Stockholm, Day 2: Pageantry and Some Awesome Meatballs

The weather for both of our days in Stockholm has been warm and sunny; highs in the mid 70’s. Everyone says this is not typical, and it’s not what we expected. But we’ll take it.

We split up this morning after breakfast and planned to meet at noon at the parade ground at the Royal Palace in Old Town. That was a serendipitous plan, since right after we met, the elaborate changing of the guard began. This involved more than a new set of guards at the guard shacks. What we watched was  a 45 minute ceremony that included a platoon of soldiers marching in, followed by the Royal Swedish Navy band. The band played an entire concert of mostly marching tunes, but also threw in a couple of Abba favorites. Bet you won’t hear Abba played by the US Marine Band. 

We split up again for the afternoon, but met for dinner at The Pelikan, and old restaurant in an even older building in Sodermalm, the southern part of the city. The Pelikan specializes in  Swedish “home style” cooking, and I was finally able to go get meatballs. And they came with whipped potatoes an, d Lingonberry jam. Classic. And these were not your Ikea meatballs. Big, meaty, round, substantial orbs of Swedish fare.

All of our crew had the meatballs, except John. John chose the reindeer (I’m opting out of the Rudolph jokes here). John’s reindeer was medium rare, came with a potato soufflé and a shiny nose (sorry). He said it was great  and tasted like beef. 

The Pelikan is also known for its selection of Aquavit (over a dozen), and since it’s part of the experience, we engaged in this tradition as well.

Since this is our last evening in Stockholm, a couple of observations…

Stockholm is close to being a cashless city. Oddly enough, cards are preferred almost everywhere. Our hotel, the Hobo, accepts cards only for payment throughout it’s restaurants, bars and shops. We expect that to change when we get outside of Stockholm, but I have to wonder if what isn’t driving the move to get rid of cash isn’t a desire to curb cash transactions that can avoid the high taxes Swedes pay.

I read a little about Swedish and Nordic culture before the trip, and one of the characteristics of the culture is a belief in equality of individuals that is pretty rigid. , A notion that no individual is better than another, and shouldn't expect to be. I’ll write more about this later, but there’s a belief that this goes back to the Vikings, the fierce warriors who took pride in having no leader. 

I'm looking for evidence of this cultural trait, and in Stockholm I think I found one:

Senior discounts! 

I guess if you really think about it, why should seniors get discounts? In fact, in writing this paragraph, I just asked the seniors in our travel group the same question: Why should seniors get discounts? And no one had an answer.  Interesting.     

Tomorrow, we’re heading north,  to Osterlund and Vemdalen, in search of Nelson family roots.