Music Monday #56

I discoverd First Aid Kit when I was doing an intership on an organic farm in Sweden during 11th grade. I talked a lot about music with the husband of the hostfamily I was staying with, and it turned out we had similar taste in music. He let me hear First Aid Kit for the first time. Eversince I've been a fan of their music.

First Aid Kit - My silver lining

Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm

While I was in Stockholm I visited many museums. The museum of Ethnography was my favorite by far. They had so many beautiful objects from places all around the world. It really made me want to see more of the world and I realised that there still are so much places I want to visit. Here are some of the photos I took. They're not great quality, but they will give you an impression.

 

 

My favorite part of the museum was The storage. It was just amazing to look at all those showcases that were chock full with foreign items. 

Source: http://www.varldskulturmuseerna.se/en/etnografiskamuseet

The Storage
an Ethnographic Treasury

It is easy to get lost amongst tinder pouches, monkey traps and poison arrows. There are 6,000 objects here, from all four corners of the world. By opening up the Storage, we cath a glimpse of the diversity and magic of our collections - a treasure-trove for the curious. Thousands of artefacts, stories from bygone eras and infinite inspiration for the future.

If you are ever in Stockholm, it is definitely worth the visit!

Skansen

Skansen is an open-air museum on the island of Djurgården in Stockholm where they have old Scandinavian buildings. I had been there a couple of years ago and I went there again last october when I was in Stockholm.
To read more about my Stockholm adventure: Stockholm part 1 & Stockholm part 2.

In this post I just wanted to show some of photos that I took of the buildings in Skansen. Most of the buildings they have are Swedish, but they also have some old ones from Norway.

Stockholm part 2

Here you can read the first post about my trip to Stockholm.

The second week I was there, I bought a Stockholm Card at the tourist centre and visited a lot of museums and I took a boat tour. The museums I went to were the Museum of biology, Museum of Ethnography, The Swedish history museum, Museum of Medieval stockholm, The Vasa museum, The museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Prince Eugen's Waldemarsudde, The Royal Armoury and the Aquaria Water museum. Furthermore I visited the open-air museum Skansen, the Butterfly house and SkyView. As you can see, it turned into a pretty cultural trip.

My personal highlights were the Musuem of Ethnography by far, and the Vasa Museum and Royal Armoury.
















The royal armoury with it's beautiful clothes and armor.

 

I found the Museum of Biology not really interesting because of it's content, but rather because of the building itself. It looks like one of those old wooden Norwegian churches, eventhough it's built much later.

At SkyView you can go in a gondola to the top of the Ericsson globe arena, which is a very high building, from where can see the whole city.  

Some girl was kind enough to take a photo of me, and it's actually the only picture from my whole trip were I'm in. I'm always the photographer (and in this case I was even on a trip by myself), so I always end up having a lot of photos, but very few where I'm in myself. 

The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities had a great collection of objects from Japan, China and Korea. Eversince I saw the movie The last samurai, I've been very interested in Japan and it's culture so I found looking around at the Japanese exhibiton particularly entertaining. The photos I took there turned out horrible, though.












The Royal Canal boat tour I took went around the island of Djurgården. I love that Stockholm has this little green island in the middle of the city. It is a great place to go for a walk and sometimes I just went there to sit by the water and write.

I had visited the Vasa museum before, but I went there for a second time. Usually I'm not really interested in boats, but the exhibitions at this museum are actually really interesting. It also help that they show a movie about the story of the Vasa and the ship itself is just incredible to see.





The train on the left is the one that I took every day to my Swedish class.

It is strange how when you are traveling you experience so much and then when you get back and everyone asks you about how it was all you manage to say is 'It was really nice' and you show your pictures. The stories about that place you went, that lives inside your head now, are so difficult to tell, because you can tell the stories but the feelings that go with them are something that you can not proparly transcribe.

I will do two more posts on Stockholm, one about The museum of Ethnography and the other about Skansen, because I want to show more than just one or two photos of them. They probably will be up on Tuesday and Friday.

Stockholm part 1

Finally I had the time to write something about my two week trip to Stockholm. I was looking through my photos and I realised that I have so many! It's to much to show them all at once, so I'm going to do several posts.

During my time in Stockholm I stayed in The red boat hostel. The first week there were a lot of people from all around the world, which was a lot of fun. The second week there was mostly just one other guy in my room (although there was room for 10) who I didn't see very often so it was a little more lonely.

I stayed in the part of the city called Södermalm which has a lot of coffee bars and nice shops. Eventhough this used to be the area of the working class, there are a lot of beautiful large buildings.

The first week I spent mainly by walking around the city and getting lost. The amount of times that I lost track of where I was, was ridiculous. The picture to the right is of Gamla Stan, the old part of the city.

The first week I had Swedish lessons with another guy, the second week I had private lessons. The lessons took place outside the city centre, so I had to travel there everyday by metro and train. It's funny how easily you get used to a new rhythm of your life. I never really got up early, but during my stay in Stockholm I usually got up at 6:30/7:00. I have always been more of an evening person than a morning persons, but I would rather be a morning person so I was hoping to maintain this newly gained lifestyle, but as soon as I got home I got back into my old habits, haha.

Some more pictures of Gamla Stan.

During my first week I visited Nordiska Museet which is Sweden's largest museum of cultural history. I had been there before, but I still really liked it. The exibitons about the Sami and Swedish traditions were my favorite as well as the one about folk art.

Here are some pictures from their exibitions:

For more of Stockholm, come back next time! (I'm going to try to have the next post up on friday).

Hej hej Sverige!

I'm so excited! On Sunday I'm leaving for Stockholm. I'm going to take swedish lessons for two weeks, so hopefully when I'll come back I will be able to say more than just a few sentences in Swedish. I am going by myself so I think it will be easy to learn new things quickly, since I won't have anyone to talk Dutch with.
I'm going to take three hours of lessons each day, so the rest of the day will be free. I have already found some things to do in Stockholm, but tips are greatly apreciated since I'll have a lot of spare time!

For the duration of my stay in Stockholm I have planned some blogposts. Comments will make me very happy, but I probably won't be able to reply to them until I get back.

I have been in Stockholm before and I loved it. Have you been there? What did you like about it and where did you go?

Unread book stack

It is unbelievable how much time I spent on finding new books to read. I browse Goodreads, online shops, local bookstores and thrift stores. Today I ordered a new book online eventhough I know I already have a huge pile of to-be-read books. The picture does not even show all of them. Most of them I bought or got ages ago. I just love that feeling of always having something to read. Some days I'm into fantasy, others I want to read in a foreign language, read non-fiction or an historical romance. Those books may sit on my shelf for ages, and then, the moment is finally right to read them.

Patrick Rothfuss' The Wise Man's Fear, The Girl Who Played with Fire and Eldest by Christopher Paolini are all sequels to books I read quite a while ago and all really loved. I have started to read in The Children of Húrin and The bookthief a very long time ago, but because I was so bussy with school I quit. I really do want to read them though, so they might be some of the first books to be read. People of the Pharaos by Hilary Wilson is a non fiction book that I just need to be in the right mood for to be able to really enjoy. Ingen sommar utan dig (It's not summer without you) and Genom dina ögon (The host) are both books in Swedish. I bought them last year while I was in Sweden along with Hungerspelen (The Hunger games). I was only planning on buying one swedish book to practice reading in Swedish, but they had had a three for the price of two deal that I could not resist, haha. No et moi (No and me) and Le Grand Meaulnes are both French books. I made a bookreport about Le Grand Meaulnes for school once and I actually did start reading it, but I never finished it. It was not even a bad book and now that I own it I'll definitely be reading it some day. I'm currently reading A clash of Kings, the second book in the A song of Ice and Fire series, and A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons are the other sequels.

Are you like me and do you also have a big to-be-read pile? What book has been on your shelf forever?

Swedish outdoor adventure

 May 31 my friend Suzan and I left for our Swedish outdoor adventure. We flew from Eindhoven airport to Skavsta airport. When we arrived in Sweden, we still had to make quite a trip by bus to get to the inn we were going to. We missed our last bus, so I was very glad that the owners of the inn were willing to pick us up. The first night we stayed at the inn, and the next day we packed our stuff in waterproof bags, loaded the canoe and started our canoe trip.We camped out in the wild for three nights and the fourth day of our trip we were picked up and brought to the inn once again. We stayed a night at the inn and the next day we traveled back to Skavsta airport very relaxed. We flew to Düsseldorf Weeze (Germany) and were picked up by Suzans father, who brought us home.

We first night outdoors we camped on a small island. It had been raining all afternoon, so we had to set up our tent while it was raining. We put it on a rock because it was the only almost flat surface that wasn't covered with water. We used small rocks to hold the tent in place. There was already a fire place (a few small rocks in a circle with a grill on top of it). We searched for dry wood and made a fire. We cooked Chinese noodles and made scrambled eggs. Don't worry, we ate some carrots for breakfast the next morning, so we ate pretty healthy ;).

The weather was at it's best the second day of our trip. In the afternoon there were few clouds and the water was calm. We spend the whole day in our canoe. Sometimes we stopped peddling for a bit and just lay in our drifting canoe and relaxed.

The second evening we set up our tent between some trees in a very grassy area. We later found out that we were in a cow pasture. We made our own fire place and made tomato sauce with zucchini and ate it with couscous.

The third day we arrived at a Viking grave field were stones were layed out in the shape of a viking ship. We ment to go there the day before, but we got a bit lost ;).

The grave field was on top of a small hill, so there was quite a view from up there.

We made bread on a stick above our campfire and decided to stay at this lovely place near the Viking grave field.

The fourth day it was blowing hard and we were having a bit difficulty with staying on track, but we managed. At the begining of the evening we arrived at a small village and were picked up by the the owners of the inn.

 We spent the last morning sitting in the sun in front of the inn, before we had to take the bus.

After an amazing holiday we flew back to Germany and were brought home by Suzan's dad.