Stockholm, Sweden

This past week, I made my first trip away from Valencia! I hadn't started classes yet (well, not really...), and Josh had a week off from medical school, so he flew to Stockholm, Sweden where we met up with a bunch of friends who are studying all over Europe for the semester! It's a group of about 25 architecture students who travel with two architecture professors from UT, and they go all over Europe for the first 7 weeks or so. This past week, they were in Stockholm, so we decided to join!

The building below is the Stockholm Public Library, designed by Gunnar Asplund. The circular reading room inside is a pretty neat experience.

We also went to the Stockholm Museum of Modern Art and Museum of Architecture with the group. For their "studio Europe" program, each student is assigned a building and a city which they have to research. When they get to that building, that student gives a short presentation to the rest of the group. Here, Diana is giving us a brief background of the Museum and its exhibits.

 This was the best "group" picture I could manage while I was with them. Guess I'll just have to meet up with them again somewhere else in Europe! :)

 

I have to admit that I wasn't super pumped about our next stop, but it ended up being one of my favorite sights from the trip: The Vasa, a Swedish warship that sank on its maiden voyage in 1628. In the 1960s, they decided to PULL IT OUT OF THE WATER and salvage it. This thing was HUGE. Even though I read all about the process of how they got this thing out of the water, I am still amazed that they were able to do it. The size, detail, precision, everything... was absolutely incredible.

Riddarholmen Church: burial church of the Swedish monarchs. 

The only things I didn't like much about Stockholm were 1) the food (can't say I'm crazyabout Swedish food... too much mayonaise, dill, and weird fish things), and 2) most of the people that we met weren't overbearingly friendly. But overall, Stockholm was pretty fantastic. The city is incredibly clean considering how large it is, and I noticed innovative design solutions everywhere. There were a TON of bikes everywhere, and the fact that we were walking around a bunch of islands was pretty cool. Also, since it's so far north, the sun hangs pretty low in the sky and always creates long, dramatic shadows that usually only happen in the morning and evening for us Texans. I felt like it was 6:00pm all day long! Another benefit from its northern latitude: an amazing sunset that seemed to last for ages.