Nypa stansen första dagen i månaden! Apparently! Although I am not sure that the expression of the sentiment will necessarily translate into Swedish, so I might not go about pinching or punching anyone today. Holidays have officially started here; lots of people are now off until August!
One of the best things about summer in Stockholm is all the cycling I am getting to do. I've got a 10km journey to KI, and pretty much the entire thing is on bike paths. In the morning when I am going in at a normal time it is BUSY! There are queues of cyclists at the lights, and for some reason the slowest person who everyone else has passed on the previous stretch of path always thinks its a good idea to free wheel past the queue, so everyone has to overtake them all over again. But in the evening I tend to miss the rush hour, and the path is nice a quite, and I can wheel along singing along to my music.
A lot of it is along water, and it is pretty beautiful. If steep at the end!
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| Crossing Tranebergsbron. |
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| I pick my favourite boat from here every morning. |
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| And then cycle round the north-west corner of Kungsholmen. |
The best and the worst cycle happened within 40 hours of each other at the end of this week. Let's start with the worst and get it over with. First off, I was TIRED, I wasn't sure if my legs were going to power me all the way back. Second, it was properly windy, like Edinburgh often is, but Stockholm seems to be less often, which means it has a lot of grit which has accumulated and blows in your face. Third, I had made an unfortunately floaty choice of skirtwear, which kept getting caught in my wheel, so I had to hold it up to the handlebars to avoid this. It was still decent (thank goodness!), but when held in this manner turns into a sail even on still days, and on this particularly blustery day became a total health hazard. Forth, I managed to leave at normal time, which meant I got caught in going home traffic, including one lady cycling whilst on a hand held phone and weaving all over the path, and several inline skaters with lethal poles, which they shoot out behind them right at cyclist eye level about 30 times every minute. To top it all off, as I was cycling past a stationary car at the side of the road, it suddenly pulled into a U-turn too close for me to avoid, and I crashed into the back of it making a terrifying noise. It gave both me and the girl driving quite a shock, but once we had got over our language barrier (by her starting to speak English!) we established that both me and the car were alright, and carried on. Horrible journey!
In contrast, on Wednesday I stayed at work until after midnight, and so got a completely deserted ride home. I haven't seem Stockholm in the dark much, because it isn't dark much at the moment, but between 12 and 1am is as dark as it gets (not very!), and beautiful!
As I pulled out of KI I was treated to a view of the cranes building the hospital all lit up.
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| Back over Tranebergsbron. |
It took way longer than usual because I kept stopping to take pictures, but I had Johnny Flynn in my ears and one heck of a sky above. I tried to get a good photo of the colour of it, but the best I got is reasonably un-scenic. Here it is anyway:
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| Absolutely not doing it justice. I am not sure if the sun is setting, or rising, or just skimming the horizon for a bit. |
As I got back to Åkeshov a deer walked right on to the bike path a little ahead of me. She was lovely, but didn't stay about for long before springing off into the bushes to the side of the path. Glory!
So, in conclusion: cycling = a good way to travel. But not at rush hour!
It's late, and a soggy Misha has just come back in from a nighttime sojourn and is trying to push her way into my bed, so I am off to remove her and sleep.
Godnatt all,
x
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