Shots from Apartment to Office by Bike

Stockholm and the surrounding area and most other places I've been in Sweden is riddled with bike paths (a good thing!). Many adults use bikes to run errands and commute to work. Most bikes are "urban" bikes and many are old are left outside, sometimes locked to a gutter or fence. The subway stations and train stations have bike parking areas. It's not unusual to see a 50 or more bikes at these stations.

The first time I tried to bike from Norrmalm to my Kista office, I got lost several times despite having a good bike path map. The ten mile route was easily fourteen. Coming back I made half the mistakes so it was maybe 10 miles. That was last weekend.

Today I tried again and made it in 45 minutes. I used paths not on the trail map.


Most of the route is city with large office buildings and city traffic. However, the bike path does have excursions into the stereotypical Swedish pastoral scenes: the signature earth-tone painted homes and wooded areas. This post shows some shots from my bike commute. It begins with a smart car parked outside my apartment with "Have you got a job?" in Swedish painted on it.

The second photo is one of two small communities on the way. The homes are small, probably 300 square feet and yet they all seem to have small gardens, many have small vegetable greenhouses. These are not typical of Swedish homes, however. More typical homes are in the next collage of photos.




You notice that the bike commute goes by water. In this case it's part of the Baltic sea. The Baltic close to Stockholm is calm by sea standards. It's almost like a lake and not very salty. Everything in Stockholm is close to water, either the Baltic or lake Mälaren. Lake Mälaren and the Baltic are separated by a lock (a sluice) at Slussen (I think that's Swedish for "the sluice"). Boats can use the lock to go between the two bodies of water. I think they lock desgn prevent salt water from entering the lake.

The sailboats are still mostly stored for the winter - on shore under plastic (maybe a photo later). I have noticed more and more boats showing up in the docks near Gamla Stan.


The last picture is of the largest tree mulcher I've ever seen. It was being used to clear a swath through the forest for something. Another bike trail? A power line? I don't know.

Around My block on a cold dim day, mostly pictures

My apartment is on the second floor (European count the ground floor as zero, it's the third floor by American convention) just above my bicycle in the picture on the left. The next photo (below) is of the back of the building.













The two carts are used by a mail man or maybe a junk-mail man. They were full of sales flyers - I saw no real mail address to a real person. About twice per week I get about half a dozen slipped through my mail slot.

The stroller is one of the rugged winterized types so common in Sweden. Notice the tractor tires.


Of course, there's the kiosk to buy parking tickets, and the "exit" (utfart) from a small parking lot (the bottom photo).




There are plenty of "urban" bikes (as opposed to road bike or mountain bikes or bmx bikes) outside the apartment buildings.



The tiny "Smart" cars always catch my eye. They are perfect for city living and can park anywhere. The reflective disk were in a nearby park, one of many. These are small parks, just enough to have some grass, several benches and four or five shade trees. Usually each park has some piece of outdoor sculpture or art: these disk are an example but the pieces vary tremendously.

Near this park was a pigeon feeder. Stockholmites take walks even in the cold. This day it was approximately 32 degrees Farenheith, zero Celcius. Yet folks were strolling the avenues and streets for fun and to buy stuff, like groceries. Some stopped to watch the pigeons feast.




I haven't taken photo's of the numerous small shops and restaurants around and near my block. That will come in a later post. I also plan more people shots in future posts.

Door to door

After frantically trying to tie up loose ends with house repairs, packing (especially my bicycle), redirecting mail (check out Remote Control Mail), and paying bills, J took me to the airport. I had to pay $254 for excess baggage. Hope the company picks that up!

Lufthansa has a direct flight from Denver to Frankfurt. The direct flight and the unusually short wait time in Frankfort allowed me the shortest travel time ever.

J and I left the house at 2:30 for a 6:30 flight. That put me at the airport 3 hours early, but I'm extra cautious. I wanted to make sure we could react if they disallowed some of the luggage. J purchased a whole bunch of over-the-counter drugs since they are hard to find in Sweden (and if I did find them I wouldn't recognize the Swedish label). So I feared I'd be arrested or, at least, interrogated as a drug dealer. I guess terrorist don't travel with 40 bottles of ibuprofen - a waste of money if you plan to blow up the plane. So leaving my house to the starting of the jet engines: 4 hours. That gave me time to read half a book and meet two couple from San Diego going to Italy. They planned to follow much the same itinerary D & J did two years ago.

The whole airport screening thing strikes me as un-American. First, you are assumed guilty until proven innocent. Second, there's an encroachment on our privacy rights.

Another thing bothers me, too. The terrorist no longer have to blow themselves up on the plane. They just get in line to be screened. The line folds back and forth like the line to a Disney World attraction. Once in the middle of the line, the terrorist could kill just as many as on a plane and he didn't even have to buy a ticket. I hope you don't pass this blog post to a terrorist who might be willing to wait in line.

The flight to Frankfurt in coach class is torture. In fact, speaking of terrorist, we should just put suspected terrorists in coach class on a trans-Atlantic flight. They'd be confessing like a child long before the final descent, especially if they, say, had a slightly pinched nerve that causes their leg to switch every few seconds for hours after hour. Flight time 8 hours, 20 minutes .


The wait in the Frankfort airport was unusually short: 90 minutes. Yippee. Of course the screening in Frankfurt is as slow as Denver so I began to worry that I might miss my connecting flight.

The flight from Frankfurt to Stockholm three hours (I think). Fortunately, I was able to sleep. I have perfected sleeping in my own lap, folded like a wallet. Sometimes I rest my head on the tray table but got tired of the flight attendant, heartless they can be, waking me up because "the Captain said..."

Arrival at Arlanda, I caught a taxi whose driver spoke no English. That's a definite tip that he wasn't Swedish since all Swedes speak English. There were other clues, too, like skin color and name. Anyway it was fixed price so I wasn't worried about a run-away meter. We got to the apartment office while the snow came down like confetti. Then I discovered the office was not in the apartment complex. So after unloading my 17 tons of baggage, I had to load it on a second taxi. (Actually the taxi driver's were very helpful.) Then we drove to the apartment about 15 minutes away in Norrmalm (the north part of town). It's on Kadettgatan, if you want to find it on a map. The time from exiting the plane to entering my apartment door was two hours.

So the door to door time was 17 hours and 20 minutes, a new (fastest) record for me. Usually this trip takes 21 hours, especially with the United Denver-to-Chicago-to-London-to-Stockholm coach class torture.

Here's some photo's looking out my apartment front and back window. I've managed to find a grocery store and buy my subway, train, and bus pass. I also bought what I thought was milk but it turned out to be a lactose free thing....Note to self: learn Swedish word for milk (mjölk, not låglaktos mellanmjölk).



As I write this, after my first day of work, I realize (again) that Sweden is a magical place if you look beyond the cold and semi-dark winters and the occasional gray skies. Getting to know my Swedish colleagues the first day was like mingling at a party where everyone is an interesting character. This is going to be an adventure.