Day 182: Meeting Up With Two Diff Sets of Friends in Stockholm
[Note: Posting from Mongolia where the internet is very slow; will add more pics later]
The breakfast buffet at our Hilton is especially exciting because it features a giant turbo-juicer for carrots, apples, etc. that guests can use themselves, as well as a make-your-own waffle station complete with waffle iron. The kids were all over both options.
Teddy ducked out of breakfast early to catch a 9 am haircut appointment. He had a cool, tatted-up Insta-famous barber — yet something about the length of the cut got lost in translation so Teddy’s hair is suuuper short.
One cool part — he discovered this magazine at the shop called American Trails, which is all about the coolest places to travel in America, as curated by Nordic tastemakers. Yes please!
We did school in our room, then set out for an adventure.
First off, it’s worth mentioning that our neighborhood, Slussen, is smack dab in the middle of the biggest construction zone I have ever seen.
Apparently the city decided to gut one of its main commercial/tourist zones to create a modern, car-free, green-spacey, more pleasant city center. It started five years ago and they claim it’ll be done in another three — but it’s hard to imagine. There are at least five cranes out our window and miles of covered temporary walkways. Total mess.
We escaped that and wandered to Gamla Stan, the city’s old town. Cobblestones, old colorful buildings, narrow streets, fountains, etc.
We peeked inside the Royal Palace which was beautiful.
Around 12:30 we caught a city bus southwest toward the Hornstull neighborhood because we’d arranged a playground meetup with Stina and Erick and their baby Ines, a Swedish family we met on a township tour while in Cape Town.
First we were looking for lunch, though.
A young dad with a stroller on the bus overheard us plotting/using our maps and kindly chimed in with some advice. It proved very good — we swapped our stabbing-in-the-dark plan with his local idea and got off at the end of the line and walked toward a waterfront locals area filled with food trucks and sunbathers. The kind of thing you don’t get from guidebooks.
We ended up eating at this outdoor boules bar — a brunch spot with outdoor picnic tables and petanque.
There was even a poor bachelor at his bachelor party who’d been dressed up like a baby girl. Made us chuckle.
The menu was kid-friendly and yummy – a true smorgasbord!!
Service a bit slow so we were late to meet our friends at the playground.
It’s so nice to reconnect with friends we’ve met along the way. This was our third such reunion — we had Laura our Amazon boat buddy who we saw again in Sao Paolo for dinner, the German friends we met in Brazil and hung out with again in Berlin and now Stina and Erick.
Willa was especially excited because she’d been completely obsessed with their darling baby Ines when we first met. Now Ines is walking and even cuter. Willa and James took turns pushing her gently on the swing, etc.
The grownups chatted and ate some candy (they bought us a big bag of Swedish fish-type candy). Great to see them.
We parted ways around 4 and headed to the Stockholm East train station, where we just barely caught the 4:40 train to the suburb of Taby. We had a pool party to attend!
Background: After high school graduation in 1997, my NCS friend Alexa Chopivsky and I spent 2 (3?) weeks at a French language school in Antibes, France. We stayed in dorms, ate in a cafeteria and had French classes every morning.
The two of us made this big group of friends from all over Europe. Our closest buddies were two Swedish girls our age, Maria and Gabriella.
Since our afternoons and nights were free, we went to the beach every afternoon and danced in the Juan-Les-Pins nightclubs every night. It was SO. MUCH. FUN.
Maria and Gabriella had a bunch of their Swedish friends fly into town toward the end of our stay, including two beaus for the Americans, Henrik and Staffan.
We’ve all stayed in touch over the years, and Teddy and I did meet up with Maria and her husband Mattias once in New York back in 2011.
Amazingly, Maria, Gabriella, Henrik and Staffan are all still best friends, even though only Maria and Henrik live in Stockholm these days.
I tried to convince Alexa, who’s back and forth between DC and Kiev all the tine, to make an appearance when I heard there was going to be a get together — and she almost pulled the trigger! — but work kept her from being able to do it…
So the party was at Henrik’s house with his wife and daughter, plus Maria and her husband and three kids and a bunch of families they know from growing up or just the neighborhood.
Great to see everyone. And once again, so funny and random and rewarding to get to parachute like imposters into everyday life in a foreign place. Suburban Saturday night pool party at the beginning of summer — not much different from something we’d attend at home. Barbecue, rose, kids running around…
Most of the other kids were under 4 and didn’t speak English, but our kids still had fun. They swam, ate hot dogs, played in a bouncy castle, watched Vic the Viking cartoons on TV (in Swedish) and ate ice cream.
At one point I looked over and there was a full-fledged kid cage fight happening in the sunken living room — all good fun but complete, complete chaos with pillow fighting, screaming, etc. I have a feeling our kids instigated it.
The grownups enjoyed a seated casual grilled dinner and chatted for a while before we headed home via Uber around 8:30 pm. A great and memorable night!
Observations:
The Swedes don’t care about gendered bathrooms. Most we’ve been to except in the airport have been unisex, even big ones at museums.
