we looked at had this as a must see item so we were excited to see it!  Malin successfully navigated us via the subway and bus.  That is one major perk of site-seeing with a local, it makes getting around so much more efficient and less stressful.  The Vasa Museum is the home to a giant war ship that sunk in the 1600s in the Stockholm Harbor.  It took two years to build but sank 40 minutes into its maiden voyage after a "light breeze" caused the ship to tip and take on water.  In the 1950's a diver found that it as still in one piece and the Swedish government decided to try to raise it from the harbor floor.  It is absolutely unbelievable how well it is preserved, the entire ship is displayed and they said it was 98% original.  The level of detail on the carvings around the entire ship was phenomenal.  I could have spent hours just looking at the ship. The museum is really well done in that it tells the history of how it was built, exactly why it sank, what they found when they pulled it up and how they are preserving it today.  They had many artifacts on display from when they pulled it up, including human remains, in tact items such as shoes, silverware and canons.  Honestly this was one of the coolest things I have ever seen, I just couldn't believe how a ship this massive stayed in one piece on the floor of the harbor for so long and how they were able to preserve it.

After the Vasa Museum we walked along what is known as the Royal Island and stopped at a little cafe where we had a fantastic lunch.  The funniest part was it was pretty windy and we all kept joking how the Vasa wouldn't have been able to stand these conditions.  After lunch we decided to go to the Globe and do the Skyview.  The Globe is one of the big arenas in Stockholm where their hockey team plays and many concerts are housed - basically the Wells Fargo Center of Stockholm.  The arena itself is basically a giant white globe that they light up at night dependent on the event.  Along the outside of the globe is a giant clear ball that travels up the side to the top.  It offers incredible views of the entire city.   It was funny because Malin had never actually done this (and she hadn't been to Vasa in 10+ years) so she was just as excited as us!

After the Globe she just walked us around different parts of the city and was able to give some history lessons.   During the tour we took a little break and stopped at this really cool underground cafe that was a dungeon in the 1300s.  We finally ended up back at the hotel to pick up our stuff and head to the train station.  We got on a 6:15 train to Copenhagen where we are spending the night before flying home tomorrow.

Again, I can't thank Malin enough for spending the day with us and acting as our tour guide.  Stockholm is a wonderful city and I'd love to come back and spend more time.  Kathleen made a comment about how lucky I am to know all of these wonderful people around the world willing to take time out of their busy lives to show us around.  She is absolutely right, the people really are the best part about working IIHF hockey and the bond we have over hockey is second to none.