Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers - Stockholm Travel Guide: What to Eat and Where to Go in Sweden’s Capital City

Episode Date: March 28, 2018

This year’s World Happiness Report just came out and once again, all the Scandinavian countries are at the top of the list. The one I haven’t been to yet is Sweden, so today I am speaking with Eric Wall, an American artist living in Stockholm, to get his advice on the best things to see and do in Sweden’s capital city.  Stockholm is actually made up of 14 islands, and Gamla Stan, its old town, is one of Europe’s best preserved medieval historic centers. Eric and I talk all about the delicious baked goods you must try, the museums you can’t miss, and other ideas to make your trip to Stockholm a great one.  Eric hosts the podcast By The Way: A Contemporary Art News Podcast, and co-founded Cultural Bandwidth, a podcast network about art, so of course we’ll share where to find the best art when visiting Stockholm.  Find links to places we discuss in this episode at postcardacademy.co If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe and forward this show to a friend. If you’re feeling especially kind, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. This helps people discover the show. 🤗 Instagram, Twitter, Facebook   Thank you to Six Miles High Design for creating the brilliant Postcard Academy logo ❤️Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

Welcome to the Postcard Academy, your weekly travel and culture podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Micatel, and I'd like to thank you so much for being here today and for subscribing to this show. In case you haven't heard, this year's World Happiness Report just came out, and once again, all the Scandinavian countries are at the top of the list. The one that I haven't been to yet is Sweden. So today, I'm speaking with Eric Wall, an American artist living in Stockholm, to get his advice on the best things to see and do in Sweden's capital city. You know, a few years ago, I lived with a Swedish couple, and they were the most adorable people I've ever met. They taught me all about their midsummer holiday, and when I asked, what do you do at this festival? They said, we dance around

and eat strawberries. I have been smitten with the Swedes ever since. Plus, they take off their shoes when they enter the house, which is just brilliant. Stockholm is actually made up of 14 islands, and Gomelistan, its old town, is one of Europe's best preserved medieval historic center. Eric and I talk all about the delicious baked goods you must try there, the museums you can't miss, and other ideas to make your trip to Stockholm a great one. Eric hosts the podcast, by the way, a contemporary art news podcast, and he co-founded cultural bandwidth, a podcast network all about art. So of course, we will share where to find the best art in the city.

Now let's jump into my conversation with Eric. Welcome, Eric. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me on the podcast. You are an American. So how did you end up in Sweden? I grew up in Denver, went to school in Denver, went to art school there, and really wanted to see artwork that was in the history books that, you know, I was studying. And so right after graduating from college, a friend and I, we backpacked around Europe for a few months looking primarily at art, going to museums, going to galleries. When we were in Berlin, I met a girl, a German girl, who became. a really good friend of mine. A few years later invited me to live in her apartment because it had an

empty room. While living in Germany, I met a Swedish girl. And yeah, it was just much easier to move to Sweden than it was to try and get her visas to come to the U.S. So you met your Swedish girl. You are now married. You have one kid, one on the way. Was it difficult for you to become a Swedish citizen? No, it's actually surprisingly easy. If you compare, because she's also a dual citizen now, because we lived back in the U.S., and it was so much easier for me as an American coming to Sweden and going through the bureaucracy of getting citizenship than it was for her coming to the U.S. And that was one reason that we chose to do it in that order. What were your first experiences in Sweden? And how did you meet people besides your wife?

I would kind of say I've done two stints of duty now in Sweden. I lived here originally from 2006 to 2009 in a city called Uppsala, which is I think a fourth or the fifth largest city in Sweden, just about an hour north or so of Stockholm. It's a university city, my wife was a student there. So we had a little bit more contact with students, student life. And then I was able to meet quite a few people, primarily immigrants, through what's called, the Svenska for Androndra, which is the Swedish programs for teaching immigrants Swedish. So there you get a classroom setting where you learn Swedish in a classroom setting with immigrants from all over the world. And that's how you learn Swedish? Yeah, that's how I learned

the academic side of Swedish, yes. And there, you know, I got to meet a doctor from Baghdad who fled during the war and fled in that sought asylum. Sweden. And so she was one of my, you know, classmates. There was a couple guys. There's a great guy from Senegal. So we always, you know, had great things to go do, go out and have beers or FECA, which is kind of like going to coffee shops here. So it was a really great way to meet other people in my situation, but it wasn't a great way to meet Swedes. Yeah. And that's something that I really love about language classes. I've lived in Italy on and off. And, you know, years ago I took a two-month language class. It was mostly for the grammar. But yeah, I would say I did

not learn most of my Italian there, but I did get to meet people around the world. And that's just, yeah, such a beautiful experience on its own. And then you go elsewhere and actually chat to Swedes or Italians to learn the language. Yeah, I kind of got thrown into the fire on the language side. I was able to get a job working in a restaurant. at the airport where I knew, okay, I had a background at that point in restaurants, and I thought, okay, with the experience, I can figure it out, even if my Swedish is horrible. And I think I lived in Sweden for about five months, maybe six when I got this job. They hired me, even though my interview was actually in English.

And then, like, the second day, my boss, who was an old guy, really nice guy, but kind of a jerk if in some ways, decided, Eric, you're not going to be able to speak English with anybody and nobody's going to speak English with you at work. You're going to have to figure this out in Swedish. And so I ended up working there for about a year and a half. And that's how I really learned Swedish was really that immersion and trial by error. Yeah, and that's tough because most Swedes do speak fantastic English at least the ones that I've met for him to put that mandate on you. But I guess that was a good learning experience. Absolutely. I don't think my confidence would have ever got there in a foreign language if it wasn't for that or even him. No, so Swedes are considered to be the first or the second best

as in English as a country that doesn't have English as their primary language. I think that the Dutch are considered the best. And so really, the people here, you don't really need to ever learn Swedish purely if you want to be suicidal or you want to just. can immerse yourself culturally or, you know, for my sake, I wanted to get to know that other half of a person's personality that is only found in their native tongue. So, you know, in this case, my wife or her family. Yeah. Because I don't know when you're speaking Italian, it seems like maybe a different personality comes out or a different type of humor or, no. I definitely swear more in Italian. I'm trying to refrain from saying things currently. So

Okay, so Sweden is probably most famous for IKEA, Abba, the Nobel Prize. There's a lot more to it, and we'll get into that. Stockholm is also often referred to as the capital of Scandinavia. So what is Scandinavia exactly? Yeah, that's kind of the, what is the UK? Nobody can ever seem to say, you know, what is it? What's England? What's UK?

What belongs where? And so sometimes when people talk about Scandinavia, It's Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark. Sometimes Iceland's included. Sometimes the Faroe Islands are included because that's a Danish territory. Sometimes you throw in Estonia because culturally they have a lot of similarities. So it seems to be kind of a fluctuating thing. But for me, Scandinavia is really Norway, Sweden, and Denmark because they're really bound.

by a longer history and almost a shared language route. And then also in aesthetic as well. Like how would you describe the Scandinavian design aesthetic? It's exactly what you kind of think. When you think of that Scandinavian design or IKEA, it's definitely a little bit more on the minimal side, a little bit more functional. Everything's just very clean everywhere.

I've lived in other cities in Germany and Chicago, for example, where on the streets there's a little bit more graffiti or a little bit of trash, and you don't get that anywhere in Sweden. Yeah, so give us a visual snapshot of Stockholm. Where is it geographically? What would the postcard look like? Sweden is, yeah, like you kind of mentioned earlier, kind of the capital of Scandinavia, it's the largest city in Scandinavia. So that's why it's the capital per se. It's in northern Europe.

It's on the, let's see, the east coast of Sweden, which is this long, skinny, tall country. But it's actually kind of in the south part of Sweden because it's so, so, so long. The kind of the postcard that you most typically see of Stockholm is that it's made up, well, it's this islands. You have these really old buildings on a whole bunch of islands. The whole city is built on an archipelago. So in the center you have Gamutistan, which is the old city, which is on its own. little island. You have the island of Sotomon, which is just across a tiny bridge. You have the center that's across another bridge. I live just north of the city and there's a couple bridges

just to get to me. So yeah. Yeah. So I think there's about 57 bridges that are connecting the 14 islands that make up Stockholm. It just looks so beautiful to me. Yeah, it's a very different place in the wintertime because that's when we're recording it and I'm looking outside right now versus what it is in the summertime. So in the summertime, it's very, very colorful. One thing that I've never experienced is the amount of wildflowers everywhere, and that includes more in the center of the city. They don't have as much just straight grass that you would experience in a lot of American cities. And so you get a lot more natural vegetation in the parks and the amount of wildflowers. That's great. But then in the winter, I think it's kind of more like London. You get this kind of gray

skies, it's kind of cold and wet. You would definitely recommend coming in the summertime then for our first time. Definitely. Because you have the longer days. That's what the Scandinavian countries are kind of known for. You have these long days because it's so far north. So if you come in the summertime, the weather's better. It's more beautiful, obviously the colors. And you can really get in a long, long day. And there's a lot of festivals as well, I think, in the summertime. Yeah, I don't do a lot of festivals in general. That's not something I've done a lot, but one thing that they do well here is they have open-air theaters that travel around all of Sweden, but then also around the general area, like general neighborhoods of Stockholm. There is the Royal Ballet, actually. This is kind of cool.

The Royal Ballet performs outside in an outdoor theater. theater and then some of the larger symphonies and orchestras as well that normally, you know, you have to pay, you know, $50 to go see. Is there like a main park where all of this activity happens? No, not really. Stockholm has some great parks, but each one kind of has its own little personality. There's one in the center called Hume Legorden, which is the biggest one right in the center. and it's beautiful, has an old library there, a great park for kids, beautiful giant trees.

But then if you go a little north of the city, there's a place called Haga Parkin. And that is in a huge, huge park with expansive lawns kind of where you can really get out into nature without actually going out into nature. It butts up to the water, so you get nice views over the lakes and into the sea. And then they also have a couple of palaces because the royal family has homes in that park as well. Yeah, I think that's something that a lot of people don't realize is that Sweden still has a royal family. Yeah, I'm a little anti-royal families. So I appreciate them. I think it's great that they're there, but I'm a little anti them because they have such great buildings that we, you know, as tourists or as citizens don't have access to, but we kind of supplement their lifestyles nowadays.

Although we can go into the royal palace, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site, I believe. And I think it's one of the biggest palaces in Europe in Stockholm. Yeah, that's the one on the island of Garmelistan. Okay. It's, you know, if you haven't been to Stockholm and you think, I'm going to go see a palace, it's a massive building, but it's not one of these like Disney-style Germanic palaces. It's a very big square type of building. So, yeah, you have at that royal palace, you have the royal guards and the changing of the guards and all of that pomp and circumstance, which is really, really fun if you've. never experienced it. But it's a big square on a very beautiful island. And it's actually everything

around the palace that's more beautiful to me. There's, I would imagine, there's probably 10 palaces or castles that the royal family owns within 40, 50 kilometers of Stockholm. You're not that into the royals, but if we like to go to a castle. Yeah, no, no, no. I mean, I'm not, I'm not so into the royals but I really love where they live. Okay. So the best one to go to that's reasonable for a tourist to get to. I think you can take a boat actually

from the city center is to Drottenham's Palace and that is one of those that you're more like, okay, this is a palace versus what you get in the center of the city. It has these very maintained lawns all around it very much like Versailles, then followed by the

forest so you can go out there, you can see this really big, beautiful palace followed by these really beautiful lawns, groomed, and followed by forest. Would you say Sweden is a good place for expats to live? Yeah, it's actually, it's great for expats to live. It's a little rough on the economic side, but when it comes to lifestyle, it's great. Yeah, so Sweden is known for being crazy expensive, but at the same time, it's known as having the best work-life balance in the world, and I know that term gets thrown around a lot, but better maternity leave and care than most countries. But then also, people switch off when they leave work, at least more so than they do in a city like New York or London.

Yeah, no, that's definitely the, I would say, the main motivation for somebody to move to Sweden or Stockholm. There's a lot more, let's say, respect for your private life or your family life when you're an employee of a company. One of the great things is that if you have a kid and your kid gets sick, you don't have to like call in sick and use vacation days or sick days. You just tell your boss, hey, my kid's sick. I got to go pick them up or stay home with them. And then you kind of submit that to the government and you get reimbursed a certain amount of your pay as well because it's not your fault that you can't go to work, that your kid's sick and you shouldn't be punish for that. So that's a really great thing. That work-life balance that you talked about,

the work week is a little bit longer than what it was when I lived in Copenhagen, because I lived in Copenhagen for a few years, but it's still under 40 hours a week in general. Yeah, and you guys are still doing quite well. The economy is still doing well. You're still a productive country, more recharged and refreshed than a lot of others, I think. Yeah, I don't think the most recent economic downturn in 2008 hits Sweden as hard as it did the U.S. and England or Iceland for that sake. No, it's a really good place to be. You mentioned maternity leave and paternity leave. You know, if you are somebody that can get here, you know, with a visa or a job and you're wanting to maybe start a family, it's a great place to have a family. We get something like a year and a half

a little bit more than that in total of maternity and paternity leave. The one thing that makes it unique here is that the father is required to take, I think it's 90 days or 60 days in total. And if you don't take that time, you lose it, you can't just give it to the mother. So it really puts a lot of pressure on fathers to be fathers very early on. Very progressive. Very. I remember when I've moved back here to Stockholm two years ago,

I was walking my son around in the neighborhood of Osteram, which is kind of this upscale, wealthy neighborhood of Stockholm, where we temporarily lived. I walked up to an intersection with my son and his stroller, and at every corner there was a dad with their kids and their strollers and not a, like a mother in sight. So that's actually one thing that really makes me proud about being here is the involvement of fathers with their young children. Yes, that's a beautiful sight to see. So until recently, you were director of one of Scandinavia's largest art galleries.

Which one was that? It's a gallery called Gallery Anderson-Sandstrom. I was hired there as a director, and then I left because I've studied art, and I'm an artist, and that's really where my passion is. I just was one of those artists that happened to figure out how galleries work, which is really difficult for most artists and got that role and realized it wasn't making me happy doing the sales of other people's arts and promoting their art. I guess it was a bit selfish, but I wanted to focus on my own work again.

So with the support of my wife, which is awesome, she said, quit. We can make ends meet and focus back on your artwork again. And you're a painter? primarily a painter. The paintings that I make are acrylic and oil on canvas, but I'm painting them, and then there's kind of a pattern put on it, and I'm going in with an Xacto knife and cutting out sections of the painting very slowly. So what you, as the audience or the viewer, gets to see, is very little of the canvas because so much of the canvas has been cut and removed. And so they're kind of decorative.

They're tended to be a little bit more playful in my mind. But I guess people can look and see if they think they're playful. And I'm definitely not the first one to kind of do this to art. You having lived in Italy, there was a really big art movement in the 1960s and 70s in Italy with one particular artist named Luca Fontana, who's internationally famous in the art world, who started to cut his canvases and kind of starting to remove the canvas to show this. support, so like the bars that you would stretch a canvas around. By doing that, you also started to see the wall behind. And so that's kind of what my work does is by removing so much canvas and

letting you see through the canvas, it actually is starting to interact with the architecture. So if you take one on my paintings, because I've cut out so much space out of them, if you hang it on a brick wall, the colors are going to change. If you hang it on a white wall, the color are going to change, the relationships change. If you hang it in a church, let's say, it's going to interact with the architecture in a much different way than a painting that's contained within its four sides. What is the art scene like in Stockholm? It's very, very good. I would say that museum-wise is where it excels in my mind. And then the galleries are really solid, but it's not quite as active as what you'd see in Berlin or in New York.

So give us some museums that we definitely, some art museums that we definitely have to check out. Yeah, number one on the art museum list is Modena Museat. And that is the modern art museum, which is in the center. It's on its own little island with, I think one other, it's an Asian museum. I can't remember the exact name. But, you know, you know, it's a little island. It's Yeah, so that's the one thing. A lot of the museums and a lot of the sites, because of this archipelago that everything sits on, there is a lot of walking. So you go over a bridge to an island and over a bridge to an island and over a bridge to an island. And so modern and a museum sits kind of alone on its own little island. And the focus of the collection is on modern and contemporary art with like artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Marcel Deschamp. And Andy Warhol actually had his first European exhibition at that museum. I heard the photography museum was quite good. The photography one is a great museum. It's absolutely beautiful.

It's a great place. As a tourist to go, to go see a great exhibition, but go see a great building and eat. Actually, they have a great restaurant and cafeteria. They often have, I think, events in the evening with music. So, yeah, that's a really good one now. And that's on the island of Sotomong. So I believe Sweden, you know, as a country really values cultural. and investing in art.

Is there any sort of public artworks in Stockholm that we should have a wander by? If you want to see artwork kind of in the public sphere, it's actually go in the subway system. At a lot of the train stops, they are really, really cool. There's some train stops that the ceilings are painted in very decorative colors. There's other train stops that have quirky sculptures,

there's one near Kung's Trey Gorden, which is also a little park in the city center, that there used to be a palace that used to be above it, and they have the old doors from the palace inside the train station. Which station is it? Kung's Trey Gorden, so the King's Garden, or Tree Garden, actually. But yeah, that would actually be a highlight, is to go, if you want to see kind of public art, is go through the train lines. Yeah, I've heard that the T-Ban.

the subway is the longest, supposedly the longest art gallery in the world. I think 90 of the hundred or so stations have art, and not just tile art, which I think is definitely cool, but also there are sculptures down there and all sorts of things. Yeah, you said tile, yeah. That's what's interesting with these is Stockholm is built on a lot of stone. You spoke about the Nobel Museum or the Nobel Prize. Alfred Nobel is, the guy who invented dynamite and where the Nobel Prize name comes from. The reason he had to, or he invented dynamite was to build in Stockholm is because of all this rock. So when you are in a majority of the train stations, you get the exposed rock everywhere because it was blasted out. And so a lot of

these paintings are on these undulating and non-even ceilings and walls. So it's kind of like walking through caves in some of the stops. That is such a cool story. I did not know that. What about churches? Are there any churches that you think are worth going into from an artist's perspective? You know, the churches that I think are the best are actually in other parts of Sweden. And it goes more for the architectural side than it is for what you'd get in other countries,

like in Spain or in Italy, where you get these beautiful frescoes. Yeah. So I think it's actually some of these smaller churches. that are around Sweden is a total country. The nearest one that is definitely worth going to would be the Uppsala Dome Sherken, which is in the city of Uppsala that I mentioned that I used to live in.

It's about an hour north of Stockholm, and that's a city worth actually taking a day trip too, but in the city center there, they have the largest cathedral in northern Europe. And so is that an easy train ride from Stockholm? Yeah, yeah. Recently they opened up a straight train line from Stockholm, to Uppsala. I would say it's about 35, 40 minutes. You can also take a bus there for a fraction of

a price, but it takes about an hour and 15 minutes. Both of those leave from the main central station. So we've seen some cool art in Stockholm. Stockholm also has many other museums. What are some of the ones we should definitely check out, especially if we're into history? By far the best one is the Vasa Museum. Have you heard of the Vasa Museum before? So that's where we can see a ship from the 1600s that sunk, but it's still, you know, I think perfectly intact. Yeah. So this is kind of the funny thing with Sweden is Vasa Museum is their most popular museum, and it's kind of the pride and joy of, you know, Swedish museums in general.

And it celebrates a ship that sank shortly after setting sail. so it's kind of funny. It's a massive failure in its day, but it's a huge success now. This boat was built in the 1600s. It was a warship because there's a whole bunch of cannons on it, but it was poorly designed. It made it about two kilometers or so from port, and it sink. And then was more or less forgotten for a few hundred years. And then in the 1950s, they kind of rediscovered it, and then they built this museum around it. And it's a large, intact ship of that era. And so you have this giant ship inside of a building.

And actually you have a couple of the mass and stuff sticking out of the top of the building because the building is kind of built around it. It's a little bizarre to think that a whole museum is built around one object, but you get to go in, you get to walk onto the ship, you get to see and touch the old wood. They salvaged, I would imagine, 85 to 9.000. 90% of the whole ship. And it is a beautiful ship, to be fair.

I saw a photo of it. And definitely seems worth checking out. And then if you were going to go to Vasa Museum, right next door pretty much is Sconson, which is an open outdoor museum. Have you ever been to any of those before? I grew up in New England, and so I've been to Plymouth Plantation and Mystic.

So, yeah, so I'm familiar with people dressing in costume and pretending to live a life of hundreds of years ago. Yeah, so it's very much then it sounds like Plymouth. But yeah, right next to the Vassa Museum, you could probably do both of them in one really long day. And like you said with Plymouth, you have people in character that are dressed up to the time period according to the buildings that are there. The reason that Sconson is so interesting is it sits up on top of a big hill, so you get great views of the city. But then they've also transported all these buildings from primarily Scandinavia to Sconson to kind of recreate the way that it would have been. And I think it's probably mostly the late 1700s or the 1800s. And it's mixed also with a little bit of a zoo.

So yeah, you have a section of how. these old buildings followed, which actually there's a great bakery in one of them where they bake a lot of Swedish baked goods the same way that it would have been baked at that time period that you can go and buy stuff from and then, you know, go down 10 more minutes and then you can go see reindeer or like a lynx. Just going back to the open-air museum. Sure. Sure.

So, yeah, I was reading that Skunson that it actually opened in 1891. They wanted people to remember how sweets lived over the centuries before the Industrial Revolution, which I thought was so interesting that they were thinking about that even at that time. Yeah, just shortly after the Industrial Revolution now. Have you been to the Abba Museum? No, I haven't. You walk by it to go to the Vasa Museum and to go to Scunton, but I've never been in there. I don't know why.

And I've had actually lots of visitors to the city, friends and, you know, acquaintances and family. And nobody's ever gone there. Nobody's ever wanted to go there. But it's one of the busiest museums in the city for sure. That's what I hear. That's what I hear. I think it has a cult following type of, you know, that goes there. I think it's like a pilgrimage.

And so if you're into Abba, you're going to go to the Alba Museum for sure. And then I was reading about the Royal. dramatic theater. Looks like a really gorgeous building from the late 1700s. You can take tours inside. Have you been in? Are you into theater at all?

It's definitely a building worth seeing. So if you're coming from like the city center, you can actually go by this theater building and then walk, which is a beautiful building, and then continue along this road called Strandvegan, which runs parallel to... this really wealthy, rich neighborhood, which has beautiful architecture. And it overlooks the gamalistan, the old town that I spoke about earlier.

And you just kind of walk for about a kilometer and a half. And that's then where you can come to the island where the Vasa Museum is, Sconson and Abba Museum. Well, that sounds like a perfect way to start out a visit to Stockholm. So let's say I'm coming to visit you for a long weekend. Are there any other must-seas? Yeah, so it really depends on, you know, what way you're going to go to the city. If you're coming to see, you know, the big sites, yeah, definitely you want to go to, you know,

Gamelistan. That's the old city, which is fabulous. It's fairly compact on its own little island where you can get lost on these old cobblestone streets. I would highly recommend doing the ghost tour there. I don't do tours very often, but I went and did their ghost tour, and it was, uh, a great history of Sweden or Stockholm and Denmark and Norway, the way that the countries have battled and the borders have shifted over the years. Where do we sign up for that?

I think it's actually just called Ghost Tour's Stockholm. Okay. And they do do it in English, I think two or three times a week during the winter or the colder months. And then, you know, more often, obviously, in the summertime, well worth the money. and the guide that we had was a British guy that must have had a theater background, and he also had to dress in character. So if you're into that, you want to carry that on from Sconson, you want more character actors.

This guy was hilarious and, you know, was in costume, super, super interesting and knowledgeable. They just take you all around. They take you to this little, little tiny street that's one of the smallest, I think, in Europe. It's just a little bit wider than your shoulders. Reminds you a little bit more of what the street would be in Venice. And then at the top of this little street and stairs at the top, is they tell you about where the medieval executioner would execute people. And then just down the street from there,

they take you to this old building where there was a brothel and why that part of the city grew so much because of all of the things. sailors that came to port there. They take you to another square where the Danish king executed so many Swedes at one point that the square filled with blood and then it started raining and flooded the city with red blood. And that's where the term bloodbath comes from. It's a very morbid dark history, but it's a great history. You know, now that you're saying this, it's just, God, Europe just seems like all the same back then. It was just one big execution bloodbath full of brothels. But now it's so different. The characters

of Europe, like, Stockholm is so different from Rome, which is so different from London. And, yeah, I love the diversity of Europe. I hope the European Union stays together. Yeah, right. It's, it's sad, yeah. But that's another conversation. We could get into the politics. I would gladly be on your travel politics podcast. That'll have to be another one. What are our other mustsies? And let's include some hidden gems that maybe others don't know about. Yeah. So, I mean, not a hidden gem, but Statshuset, the city hall is great. That's where they do the Nobel dinner. And then there is a great room in there that's a golden mosaic room where they hired an artist who really didn't have much experience in doing mosaics.

And there's a few problems in this giant gold room of mosaics where there's a character or a figure sitting on a throne and his head gets cut off by the top of the ceiling because he didn't do the math right. Didn't have enough room to put the person's whole head in there. So that's kind of fun to go see. There is an area called Maria Heeson. Maria's M-A-R-I-A and then Heathson, H-I-S-S-E-S-E-E-N. And it's on the island of Sodomolm also where quite a few things are.

And that's where the hipster trendy area is. But you go to this little area. If you look on it on Google Maps to get there, you'll never see tourists there. It's a little dirt path that overlooks the whole city next to a church. But it's next to the churches and you're above the church. So you're sitting at like the rooftop of a church to your right as you're overlooking the city and kind of a cliff down into the water. That's a great, great spot to grab some coffee and go sit there

or grab some pastries and go sit there or because you can drink out in public if you can afford it here in Sweden. That sounds beautiful. I did hear that the government has a monopoly on alcohol. How does that work exactly? So if we did want to bring some alcohol? You can't go to a kiosk or a bodega or a corner store

to go buy it. You have to go to what's called System Blogget. It's the state-run liquor store, and it has more or less standard business hours, nine to five. And then on Saturdays for a couple hours. So Swedes have to plan their drinking. They're responsible, well-organized drinkers when it comes to that. But the selection is amazing, and the people there are incredibly knowledgeable. So if you want a particular beer with these type of qualities, you'll find it.

If you want a wine that's somehow local, I don't know why you'd ever drink a local Swedish wine, but you wanted a local Swedish wine that was eco-friendly, they will know exactly what it is, which is great. You can't do that at most liquor stores. So we can go to the wine shop, take some wine, and then maybe take it on a little picnic to that area that you mentioned. You also mentioned earlier the Stockholm, I never pronounce this right, the Stockholm Archipelago. Oh, yeah. I think that's like very. 30,000 islands. Would you spend a whole day just island hopping?

Yeah, you have to spend a whole day because it's so big and it depends on where you want to go. So from the city center, there's boats that go out all the time. And there's actually a few boats. This is actually kind of an insider tip. If you don't want to pay because it's too expensive for you, you don't want to pay for one of the really long boats to go out into the archipelago, you can take the local transport, just paying the local fee, which I think is about 40 crowns, to take a local boat bus, you could say, if that makes any sense. It does, like a water taxi like you would in Venice.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, like Venice, there's no extra surcharges or anything like that. It's just like a local bus, but on water. And that'll get you to a couple spots. You'll get it far enough out to see the city from the water. but if you really want to get out and get to see the archipelago, the first place that most people go is an island called Vaxholm, which I think is about a 45 minute to an hour boat ride out. And then from there, a lot of boats then leave and go even further out to the archipelago,

where some of them, I would say two or three thousand people live on the little island. There's a few islands that it's just summer homes and pretty much nothing else. and almost all of them are a car-free or very few cars. And I think there's a citadel out there. A porcelain museum is on one of them. Yeah, one of the great things actually on the boat rides is actually not, in my mind, going to the destination. It's actually the journey out there. So when you're on the boat, you get to look at the landscape around there,

but you get these really great homes that are there. there's a couple of little tiny islands that are, I don't know, not much more than 100 meters by 100 meters that have a house on it. You're like, how did they build that? How do they get their power there? And yeah, it's pretty interesting. It's really beautiful. I suggest doing that also in the warmer months just because you want to get out on the decks of the boat and drink our wine. And drink your wine, yeah.

How do you usually spend an afternoon? If you wanted to be kind of more like a swede, is go to the forest, go to the forest, go to the forest. It's amazing how addicted Swedes are to go into the forest. And that's a great thing is the city hasn't cut down a lot of its nature. The way that other cities have is they've expanded. So there are forests and nature quite, quite close to the city. I often, even in the wintertime, we'll go with like a little paper,

and go to a fire pit that's in the forest because the city maintains them. And you can go and, yeah, start a fire and picnic around in the snow if you wanted to. So that's one thing that we typically do quite often is go out into nature. If you wanted to be, you know, stick in the city, going around the park of Humla Gordon, which is near the center, is great. It's a great big park. And then around that you have quite a few cafes and restaurants. It's right on the edge of the, on one side you have the one side, you have the water.

wealthy part of the city, so you get all that, the glitz and the glamour and some of the shopping of the high-end stuff. And then on the other side of the park, you're not too far from the Arts District and a few more middle-of-the-road type of places and some regular shopping. So you mentioned restaurants. I'd love to talk a little bit about Swedish food culture. Yeah, so anybody who's done their, you know, like they picked up their travel guide, they're going to go to Sweden, you're going to get the kind of the typical couple of food items, Swedish meatballs, and lingenberries and stuff like that. But the real thing that, to me, that makes Swedish cuisine is FECA. And so FICA is kind of a cultural tradition, and people do this at work as well,

is it's like a coffee break. And so in the workplace, people are diehard FICA. People, my father-in-law, he worked at the post office, and they stopped at 10 o'clock every day to Fika. And so, and so in the workplace, they go have a little pastry and coffee and then in the afternoon at like 3 o'clock, boom, exactly the exact same time, Fika. And when you do it on the weekend or with friends, you're going to meet at a coffee shop and you're going to buy some Swedish pastries.

And those are where Sweden excels in my mind. There's a couple that you don't want to miss. There's a thing called Semla, which kind of looks like a baked dough like roll. That's a little bit more on the sweet. side, they cut off the top, they pull up the center and they fill it with an almond paste, which has cardamom in it, and then they put fresh whipped cream on it, put the little lid that you just cut off the top on top of the whipped cream and then sprinkle it with powdered sugar,

and that's incredibly good. That sounds amazing. There are canal boulart and cardam boulart, which are cinnamon rolls and cardamom rles. So they kind of, you would think of like an American cinnamon roll. they're not quite as sweet. They're a little bit more bread, but they are amazing. They're so good. That's really what you do.

You go to coffee shops and you eat pastries. Well, there is a tiny, tiny little Swedish bakery here in London. And I actually never knew how to pronounce the name. Maybe you could help me. Bajeriet. Oh, baguayet. Yeah. Bagariate.

Yes. This tiny Swedish bakery on Roastry, I used to sneak off there sometimes when I used to work in Covent Garden. And I'm going to go down there today and order one of these things. Yeah, definitely. Right now, if it's run by Swedes, they should have those Samla, S-E-M-L-A. And those are great. And you might as well order like two or three things and just sample. You know. I might as well. I will. Yeah. But coffee is huge, hugely important here. I think every country says they drink the most amount of coffee, but I think Swedes really are up there. My wife is currently pregnant, and I think they recommend that she doesn't drink over four cups of coffee a day.

If I think in the U.S., they say no coffee. So, yeah, it all depends. I went to the doctor once, and they asked about, like, how much alcohol you drink a day, and I was really surprised that you didn't drink enough? Pretty much. Yeah, they're like, you barely drink at all. That doesn't even qualify as a social drinker. But what's the drinking culture like in Sweden? That's one thing that has changed, I think, dramatically for me in the time that I've lived here. The first time I, you know, lived here was three years in 2006 to 9, and then most recently

the last two years, but my wife's from here, so we're back here all the time in those intermittent years. And in 2005 and 6, 7, it was all... or Pilsners, Pilsners, Pilsners. That's all you could ever get on tap at a bar. Nothing was dark beer. Guinness was like the one few thing, far and few between. And I think it's a little bit because the government has a monopoly over, you know, the liquor.

But one thing that's starting to happen is microbreweries are starting to pop up the way that they have popped up in much of Europe. and the Swedes are starting to learn what real beer tastes like. So that's a really good thing. So yeah, now you can go to a handful of almost every restaurant will have a larger selection nowadays. And then there's a handful of really, really good bars or breweries or specialty microbrewery bars. Are there any distilleries or breweries worth checking out? By Swedish law, you can't go do like beer tours. go to them and you can't, you know, get samples directly from there. But there's one place that is

excellent called Omnipolis Hat. And I think I'm going to have to send you a list of links that you can share with everybody. Okay. But this place, they make their own microbrewer. Brews. Really, really, really good beer. And then they make amazing pizza. So you can go there and have a couple hours, definitely. Their beers are regularly listed as some of the top, like, 20 beers in the world consistently. So, and I can vouch for that. Okay. Yeah, and then the pizzas are excellent, really good, interesting toppings and all that. But my favorite place to drink is actually a place not too far from there called the Saldotten's Fake, which is a Czech beer restaurant. And they just serve beers from Czechoslovakia, or the Czech Republic nowadays, sorry. Um,

and they're the slow-poor pilsners. So I know I just kind of said Swedes only drink pilsners, but these are the good pilsners from, yeah, the Czech Republic. And what if we're not that into beer? We want to drink something else. Yeah, you can always get wine everywhere. Wine is pretty easy everywhere.

And actually, it's a decent price here. That's one thing we haven't touched on is when you do go out to eat or drink is be expecting. no, let's say 20 or 25% more than what you would cost than what you would get in much of Europe. So a pint of beer would probably run you, I would say, about eight or nine euros for just a basic beer. But if you're going to get a micro brew that's extra good, you're looking probably another

euro or two on that. But don't worry about tipping. Okay. So I was just going to ask that there's a very high price, but then we don't have to worry about tips. Yeah, correct. But that does surprise a lot of people how expensive it is to go out and eat. But yeah, you know, wine prices actually are really affordable if you compare it to the rest of Europe. And then one thing, not as so many younger people, but definitely the like 45, 50-year-olds and older Swedes.

I'm getting close to that 45, so I should maybe move up that age a little bit higher to old. They drink a lot of after-dinner drinks, so like schnapps and aquavit, the digestive liquors after dinner, I guess, is what they're technically called. I'm sure that's going to become hip again. Yeah, as soon as, you know, like Paps Blue Ribbon in the U.S. As soon as they get- Let's make it happen. Business idea. Bring back the old spirits.

I like a good after-dinner drink. Why not? Yeah. So it's... Sorry, go ahead. Punch. That's one thing. That's a flavor that is a...

and liquor and in a lot of these Swedish pastries is it's called P-U-N-S-C-H. It's a sweet kind of liquory flavor. That's very, very common to have at kind of a traditional Swedish holiday dinner or, like I said, found in a lot of pastries. Speaking of drinks around the holiday, so Glog, is that in exclusive like Christmas time type of thing? It is. It's very similar to Gluvine, which is the German. mold red wine. This is something that I've fallen in love with. You know, I make actually every year at Christmas, you know, by hand, but it's essentially, it's dry red wine with,

depends on how you make it if you wanted to make it yourself, a little bit of brandy, and then spices like cinnamon and nutmeg, orange, and you just let it slowly simmer where you don't cook out the alcohol, and it's amazing. So around Christmas time, I heard the markets were really great in Stockholm. So I can just imagine drinking some glug, walking around. Drunk after drinking too much glug. I guess. Buying everything.

Glugging around. So, okay, say I've had like a fantastic stay in Stockholm. I want to buy a sort of typical product to bring back with me to remember Sweden. What would be a good souvenir? And are there any local markets that you would recommend to shop at? You know, the thing I think most tourists would probably leave with, but it's not a, like this region is Dala Hest. It's these little horses that are, you can find them at about a few inches to about a foot tall very easily. And, you know, most touristy areas, they're hand-carved wooden horses that have been painted.

the typical one is red and then it kind of has like a flower pattern all around it but those come from a region called dalana which is the more iconic part of Sweden when people think of old time Sweden but that's why they're so popular and why they're synonymous with all of Sweden so a lot of people I think pick up you know one of those they're small enough to throw in your you know your carry on and they're not terribly heavy you know they're handcrafted Are there any shops or markets by local designers or artists that you know of or a fan of? You know, a lot of those, there's a lot of clothing stores because the Swedish design when it comes to fashion is quite cool. I'm not so fashionable, but those kind of shops that you're going to find are going to be on most of the island of Sotomon. So just a little south of like the center of the city. And that's where you get the more hip areas. And there's a long shopping street there where, yeah, you do have a lot of shops run by local Swedes or local designers. There's a design store called Design Torriot, which has a lot more like interior design and decorative pieces and little trinkets and knickknacks that are primarily by.

Scandinavian designers. That's pretty cool. And then if you wanted to, you know, splurge, there is a place called Svensk 10, or that's on that road called Strandvagin that I mentioned earlier, that if you were going to walk out to the Vasa Museum in Abba and Sconson, it's along that road, and that's one of the most famous designers of like interiors. So if you wanted textiles, or you actually had the budget to buy, let's say, some furniture or a mirror or lamp, that's where you'd want to go. Okay, sounds good. This has been such a fun conversation, Eric.

Before I let you go, could we do a lightning round of some of your favorite places in Stockholm? I hope so. We'll see if I can answer them well. Let's see. I'm up for the challenge. Okay. Favorite bakery? Ooh, Viette the captain.

Right in the center, it's an old coffee shop with a bakery inside. And what do you usually order there? A thing called probably a Budapest Bakusa. I'm going to have to get you to send me all these spellings. Yeah, yeah, it's a Budapest cake. So, yeah, it's kind of a sponge cake with some orange and it's rolled. Yeah. That's the one I would go for.

How about a coffee shop? You know what? I stick to the old ones. There's something really nice about Sweden where they haven't lost these old, old coffee shops. where it feels like you're sitting in your grandparents living room. So those are the ones that I would recommend. There's like espresso house, which is your Starbucks, a Wayne's coffee, but yeah, skip those. Go to the unique ones.

These are the ones that aren't chains and you can tell from looking in the windows. Give us one or two unique ones. Yeah, vet the captain is one that I mentioned. They're not tough to find, but you just have to look in and often they have their own bakery as well, which a lot of the coffee shop chains don't. Okay. Before we go on to lunch spot, so we sort of like touched on Swedish food

and we went right into the baked goods. But what would like a typical Swedish lunch bay, traditional, and then we can go into like other places you like to go? You can eat like a swede right now, the way that a lot of workers do. Go to a lot of restaurants at lunchtime and they don't have a menu.

they just kind of serve a buffet style, and it's called Doggins Lunch, so the Daily Special. And for typically between 90 and maybe 120 crowns, you are going to be offered probably one of three different like entrees that will come out quite quickly. But then you'll get coffee, you'll maybe get a dessert, you'll get salad, you'll get maybe some like juice included as well. that's the very typical way to eat Swedish lunch. And I know there's a lot of fish in Sweden, but are vegetarians out of luck? Or we wanted to go to one of these daily canteens, would we have an option?

You definitely would. And yeah, now I've listened to enough of your podcast as well that I know that one on your list that you talk about often when you travel to these other cities. And so there is a really good cafe restaurant called Hermans on the island of Sotom, which also has one of the best overlooks of the city as well. And there they serve vegetarian and vegan food. But you can find definitely vegan or sorry, vegetarian food, I would say at least 50% of the places in the city. That's not going to be a problem.

Vegan, you're probably going to do pretty well. Yeah, it's not going to be too difficult anywhere. And then if you're, you know, gluten intolerant or such, there's quite a few bakeries as well that will have something in there or at least be able to tell you what is gluten-free and not. What's your favorite place to have lunch? A place in this building called Kutuahusit, the culture house right in the city center. It's kind of what I said that all Swedes do for lunch, this daily special. I don't, it's not that the food is amazing. but it's inside of this culture building right in the city center it's on the sixth floor it's just very relaxed the people there that that work there are great they always have fresh good food it's usually a pasta dish a meat dish and a fish dish and then something vegetarian and followed by a big like salad buffet and coffee and all that for under 100 crowns so that's the type of place that I would recommend for people when they

come to Sweden because that's really what the Swedes do. That sounds good. And so is that the culture then to take a proper lunch break and not just eat at your computer? Yeah, yeah, definitely. You take a real lunch here. Yeah, I've spent most of my working career eating lunch at my computer and it just sounds so sad upon reflection. I want to try to not do that. Yeah, that's one thing that makes me really happy about being back in Scandinavia again is because they're very strict with that. I worked at a gallery in Copenhagen as well. And we actually, this is definitely different than a lot of other parts of Europe. In Denmark, they get kind of a stipend, you could say, businesses do to help supplement or to actually even feed their employees. So there we,

our boss, you know, he paid for all of our lunches. And we ordered food. kind of like from a grocery store and we ate together and we were only eight people in the gallery but it was something that we did together we always ate food that more or less he paid for which was great and if you wanted to go away for a little while maybe read would that be sort of frowned upon culturally if you want to do your own thing yeah unfortunately the places that i've worked and been it's kind of a social time i think because they do in general enough, they're very conscious of that work-life balance that it's not too bad that you have to spend a little time with your calling during that instead of, you know, getting away and reading

a book or... Because you'll actually have a life after work and not be tethered to your phone or computer. Fair enough. You don't have to build that free time into your workday as much, so... Okay, moving on to dinner. So let's say you're treating your wife to a night out on the town, or she's treating you. Where would you guys go? I'd go to, again, Gamanistan, the old town, because it would be kind of like a date night.

So if you're going to come here to Stockholm with like a significant other, you know, almost any of the restaurants in Gamanistan, but build in a little bit of time just to walk and take it slow. That's really what we do when we go out to dinner. It's not really about the location or it's not about all the restaurant. It's about the time around it. And that's kind of what's nice about Stockholm to me. The more that we're talking, not about specific restaurants. restaurants or specific cafes. It's more about the environment in which you're sitting in and

your mental space as you're kind of, you know, going there and around it. That sounds lovely, Eric, but you have to give us at least one. So give us one. We really just jump and jump and jump and and jump. I guess I'm not a loyal person to the yeah, though the one that I think is probably a good one that a lot of people would like is Taverna Brillo. It's a kind of also towards the center of the city. It's a very large restaurant that it broke up into a couple different moods, you could say. So that's a good place that depending on how you're feeling that night, you can kind of sit in that section or this section. They have their own bakery. They have, they make their own ice cream. The food is excellent. The crowd there is just. You're

usually lively. They sometimes have live music. I guess I would say Tavernabrillo, if I'm going to be pinned down, which I am by you. Yes, I'm pinning you down. Do you have a favorite Swedish meal? Yeah, I'm going to have to go to the one that if Swedes here, they'll probably be like, oh my God. It's an old dish that I don't think has been popular with Swedes for a while, but you can find it on a lot of menus still, and it's so good. It's called plank steak. So, So they take a piece of oak and they dip it in water. They let it soak and just become full of moisture. They cook a steak to maybe, let's say, medium.

And then they put it on this piece of wood. They put some mashed potatoes out of a piping, like a baking piping bag. So you get this kind of weird mashed potato ring around it on this piece of wood and some fresh vegetables. And then they throw it back into an oven. So then the wood starts a smoke and that smoke just infuses into everything. And then your mashed potatoes are nice and crispy on top. There's something very old school about that one that's really, really good. What is your favorite thing to do culturally?

Do you like comedy, live music? For me, it's going to art and art museums and architecture. So, you know, the comedy scene here is primarily in Swedish. so that's not going to be so great for tours. But quite a few big acts do come, like English-speaking ones, do come here. I saw Jim Gaff again recently. So that was really cool. The music scene, just because I have kids, I don't go to music very often,

but the Swedish music industry is actually one of their largest exports. and I'm always surprised to find out that a certain band is Swedish or that songwriter is Swedish. The Eurovision song contest is ridiculously important here. Oh, yeah. Can you mention what Eurovision is for non-European listeners? Yeah, it was something that I never knew either before. That's where Abba became super famous on the global scale to start with. But imagine American Idol, but with countries. and a little less like reality TV to it.

But this goes back, I think, to the 70s, if I recall. A few decades, yeah. And it's sort of like the Olympics of music. So countries are competing against each other. And some countries get more into it than others, but I'd never heard of it before I moved to England. It's not super huge here. But I love the idea of having an event,

not just the Olympics, where different countries are all watching the same thing. and sort of participating in this event. Yeah, I don't follow it either much myself, but I know I find it quite amusing because a few years ago, I think it was like a death metal band that dressed up in costumes from Finland that won.

So, you know, this is, that's kind of odd that that would become like, kind of, you know, the best music of in this competition. I think it was like two or three years ago. It was a man in, drag, I believe, or maybe it was a man in transition to becoming a woman, but he had a very thick beard while performing in very female clothes. So it was a very gender-bending type of performance, but was really good, and I'm 99% sure won the Eurovision that year, which is pretty cool.

Are there any culture tips we should know about Sweden before we go? Yeah, actually. So one of the most important things I think is a tourist coming here. To be prepared, it's a very cash-free society. I don't even know the last time I actually had, you know, a actual paper bill or coins on me very often. Everybody pays with card or with like mobile payments. So be prepared to pay with a card. Make sure you have a pen number. You have that all sorted out. If you're coming here, a couple hundred, crowns is all you need in actual currency because nobody really needs cash. So even on like the water taxis and stuff, we can pay with card. Yeah, you're going to pay with card before you get on them or, you know, you're going to buy like a week pass or something like that. Yeah, I think there's something called the Stockholm Pass. Yeah, yeah, the Stockholm Pass or card.

If you're going to buy a hot dog from like a hot dog stand, you're going to pay with a card. So convenient. Yeah, it's really crazy. I recently tried to pay with old currency and didn't realize I didn't have valid currency any longer. Public toilets, far and few between here. And then be ready. That's one reason that you would need to have some money with you in coins is because you have to pay for all the toilets everywhere. Even if you go to like a McDonald's and you order food, often you have to pay for the toilet. That is an interesting tip. I would not have guessed that. So you mentioned before that we don't tip in restaurants. Is there anywhere else we're supposed to tip or it's all already built into the bill? Most of the time it's built into the bill. I rarely tip. So, you know, if you're taking a taxi from the airport, stuff like that, I wouldn't worry about it unless you really, you know, asked a lot from the taxi driver. You know, you had a thousand bags and they were really helping you. And a restaurant or pub, it's the exact same thing. If they're really, really nice people and going out of their way, you can leave, you know, a few crowns, but it's not customary.

That's how it should be. It just makes life so much easier. And then also somebody was telling me about a trip to America. And I actually realized this myself the last time I went that. The price tags everywhere don't have tax built in. Like here in London, it is. So the price is what you say. And they were so confused. What is it like in Sweden? I think that's everywhere but the United States. Why do we make things so complicated? Or why do they? Anyway.

So, yeah. So if the listeners didn't quite follow that, this is one thing that stresses out my wife. And it now stresses me out because I've lived abroad long enough. Whenever we go back to the U.S., you, I don't know, you go and you buy a shirt from a store. And it says it's, I don't know, $13.99 on the price tag. but you can't pull out $13.99 and be ready to pay because you don't know what the local tax is going to be.

And so it's inevitably going to come out and cost you $15 and $13. And you're like, why can't you just put $15 and $13 on the price tag? So here, if it says it's $25, it's going to be $25 crown. If it's $500, it's $500. So easy. Yeah, very rarely some hidden fee. They're very transparent in that. What advice would you give to somebody who's thinking about moving to Sweden?

If you're able to move here with some type of work, you're going to be much better off. And if you are moving here because of like a partner, that's going to make it a lot easier. If you don't have any ties here, I'm going to say it's nearly impossible versus, let's say, like, a Central American country or South American country. They're very strict on that. But once you do get here, like we've talked about a lot of the maternity leave, the vacation, the quality of life. is incredibly high. The shockers is that housing is incredibly difficult. There's a housing shortage that seems like it goes back to the 80s

and they're always 20 years behind what they're supposed to be at. So in the city of Stockholm, if you think, oh, I can just come here with a good budget and start renting a place in the city center, good luck. because there's these really long lines that Swedes will sign their kids up for when they're just a few years old, so that 20 years later, when they're ready to move out of the house, they've moved up this long queue system so they can get a firsthand contract. That's insane.

So your kids already have a place to live 20 years ago? Yeah, no, I'm not joking. If you're a kid or if your parents and you were born in Stockholm, I would say, a majority of kids by the time they're five, they're probably on a few of these housing lists. So they have a chance to get a firsthand contract in an area of the city that they would like. And it's just government regulates the market so well or so well as maybe not the right term. So be ready to be renting an apartment secondhand, which means the price is going to be a little bit higher because somebody wants to make a couple dollars off of that transaction.

Your renter's rights are a little bit different than if you're a firsthand contract. But if you are okay living a little bit further outside of the center, you're going to have much better luck. And the housing prices are a little steep here. I think that was a question that you posed earlier. And I would say you're going to need for a single person, for a single room, you know, or one room, flat, you're probably looking at 10,000 crowns, which is probably, you know, a little over a thousand euros. How much do you think you would need to live a comfortable life in Stockholm?

I would say, you know, monthly-wise, I can do that a little bit easier. I think, you know, the average is that people make after taxes here is probably about 22,000 crowns, which I look this up, which is about $27, or $2,700 U.S. dollars. After taxes. Yeah, after taxes are about 2,000 pounds. I think that you can definitely do it here, but I think you're going to be kind of on a tight budget. You're going to maybe be living far away from the city.

You're going to live maybe in smaller accommodations, not go out so often. I would probably say you need to have another $500 or $600 per month a little over $3,000 to start being. okay here. But, you know, if you can get past that initial, like, shock or come with an extra couple thousand dollars to start with, the quality of life, it outweighs the negative, negative consequences of having high cost of living. Well, this has been such a fun conversation, Eric. Thank you for taking the time. Where can people find out more about you?

Ericwold.org, if you want to hear or look at my artwork, E-R-I-C-W-A-L-L-O-R-G, I do show regularly, and you can look on my website for that. You also started a podcast network that's all about art and culture. I have a Danish friend, a Danish-American friend that I met while living in Denmark. He had a long-running art podcast, so we decided to start a podcast together. and that one's called By the Way, a contemporary art news podcast. I follow the art world. He doesn't so well. And so I present stories to him from the art world.

And this is not a podcast that's supposed to be really deep for artists necessarily. It's supposed to be very inclusive to anybody who likes to go to museums all the time when they travel. We'll talk about the Leonardo da Vinci painting that sold a few months ago for a record, you know, record amount of auction. and it's me presenting stories to him and us just kind of banter. It's very loosey-goosey. That sounds awesome, Eric. Thank you so much again for being on the show and for sharing all of your great insight on Stockholm. Thank you.

Enjoy your weekend. All right, you too, thanks. Bye. Bye. In case your mind drifted off into the clouds when we started talking about almond-filled pastries, I will include the links to the things that Eric and I talked about on postcardacademy.com. So come say hello to me over there. You can also find me on Instagram at Postcard Academy.

If you want to cheer on Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest, it begins May 8th in Lisbon, Portugal. And on the next episode of Postcard Academy, I will be talking to the founder of the Bult Collective, a travel community that uses collective purchasing power to access amazing experiences at a fraction of the cost of you go solo. That's all for now. Thanks for listening, and have a beautiful week wherever you are. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarah micotel.com slash blank no more.