Stockholm

STHLM is not a new web technology, it's the trendy, abbreviated term used by locals for referring to Stockholm. I've been lucky to spend a few days in this gorgeous city recently. My perception of beauty has evolved over years, as my interests and experiences have changed. Owing to that, to fading memories and to how the accumulation of surprises make new surprises harder to happen... it's not fair to do a permanent ranking of my most beautiful cities. Well, that for me Paris is the most beautiful city in the world is something permanent, universal and atemporal, that I can say for sure... but for other cities, placing them in an exact location in a ranking is very difficult. However, with my current taste for architecture, urbanism and societal factors, I can say that as of today, Stockholm is the second most beautiful city that I know (yes, I'm placing this Nordic treasure above Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Lisbon, Lyon, Tallinn, Berlin...)

The Geographic setting of Stockholm is top-notch. The central part of the city (I'm not talking just of downtown, but of what you see in the map above) is made up of 14 islands laid between Lake Mälaren and the Baltic sea. There's water everywhere! Islands mean bridges, and those bridges are pretty diverse. While some of those in the most central and old part give you an amazing Venice feeling, others joining islands that are slightly hilly are huge, elevated bridges (like Vasterbron), that kind of make you feel like spitting to see the hypnotic play of your saliva with gravity and reflect on how it will travel now into the sea, and that you can compare a bit to those in Porto. As I've said, some of the islands are hilly, so you have some amazing views, like those from Soder Malarstrand. This is northern Europe, so in spite of the crazy summers that they are getting in the last years (during my stay there in early June we reached 27 degrees!!!) the natural landscape is beautifully green.

Architecture. Everyone has heard about Nordic design, so it's easy to expect that their good taste for furniture and home decoration would extend also to the buildings themselves. On the other side, documentaries and texts about the Swedish welfare state and strong economy tend to mention that before the WWI Sweden was a very poor country. Yes, it was a poor country during that period, but before that Sweden had been an Scandinavian empire, so you can assume that you'll find amazing historical buildings. And yes, that's true. The old town, Gamla Stan, has beautiful medieval houses (think of those in Tallinn), gorgeous brick gothic churches, and massive baroque-renaissance buildings (like the Royal Palace). You'll find also some amazing medieval buildings in Soder. Then you have the elegant late XIX century buildings of Ostermalm. The architecture is different, but in a sense we could think of this area as if Baron Haussmann had cast his spell further north. You'll find similar elegant buildings scattered over Vasastan, along with many more simple but also pretty nice buildings of the early XX century. Height of the constructions is really harmonious, most of the central part of the city is made up of 5 to 7 stories buildings, with occasional taller buildings. There are some skyscrappers (for European standards, that is, more than 85 meters) and high-rise buildings, but not organized in clusters, but as independent constructions scattered over the cityscape conforming points of reference. I've said in previous posts that this is the approach that I like more when it comes the relation of a city with high-rise buildings, independent towers that make the modern reflection of the church towers of medieval cities (you had one here and there, one in each neighbourhood let's say, not a whole neighbourhood made up of church towers...).
As someone with a sort of fetish with train stations and large extension of rail tracks entering the city and lined with buildings, Stockholm did not disappoint me. I particularly liked the odd view of the Tunelbana (metro) that comes to light out of the slightly elevated Soder, crosses to Gamla Stan through a bridge and goes underground as it touches this island.

Calm city. I had read and watched a lot about the islamisation of Sweden and the associated criminality (and "youngsters" burning cars and throwing stones at the police and other cultural expressions of the "victims of society"...), so I was expecting something that for sure would not be that bad as France or Belgium, but would revolt me. That's not been the case at all. Obviously I had nothing to see/do in the infamous ghettos (Rinkeby...) and the thing is that most of the scum living in the bad areas (I'm talking about the islamists and criminals that live there, of course there are normal people that have the bad luck of having to live in those areas) does not seem to travel too much to the central area, meaning that the city felt really calm to me and I hardly saw any signs of islamic separatism (Niqaabs or similarly segregationist female clothing, beardy bastards with the islamic male dress code, halal shops everywhere...) Furthermore, I hardly saw any "youngster" with the typical "racaille" dress code. It made me realize that in this sense France/Belgium is fucked up to a much greater extent than the rest of Europe.

All our experiences are deeply subjective, so I came to wonder to what extent my fascination with this city was justified or it was just me, the moment and some particular "stars alignment". The other day, while taking a coffee with one friend (that has traveled way further than me) he agreed with me, telling me that STHLM was one of the 3 more beautiful cities he had set foot on.

I'll close this post with some unordered pics: