I arrived
in Stockholm on Monday 10th, and after three
nights here, I'll be leaving very early tomorrow morning to head for Finland on the
ferry. I've been staying in Fridhemsplan
(a few tube stops out), at a massive hostel with several hundred beds. The kitchen's got thirty fridges, numbered to
help you remember where you put the milk!
Like many others in Scandinavia, the hostel is spotlessly clean and
efficient too - the byproduct of that seems to be that many people here on
conferences or in Stockholm
for meetings seem to use the hostel rather than a hotel.
Church Roof Appeal: Urgent help needed
A football legend but he couldn't control his temper on the pitch
Anyway,
instead of boring you with details of the art galleries, open air museums and
architecture, or any of the things that Stockholm is rightly famous for, here's
details of my tour of the city by Segway:
Having
never had a shot on one, 250 'Crowns' (about twenty quid) seemed well worth it,
so I paid up and we set off with two guides to a city centre underground car
park. There we were told that it is
illegal to use Segways anywhere in the Stockholm
city centre area, or on any roads, pavements or on bike lanes in the wider city
area. All of which we were going to
do. But if and when stopped by the
police we should say nothing and let the guides do the talking and pay the
fines.
But before
that we needed to get accustomed to using the machines. For those (like myself before the tour) who
don't know about Segways, they're electrically powered, go up to 20kmph, and
have no controls as such. You stand on
the self-levelling platform, and whichever way you lean, the Segway moves or
turns in that direction. They're quite
nimble and can accelerate and spin around surprisingly quickly.
Previously
I'd thought that it was almost impossible to fall off one, and that George Bush
had only famously managed it by forgetting to switch the thing on. But not
so. First up was an American lady who
boldly got on hers, and straight away started slowly gliding forwards. Rather than leaning back to slow down and try
coming backwards as the guide was enthusiastically instructing her, she
soundlessly gathered forward pace, until eventually she smacked quite hard into
the back of a brand new Saab estate, before falling to the tarmac to be
followed by her Segway. The rest of us gulped
and tried not to laugh too much. But to
her credit she got up and straight back on.
While
avoiding the occasional car going into or out of the car park, we all had a
quick introduction to using them - the first 10 seconds are very strange, as
you get used to the machine compensating for your movements, and getting on and
off is surprisingly hard for the first one or two times - then off we went up
the car park ramp, and out onto one of the busiest shopping streets in
Stockholm, at lunchtime.
The bizarre
thing was that we, a group of tourists on a guided tour, quickly became objects
of tourism ourselves, being videod, photographed and pointed at as we went.
We were
made up of four Americans, who tried to befriend or at least wave at every
single person we passed, three Italians, who treated the hour and a half tour
as a race with no rules (apart from when they were making or receiving calls on
their phones) and three Brits who made good solid progress while steadfastly
maintaining our positions in the line.
Apart from a couple of spectacular wipe-outs at top speed on gravel
(Segways don't seem to cope very well with any skidding or wheelspin), we
zipped along, gliding by shopping streets, past marinas, around and through
huge parks and past cathedrals, art galleries and Swedish royalty attending an
opening of some kind.
Unfortunately
there wasn't any time for our tour guides to tell us what anything was, but we
were all having too much fun doing slalom at top speed to care!
Despite all that, I still found time to make some coffee:
This is not a pub
In Sweden there's no escape from this rubbish either
This way for fish
