Bob:

Stockholm is situated at the end of a 40-kilometer long fjord, and we started working our way through it long before dawn. When we came on deck that morning, we saw the steep wooded sides of the fjord slowly sliding by our ship on either side.

Besides being surprisingly long--I mean, how did the Vikings get their longships in and out?--the fjord was also quite narrow. At some points our ship barely squeezed through and the other ships behind us had to line up like ducks in a row to make the passage. These narrow sections must also be essentially "one-way streets" and I did wonder how they managed 2-way traffic in the narrowest parts.

Monika:

Bob:

As we neared Stockholm's harbor, the banks of the fjord became much more settled. Homes and even small villages dotted the shoreline. I particularly liked the mansions with their own private boat docks and little sailing sloops anchored just offshore. What a life! But finally we eased into our berth at the outer edge of Stockholm's rather large harbor

Monika:

Bob:

In Stockholm, our plan for the day was to use the "Hop-On, Hop-Off" tour boat system that circles the harbor to get from the cruise ship dock to the old town section, do Rick Steve's recommended walk there, take the Hop-On Hop-Off boat again over the the Skansa museum/amusement center on another island, walk around a bit, and finally take one last leg with the Hop-On Hop-Off boat to complete the harbor loop back to our ship. We queued up to wait for the gangplank to be opened and it was a good thing that we did because we just caught the first Hop-On Hop-Off boat of the day from the cruise ship pier to the old town section of Stockholm, called Gamla Stan.

The Hop-On Hop-Off boat really lived up to its name in that it did not ever tie up at the pier. The captain just nosed into the quayside headfirst and then held the boat there with a slight application of throttle while the first (and only) mate helped us hop off or hop on as the case might be. So we hopped off at the Royal Palace and wandered up the Slottsberg street to a memorial obelisk, stopping only to watch the changing of the guard at the gates.

Monika:

Bob:

After getting off track, we retraced our route a bit and curled around the Finnish Church right across the street from the Royal Palace and saw the very small statue dedicated to orphans who used to work there. Shades of stories by Dickens, the orphans were put to work unloading the freight from the ocean going ships and into the canal and lake boats for shipment inland, an occupation as tedious and exploitive as the current practice of putting kids to work weaving "Persian" rugs in the Middle East, or doing other nasty jobs in various parts of the Third World. People rub the head of the little statue for luck, a custom we saw in action as we passed by. We continued on past the Nobel Museum where they host the Nobel Prizes given out each year, an impressive block of a place.

Monika:

Bob:

We then turned right down the Trangsund to get to the old Storkyrkan church just next door. We didn't have any Swedish kroner yet, so we were glad they accepted Euros for the entrance fee. Once inside, we looked at all the old gravestones on the floor, some of whom were clearly medieval knights and their ladies. In fact, one fantastically intricate stone sculpture near the altar was of St. George slaying the dragon.

The Storkyrkan also boasted of a lot of gilt decoration. The pulpit, the royal boxes, and the altar area were all heavily gilded, which made them glitter in the generally gloomy confines of the church. The vaulted arches were quite graceful and some, but not all sections of the ceiling had been painted with interesting patterns, which I liked.

Some of the stained glass windows were distinctly contemporary work while the rose window behind the altar looked quite old to me. In the back, the pipe organ occupied the entire rear wall of the church and I would have liked to hear it played. One big extra we found just as we were leaving was a FREE public toilet just to the right of the exit door. Being opposed to pay toilets in principle, we both made use of that one.

Monika:

Bob:

After exiting the church we continued on our walk by curling around the end of the block to the Prastgatan a quiet little street that cuts clear across the island.

Along the way we passed the cannon barrel beside the old rune stone set into the side of a building, a curious juxtaposition for sure, and finally ended up in a square with Sweden's first bank. There were two bank buildings joined by a covered pedestrian walkway, one dating from 1630 or so and the other a half a century newer. But interestingly enough the newer building still serves as a bank and when I went in to ask about an ATM machine, I was informed that in Sweden those were called "Bankomats" and the nearest one was left, then right, then 100 yards down an adjacent street. Well we did find the Bankomat and although my bank card didn't work, Monika's German card did work so we now had some Swedish Kroner, which was good as we were getting hungry.

After circling around the statue of Bernadotte, Napoleon's ex-general who was selected to become Sweden's new king after the Napoleonic Wars, we hotfooted it back down the main tourist shopping street of the Vasterlanggatan until we were back in sight of the Royal Palace. We returned back past the obelisk to the boat dock and snacked on an apple to stave off hunger pangs while we waited for our boat.

Monika:

Bob:

The boat ride around the harbor to the Vasa Museum dock was quite pretty. We had a clear, sunny day with bright blue skies and that made the colors of the houses along the edge of the harbor really stand out. We also saw a lot of small passenger ferries, canal boats or tour boats chugging around the harbor in all different directions.

Monika:

Bob:

The taped commentary that was played between stops on our boat told us about the Nordic Museum just up the hill from the Vasa Museum, and I decided to have a look at that as we had already seen the Vasa Museum. That had been 23 years back when our boys were little, but we didn't think it would have changed much if at all from that time, so we were ready to try something new.

I was hoping for some more information about the Viking era in the Nordic Museum, but I didn't find anything like that on the two floors we covered. Rather, the museum covered the period from about 1600 to modern times, an interesting period to be sure but not quite as fascinating as the period when those intrepid seafarers sailed across the North Atlantic in open boats. An unexpected bonus was that about 1/3 of the 4th floor was a big, new exhibit devoted to the Sami people, formerly called Lapps. That exhibit made it crystal clear that the Swedes have exactly the same kinds of problems with the Sami minority that my culture has had with the Native American Indian population, and that the Australian culture has apparently had with the Aborigine population, and so on and so forth.

I was surprised because I had assumed, naively as it turned out, that because I had never heard of prejudice or cultural suppression being practiced by the Swedes, they had never done so. But unfortunately it turned out that they had their share of problems with the cultural differences, the most striking example of which was a bumper sticker that said, "Save a wolf, shoot a Lapp!" The Sami are historically, of course, Reindeer herders and from their viewpoint regard wolves as dangerous predators rather than a species to be protected, but still the bumper sticker seemed way, way over the line to me and I couldn't understand how the Swedish authorities managed to not do anything about it.

Monika:

Bob:

I wasted so much time in the museum that it just didn't make sense to pay the 90 kroner ($18) apiece to get into Skansa just to spend an hour or so there. So instead we had a quick, and very expensive, lunch at a small cafe across from Skansa. We had Vienna style hotdogs and potato salad, one of the cheapest things on the menu, for 73 Kroner each. That's a bit over $12, and we each got two long, thin hotdogs plus a decent serving of potato salad (but no bun). But that was $6 per hot dog and Monika's beer was a cool 45 Kroner or $9, which was by my reckoning sky-high pricing. Normally, having a beer when on shore is cheaper than having it on the ship, but this was one of those exceptions. Eating out is similarly expensive in Denmark and, as I recall, Norway, so the take-home message in Scandinavia in general seems to be "Don't eat out and don't even think about drinking alcohol!"

Somewhat in shell shock from paying our restaurant bill, we tried to find the entrance to Grona Lunds Tivoli which was small amusement park like the original Tivoli in Copenhagen. We saw typical arcade games like Skeeball, games of "skill" like target shooting, and lots of rides. The classic Disney-inspired rides of Dumbo and Mad Hatter teacups for the little tykes were augmented by a small carousel and tiny ferris wheel. The adult rides included bumper cars, free-fall towers, the whirling octopus thing and the big spinning mushroom-shaped tower with chairs hanging from chains beneath it.

No amusement park would be complete without roller coasters, of course, and Grona Lunds included the old Wild Mouse coaster imported from the U.S. as well as several newer and larger roller coasters, but nothing truly huge. There were only a few patrons in the park when we visited, but many more were streaming uphill from the passenger ferries docking at the nearby pier, and it looked to me like they would have a good turnout for some kind of rock concert that was being set up on the central stage.

Monika:

Bob:

After our turn around the amusement park it was time to take the last Hop-On Hop-Off boat back to our ship. With our last Swedish Kroner we wanted to buy our usual refrigerator magnet with some picture of Stockholm on it, but we just had 23 Kroner left and it cost 25 Kroner. We offered to pay the difference with an extra 50-cent Euro coin thrown in, but the young lady at the counter just waved it away and gave us the magnet for the rest of our Kroner. Our refrigerator at home, by the way, is gradually becoming encrusted with these magnets much like a ship at sea slowly accumulates barnacles on its hull, except that the magnets also are playthings for our granddaughters when they visit and thus get re-arranged. After our purchase it was time to clamber on board, watch the ship pull away from the dock, and dress up in formal wear for dinner.

Monika:

Bob:

We once again had a lively conversation with our table mates. Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela, had just forced the American ambassador to return to Washington, so naturally we chatted a bit with Raul and Michelle about Venezuelan politics. Raul told us some rather chilling details about the Venezualan government trying to collect personal ID information for each retail sale, and using that kind of detailed Point-Of-Sale information to track minute behaviors of every citizen. Coupled with the authoritarian state that Chavez seems bound and determined to set up, that just brings up the real possibility of a "Brave New World" to me. Although Venezuela is a beautiful country with a variety of ecological zones and wonderful scenery, Raul advised us not to visit in the current political climate as it might be dangerous.

Raul and Michelle also recounted how both their Spanish-speaking and French-speaking guides in St. Petersburg had spontaneously commented on the predominance of corruption in Russian government. One guide was a university student and she bitterly recounted how university professors were driving around BMWs and Mercedes cars because they were openly selling grades for cash. Apparently this was so blatent that for some classes the required "donation" for each grade was publicly posted. I was ashamed that university professors would stoop to such behavior, even though I'm sure many of my students in the past would have just loved such a system, and it made me question how much a degree from any Russian university would really be worth if they could simply be bought with sufficient money. The other guide concurred and also mentioned that partly due to the corruption, the working class folks really don't have enough to afford housing and most of them were forced to work multiple jobs to make ends meet.Our tour guide also mentioned that being a taxicab driver in the evening was one such popular second job, and many professionals did that type of work in the evening to supplement their income, so in St. Petersburg in the evening there were, as he put it, "Almost as many taxi drivers as there are automobiles."

We also had a good discussion of the pros and cons of socialized medicine. We discussed the European and Canadian approaches to socialized medicine with the U.S. The U.S. system suffers from unequal coverage and complete lack of coverage for some segments of the population, but the European and Canadian systems get into the problems of long waits for necessary procedures and essentially rationing of medical services. That's a knotty problem indeed but interesting to get the views of other open-minded multi-cultural couples like Lou and Glenda (Chinese and American), Raul and Michelle (Venzuelan and Canadian), and Monika and myself (German and American). We really had a variety of cultures represented around our table, and that lead to some very rich discussions from all our different viewpoints.

Our cooks took their bow for their services during our meal, and as part of the celebration we were served generous portions of baked Alaska. As the Gentle Reader is well aware, I have absolutely no will power when it comes to eating. Although I would never have ordered that desert in the normal course of things, once it was plunked down in front of me I couldn't resist eating every crumb of cake, every dollop of ice cream, and every wisp of meringue topping which Michelle, bless her heart, reassured me had almost no fat in it. So once again we left when they turned the lights up on us and returned to our cabin for a bit before attending the evening show, another gala performance of the ship's ensemble.

Monika:

Bob:

I thought the evening performance coped very well with the multi-language composition of the patrons. The theme for the show was "Earth, Air, Fire, and Water" and it was set up by explanations in all five official ship's languages projected on the screens on either side of the stage. The show itself was a series of four nicely connected phases representing in order the fire, earth, air, and water. The composition was 80-90% dance and only a short number or two sung in English like "Here Comes the Sun" for the earth segment where the accompanying dancing represented plants growing in the spring sunshine. In the other three segments the dancing really carried the entire story line, and each segment was very well done.

I thought the creativity of the costumes and choreography of that performance were among the best of all the cruise ship shows we have seen. The "water" segment, for example, started out with an undersea coral reef scene where coral plants were waving in the currents while a poor little sea anemone was being chased by some kind of fish, who ended up being chased by a bigger fish. (I thought the theme music from the movie "Jaws" would have worked for that piece, but they used something else.) Please realize that all of the plants and animals were done by dancers in outlandish, brilliantly colored and flourescently hued costumes, and they mimed each thing well enough to bring it off. The "water" segment transitioned into a frozen sea tableaux complete with snowflakes falling down from the sky, which was the grand finale. It was clear that using instrumental music and miming (a la Charlie Chaplin) or dance (a la classical ballet) really does communicate with at least a multi-western-cultural audience.

Monika: