Pretty Stockholm and Skansen too

We arrived in Stockholm on Sunday a week ago. We are settled into our lovely little apartment on Danderidsgaten, a tiny little street that holds both the Algerian Embassy and the home of the Uruguayan Ambassador. Around the corner are the Bulgarian and the Polish, as well as the Malaysian Embassies.
(this photo is the view out our window, across the street)As this might suggest, our neighborhood is an up-scale one; people tell us that, of all the neighborhoods with apartments (rather than houses), it is THE most exclusive, expensive, and desirable.

What this also means is that it is rather like living surrounded by many streets that are all like 5^th Avenue and Madison Avenue in New York; lots and lots of very expensive clothing stores, classy interior design stores, up scale bars, cafes, and coffee shops, and very pretty women, men and children. Almost everyone we see locally is dressed in elegant, designer clothing, and is totally and ridiculously gorgeous. At first I felt completely intimidated until I remembered that social class selects for gorgeousness; rich people marry gorgeous people and can also pay for expensive hair care, skin care, body-shaping, and flattering clothing.

Well, to tell you the truth, Swedish women do seem to also have some sort of genetic advantage going, too. They are unbelievably beautiful. I tried to figure out what it is, besides perfect bone structure, slim figures, and white-blond hair (my own gold-blond hair turns out to seem very dark here). Their skin also seems to be completely without any marks or blemishes—no moles, no freckles, no pimples, no scars, no lumps, bumps or discolorations. It glows golden, even when they don’t have much of a tan—though many DO have a tan. They not only epitomize the definition of beauty that too many of us have learned—blond, slim, specific facial structure—but also glow with seeming good health. Many of the women seem to age well, too, at least in this wealthy neighborhood.

The men, on the other hand, are a different kind of story. There are many good-looking young men, but most of them are what I would call “pretty,” rather than handsome (remember the singing group “Hansen””?). They do not have particularly masculine good looks, but instead look like the young male models used by fashion designers—blond, slim, sculpted faces, and pretty. Swedish men do not seem to age all that well, though; maybe cigarettes and drink take their toll.

We have been walking our feet off, walking everywhere, and have visited the university. If it rains we stay inside and work, and if it is beautiful out we are tourists. Summer won’t last much longer here, so we are determined, like most others here seem to be, to enjoy it while it is here.

Today we went to Skansen, the open-air museum of traditional Swedish life. It is composed mostly of farm buildings brought there from all over Sweden, originally built anywhere from the 1300s to the early 20^th century. We saw lots of farm tools, lots of traditional architecture, doors, windows, building techniques, gardens, clothing, cooking implements, etc. We were both in hogs’ heaven, both of us loving these sorts of things.
I can’t wait to visit, on rainy days, the National Museum (with lots of art), the Museum of Nordic Culture, and the Ethnographic Museum. Meanwhile, we are enjoying Swedish pastries and slowly learning the bus system and what various foods are. We are worried we will not learn much Swedish since everyone here speaks English—in fact, Donald says that Swedish English is easier to understand than Irish English!!!