Stockholm Syndrome

At the end of May we headed off to Sweden’s capital Stockholm for a weekend of Nordic cool. Well, actually, when I say Stockholm, I mean an hour away by bus – Ryanair may be cheap but its airports are usually out of the way.
Scandinavia has always appealed as a holiday destination because of its design aesthetic (lots of clean lines, pale wood and quirky touches) and beautiful scenery. We decided on Stockholm, as it seemed to be the most interesting capital.



So far during our time in Europe, we’d stayed in cheap and cheerful hotels, but this time we decided to treat ourselves by booking a room in a flash ‘design’ hotel – the Nordic Light. Design hotels are renowned for their design (of course), attention to detail and above all cool. The Nordic Light’s claim to fame is its light features – the rooms have light boxes with coloured lights in them, and the lobby also is surrounded in changing coloured lights. In a country with almost all day darkness in winter, light is very important!
We got a Nordic Love Package, which meant we got a deluxe room with heart lights projected onto the wall and the bed, a light box bedhead which we could control ourselves, a bottle of champagne, chocolates, some spa products and room service breakfast. All very luxurious.




We did manage to tear ourselves away from our super cool hotel room and get out and explore Stockholm, which turned out to be a great place to spend a weekend. Central Stockholm is built on 14 islands and is easily walkable. The first afternoon we were there we walked through Gamla Stan, the island with the Old Town on it. This was your typical Old Town in Europe – cobbled streets, old buildings, lots of tourists, and tacky souvenir shops.

The next day, after a hearty Swedish breakfast of rolls, salami, cheese, pepper, fruit and croissants, we headed to Djugarden, an island where Stockholmites go for picnics, strolls and amusement parks. You can walk to the island from the mainland, but you can also take a short ferry ride from there to Gamla Stan, which we decided to do on the way back.



That night we went for dinner at a bar-restaurant serving modern Swedish food. No Swedish meatballs unfortunately, but we did have a lovely seared beef patty with capers, beetroot and dill. Bizarrely, on our way to the restaurant we walked through a park which had lots of wild rabbits hopping around. Only in Sweden!



After bidding a sad farewell to our hotel the next day, we went to Stockholm’s modern art museum on another of the islands. This had a lot of sculptures and interactive art as well as paintings and was definitely worth a visit. Then a final meal in Stockholm of marinated herrings, rye bread and cinnamon buns before heading back out to the airport to fly back to London.
All in all a great weekend away. Stockholm really is as beautiful as the guidebooks describe, and quite different looking from other places we’ve visited so far. Its proximity to the water, its old buildings, and friendly people make it definitely worth a trip.

Czech Mates

Apologies for the simply awful title, and more importantly, our general slackness in writing new enrtries.

Anyway, back in midJanuary (told you we were slack) we took a weekend break in Prague, visiting Lukas (a very old friend of Stu's who lived in Wellington for a year or so in the mid 90's) and his girlfriend Mirka.

We arrived in Prague on Friday evening and went to Lukas's brother Thomas and his wife Monika's house, where we would be staying for the weekend, and had a fun evening catching up on 12 years of our respective lives! We had dinner at a local pub: classic Czech food involving lots of pork with creamy sauce, cabbage and beer, which was great.

The next morning, we hopped on a communist-era tram and headed into the city. We started in the old part of town, up on the hill and went into Prazska Loreta, a very ornate baroque convent from the 17th century.

From there, we headed towards Prague Castle, a huge complex overlooking the city made up of a number of buildings from different eras and styles, including a catherdral.

The view from the castle wasn't too shabby either...

From there, we headed down the hill to Charles Bridge (built in 1357). At the end of the bridge, there was a tower, which we climbed. From up there, we had a 360 degree view of the city: in one direction there was the hill and the castle...

And in the other there was the rest of the city

From there, it was off to lunch (garlic soup) and onwards for a look around the rest of the town, passing the astological clock:

From there, we took the Metro to another part of town where we had some honey cake and coffee. Interesting thing about their metro: the train was an ancient russian one, yet it was still quieter, smoother and faster than anything on the London Underground. The tickets cost about 50p, compared with 4 pounds in London. Go figure.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon/evening having a walk through a few parks before heading back out of the city for another pub dinner (with obligatory beer!). The rest of the evening was spent back at Thomas and Monika's house in a haze of Czech wine. The idea of Czech wine might surprise some people, but the region where Lukas is from, Moravia, has quite a long history of wine making. The wines are mainly white (or lighter reds) and made from local grape varieties, and they were actually rather good.

The next morning, we visited a very interesting park built around a bizarre star-shaped house, the Hvezda Summer Palace, which dates back to 1555. It was a really cool thing to see: an oasis well away from the city and tourists. (google maps users: see 50° 5'0.40"N 14°19'34.53"E)

From there, we went across the city to Lukas and Mirka's house, where Mirka cooked us a great lunch. We walked this off with a stroll around the neighhourhood and up to a clifftop overlooking the river. All too soon, it was time to go back to the airport and return home.

It was fantastic to see Lukas again: he and Mirka were excellent guides, and Thomas and Monika were wonderful hosts (Thanks a lot guys!). Prague is a beautiful city, and we had a huge amount of fun there. We'll defintely be visiting again before we return to NZ, and hopefully then we'll be able to see more of the country.

We'll finish the entry with a pic of Lukas and Mirka: without them, we wouldn't have enjoyed ourselves nearly as much!

Il neige!

We woke up this morning to snow - finally! After a mild and blustery start to January it is properly cold. There was 5 cm this morning, the most London has had since 2003. Lucky us. It didn't stick around but there's meant to be more tonight. Very exciting.

Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year.

We spent our first (and probably only) Christmas in the UK exactly as we planned - eating delicious food, drinking champagne, and then going for a walk to burn it off.

Stu made gravlax (cured salmon) a few days before Christmas using gin, sugar, salt and mustard. The salmon was wild Alaskan salmon so was a beautiful deep pink colour. We had that for a starter on Christmas Day with homemade buckwheat blinis, sour cream, lemon and of course champagne. Yum!

As it was just the two of us, we couldn't really justify cooking a turkey, so we roasted a chicken instead. Not just any chicken, though. We've found an excellent organic butchers which sells amazingly good chickens. They're also sold with giblets, which were put to good use in the gravy. French people use goose fat to roast their potatoes as it makes the crispiest, tastiest potatoes you could hope for. There's a potato stall at our local farmer's market, and the guy keeps recommending different varieties to us. He knows his stuff, because the ones we used for Christmas dinner were perfect for the task.

Stu and I both hated brussel sprouts as children but have recently come around to them, largely thanks to discovering a way of cooking them with chestnuts and pancetta. They made a very festive accompaniment to the rest of our dinner. We also made a sausage stuffing with yet more chestnuts, and the giblet gravy (mmm, offal).

Dessert was Mont Blanc, a ridiculously easy dessert of creme de marrons (chestnut puree), grated dark chocolate and cream, topped off with some silver cachous just because it was Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you all have a wonderful day, wherever you are or whatever you are doing.

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!

It's been a while since our last post, mainly because work's been keeping us busy. Now thinking fondly of our days of leisure in Paris!
Winter is setting in here, although it has been the warmest autumn on record. Go global warming. This weekend it's been clear and crisp - the best kind of weather for a walk on Hampstead Heath.

Hampstead Heath
The main downer at the moment is that it gets dark at 3.50 in the afternoon. So it's dark when you leave for work in the morning and dark when you get home.
However, there are some benefits to a northern hemisphere winter, and Christmas is definitely one of them. Christmas just seems to make so much more sense here. There are Christmas lights up in the streets, mulled wine seems like an attractive proposition, and there are lots of Christmas festivities to break up an otherwise dreary winter.
We will be spending Christmas in London by ourselves, cooking a nice meal, drinking some champagne, then going out for a walk in the frosty air (assuming that it's not raining - unfortunately snow isn't predicted this Christmas).
We've cancelled our planned trip to Paris for New Year's because it was too expensive but we're not too disappointed because we've instead decided to go to Prague for a weekend in January. Stu went to school with a guy from the Czech Republic who now lives in Prague with his girlfriend so we are going to visit them. Will be great to be shown the place by a local. Can't wait!

Life in London

We are now starting to get settled into life in London. We both have jobs and have moved into a flat, so we are pretty much sorted. As you know, Stu is working for Ford, and I have just started working at the Department of Constitutional Affairs on a two month contract. Although it's just a short term contract, it should hopefully lead to more other work. It's definitely nice to be back into a routine and to have workmates again. We moved into our new flat last week. It's a cottage (yes, that's right - a cottage in central London) in Chalk Farm, which is about 15 minutes from the Camden markets, for those that know London. The location is excellent. We're close to a tube station and the train station for Stu to get out to Essex, and we're within walking distance of both Camden Town and Kentish Town shopping areas as well as Hampstead Heath and Primrose Hill parks. There are quite a few organic shops in the area and some cool second hand places near Camden market. We are also smack bang in the indie music centre of London. The cottage itself is also good, if a bit strange. It's (we think) a 1930s art deco-style bungalow tacked onto a set of terraced houses. There is only one window in the place but both the kitchen and bedroom have skylights so it gets plenty of light. The kitchen is slightly dated but it's huge, with lots of bench space, and the oven bakes bread perfectly (always important!). Some of the walls aren't straight, which gives it a weird Tardis-like effect - smaller at the front than the back - and parts of the floor are sloped, but it seems pretty liveable so far. Most flats in London are furnished but unlike in Paris, this just means bed, tables etc and no kitchenware or bedding. So we took our first trip to Ikea last week and have already been back once since then! Ikea is amazing. Freedom in NZ is kind of aiming to be like Ikea but is not in the same league. Homewares at Ikea are cheap but still very stylish, and we've been able to kit our flat out very nicely at minimal cost. They also have a canteen-style restaurant serving Swedish food. Not bad at all.
We still find London quite ugly but have found a few pockets of niceness. The area we are in is actually fairly good looking, with lots of trees and coloured terrace houses (instead of the usual brown brick). One thing that we are not growing to love, however, is the Tube. Someone said on Friday that it will take 22 years of work before the Underground is up to a 21st century standard. That's pretty poor. Stu gets to work by train but I rely on the Tube and so have to spend about 40 minutes each day cramped, hot and sweaty. I am getting good at adopting the blank look favoured by commuters and have mastered the art of reading the free evening paper with one hand while standing up on the train. Stu read somewhere that if spending 40 minutes on the Tube is the equivalent of smoking a cigarette and I wouldn't be surprised if that's true. You always feel quite dirty afterwards.
We're really appreciating NZ now that we're in London. France was different because they really do have the best of a lot of things. London just doesn't have enough advantages to make us want to stay here for any longer than we have to. The bureaucracy here is also really bad, in fact worse than in France. We've come to the conclusion that France is very bureaucratic but very efficient - if you do everything they tell you to do, and supply the appropriate documents, you'll have no problem. England, while also very bureaucratic, is terribly inefficient as a country. For example, for some unknown reason it takes 3-4 working days for online bank transfers to clear, rather than 1 day in NZ. So, instead of paying our rent on the 11 of the month, we are required to pay on the 1st, so that the money can be transferred from our account to the rental agency, then from the rental agency's account to the landlord! We are understandably not impressed at having to pay again two weeks after moving in! In addition, we have to pay £106 for an inventory company to check over the flat when we leave. Yes, that's right - you need an inventory company to check you in and out of a flat here, and it takes them an hour each time. It's obviously not enough for the landlord and tenants to do this themselves. I guess we're just going to have to get used to this sort of thing.
While London may not have really been where we wanted to end up, it is great to have somewhere to call home again and I think we'll have a good time here.