(Click on any picture to enlarge it)
Greetings! I'm sending
this out through the Internet. You'd think this would be easy,
right? As it turns out, it's not. Telephone jacks in Sweden are
quite different from their U.S. counterparts, though a little
adaptation with some alligator clips and a U.S.-style jack
worked. Mighty stylish and professional, wouldn't you say? But
you're reading this, so it worked.
I'm staying at the Sergel
Plaza Hotel. It's a pretty nice place overall; if nothing else,
it's certainly convenient.
The Swedes really know
interior design; most any building here is spectacular by U.S.
standards. Within the office, for example, they've chosen to use
hardwood floors rather than commercial-grade carpet or linoleum
in some of the hallways. They use a lot of halogen lights where
you'd typically expect to see fluorescent bulbs. The results are
awfully nice.
This is Sergels Torg,
which is Stockholm's main square. It's about two minutes from the
hotel. Tobias Sergel was a Swedish sculptor of some renown, but I
don't think he designed the column in the center. The building at
right contains several galleries, a library, coffee shops, and
the like. The weather here has been much better than my last
trip; it's been sunny with high temperatures around 60 degrees;
this is fairly warm for this time of year (low- to mid-50s is
much more typical).
Sergels Torg is
surrounded by office buildings and shops.
And you thought the Irish
took their pubs seriously. Actually, this is a department store
in downtown Stockholm. It's named after its founder, Paul U.
Bergstrom.
No, I didn't eat here.
They may have Swedish flags out front, but I wasn't fooled for
even a moment.
Another view of Sergels
Torg. If you look through the archway at the lower right, you can
see the hotel in the background.
The view down one of the
streets surrounding Sergels Torg. As you can see, there are many,
many shops here; the central shopping/office district extends out
from Sergels Torg five or ten blocks in any direction.
I wandered around a bit
after it got dark, and I happened upon what was apparently a
movie being filmed. The gigantic white cube in this picture is a
bunch of very bright lights inside a sort of fabric box;
the whole thing is held up by a crane.
I looked, but I didn't
see anyone famous. In fact, it didn't look like there was any
filming going on; there were a bunch of passers-by admiring the
Cube-O-Light on the crane (which really did a good job of
lighting up the street without casting harsh shadows) and a bunch
of bored-looking technicians, but no activity to speak of.
That's it for now. I'll put more pictures online when I get some
more time...
Phillip Wherry, psw@wherry.com