My husband’s birthday is on October 16th.
So I decided to give him a ticket to a Walk Off The Earth’s concert as a birthday present, deliberately ignoring the fact that he hates that band.
It’s not that I am a fan or anything, I boast about the fact I have better musical taste, but I just thought they might be cool to see live, and I like their positive attitude towards music, life, gender issues and parenthood, so I felt good in giving them some money and watch their show.
And it’s not even fair to say that G hates them. He just doesn’t think that throwing instruments at each other and covering hits of other composers represent a sufficient condition to be a good music band (who could blame him for this indeed).
But, yeah well, anyways, I kind of like these peeps, and I wanted to watch their show, and it was ages since I haven’t been to a concert, so I basically didn’t give a damn of the fact that it was his 30th birthday, and bought two tickets. I mean, I also bought him a great present, a photography book that he wanted so much, so I’m not a totally shitty wife.
Just a bit.
The show was at the Fryshuset, in Stockholm, which is more or less 5 hours by train from Malmö, where we live. So, we had the excuse for a nice trip to the city that Swedes like to call naively “the Venice of the North”…
Ok, let’s talk about it.
Canals don’t necessarily mean Venice. Venice is famous for its water, sure, but not every puddle looks like Venice.
Ok, I don’t want to go too hard on Stockholm, it is really a beautiful city. But Venice (and here I’m assuming the same tone as Boromir’s) is not simply a beautiful city: Venice is unique, it’s just perfect. It’s unbelievable.
And this is well proven by the fact that the hackneyed expression “Venice of the North” itself is used for too many cities, but no one would ever dare to define Venice as “x of the South”.
When I was in Saint Petersburg they believed their city was the Venice of the North, when G has recently been to Hamburg to work they told him he was in the Venice of the North, in Copenhagen they always tell you they’re the Venice of the North, and so when I traveled to Bruges, to Amsterdam, to Dordrecht, to Arendal… I’d speculate no less than 10% of the parts of the world I’ve visited was a Venice of the North.
Something I didn’t think of when I bought the ticket to that concert, though, was that our kid was not even 1 year old, and the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare (in Swedish: Socialstyrelsen) has (rightly) decided that children under 13 years old cannot attend big concerts, since high sound volumes can cause life-long hearing injuries.
So… what to do with the kid?
Luckily, the AirBnb woman who rented us a room, took care of him.
Well, to be honest she asked us 50€ for this, and when we came back home she told us he cried a lot in the last 30 minutes ’cause he missed us. Actually she forgot to feed him, and he was crying ’cause he was starving.
But let’s forget about it: we had a nice evening me and G alone. Walk off the Earth even filmed the crowd, and in the short clip one can see G in the middle of the crowd laughing and singing, something for which I’ll mock him forevah and evah.
He still hates me for that clip.
The following days we enjoyed the wonderful colors of the Swedish fall. Stockholm was like they increased the saturation of its colors, every tree was crazy-red, crazy-orange and crazy-yellow, the breeze was chilly, and I loved all the scarves I wore: you know, the platonic idea of autumn, where you picture yourself with a hot mug of chai tea warming your hands, a fishtail braid and a sensual off-the-shoulder wool sweater… that idea that usually lasts for three days, and then you’re fed up again, don’t know what to wear, have awful hair and desperately want either Christmas or summer again.
Luckily, these three days of the “I love fall” thing were those we were in Stockholm.
We traveled the city and brought our little dude to Skansen, a sort of zoo and open-air museum on the island Djurgården.
At first he was sleeping like a log, so much so that when we went through the lemur area, we had to wake him up. I know, it doesn’t sound kind to wake a baby up, but hey, we are doing this for you, to show you these damn animals, it’s cold, we’ve paid the pricey Skansen ticket, we’ve paid the even more pricey Aquarium ticket (the zoo inside the zoo, hate these tourist traps), and when there’s a bunch of lemurs jumping around you, you fucking sleep?! No way, wake up, enjoy these stupid beasts, and then go back to sleep again.
And the poor thing did exactly this: zzzzz – COOL! LEMURS! – zzzzz.
No actually, he did something else that made me think a lot about humans and primordial aversions. At the end of the Aquarium, kids (but not only them) have the chance to stroke a hairy spider, or a boa constrictor (dunno how annoying might this be for the animals…).
G took the little hand of our son and made him caress the snake (he avoided the spider ’cause it was revolting) and this 9-months-old little thing shivered with an ‘adult’ shiver after he touched the snakeskin.
It has been really strange to see him having this reaction, he was not scared nor excited nor anything, he didn’t cry nor laugh, and didn’t seem to be particularly suspicious nor enthusiast; only that odd shiver. I thought it was pretty cool.
We traveled a bit in the center and had a pizza at Omnipollos Hatt, a nice microbrewery in Södermalm where pizza is very good, and beer is even better. There, we quickly said hello to Sarah and Amy (that we firstmet during our trip to Florence with Ha & Gu) and had a pizza with Hanna, the very first person I met in Sweden a century ago! We had a pleasant afternoon with her, just talking about everything and wandering around Söder, a great example of that phenomenon known as gentrification.
Still in the ’60ies, in fact, Södermalm was a slam, inhabited by Stockholm working class; but as time went by, it rained cool restaurants, trendy bars, bohemian ateliers and a broad range of cultural amenities. Now, it’s known as the home of alternative culture and hipsters and the growing demand of housing made apartments here more and more difficult and expensive to come by.
I lived in Stockholm several years ago for a short period, and I honestly didn’t like the experience that much. But I had a shitty job and a shitty relationship at that time, so I’m sure this might had an influence on my opinion on the city, and I know it’s not fair.
What I know for sure, though, is that Stockholm is pretty expensive, so I don’t think I’ll move there anytime soon.
But this short trip was anyway absolutely lovely, I’m sure we’ll go there again soon, maybe for another concert. Maybe some music band G likes, this time.
Maybe.
[Header pic: Skansen, Stockholm ©Gianluca La Bruna]
Just a wandering Family 