It's Friday so this must be Sweden
Jun. 17th, 2004 10:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lprovenBeer, bars and babes: Scandinavia in early Summer. Featuring a guide to some of the alternative clubs of the capital of Sverige and some notes on one of the oldest brewing traditions in the world. Warning to temporally-challenged: four and quarter thousand words hide behind this cut tag...
After my last abortive attempt to visit Scandinavia, this time I was taking no chances. Oddly enough, I have been inspired by a "60 Second Interview" with Alan Whicker in Metro, which would be my preferred paper even if it weren't for Nemi. He spoke of always allowing at least a couple of extra hours, preferably three, before a journey, giving you time to get there, relax, have a drink and maybe a meal before you travel. The drink helps you avoid stress and the meal means that you can, if you wish, choose to avoid the movable feast of an in-flight meal. Wise words from a veteran traveller and something of an icon of mine, the exemplary Englishman Abroad, and I took them to heart. I've had time to spare before my last four flights now and it really does make the whole process vastly more pleasant. Merely "not being late" is not spur enough for me, but I actively enjoy travel, flying especially, and anything that makes the process more fun is to be welcomed. Oddly, perhaps, for someone who is so chronically unpunctual, I detest being late and cope badly with the ensuing stress. I plan to make this a habit.
So I left at slightly after my planned departure time of 3, comfortably got a train at 4, including buying a crusty baguette and a discount ticket, and arrived at Stansted an hour before the checkin closed, giving me time to leisurely browse the shops and acquire drink. This after being up early enough to go shopping beforehand, procuring cat food & litter, a selection of interesting bottled ales for my host![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
suaveswede and a bottle of Sainsbury's own-brand Speyside single malt Scotch for khnark - plus a box of liqueurs for birthday girl Sanna (WINOLJ but is on helgon.net).
I brought with me my leftover supply of Norwegian Kroner - a few hundred, mostly coins and thus inexchangeable in Britain. I hoped that they might be more useful in the country next door, but actually, I spent the single banknote on the plane to buy a beer.
Next stop, Stockholm Vasteras, an airport so tiny it doesn't even have a cash machine. My meagre Swedish sufficed to negotiate the purchase of a return bus ticket to Stockholm - a 1h20m drive away - by debit card, though. Shortly after my arrival, a slightly flustered but nonetheless still Suave Swede arrived to take me on a whistle-stop pub crawl. Even at over £4 a pint, one cannot help but like a city where a weary traveller can start drinking at gone 11pm and keep going for a couple of hours. We had an antique brown Belgian ale at Hornans and a reasonable microbrewed Swedish lager at Nils Oscars, followed by a T-Bana to Husby. The underground runs 'til 1am in the week and 3am at weekends, another admirable amenity.
Friday dawned bright and early, but I didn't. Even a mattress on the floor seemed hugely inviting, particularly positioned right next to the comics section of the bookshelves. However, we dragged ourselves off to the local shopping mall at Kista - a cavernous place but bright and welcoming, even sporting one (of its several) bars with draught real ale and bottled world beers. Most impressive.
In the evening it was off into town to Sanna's cousin Anna's place, near Medborgarplatsen - the next block along from wheresquaddie, Anders and I spent such an interesting evening last time around. The birthday party involved lots of Swedish rock kids - mostly couples - and a very welcoming atmosphere. Everyone was pretty happy to switch to English for my benefit, although as the drink went down, folk switched to Swedish to get across more difficult points or anecdotes, leaving me floundering somewhat. I was working hard, but not entirely in vain, and the surprise when I occasionally got a joke or interjected something was rather gratifying. Very few LJers - well, me, Anders and Thomas - but lots of members of Helgon.net, Sweden's main subculture site. It's amusing and it's free to join - I am, of course, lproven there - but it's all in Swedish, so it's probably kinda inaccessible. I struggle.
Swedes seem to do a lot of socialising around at one anothers' homes, largely, I suspect, due to the forbidding prices of beer in bars and clubs. The trick is to know that it's a lot cheaper to buy it in a shop. There are no off-licenses or liquor stores, though - you can only buy beer, nothing stronger, and only in supermarkets. For anything stronger, you must go to one of the state alcohol monopoly stores - "Systembolaget".
Anders & I had picked up a four-pack of Murphy's each at his local ICA supermarket, at around 99p each - reasonable by British prices but superb in Sweden. So what the kids do is go down to the supermarket, buy a load of cheap beer, usually imported - for example, a fairly dire Finnish lager called Lapin Kulta is popular - and take it home or to a mate's house. You only go out to a club or bar once you're well on your way. At any rate, Sanna seemed pleased with her selection of fruit liqueurs andkhnark with his bottle of Sainsbury's 15 year-old Speyside malt - at about one fifth of the price of Scotch in Sweden. The bottle didn't stay sealed for long. In a rare moment of almost adult sensibleness, perhaps spurred by my linguistic struggles, I started alternating stout and water as soon as I began to feel wibbly - not having had any dinner played a significant part here - so events stayed relatively clear.
Gradually, the party grew in size, attracting a couple of neon-clad dance heads - who stayed in the lounge and watched TV, along with most of the boyfriends of Sanna's various mates. Once there was a crowd, the poor buggers sitting near the Brit got the chance to stop talking foreign and natter to their mates, and it all got rather impenetrable much of the time. I confess I was much distracted, though, by a series of angry texts from Ireland. Ms Hamman was much incensed by a Livejournal post of mine - not specifying which one, mind - and had decided enough was enough. It took considerable toing and froing to determine the point of contention and a very apologetic email the next day to smoothe her ruffled feathers.
Eventually, after a flying visit from a harried aunt to provide a quite inordinate amount of toilet paper, we all piled off in a disorganized mob down the road the Rocks nightclub. You can guess what sort of thing it plays. Thomas didn't wish to join us but proposed a temporary side-trip to Oliver Twist, a nearby real ale bar, so Anders & I ducked into the club to deposit out coats - thus proving we'd been in already, when it was still cheap & the queue short. Then, my hands thrust deep into my hoodie's pockets for warmth, we trotted off for some Real Beer.
Once again, Anders demonstrated his ubiquity by not only meeting some mates in the exceptionally crowded pub, but also managing to blag a free meal - a steak in a bun, described with some license as a burger. It remains unclear to me how he managed to do this, but he's undoubtedly a useful chap to know. After a couple of pints of Speckled Hen & Bishop's Finger, A & I returned to Rocks, where the party had dispersed into the crowd, alas. It's not a bad little place, with a good line in retro pop/rock, but about as hardcore as a school disco and surprisingly low-volume - for a rock club. You can talk in there. Just.
Rocks closed at 3 or so and the remnants of the party reconvened in the street and headed back to Anna's. Sanna had to be up early the following day - she was heading out to her parents' summer house first thing Saturday morning - so she wimped out about 5am. The rest of us kept going on some vile mandarin-flavoured liqueur, gin and whatever else we could find. For reasons which escape me - not that I'm complaining, though Anders was - Anna spent the bulk of the time sitting in my lap, which was very pleasant. For all that she's bitterly jealous of her cousin's looks - Sanna is a tall, leggy, buxom natural (well, claimed natural) blonde, unlike all the rest of her family - her short, curvy, redheaded little cousin is not without her own charms. She's thoroughly pissed off that she doesn't look like Swedish women are meant to, though.
Even hardcore party animals such as myself and Mr Holmstrom were flagging by 7am or so, and people were starting to bed down, so we stumbled into the early morning light, just like the last time, onto the T-bana and home.
Saturday was lovely and sunny and I couldn't get the curtains to block it all out no matter how I tried. Eventually, I surfaced, and found to my intense annoyance that I'd just missed a signing by Lise, the creator of Nemi, Europe's finest goth comic. Curse the Americans with their Lenore and Gloom Cookie. At least Britain has Rachel Huntingdon - someone should get that girl drawing comics!
So, predictably, it was early evening when Anders and I crawled into town to the Czech beer festival at Svejk, Stockholm's authentic Czech bar - something that, to the best of my knowledge, London cannot match. I was still carrying the dying embers of a fairly serious hangover and really wasn't in the mood for a beer festival, but it was a one-day event and I wasn't about to miss the chance. We had vaguely planned to attend a fannish birthday party in Uppsala, but it's some 2h away by train and in the end we couldn't be bothered. Anders was surprised to find no-one he knew in attendance, except one rather drunk chap at the bar who'd been there all day. We were both entertained by a text from the utterly-trollied-at-5am Sanna, who had been up at 8 and was being made to garden all day, even though she didn't feel very well.
The most prosperous of the former Communist nations of the Balkans, the Czechs invented lager and Svejk offers an impressive range of imported brews, all on draught - comparatively well-known names such as Staropramen, Budejovice Budvar, and Pilsner Urquell, plus less well-known beers which seldom make it abroad. All are served from tall, porcelain pumps emblazoned with the breweries' crests; these companies are all many centuries old and eschew logos for heraldry. For the festival, there were many extras on, including some allegedly never before exported. All were lagers, but some were dark or half-dark in addition to the normal golden amber beers we Brits associate with the name lager. Some of the rarer ones even offered unpasteurized or unfiltered versions - or ones which were both; surprisingly, these were generally slightly lower in alcohol than the normal versions.
I sampled as many as were still available. They're not what you might expect, especially if you're drawing parallels from Belgian brewing: most are very light, quite mildly-flavoured drinks, served cool but not cold. Although many are well over 5% ABV, they're deceptively gentle, and astonishingly, they bear a faint resemblance to Britain's appalling weak industrially-produced mass-market lagers. They're not as hoppy and sharp as French or German lager beers, and those of us with a palate trained on real ales or whisky found them almost bland. The flavours are there, but subtle and gentle; you have to concentrate to pick them out, rather than bludgeoning your tongue and nose like some English ale of approaching 1100OG.
I think they'd suit the average British drinkers' tastes exceptionally well, and the seed of an idea was sown in my head. Of this, maybe more anon. Vague plans notwithstanding, it's good stuff and immenseley drinkable, and as such it's not only a pity that the stuff isn't better known in Blighty, it's a crying shame of historic proportions that since the fall of the Iron Curtain, many of these ancient breweries are being acquired and taken over by international brewing combines such as Carlsberg and Anheuser-Busch, who are destroying the traditional breweries by turning them over to producing their formulaic, generic crap. Now, the entry of the Czech Republic into the EU will probably only accelerate this process. Try to experience these fine beers while you can, even if you're not generally a lager drinker. If you are, you're in for a treat; you'll not sample a more authentic drop anywhere in the world.
On a more pleasant note, a surpise was that, since my last visit, Svejk has completely revamped its menu. According to one tourist guide I've read, the #1 thing not to say in the Czech Republic is "I'm a vegetarian!" Last time around, they offered nothing I could eat on the one short card they had as a menu. Now, it's six pages long and offers a veggie section. I chose a vegetable stew with salad and fried potatoes, plus some garlic bread - something of an error, as the stew came with some traditional soft heavy white bread already. As we sat to eat, once again, Anders was spotted and recognised. Anyone who attended Rancon may recall Jerry, who co-presented the Weird Food panel with the Suave Swede. Amongst other things, Jerry is a whisky connoisseur and had just completed an illustrated tour of some of the more famous Scottish distilleries (which fine country I am in as I write). His pictures were hung all around the pub's dining room, and very fine they are, too. We spoke of beer and whisky and food and travel and many other things, until it got to the time that Jerry and friends had to leave, which we took as a cue to get moving ourselves.
Which meant it was Gothing time.
Conveniently, right next door to Svejk is the Cavern Club, a basement venue which is host to a regular Friday night goth/punk club, the Cave. We visited is last visit, as regular readers might recall, but again, we faced the same problem: the big monthly goth night was on and everyone who was everyone was there instead. So off we trotted to Slussen and the other venue.
And here, I must sadly recount, my host for once failed me: it was a members-only night, no guests, and it was not possible to join on the door. The illustrious Mr H had not only not got us on the guestlist - well, a man can dream, and if the thought of a nightclub full of willowy Scandinavian goth chicks doesn't sound like a dream to you, you don't get out enough - but he had also failed to warn me in advance so that I could join, nor procured a membership for me. (In case you've forgotten, Anders, go do it next time!)
So we stood around outside for a little while - I was vaguely mollified to discover that the best bum on display, in a slinky black PC dress, was that of a bloke in drag (alas that the curse of cross-dressing goth boys has spread across the Baltic) - then returned, foiled, to the Cave. The promoter, a genial old half-Aussie punk (old goths never die, they just need less and less peroxide), was philosophical about the monthly exodus to a trendier venue. He got 'em the rest of the time and he wasn't paying for his beer. Good job, too, it was filthy stuff - Pripp's, Stockholm's most-reviled pint, and some fetid Polish stuff named after a bear. Mind you, anything would have suffered in comparison to the excellent tipples next door. I generally resent paying a fiver for small bottle of beer that's come from the same place I have, like the Newcastle Brown in the one Gotham Nights I attended - Oslo's peripatetic monthly goth club - but the Spitfire would've still been an infinitely better bet.
Sunday was again a lovely sunny day, and what with Saturday not being a hugely wild night and most of the beer being consumed being of the very highest quality, I decided to seize something of my last full day and set off into town at the crack of 4pm. By this time, all the museums and so forth were closing - mid-April is the very start of the tourist season in these Northern climes, and the Tivoli fairground had only reopened after winter on Saturday.
The main open-air folk museum at Skansen came very highly recommended, though, and although it would be shut by the time I got there, it's set on an island which is mostly parkland, so I decided that was the place to go anyway. Djurgarden on an early summer afternoon is quite gorgeous. I decided to spare myself the pleasures of the funfair - some of the more traumatic memories of the, ah, more altitudinous rides at Blackpool were still disturbingly fresh in my mind. Especially in the small hours of the morning after rich food.
Like last time, I took a ferry from Slussen. I love the fact that this form of transport forms an integral part of the modern city's transport system and you can use it on your 72-hour-card. The island, like all the larger ones, is linked to the others by bridge and you can catch a tram to it from the trendy-shops end of the city, but it's an unalloyed joy to stand in the prow of a small ship as it crosses the harbour amid everything from small yachts to vast liners. I walked around the south side of the island, past the small zone of big, luxury houses - I shudder to think of their cost, although Stockholm property prices are moderate compared to London or even Dublin. Suffice it to say that at his modest age, which I am not allowed to state, as it mysteriously shrinks where cute young women are involved, Anders has paid off his mortgage.
The centre of the island is a largish hill - well, by the standards of my part of the world, anyway - and one side is a traditional farm, run by a collective using traditional, organic techniques. I browsed the flower and garden plant market but restrained myself to purchasing a pot of local honey. As I descended the far side, on the eastern side of the island, I received a call from Thomas, who was out with a mate and wanted to meet up. I attempted to describe where I was, but as I warned him, I had very little idea of my location, which suited me just fine. "That's OK," he proclaimed - he does tend to proclaim things a lot - "we're on a motorbike, we'll come and find you." As I roamed along the coast of the island back in the general direction of the city, we exchanged an increasingly vexed series of text messages - costing me something like a tenner - as I tried to tell them where I was and they tried and failed to find me. "I'm on Garveg", I told them helpfully. As I got to the second or third Garveg, I worked out what it meant. "Footpath."
Eventually, they gave up and told me they'd wait for me at the foot of the bridge. We'd worked out that we could see the same vessels passing so we were at least on the same island and looking at the same waterway. I spotted two lads and a tiny Aprilia from a kilometer way. When I got there and told them where I'd been, they stood amazed: "You must have walked around the coast of the entire fucking island," exclaimed Thomas. "Well, yes, that was the general idea," I replied.
The mate with the bike rode off in the howl of a derestricted 125ccc single race rep and Thomas and I decided to walk across town to the Gamla Stan, the Old Town, where one of the other fine real ale bars of Stockholm is located, just down from the SF Bookshop on Vasterlanggatan: the Ardbeg Rooms. Thomas and I had negotiated a deal: to pay for his whisky, all he'd have to do, at local prices, was buy me about five pints, and this seemed like a good place to do it. We met an ex-girlfriend of his, Susan, in the town square. We sat on the veranda of the local gay bar, swathed in blankets - the evening was getting distinctly chill by 7:30pm - and shared a warming hot chocolate and chocolate cake. (Hey, I was on holiday).
T had been planning to share some fine old Belgian abbey beer with me since he and Anders spent an evening in Akkurat, post Rancon, introducing me to the joys of Belgian brews. (It's not all made with fruit or superstrength rocket fuel made by monks with nothing better to do.) He had brought a bottle with him. We couldn't really drink that in a bar, though, so we decided to go and sit on the steps of the town museum.
It was, though, too good to swig from the bottle, so T scuttled off to Gragasen - now, sadly, under new management; no more of the irrepressible Martin and Jens - to borrow some drinking vessels. It emerged that Susan's extraodinarily husky voice was due to laryngitis and was not normal, and that was why she hadn't been saying much. However, her sister also found us and joined us.
He returned bearing two Mediaeval-style clay beakers, and we sat on the steps of the town museum to share the beer. Drinking in public is strictly illegal in Stockholm, but this didn't seem to dissuade the locals, although the girls were't much taken with the beer. The contrast between the sisters was amusing: one, all in black Cyberdog-type gear, with purple hair - though T assures me she's a natural redhead - and the other a neat BCBG. I guess that's something like a Preppie for any colonial readers; Brits might imagine a sort of Swedish Sloane Ranger. Very different, although apparently they can borrow one another's clothes. I don't imagine they do so much, though.
It was good stuff, too. I'd tell you the name and its provenance - above the fact that T got it cheap when visiting family in Poland - but I can't remember. Perhaps someone will enlighten me...?
As we sat draining the bottle, I received a somewhat irate text from Anders. He had, as promised, got to the Ardbeg Rooms by 8pm, and where were we? Stunned by this display of punctuality, we shook the remnants out of the bottle - a solid clay flask of black pottery, which slightly dented a steel cafe table during one of my more enthusiastic swings - this was 10% stuff, and before dinner, too - and scuttled off to meet Mr A, and shortly thereafter, Ylva and Sanna, who to the former's surprise had previously met. I fear I may have rather neglected the other girls, as this was the first time I had seen Ms Spangberg this trip. The evening grew long; Thomas left us, went off and has a Thai meal and returned; Susan's sister left us, and finally Anders, Ylva and I wandered vaguely out at closing time and were persuaded by Sanna to go to Kelly's Rock Bar. Susan and Thomas could not be persuaded, sadly. There, I must confess, I did a Bad Thing. After several pints of some abominable bitter, Ylva decided that the last rounsd was too complex to remember and that we'd drink what she bought us. And what she bought us...
Was Guinness. Which I, infamously, do not drink, as it's not vegetarian. But it was the last one of a long night, and she'd paid a fortune for it, and the bar was shut... So I drank it.
It was quite nice, actually.
And so my last night ended. On Monday, Anders & I cooked a large lunch of vegetarian penne ragu, using most of the masses of veggies I'd bought in Kista on Friday, and we nipped into town to the SF Bookshop before I had to scurry to T-Centralen to catch my bus to the airport, pausing only to procure a large quantity of junkfood to sustain me through the journey. Which the bus driver then refused to allow me on with, so I had to cram a veggieburger down my neck in the last 2min before departure. I concealed the fries and onion rings in my baggage and rebelliously ate it anyway as we left Stockholm, driving into the countryside to the west and the sunset.
After my last abortive attempt to visit Scandinavia, this time I was taking no chances. Oddly enough, I have been inspired by a "60 Second Interview" with Alan Whicker in Metro, which would be my preferred paper even if it weren't for Nemi. He spoke of always allowing at least a couple of extra hours, preferably three, before a journey, giving you time to get there, relax, have a drink and maybe a meal before you travel. The drink helps you avoid stress and the meal means that you can, if you wish, choose to avoid the movable feast of an in-flight meal. Wise words from a veteran traveller and something of an icon of mine, the exemplary Englishman Abroad, and I took them to heart. I've had time to spare before my last four flights now and it really does make the whole process vastly more pleasant. Merely "not being late" is not spur enough for me, but I actively enjoy travel, flying especially, and anything that makes the process more fun is to be welcomed. Oddly, perhaps, for someone who is so chronically unpunctual, I detest being late and cope badly with the ensuing stress. I plan to make this a habit.
So I left at slightly after my planned departure time of 3, comfortably got a train at 4, including buying a crusty baguette and a discount ticket, and arrived at Stansted an hour before the checkin closed, giving me time to leisurely browse the shops and acquire drink. This after being up early enough to go shopping beforehand, procuring cat food & litter, a selection of interesting bottled ales for my host
suaveswede and a bottle of Sainsbury's own-brand Speyside single malt Scotch for khnark - plus a box of liqueurs for birthday girl Sanna (WINOLJ but is on helgon.net).I brought with me my leftover supply of Norwegian Kroner - a few hundred, mostly coins and thus inexchangeable in Britain. I hoped that they might be more useful in the country next door, but actually, I spent the single banknote on the plane to buy a beer.
Next stop, Stockholm Vasteras, an airport so tiny it doesn't even have a cash machine. My meagre Swedish sufficed to negotiate the purchase of a return bus ticket to Stockholm - a 1h20m drive away - by debit card, though. Shortly after my arrival, a slightly flustered but nonetheless still Suave Swede arrived to take me on a whistle-stop pub crawl. Even at over £4 a pint, one cannot help but like a city where a weary traveller can start drinking at gone 11pm and keep going for a couple of hours. We had an antique brown Belgian ale at Hornans and a reasonable microbrewed Swedish lager at Nils Oscars, followed by a T-Bana to Husby. The underground runs 'til 1am in the week and 3am at weekends, another admirable amenity.
Friday dawned bright and early, but I didn't. Even a mattress on the floor seemed hugely inviting, particularly positioned right next to the comics section of the bookshelves. However, we dragged ourselves off to the local shopping mall at Kista - a cavernous place but bright and welcoming, even sporting one (of its several) bars with draught real ale and bottled world beers. Most impressive.
In the evening it was off into town to Sanna's cousin Anna's place, near Medborgarplatsen - the next block along from where
squaddie, Anders and I spent such an interesting evening last time around. The birthday party involved lots of Swedish rock kids - mostly couples - and a very welcoming atmosphere. Everyone was pretty happy to switch to English for my benefit, although as the drink went down, folk switched to Swedish to get across more difficult points or anecdotes, leaving me floundering somewhat. I was working hard, but not entirely in vain, and the surprise when I occasionally got a joke or interjected something was rather gratifying. Very few LJers - well, me, Anders and Thomas - but lots of members of Helgon.net, Sweden's main subculture site. It's amusing and it's free to join - I am, of course, lproven there - but it's all in Swedish, so it's probably kinda inaccessible. I struggle.Swedes seem to do a lot of socialising around at one anothers' homes, largely, I suspect, due to the forbidding prices of beer in bars and clubs. The trick is to know that it's a lot cheaper to buy it in a shop. There are no off-licenses or liquor stores, though - you can only buy beer, nothing stronger, and only in supermarkets. For anything stronger, you must go to one of the state alcohol monopoly stores - "Systembolaget".
Anders & I had picked up a four-pack of Murphy's each at his local ICA supermarket, at around 99p each - reasonable by British prices but superb in Sweden. So what the kids do is go down to the supermarket, buy a load of cheap beer, usually imported - for example, a fairly dire Finnish lager called Lapin Kulta is popular - and take it home or to a mate's house. You only go out to a club or bar once you're well on your way. At any rate, Sanna seemed pleased with her selection of fruit liqueurs and
khnark with his bottle of Sainsbury's 15 year-old Speyside malt - at about one fifth of the price of Scotch in Sweden. The bottle didn't stay sealed for long. In a rare moment of almost adult sensibleness, perhaps spurred by my linguistic struggles, I started alternating stout and water as soon as I began to feel wibbly - not having had any dinner played a significant part here - so events stayed relatively clear.Gradually, the party grew in size, attracting a couple of neon-clad dance heads - who stayed in the lounge and watched TV, along with most of the boyfriends of Sanna's various mates. Once there was a crowd, the poor buggers sitting near the Brit got the chance to stop talking foreign and natter to their mates, and it all got rather impenetrable much of the time. I confess I was much distracted, though, by a series of angry texts from Ireland. Ms Hamman was much incensed by a Livejournal post of mine - not specifying which one, mind - and had decided enough was enough. It took considerable toing and froing to determine the point of contention and a very apologetic email the next day to smoothe her ruffled feathers.
Eventually, after a flying visit from a harried aunt to provide a quite inordinate amount of toilet paper, we all piled off in a disorganized mob down the road the Rocks nightclub. You can guess what sort of thing it plays. Thomas didn't wish to join us but proposed a temporary side-trip to Oliver Twist, a nearby real ale bar, so Anders & I ducked into the club to deposit out coats - thus proving we'd been in already, when it was still cheap & the queue short. Then, my hands thrust deep into my hoodie's pockets for warmth, we trotted off for some Real Beer.
Once again, Anders demonstrated his ubiquity by not only meeting some mates in the exceptionally crowded pub, but also managing to blag a free meal - a steak in a bun, described with some license as a burger. It remains unclear to me how he managed to do this, but he's undoubtedly a useful chap to know. After a couple of pints of Speckled Hen & Bishop's Finger, A & I returned to Rocks, where the party had dispersed into the crowd, alas. It's not a bad little place, with a good line in retro pop/rock, but about as hardcore as a school disco and surprisingly low-volume - for a rock club. You can talk in there. Just.
Rocks closed at 3 or so and the remnants of the party reconvened in the street and headed back to Anna's. Sanna had to be up early the following day - she was heading out to her parents' summer house first thing Saturday morning - so she wimped out about 5am. The rest of us kept going on some vile mandarin-flavoured liqueur, gin and whatever else we could find. For reasons which escape me - not that I'm complaining, though Anders was - Anna spent the bulk of the time sitting in my lap, which was very pleasant. For all that she's bitterly jealous of her cousin's looks - Sanna is a tall, leggy, buxom natural (well, claimed natural) blonde, unlike all the rest of her family - her short, curvy, redheaded little cousin is not without her own charms. She's thoroughly pissed off that she doesn't look like Swedish women are meant to, though.
Even hardcore party animals such as myself and Mr Holmstrom were flagging by 7am or so, and people were starting to bed down, so we stumbled into the early morning light, just like the last time, onto the T-bana and home.
Saturday was lovely and sunny and I couldn't get the curtains to block it all out no matter how I tried. Eventually, I surfaced, and found to my intense annoyance that I'd just missed a signing by Lise, the creator of Nemi, Europe's finest goth comic. Curse the Americans with their Lenore and Gloom Cookie. At least Britain has Rachel Huntingdon - someone should get that girl drawing comics!
So, predictably, it was early evening when Anders and I crawled into town to the Czech beer festival at Svejk, Stockholm's authentic Czech bar - something that, to the best of my knowledge, London cannot match. I was still carrying the dying embers of a fairly serious hangover and really wasn't in the mood for a beer festival, but it was a one-day event and I wasn't about to miss the chance. We had vaguely planned to attend a fannish birthday party in Uppsala, but it's some 2h away by train and in the end we couldn't be bothered. Anders was surprised to find no-one he knew in attendance, except one rather drunk chap at the bar who'd been there all day. We were both entertained by a text from the utterly-trollied-at-5am Sanna, who had been up at 8 and was being made to garden all day, even though she didn't feel very well.
The most prosperous of the former Communist nations of the Balkans, the Czechs invented lager and Svejk offers an impressive range of imported brews, all on draught - comparatively well-known names such as Staropramen, Budejovice Budvar, and Pilsner Urquell, plus less well-known beers which seldom make it abroad. All are served from tall, porcelain pumps emblazoned with the breweries' crests; these companies are all many centuries old and eschew logos for heraldry. For the festival, there were many extras on, including some allegedly never before exported. All were lagers, but some were dark or half-dark in addition to the normal golden amber beers we Brits associate with the name lager. Some of the rarer ones even offered unpasteurized or unfiltered versions - or ones which were both; surprisingly, these were generally slightly lower in alcohol than the normal versions.
I sampled as many as were still available. They're not what you might expect, especially if you're drawing parallels from Belgian brewing: most are very light, quite mildly-flavoured drinks, served cool but not cold. Although many are well over 5% ABV, they're deceptively gentle, and astonishingly, they bear a faint resemblance to Britain's appalling weak industrially-produced mass-market lagers. They're not as hoppy and sharp as French or German lager beers, and those of us with a palate trained on real ales or whisky found them almost bland. The flavours are there, but subtle and gentle; you have to concentrate to pick them out, rather than bludgeoning your tongue and nose like some English ale of approaching 1100OG.
I think they'd suit the average British drinkers' tastes exceptionally well, and the seed of an idea was sown in my head. Of this, maybe more anon. Vague plans notwithstanding, it's good stuff and immenseley drinkable, and as such it's not only a pity that the stuff isn't better known in Blighty, it's a crying shame of historic proportions that since the fall of the Iron Curtain, many of these ancient breweries are being acquired and taken over by international brewing combines such as Carlsberg and Anheuser-Busch, who are destroying the traditional breweries by turning them over to producing their formulaic, generic crap. Now, the entry of the Czech Republic into the EU will probably only accelerate this process. Try to experience these fine beers while you can, even if you're not generally a lager drinker. If you are, you're in for a treat; you'll not sample a more authentic drop anywhere in the world.
On a more pleasant note, a surpise was that, since my last visit, Svejk has completely revamped its menu. According to one tourist guide I've read, the #1 thing not to say in the Czech Republic is "I'm a vegetarian!" Last time around, they offered nothing I could eat on the one short card they had as a menu. Now, it's six pages long and offers a veggie section. I chose a vegetable stew with salad and fried potatoes, plus some garlic bread - something of an error, as the stew came with some traditional soft heavy white bread already. As we sat to eat, once again, Anders was spotted and recognised. Anyone who attended Rancon may recall Jerry, who co-presented the Weird Food panel with the Suave Swede. Amongst other things, Jerry is a whisky connoisseur and had just completed an illustrated tour of some of the more famous Scottish distilleries (which fine country I am in as I write). His pictures were hung all around the pub's dining room, and very fine they are, too. We spoke of beer and whisky and food and travel and many other things, until it got to the time that Jerry and friends had to leave, which we took as a cue to get moving ourselves.
Which meant it was Gothing time.
Conveniently, right next door to Svejk is the Cavern Club, a basement venue which is host to a regular Friday night goth/punk club, the Cave. We visited is last visit, as regular readers might recall, but again, we faced the same problem: the big monthly goth night was on and everyone who was everyone was there instead. So off we trotted to Slussen and the other venue.
And here, I must sadly recount, my host for once failed me: it was a members-only night, no guests, and it was not possible to join on the door. The illustrious Mr H had not only not got us on the guestlist - well, a man can dream, and if the thought of a nightclub full of willowy Scandinavian goth chicks doesn't sound like a dream to you, you don't get out enough - but he had also failed to warn me in advance so that I could join, nor procured a membership for me. (In case you've forgotten, Anders, go do it next time!)
So we stood around outside for a little while - I was vaguely mollified to discover that the best bum on display, in a slinky black PC dress, was that of a bloke in drag (alas that the curse of cross-dressing goth boys has spread across the Baltic) - then returned, foiled, to the Cave. The promoter, a genial old half-Aussie punk (old goths never die, they just need less and less peroxide), was philosophical about the monthly exodus to a trendier venue. He got 'em the rest of the time and he wasn't paying for his beer. Good job, too, it was filthy stuff - Pripp's, Stockholm's most-reviled pint, and some fetid Polish stuff named after a bear. Mind you, anything would have suffered in comparison to the excellent tipples next door. I generally resent paying a fiver for small bottle of beer that's come from the same place I have, like the Newcastle Brown in the one Gotham Nights I attended - Oslo's peripatetic monthly goth club - but the Spitfire would've still been an infinitely better bet.
Sunday was again a lovely sunny day, and what with Saturday not being a hugely wild night and most of the beer being consumed being of the very highest quality, I decided to seize something of my last full day and set off into town at the crack of 4pm. By this time, all the museums and so forth were closing - mid-April is the very start of the tourist season in these Northern climes, and the Tivoli fairground had only reopened after winter on Saturday.
The main open-air folk museum at Skansen came very highly recommended, though, and although it would be shut by the time I got there, it's set on an island which is mostly parkland, so I decided that was the place to go anyway. Djurgarden on an early summer afternoon is quite gorgeous. I decided to spare myself the pleasures of the funfair - some of the more traumatic memories of the, ah, more altitudinous rides at Blackpool were still disturbingly fresh in my mind. Especially in the small hours of the morning after rich food.
Like last time, I took a ferry from Slussen. I love the fact that this form of transport forms an integral part of the modern city's transport system and you can use it on your 72-hour-card. The island, like all the larger ones, is linked to the others by bridge and you can catch a tram to it from the trendy-shops end of the city, but it's an unalloyed joy to stand in the prow of a small ship as it crosses the harbour amid everything from small yachts to vast liners. I walked around the south side of the island, past the small zone of big, luxury houses - I shudder to think of their cost, although Stockholm property prices are moderate compared to London or even Dublin. Suffice it to say that at his modest age, which I am not allowed to state, as it mysteriously shrinks where cute young women are involved, Anders has paid off his mortgage.
The centre of the island is a largish hill - well, by the standards of my part of the world, anyway - and one side is a traditional farm, run by a collective using traditional, organic techniques. I browsed the flower and garden plant market but restrained myself to purchasing a pot of local honey. As I descended the far side, on the eastern side of the island, I received a call from Thomas, who was out with a mate and wanted to meet up. I attempted to describe where I was, but as I warned him, I had very little idea of my location, which suited me just fine. "That's OK," he proclaimed - he does tend to proclaim things a lot - "we're on a motorbike, we'll come and find you." As I roamed along the coast of the island back in the general direction of the city, we exchanged an increasingly vexed series of text messages - costing me something like a tenner - as I tried to tell them where I was and they tried and failed to find me. "I'm on Garveg", I told them helpfully. As I got to the second or third Garveg, I worked out what it meant. "Footpath."
Eventually, they gave up and told me they'd wait for me at the foot of the bridge. We'd worked out that we could see the same vessels passing so we were at least on the same island and looking at the same waterway. I spotted two lads and a tiny Aprilia from a kilometer way. When I got there and told them where I'd been, they stood amazed: "You must have walked around the coast of the entire fucking island," exclaimed Thomas. "Well, yes, that was the general idea," I replied.
The mate with the bike rode off in the howl of a derestricted 125ccc single race rep and Thomas and I decided to walk across town to the Gamla Stan, the Old Town, where one of the other fine real ale bars of Stockholm is located, just down from the SF Bookshop on Vasterlanggatan: the Ardbeg Rooms. Thomas and I had negotiated a deal: to pay for his whisky, all he'd have to do, at local prices, was buy me about five pints, and this seemed like a good place to do it. We met an ex-girlfriend of his, Susan, in the town square. We sat on the veranda of the local gay bar, swathed in blankets - the evening was getting distinctly chill by 7:30pm - and shared a warming hot chocolate and chocolate cake. (Hey, I was on holiday).
T had been planning to share some fine old Belgian abbey beer with me since he and Anders spent an evening in Akkurat, post Rancon, introducing me to the joys of Belgian brews. (It's not all made with fruit or superstrength rocket fuel made by monks with nothing better to do.) He had brought a bottle with him. We couldn't really drink that in a bar, though, so we decided to go and sit on the steps of the town museum.
It was, though, too good to swig from the bottle, so T scuttled off to Gragasen - now, sadly, under new management; no more of the irrepressible Martin and Jens - to borrow some drinking vessels. It emerged that Susan's extraodinarily husky voice was due to laryngitis and was not normal, and that was why she hadn't been saying much. However, her sister also found us and joined us.
He returned bearing two Mediaeval-style clay beakers, and we sat on the steps of the town museum to share the beer. Drinking in public is strictly illegal in Stockholm, but this didn't seem to dissuade the locals, although the girls were't much taken with the beer. The contrast between the sisters was amusing: one, all in black Cyberdog-type gear, with purple hair - though T assures me she's a natural redhead - and the other a neat BCBG. I guess that's something like a Preppie for any colonial readers; Brits might imagine a sort of Swedish Sloane Ranger. Very different, although apparently they can borrow one another's clothes. I don't imagine they do so much, though.
It was good stuff, too. I'd tell you the name and its provenance - above the fact that T got it cheap when visiting family in Poland - but I can't remember. Perhaps someone will enlighten me...?
As we sat draining the bottle, I received a somewhat irate text from Anders. He had, as promised, got to the Ardbeg Rooms by 8pm, and where were we? Stunned by this display of punctuality, we shook the remnants out of the bottle - a solid clay flask of black pottery, which slightly dented a steel cafe table during one of my more enthusiastic swings - this was 10% stuff, and before dinner, too - and scuttled off to meet Mr A, and shortly thereafter, Ylva and Sanna, who to the former's surprise had previously met. I fear I may have rather neglected the other girls, as this was the first time I had seen Ms Spangberg this trip. The evening grew long; Thomas left us, went off and has a Thai meal and returned; Susan's sister left us, and finally Anders, Ylva and I wandered vaguely out at closing time and were persuaded by Sanna to go to Kelly's Rock Bar. Susan and Thomas could not be persuaded, sadly. There, I must confess, I did a Bad Thing. After several pints of some abominable bitter, Ylva decided that the last rounsd was too complex to remember and that we'd drink what she bought us. And what she bought us...
Was Guinness. Which I, infamously, do not drink, as it's not vegetarian. But it was the last one of a long night, and she'd paid a fortune for it, and the bar was shut... So I drank it.
It was quite nice, actually.
And so my last night ended. On Monday, Anders & I cooked a large lunch of vegetarian penne ragu, using most of the masses of veggies I'd bought in Kista on Friday, and we nipped into town to the SF Bookshop before I had to scurry to T-Centralen to catch my bus to the airport, pausing only to procure a large quantity of junkfood to sustain me through the journey. Which the bus driver then refused to allow me on with, so I had to cram a veggieburger down my neck in the last 2min before departure. I concealed the fries and onion rings in my baggage and rebelliously ate it anyway as we left Stockholm, driving into the countryside to the west and the sunset.
