Scandinavia

Bonjour! 

So after only working for a week, we were treated with a two week break for half term. I was determined to make the most of all free time in France we decided to plan a ten day trip, travelling around Scandinavia. I love Scandinavia. The people are lovely,  it’s filled with those quintessential European cobbled streets that I love so much and it’s not such a tourist hub that it’s impossible to get anywhere without a battering ram (cough Paris).

COPENHAGEN

My trip started in Denmark where I met my friend Emily in Copenhagen airport and we immediately headed into the city centre to find our hostel. The original plan was to go to a Deaf Havana gig, but naturally the tour was cancelled after I’d booked flights and accommodation. Mildly infuriating, but Copenhagen’s a beautiful city regardless. We’d made a detailed pan of where we were going to ensure we made it to the ‘must see’ parts, since we were in the city for just under 24 hours. We started by heading to the Rundetårn & after climbing to the top had a beautiful panoramic view of the city. I’m a sucker for city views and would definitely recommend walking up the steep ramp inside the tower to get to the top – it’s a novel alternative to 42m worth of steps. Ingenious. Next we wondered down to the Rosenborg castle and were honestly a bit surprised by how tiny it was. Nice to look at, but a bit anticlimactic after wandering through the relatively impressive grounds, but whatever.

On our way to Amalienborg (the Royal family’s main residence) we stopped by Frederiks Kirke, a vast, white church with a domed roof and eventually found ourselves in the courtyard of the royal palace.  Considering it’s the Danish equivalent of Buckingham Palace, complete with a changing of the guard, I marvelled at the fact that there was probably only about six people there. None of the twenty deep crowds you’d find standing outside the gates of Queen Lizzy’s house trying to catch a glimpse of a Bearskin hat.  Despite being Denmark’s capital city, Copenhagen felt small and quaint, with none of the urgency I’ve found in other capitals like London or Paris, and it was lovely to look around popular spots without awkwardly being in the back of countless other people’s photos.

By this point it was getting quite cold as we walked along the water to get to the Little Mermaid, probably the most famous (and smallest) tourist spot in Copenhagen. We wandered through Kastellet and eventually saw her tiny figure in the distance. She’s a tough cookie, having often had limbs/heads removed for various political/social protests so it was nice to see her in one piece, even if she does look fairly miserable.

We’d finished our itinerary by about 18:30 and so decided to turn back on ourselves and walk back up the waterside to get to Nyhavn (that harbour with the colourful houses that’s on literally every postcard, ever). Obviously, there had to be at least one clumsy disaster, this time taking form in me nearly falling backwards into a really deep fountain; much to the delight/fear of a small group of American tourists. Well played Miles. Anyway, we eventually reached Nyhavn and fully understood why it’s the most popularly used image of the city. It’s gorgeous – an abundance of fairy lights and Balamory-esque buildings reflected in the water, in between the multitude of boats lined up in the harbour. We decided to eat in one of the many adorable restaurants and thoroughly enjoyed sitting down after a long day of walking around.

Unfortunately our second day was a bit less successful. We woke up to absolutely horrible weather – a torrential downpour that could rival Manchester in winter, and naturally I’d forgotten to bring an umbrella. But we still headed out with hopes of visiting the Church of our Saviour and climbing the spire but unluckily it was closed due to the downpour. Already absolutely soaked at 10am, we then walked over to Christiana, a lawless, hippy free town where anything goes due to technically being an autonomous area within the city. It’s a weird and wonderful place, definitely a bit unsettling since it’s unclear if the locals want visitors wandering around or not, but the colourful, man-made houses and murals are truly beautiful. There’s signs all around the main and busiest street refusing photographs, no doubt so people cannot be accounted for whatever goes on there, but due to the terrible weather and early hour there was hardly anyone there, which if anything made it even more unnerving.

Desperate to get out of the rain, we decided to go to a nearby museum. Nearby as in about two centimetres away on our map, which unfortunately resulted in ninety minutes of hitting dead ends/road works/the literal end of the road into the water and eventually gave up. Thoroughly drenched we went back to the metro stop in search of a café we’d been recommended – cue more aimless wandering in the rain and eventually giving up again. With half a lake oozing out of my shoes, we made it back to the airport at about 15:00 and went our separate ways to board our separate planes, Emily's back to Manchester, mine back to Paris CDG. Such a busy but such a good 24 hours!

STOCKHOLM

After a one day pit stop back in Le Mans to pack and pick up my housemate Alicia, I was reunited with Paris CDG for our flight to Stockholm, Sweden. We arrived in the afternoon and after dumping our bags in a hostel seemingly home to all of Stockholm's nutters headed straight out into the nippy Swedish air. The best view of the city is supposedly from the top of the city hall, which is annoyingly closed in the colder months. But never fear, I'd found a path online which all the locals raved about for the view and was conveniently only about twenty minutes away from our hostel. The locals were right. The view was impeccable and we only saw a handful of people as we soaked it up. Then we walked down the steepest hill I've ever seen and eventually made it to Gamla Stan, Stockholm's old town, which to be honest isn't that old. But it's lovely to walk through and we determinedly tracked down an affordable looking restaurant for the obligatory Swedish meatballs. A meal that's definitely in the top five that I've ever consumed. 

While in Scandinavia, we were really lucky that our days in each country often coincided with the days where museums had free entry - a big bonus when we were absolutely skint in some of the most expensive countries in Europe. Our first free museum was the Nobel Prize centre in the heart of Gamla Stan and we rushed in out of the cold completely by chance on Mr Nobel's birthday. As a result it was quite busy but to be honest a bit naff, interesting-ish but I'd have been pretty peeved had I paid the usual 70 SEK admission (about £7). We then found a pub and sat with cider for a while before heading back to hostel.

The next day we headed straight to the Vasa Museum, supposedly one of the best museums in the world and home to a fully intact warship from 1628 who had her first and last voyage all in the same day. It sounds like a niche thing to visit but it was truly remarkable. The guided tour was interesting, as well as the other exhibitions in the building and it was surreal to stand next to a 172ft high, ornate battle ship. I'd definitely recommend it and the entrance fee's not too bad either (if you've got a student card!). Our next port of call was Skansen, a huge open air 'museum' and zoo with native Scandinavian animals and a plethora of old Swedish buildings. A bit like Beamish but colder and with brown bears and seals. The seals were the absolute highlight of my trip with their adorable faces and strops at feeding time when they weren't being thrown fish fast enough. So cute and so exciting to see one of my favourite animals so close. I'm generally opposed to keeping wild animals in captivity but here the enclosures were absolutely huge and they were all obviously well looked after. Ten points to Sweden.

After Skansen, we went on a magical mystery tour trying to find the city hall but eventually had to turn back to make it to the Swedish History Museum in time for the free entrance fee. It was relatively interesting and it gave us a chance to get out of the cold, enjoy decent tea and later on decent free wi-fi (priorities). We were reluctant to leave Stockholm, it felt so homely and yet so new and so I caught the bus back to the airport thinking of where I want to visit if I get the chance to go back.

HELSINKI

Next stop was Helsinki, Finland. I'd wanted to go for years, honestly since Lordi won Eurovision in 2006, and so was really excited as we walked through the airport and found the bus stop. Sadly everything went down hill from there. To begin with it was really cold. As in snow on the ground and icicles hanging from buildings cold. That wouldn't have bothered us had we been able to get straight onto the bus into the city centre. Instead we stood and shivered in our layers, scarves, wooly hats, thick coats and boots for about half an hour until a bus finally arrived with enough space for us to squeeze on. After checking in to the hostel, bizarrely right in the middle of Helsinki's Olympic stadium we headed out to enjoy what little daylight we had left, with a vague plan of where we wanted to visit on our first day. Firstly, Helsinki just feels weird. Like you're constantly on the set of some independent Scandinavian film with bland colours and desolate streets. I don't know if we just never found the right parts of the city but there was a very strong industrial feeling and it definitely felt like a place to live rather than visit. But I'm glad I went. We began by trying to find the Sibelius monument, a truly bizarre metal sculpture for the composer of the same name, which was on the list of top ten things to visit in Helsinki. Bit weird, but it certainly got us into the spirit of what to expect in this bizarre country.

Next on the list was the Temppeliaukio Church, a church that basically looks like a UFO has crashed into a giant slab of rock and is supposedly something you absolutely shouldn't miss. I don't really understand why. It was closed when we got there (naturally), but when we returned the next day we were even more confused as to why it's such a big deal. The interior has been excavated and built straight out of the bedrock and inside it just feels a bit odd. Modern with purple mood lighting and yet filled with generic churchiness. Bizarre. After our failed first visit we thought we'd try and see the Cathedral while it was still relatively light. In my research I knew we had to get a tram/metro/bus to it which is where our day got really, really bad. Although I'm sure the public transport in Helsinki is perfectly adequate, I've never experienced a system more confusing. What we thought was an underground metro system turned out to be an overground tram line which we just couldn't understand. Having spent about an hour struggling with the map it was now pitch black and so we decided to abandon the Cathedral and go to a pub we'd be recommended and asked a policeman how to get there. Again, there was lots of aimless wandering and getting very lost. Did I mention it was cold? Now it was absolutely freezing. We passed by dozens of pleasant looking pubs but kept on trying to find a library-esque place I'd been told was the best place to go. When we finally tracked down it turned out to be exactly the same as the countless other places we'd passed with a few books on the wall. But the food was alright and they served the Swedish cider we'd tried to find in Stockholm to no avail, so it wasn't all bad. Of course we had no idea how to get back to the hostel and ended up spending far too long standing in a tram stop we hoped would take us in the right direction whilst also trying not to die of frost bite.

The next day was much better. We made it to the Cathedral (beautiful), the Uspenski Cathedral (also beautiful), went up the Olympic tower for the view of the city (big fan), guzzled down hot chocolate (much appreciated) and walked round the National Museum of Finland. Annoyingly we'd spent all day thinking it was Thursday rather than Friday and so missed the National History museum's free entry and late opening hours (did I mention everything in Scandinavia closes at 16:00?) and so we went back to the hostel ridiculously early to plan out our stay in Oslo.

Our flight to Oslo was at 7:15am and so we left the hostel at 4:30am to find the airport bus. Absolutely exhausted and irritated by the fools staying in our hostel room (if you've never made a bed before please don't let your first time be in a room with 10 other people at one in the morning ugh). The useless receptionist gave us the worst directions I've ever received and so we ended up lost in Helsinki in the middle of the night, well aware that the first bus at 5am was the only chance we'd have of making our flight on time. Eventually we gave in and taxi-ed it to the bus stop which would have definitely been at least a 60 minute+ walk, none of the 'ten minute's round the corner' spiel we'd been given. But thankfully we made the flight and were on our way to Oslo.

Rock Church

OSLO

We were only in Oslo for a day, so it was lucky we landed at 7:45am, giving us the entirety to wander round Norway's capitol city. Whilst we'd run out of things to do in Helsinki there was almost too much to do in Oslo. We went to a Viking museum, a Norwegian Folk museum and a Polar Expedition museum (all of which were v. good) and then after 16:00 when everything closed down we wandered around the city and saw all of the famous monuments/buildings from the outside. We wandered around the grounds of the Royal Palace and admired the building itself (it's weird how all the royal palaces I've seen are virtually identical), walked down to the city hall and stumbled upon some strange street festival where everyone was singing Pharrell songs, found the National Theatre and the building where they present the Nobel Peace Prize, found some Norwegian trolls and walked along the harbour until we got to the Akershus Fortress. The fortress gave us an incredible view of the city and we sat there for a while to rest our slowly dying feet before walking over to the Opera house. The Opera house is a strange building to say the least, shaped like a wave to appear like it's rising out of the water and due to it's weird shape you can walk up it and stand on the roof. By this point it was getting dark and we decided to climb to the top as the sun set over Oslo. It was beautiful watching the city gradually get darker and definitely the best way to end the trip.

THE BIGGEST PIG I HAVE EVER SEEN.

Miles out. X