Sweden: pretty awesome and very, very cold.
On our trip we ate reindeer and pickled herring, jumped in the (literally) freezing Baltic Sea, and sang ABBA while we made meatballs. We saw Nobel prize winners lecture on their genius ideas, and we went ice skating outside and hung out on Viking ships. But by far the oddest part of the trip was trying to adjust to the daylight hours in Sweden, or the scarcity thereof. The sun rises at 9 and sets at 3. Six hours, and that's not including dawn and dusk.
It throws you completely off kilter. You find yourself yawning, looking at your watch and thinking, surely it's almost time for bed!, but it's really only 6:30. It's just been dark for three hours.
The first day we arrived, it was about 1:30 in the afternoon and we told the receptionist at our hostel that we were going to peek around and then have lunch in a few hours (we do live in Spain, after all, so we usually eat lunch between 3 and 4. When in Rome...) The girl looked at us like we were crazy. "You'd better go to lunch now," she told us, "everyone closes in the next half hour." So we rushed to a nearby restaurant to eat and when we emerged at 2:30 it was sunset.
We stood in the street, stunned and incredulous, looking at the sky. 2:30! It was nightfall by 3:00 and that was that.
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| 11:22 a.m. |
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| 2:38 p.m. |
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| 3:32 p.m. |
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| 3:45 p.m. |
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| 3:48 p.m. |
Wow, that's incredible! It's hard to imagine what the sensation is really like. Love your pictures, as always!
ReplyDeleteYikes. In Berlin at this time of year it starts to get dark around 4pm which already seems insanely early. Hope you guys had a fun trip!
ReplyDeleteHey, hope you had fun in Stockholm! I'm also American and have lived in Stockholm for 7 years and I still can't get used to the short winter days! I do recommend the endless days of summer though!
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