Stockholm day 1 (Part 2)

I am sitting in the reception of the hostel and I have just realised that the coffee tables are from Ikea (so are the curtains from the showers). By my side there is a guy from Mid-lands, Skype-ing with a loud male voice, about future plans and possibly moving to Australia. Exactly at the same time, the equivalent (physically) of Mr Miyagi has walked downstairs into the lounge and stared at us for some long 5 minutes.

Anyways...

Back to when I overdosed myself with sugar from the peanut and chocolate brownie from the coffee shop that was playing some (very loud) Ricky Martin from the late 90s and was served by a Swedish that could easily be 16 years old, I headed towards Djurgärden to keep exploring. The fact that it was Sunday and Midsummer Festival left me with limited options, so as my friend A advised me, I decided to explore the Vasa Museum.

On the way to the said coffee shop, I was forced to cross the Old Town, the isle in the middle, so came across the most (but really, the less) touristy place of the city which is the Royal Palace, where very strict guards were telling tourists off when stepping on the invisible lines of the military territory.

You have to do something touristy and visit the Royal Palace (just from outside).

Excuse my ignorance, but isn't this an Illuminati sign?

The promenade was deliciously pleasant. After a non-existent spring in London, this northern sunshine was actually hurting my eyes, forcing me to wear my sunglasses after months of getting dust. Gorgeous blue skies that I thought I would never have, walking through the Strandvägen.

Djurgärden hid the Vasa Museum behind the Nordiska Museet (another impressive building, by the way) and big leafy trees. There it was, a modern building containing a very old ship. And what a ship!

While waiting in the queue for the tickets, those desired blue skies turned graphite grey and started drizzling back to London-mode. It was probably the fact that I was still slightly wet and cold from the rain, the darkness and what I was seeing itself, but really, as soon as in saw the sunken ship I had shivers, goose bumps and irremediably, I found myself 20 ago watching The Goonies for the first time, on their last scene when they finally find One-eye Willie, the boat in the cave and they fight against The Fratellis (video, yay).

Regardless that The Gonnies is one of my ultimate favourite films and that the adventure itself is every kids' dream (having an Spielberg's disfunctional family is not really necessary), I must admit that the first view of the ship, in the gloomy light, and itself of being of those enormous propoertions undoubltly impressive.

Now, without trying to frivolice, the Vasa sank in 1628. One-eye Willies ship (The Goonies) was dated from 1632. It all make sense now.

As I could hear from the English free tour, the history is as interesting as intriguing. The history itself can actually be shortened by saying that It was basically a major engineering mistake; a BAD design for which nobody could be finally blamed as nobody was directly guilty for what happened.

I would say that the history behind the Vasa is probably as shameful as the Spanish Armada half a century before, as the Vasa just managed to sail less than a nautical mile (2 km) and sank straight away. From all the tripulation, only just around a dozen perished. The fact that it was still between the islands, that there were boats surrounding it and that they could swim is what saved the rest. It was the greediness of the king of the time, who insisted on a titanical proportioned ship (well, NOT that big, and it also sank, innit?), the outrageous amounts of cannons, which added weight and an excessive 10 sails what tipped the boat even with weak wind.

Breathtaking, really.

It wasn't until 1959, when the ship was finally salvaged, resurfaced and the history revived for the decades to come. Preserved in natural wooden colour with some white marks, that according to the tour guide was spits; 'yes, spits. Please don't do it, we don't like it' asserted the guide with his Swedish accent. Apparently water reacts with PEG (polyethylene glycol) the polymer that preservers the wood, creating the weird white marks on the surface. It was probably just condensation. I forgot to spit.

A good deal of it was saved but unfortunately it had lost its colour. Thanks to painting and writings, it can be known that it was originally red, decorated in a rainbow of colours, in each of the wooden images. Every sailor's dream!

A small replica with the original colours of the Vasa

After good couple of hours, my stomach started to growl, sign that it was time to fill it up. Wondering about the Strandvägen (promenade. Yes, I'm pretending that I'm actually learning English, when what I am really doing is using Google), I found myself in the Musikmuseet, on one of the sides, a nice little courtyard with a few wooden tables and locals having a beer. So did I.

I had some meatballs

These super friendly chaps and I made some conversation as they started commenting how much they like the meatballs from that place. The even taught me how to pronounce the swedish word kötbullar (pronounced chotbullar). Meatballs with puréed potatoes, number 1 of the traditional Swedish dishes, served with creamy sauce and lingonberries. Idea never lied to us.

And I am recapping this, as I dry myself out from being soaking wet trying to reach this coffee shop. As I accostummed to do in London, I managed to find one of those arty/local magazines, which was conveniently edited in English and from which I downloaded the digital edition of Totally Stockholm. Good job guys. I discovered that there is another cool street parallel to Götgatan, called Swedenborgsgatan, which, according to this magazine, had two very interesting coffee shops one next to each other. With a bit of confusion at first, I managed to find KA's cafe, stopping first at Waynes Coffee in the corner, the other place around the corner that has been closed all this weekend. It really is a conglomerate of lots of shops in one, but that particular one is really cool shop. Lots of arty magazines, ridiculously yummy looking muffins and coffee and a transparent floor that sort of bloomed my vertigo, as I could see people getting their hair cut in the floor underneath.

But yes, I managed to get to KA's ready to have the warmest soup and treat me with my Sunday morning poached eggs.

The Swedish option though, offered a different thing to offer me. I opted for the not necessarily appealing Rye bread with ham and cheese, praying to god not to get one of those hard-rock toastie breads commonly suggested in diets. Surprisingly, I received an amazing moist rye bread, with delicious cheese and ham, soy sprouts, tomato and cucumber. The best sandwich I have had in a long time.

They are playing Lykke Li on the background. I don't want to generalise. That really will be the next story.

 

Weeds

I am sitting right now in one the first places I ever had the chance to eat out in London when i moved in. The first couple of weeks I was not leaving in my current house. I was in a youth hostel in Pimlico, in Belgravia Rd, very close to Victoria Station. This is it, Pimlico Fresh again, and I just witnessed on the funnies things of the week.

I was seating by the window, when a couple of Spanish guys were looking for a place to sit, and quietly I made them some room as I was perfectly understanding every word they were saying. But when the place emptied a bit, I sat in the communal tables to have my space, and let's be honest, to have a nearby socket in which to plug by phone as it drains of battery for tethering the internet connection to the iPad.

Two friends seated in the table in front of me, but one of them, his voice was disturbingly, as being the living embodiment of Darth Vader, if it wasn't for a) him being a hipster and b) blonde. I want to think he had a massive party last night and as a result, his voice has the deepest darkest pitches I have ever heard in my life, not counting Bon Jovi's vocoder, but never mind.

A group of middle age women siting besides me just called one of the waitress attention: 'Excuse me, excuse me! There is a very strong smell of Marihuana coming from that corner!!!'. The whole cafe just looked at the corner where two women were having their own conversation. All eyes were on them but they realise they   were talking about the actual corner. Amazed, the one facing the public, looks at all of us confused and waving some jazz hands she replies with an accent: 'Hey, I am Dutch but I'm not smoking!' and the whole cafe laughs effusively.

By the way, the couple sitting in front of me just asked for a piece of carrot cake that has more icing than cake, but still, I'm tempted to put my most innocent face and ask them for a scoop of it to try. It really looks amazing.

Darth Vader has baby pink socks.

After a quick look from the counter, two of the waitress went outside to examine the source of said intoxicating substance. Left, right, they don't see anything. And all of a sudden, an invisible wave of the allucinogic plant slaps us in our faces, like somebody would be right in front of us smoking. The group of ladies, still horrified about the fact that somebody has smoking a spliff near the premises cannot understand how the source has not been found yet.

But I started the morning running away from the Jubilee festivities. I didn't miss last year Kate and William's wedding, pretty entertaining environment at Hyde Park, but this barely springy weather plus the constant threats from TfL to avoid the public transport in zone 1 at all cost has really put me off this year. I considered attending todays parade, but for the sake of a potential cold and somebody stepping on my feet, I still headed south to Sloane Sq to the Saatchi Gallery. Almost a dozen of galleries free of cost kept me entertained while the hordes of people started clearing the tube, on time to my way home.

The photographies from Katy Grannan were impressives. Are the ones which are portraying the whole Out of Focus exhibition. Brilliant. 

Heartbroken boyfriend maybe? (Marlo Pascual)

Octopus Face (Yumiko Utsu)

Good Old Lizzie (Chris Levine)

And the canvases from Ana Tzarev, a Croatian artist. It was not really the pieces themselves what I liked, but physically them. It all consisted on different flowers in big canvases using big blobs of oil paint, so my engineering and stingy mind thought inmediately: what is the cost of each of these pieces, just by their paint cost? I am pretty sure that is a fortune, plus imagine the finger pain after squeezing all those thousands of tubes. Let's make an estimation:

Winton Oil Paint tubes: 6 GBP average

Dimensions of each blob: 1x1x1 cm (approximate) 

Volume of each blob: 1 cm3 = 1 ml

Number of blobs in 10x10 cm of canvas = 100 blobs = 100 ml

Dimensions of canvas: 2x2m = 200x200 cm = 40,000 blobs.

Let's not be exaggerated and round that to 20,000 blobs. 

Still, that equals 20,000 ml.

Each tube is 200 ml, therefore, it is needed 100 tubes of paint.

100 tubes x 6 GBP = 600 pounds worth of paint (+ price of canvas).

Amazing. I loved it. 

Massive -undetermined material- flower in the middle of the room. Not that I would put it on my living room, but big enough to be amazing.

Then I arrived at this very disturbing room, (I don't really remember which floor), a display by Richard Wilson kept me for 5 long seconds ridiculously confused. There was a very strong smell of crude oil, due to some of the parts proceeding from old oil installations. It was very weird, it was an empty room and some kind of channel on the left. Looked like the room was filled with water, dark water, or maybe oil because of the smell. Then I thought it was a very deep room, and in the middle, they had laid a mesh to avoid visitors falling into the pit. And finally I realised that it was a giant mirror and what I saw reflected it was the actual ceiling.

After feeling completely stupid for taking me so long to realise about it, I took a photo of myself to celebrate my discovery (and left the room quickly to avoid intoxication with the crude fumes).

Hello!!!

Disturbing but very cool.

Not to bore anybody, I think Saatchi was great, I liked almost everything. Excuse my incompence to write about art, it is really not my field.

I hope I still find some other little unexplored gems around the city soon. But that is going to be another story.

First Impressions on Earth

I could say that I have been living here in this city time enough to feel comfortable with it structure, and be able to get a feeling of what to do and where to go easily. It is exactly at this point in which my 'sponginess' for knowledge is used as a base to start collecting 'The best of...'. 

It is right now when I carry my little black book of Greatest Hits and start jotting down ideas and places. And it cannot be denied that feeling comfortable in a place enough to want to come back it is definitely a winning situation. A little coffee place, a restaurant, a favourite dish or drink and just want to take your friends there all the time.

This happened this weekend. After some time wasted spent trying to find something appealing or decent to do around Bermondsey, unexplored area for me, gut feeling told me to go further down South to Brixton. My friend M directed me to Brixton Market. It was 6-ish, time for stalls and stands to be closing down. Remains of wrapping film, fruit skins and washing water on the floor was a clear sign of the end of the trade time. Inside the corridors of the market, after a bit of doubt of where exactly to go and what did we wanted, we ended up in Seven at Brixton.

M had been there before, eating some churros before. I was strangely craving for some cake and a cup of coffee, as unfortunately this spring is not proving very warm. Our first instinct moved us to seat on the booths, next to the working heater and probably thinking about using the blankets that were availble. A traditional paper luggage tag advised us that the table was reserved, so we headed to the bar sitting on the stools, facing the market alleyway. 

While amused by the Menu reigned by Spanish dished and the presence of Tarta de Santiago, again, we instinctively looked back to the main bar, to find a big collection of books carefully  organised by colour, like a colour pencil case, and next to them, a pile of board games. Without not much hesitation, we went for Connect 4. Another clever turning back to explore the place, we found a passage that headed to the upstairs floor. Even though we had just ignored the hint from the amicable waiter about the presence of the second floor, it wasn't until that second that we decided to keep being explorative and see what was in there.

The passage was mystically lighted by dozens of white thick candles, like in a castle. Only lighted by that cosy candle light, but almost in the darkness, we headed up, climbing the narrow and stiff stairs to that second floor. This new area, also barely lit, was the entrance hall to different rooms. A big watch on the wall with all number 7s reinforced the name of the place.

On a very exploratory scan of the floor, the first impression was that the place looked a bit like a squat. However, the quirkiness of the place, the randomness of the furniture and the different decoration of each room removed all oddness that just lasted a couple of seconds.

We decided to sit in one of the rooms that faced the market, with a big window that allowed the bright light from the street to come inside. The room was covered in wall paper with an amusing pattern of blue ink scribbles, sketches, faces, people. As it could be represented on a film, the paper had been ripped off (on purpose) giving the slight impression of a madhouse or an abandon house.

Looking at it closer, it certainly was a very amusing piece of art, that as soon as we sat in, we started to capture on camera. An even closer look gave us more information about the author: Adam Hemuss. It was definitely impressive.

Once sat down, M and I decided that the place was certainly a pleasant surprise and it had been a really good choice us adventuring ourselves into the second floor of this very interesting place.

While catching up, and still amused by all the visual stimulus, we reaffirmed ourselves in our choice of churros with hot chocolate and Tarta de Santiago. The warm cinnamon and sugar covered churros and the very moist Tarta gave us energy to recover from the cold and go back into business: Connect 4. 

Full of joy and full of victory, after finishing our treats, we decided to head home and write down this place's address for future reference in our little black books. We certainly loved it.

Needless to say, I won to M three times. But that's another story.

Follow Seven at Brixton @sevenatbrixton and Adam Hemuss @hemussArt on Twitter.

Normal routine

The task of highly engineering your journey starts the moment you wake up. These mathematical actions of the rutine get perfectioned during the course of time and cannot be developed from day one.

As everybody knows, engineering requires the domain of different arts, combination of multiple skills and the hability to put them together for a good use.

The night before, while preparing your tea or right afterwards (remember not to let yourself relax of the pumped up stated of mind after surviving the evening rush hour), you should prepare your next day meal, bits and pieces for snack and breakfast included taking on account that you, must probably, will have to eat said meal without the aid of a microwaves and while seating in front of the computer. Not too juicy. Not too smelly. Not too messy. Options are reduced to a third.

Before going to bed, you careful select the outfit of the day, checking the very unreliable weather prediction and selecting the appropriate footwear for it. You prepare you lunchbag, your normal bag, and you set two alarms at the needed time in the morning. One alarm is never enough.

Forgot to say that it is essential to play as a team at home. I find essential to organise turns of coffee-maker hobbing, so that the first housemate that comes out of the shower, is the one in charge of laying a row of cups, put a spoonful of sugar and brewing that Illy coffee while the rest come downstairs. The caffetiere has been carefully filled with water and ground coffee the night before, just in case I forgot to mention it.

As the alarm goes of, the job is quite straight forward. Shower, teeth, makeup, clothes, coffee (and a biscuit if there is time) and off to the tube.

The pace of walking has already been determined by previous trial-and-error experiments. After a while, it is natural. No time for double checks. You've left your phone. Shame.

You know you're late because your 6:45 alert of 'No Disruptionson your line' from National Rail on your phone indicates that you should be halfway drinking your coffee. Passing by the blonde lady neighbourgh at X part of the street indicates the exact minute. If you find her next to your door, you're late.

Approaching the tube station, the Oyster card should be already in your hands. No time from Armageddon speeches from the Pentecostal church down the road. Develop the skillfull task of picking up one, I mean ONE issue of Metro newspaper without deacceleating the pace along the corridor. Same action while touching in the Oyster. Turn to the left to the right corridor of your usual southbound while, with the corner of you eye you check that any of your possible paths to point B is not disrupted.

Train is approaching while walking down the stairs but you know that it strategically waits a few more seconds to be filled with commuters of the line in front, to cope with the flow of passengers. You should arrive to your carriage keeping your cool, not panting. Change at your designated station. Always arrives with a couple of minutes of cushion. Time for placing yourself on the desired tile, next to the forth yellow spot on the platform. Strategic door to come right in front of the best exit to the final stop.

While climbing up the scalator, phone, Oyster and train tickets should be already in hand. Touch out. Oyster to the bag. Congratulate yourself. You made it in one piece to the big station. Put a smile on your face while you walk to your usual platform number X. Happiness disturb fellow commuters.

If lucky, you will get a freebie that day. Cereals, Oyster wallet, organic moisturiser, voucher for 50p off of Lurpak...

I'm hungry now.

Get your freebie without loosing your tickets. Tickets that have been strategically collected the day before as you arrived from work. Placed on the plastic wallet in order of usage. Outward trip. Plusbus. Return. Receipt. Visa.

Get in. Sit down. Think.

You've realised you've developed very strong OCDs.

Welcome to my life