Stockholm day 2: A chance encounter
A memory popped up on Facebook the other day about our trip to Stockholm last summer, and I realised that I had entirely left you with a bit of a cliffhanger. On day one, we’d been to the Vasa Museum (highly recommended) then finished off the day with a trip to the fabulous Ardbeg Embassy in the old town for a whisky adventure.
What do you mean, you don’t remember? Go back and catch up, I’ll wait.
Done? Excellent.
Day 2 found us remarkably hangover-free and back in Gamla Stan on the search for coffee and those amazing cinnamon buns that they sell everywhere. We ate a lot of those.
Like, really a lot. Worked out when we got home that we’d spent the same amount on coffee and cinnamon buns as we did on all the other food put together.
Suitably fortified, we continued our wandering. The previous day we’d spotted the Science Fiction Bookstore, so just had to go in and check on my friends’ books.
I’d fancied checking out the Fotografiska museum (go on, see if you can guess what that is), so set off.
After all that mooching, we decided to go for some food. There was really only one choice. I wanted to head over to the Rålambshovsparken later on as there was a free outdoor film festival and on the way there was this lovely little spot.
Suitably fortified, we set off for the park, pausing briefly to admire the quite excellent traffic crossing signs.
Finally we got to the park, and the point of this story. (Well done for playing along so far. It does get good, I promise.)
The park was pretty busy on this warm August evening. The young and the beautiful of Stockholm were lounging around on the grass, chatting and drinking and having a splendid time. We wandered along the path towards where the big screen was set up, and noticed a couple of guys heading towards us.
Now so far Stockholm had felt like a super-safe place to be, and we didn’t think much of it. Until one of the guys pointed towards us and spoke to his mate, then clearly started heading towards us.
This guy was skinny, heavily tattooed (like hairline down, covered in tats) and I must confess that I was starting to get slightly nervous. The two guys reached us and he started talking excitedly and pointing at Ed.
“I’m sorry - I don’t speak Swedish,” I said, thinking that I really must learn how to say that in Swedish at some point (it’s jag pratar inte svenska, in case you were wondering), as a lot of people we’d met had started off in Swedish before realising and switching instantly to fluent English.
Which is what this guy did. He pointed at Ed’s t-shirt, with a big grin on his face.
“I drew that!”
It turned out that he was an illustrator living in Stockholm, who just so happened to have designed the t-shirt for an American rock band from Jacksonville, Florida, and who just so happened to be in the park on the same evening that two guys from Yorkshire happened to be wandering along, one of whom was wearing the t-shirt that he designed.
It’s a small world, what can I tell you?
We had a chat about the band, if we were going to see them when they were playing later in the year (no, just here for the weekend), would we go see them back home (maybe), and how were we enjoying Stockholm (very much!), he gave us a thumbs-up and we went our separate ways.
What are the odds?
I must admit part of me thought he might have been trying to get us to buy him a beer (entirely my bad, and I felt terrible for it), but we bumped into him later on and he gave us the biggest grin and two thumbs-up.
I think we had genuinely made his evening. He was just so thrilled to see someone wearing his design out in the world. I wish we’d got his name, or a selfie with him.
The main point of this particular episode over, we headed back to the hotel. Cracking sunset.
The City Hall looked fabulous at night.
Then back to our hotel. What exciting adventures will the Graham boys get up to on Day 3? Will you have to wait another five months to find out?
Guess you’ll just have to wait and see!
Great images and fabulous storytelling. Small world indeed.