Stockholm and the Stockholm Archipelago photos (august 2006)
Here we go, as I promised myself(!) I am publishing some photos from our trip to Sweden before it is 2007: precisely photos from Stockholm and from the Söderviken zone of Ornö island, which is just one of 24000 islands that form the Stockholm Archipelago or better said Stockholm Skärgården (garden on the rocks). 
Some of these so called islands are small islots and rocks. This is not to scorn what you might experience in every single one of them… Nature was very generous when we were there and everything seem to be much more protected than it is in other parts of the world.
Especially in the Stockholm Archipelago people seemed to obey what nature and local authorities was obliging them to do. I don’t want to imagine what “inversores” of, let’s say, Marbella or Karadeniz (Black Sea coast of Turkey) might have built all over those islands if only they had the chance. Most of the houses and cottages that I had seen in Ornö island were %100 wooden and built with great carpentry skill, with details solved precisely and pragmatically. Most of them were very well looked after and seemed to be built with “sustainability” in mind. Stockholm Archipelago is a great spot for anyone seeking to spend some time in nature by the sea and it should be even better if you don’t attract mosquitoes. I was bitten 25 times the first day from the back of my neck according to books of Greta. This affected me all along the trip both physically and psychologically :). I wasn’t expecting such an attack in Sweden! A young swedish guy that we met told that this is a common problem in the bigger islands of the Archipelago.
Swedish versions of concepts like real estate speculation is probably non existent so these 24000 islands seem to be very well protected. Though i am underlining the known fact that there are lots of Swedish who prefer to live in Turkish, Greek or Spanish coast. 🙂 If we can count on what Ingemo told us, until mid-90s, it was forbidden to foreigners to land some of these islands due to cold war issues. All these islands of Baltic sea were thought to be the ideal spots through the “enemy” might have been infiltrating. How stupid… The northern part of the Ornö island was totally deserted during our stay as it was out-of-season period (end of August). It was extremely calm and very beautiful with the sea, mossed rocks, huge trees, lakes and the locals of the island like squirrels, foxes and the company. The Söderviken zone is not completely open to Baltic sea and closer to Swedish mainland so the sensation was rather as if we were surrounded by a big lake where thousands of Swedes were sailing peacefully. Probably it is one of the zones of the world where boat-per-capita is the highest. It is just so nice to see people this much in contact with the sea. When we took the boat trip to visit Huvudskär island which is out of Stockholm Archipelago, we noticed that beyond the sheltered waters of the Archipelago there was the Baltic, windy and shaky.
Greta mentioned several times that Stockholm didn’t change a lot since the days she used to visit the town with her grandma. (nearly 15-20 years ago) Even the bald taxi driver of Stockholm was there as the old ice cream cartoon character was inclined the way it was. 😉 Although some of the local Swedish people were complaining that the days of welfare already came to an end, we appreciated that in old city center of Stockholm some entreprising people were serving masaje in-situ sin compromisos, as seen below. We could not figure out if this is the new swedish social democracy: massage for everyone but not free?
