Note: This post is predated

We had the idea this week to check out the stops along the red tunnelbana line. And so..

Heh well actually we only visited a few of the more interesting stops along the way.. namely, Liljeholmen, Midsommarkransen, Telefonplan and Fruängen.

Here we go =)

Liljeholmen

It looked like a quiet town when we first got out of the station.. but after consulting with the map, we found a lake in the vicinity and decided to head for it.

That’s the lake you see on the map above, Trekanten. Unfortunately, I only shot a video of the surrounding park and not still pictures =( But take my word for it.. it was beautiful.. So here’s how we found it

Long way around isn’t it?

Aside from the beauty though. something else struck me:

 

All right. Who can guess where this picture was taken? If I didn’t know better actually, at first glance I’d say it was taken at the Chinese Gardens. Those certainly look like HDB flats in the background don’t they? But.. yeah.. this was actually taken from the bank of Trekanten.

It was really nice and peaceful there.. pretty different from the parks you get back home. No mad kids running amok, no aunties screaming after them.. it was almost like a scene out of a movie.. lush grass (again I apologise for the lack of pics), big playground, laughing kids.. and oh, how can we leave out the old man feeding pigeons?

Now, being the ever-curious students on exchange, we asked him to share his secret of taming these feathered friends of his. So the master gave us some seed and asked us to wait.

After a short while, Alison had some luck

While I..

.. soon got sick of waiting.. =(

After a few fruitless minutes, we met this chap..

We had these 2 great white swans swim over to us to check out the commotion caused by the hungry pigeons. And they were very very elegant creatures in the water. The way they glided, the way their necks gently bent around.

But of course, out of the water, they were just a pair of hungry birds:) There was this lady who bought bread to feed the swans as the lake. And it wasn’t just any bread too.. from the looks of it, the buns were the sugar coated variety you can find at Delifrance or Breadtalk at home. What lucky swans. We were joking afterwards that had it been in Singapore, the swans would have been feeding on bread crusts, old and maybe mouldy bread. (Just look at the sad state of the swans at the Botanic Gardens. At least the last time I was there they didn’t look too happy. So visitors to the Botanic Gardens, please, make the swans happy and get them something from Delifrance instead. Save your breadcrumbs for some other charitable cause.)

We managed to feed the swans ourselves, after getting a few pointers from the same guy who was feeding the pigeons earlier on. He was pretty cool, since he seemed familiar with all the animals in the area, telling us that the pigeons and sparrows liked to eat seed while the ducks and swans preferred bread instead.

So.. Swan Feeding 1101

 

So.. if you ever get to feed swans.. Do it the right way! Remember, you heard it here first. =)

Telefonplan

This place had an interesting enough name for us to want to stop to take a look. Translated, it means “telephone square“. And why? Because the famous Ericsson’s first headquarters was first established here.

I’ve set foot on Ericsson’s headquarters!

..And body too! I’m a part of history now.

And unfortunately so is this building’s role as the headquarters of the communications giant. The heart and soul has moved off to somewhere else now, but the history remains standing here.

As we walked down the street in Telefonplan, we came across these bunch of kids bashing these fruits from a tree and then collecting them very enthusiastically. We thought they were green apples on the tree at first, but none of the kids seemed to be eating much of the fruit. After asking one of the adults in the area, we found out that these fruits were actually chestnuts. Not like the type we have back in Singapore though (even gao lak don’t grow on trees.. well, not here anyway =) I’m not sure exactly what they are, except for chestnuts, so for convenience’s sake, they’ll be known as (Swedish) chestnuts

And so, I proudly present to you, the Swedish Chestnut Collecting Guide!

1. First, get yourself one of these fruits (which look like obese rambutans on a bad hair day.. or retarded durians.. whichever you like)

2. Then give them the old one-two.

3. Taa Daa! Swedish Chestnut! This little beauty lies hidden inside the hard green shell and needs a little coaxing, as shown in Step 2, to invite her out. Now you can put her somewhere nice and safe and admire her when you’re bored.

Fruängen

Fruängen was the last stop on the red line as you can see from the map above. The highlight for this stop was the lake called Långsjön (say: long-shurn or, if you want to sound like you’re from southern Sweden, long-hyun). We had to take a bus (No. 403) from the subway station though. We’d noted the road at which we were supposed to stop, and so we alighted when we saw the appropriate street name. But unfortunately for us, Uncle Murphy didn’t tell us he was coming along too (bad murphy!). We ended up about one stop and a few hundred meters too early, and with construction works in the middle of the walkway towards the lake. We did ask for directions before this though, before we got ourselves hopelessly lost.

Then again, the natives were perplexed when we started asking them how to get to long-john or.. er.. long-yon?

The nice, friendly people they were though, the old couple we asked, quickly set us young whippersnappers on the right path and set off towards Långsjön. It wasn’t easy to get to the lake though, as it was tucked pretty safely deep within a residential area. When we got there, we realised, that, while the waters weren’t seemingly as inviting as Trekanten, it was beautiful to have houses that sat right at the water’s edge.

A few I-think-I-take-great-photos-and-must-therefore-gratituously-share-them photos of Långsjön :

 

Personally prefer the second picture though. The balloon in the background adds a very nice touch to the picture. =)

Gamla Stan (The Old Town)

The Old Town in Stockholm is one of the nicer places for sightseeing and such. The architecture there is, to me at least, very reminiscent of the 1920s era, with granite set streets, old brick buildings, old churches that chime the time.

One of the newer-looking buildings though (at least just the doorway), is the Nobel Museum.

Apparently, and I didn’t know this before I came to here, Stockholm is the city in which Nobel Prizes are handed out annually. [Edit: I feel like an idiot. Not long after posting this, I found out that Alfred Nobel himself was Swedish. That kinda explains things doesn't it?] So I guess this is the place that keeps the records? We didn’t get a chance to step inside to take a look though since it was already closed. But it was nice enough to admire it from the outside. Such an esteemed building, housing the great achievements of our race, sitting in the middle of an old town that looked like a page out of a story set in the 1920s. How nice..=)

Check out the buildings right beside the museum

Quaint, no?

Then again, quaintness and oldness must add value to Gamla Stan, since the restaurants there have the highest prices I’ve seen in Sweden so far.

And yet, seems like someone had some problems with paying for his windows

Note: Drop me a comment if you don’t understand what’s going on in this pic =)
Some things are nicely kept old though. We found this funky looking phone booth still standing, slightly before coming to the Nobel Museum

Not much privacy for Superman if he ever decides to put on his red underwear in here, but hey, it’s a nice booth!

We found this pasted on the inside of the door of the phone booth.. looks like someone was spoofing the royal Three Crowns crest.

There might a deeper meaning to the three monkeys on the crest than just being three monkeys, but you’d probably have to be a local to catch the joke. It’s quite interesting to see “official” symbols being spoofed here though. Back home, most satire artists tend to stay clear of circles and lightning bolts for some reason.

Nästa (next, that is), Bergshamra.