I couldn’t complain about our first few days in Sweden. Man, it was fun. At least, once we’d gotten out of the sky. We flew in over Scotland and then Norway and landed at Stockholm Arlanda Airport, which is way north of Stockholm. Grandpa got us a cab, and we made the long trip down to the city. I couldn’t believe how much Sweden seemed like Canada at first as we sat in the back of the cab looking out at a four-lane highway with lots of Canadian-type trees on either side and a few stretches of farmland and then some modern-looking suburbs. Everything seemed awfully clean too, just like the Great White North.
Grandpa was pointing things out—he’d obviously been here many times before—smiling away at me again as I now genuinely smiled back (since we had returned to planet Earth).
When we finally got off the highway, we hit this street called Sveavägen (with two dots over the second “a”), and things began looking a little more like I figured Sweden should look. The buildings just somehow seemed kind of Swedish, not American or even Canadian. For a start, they looked older and more colorful than North American buildings, and they didn’t have as much glass or even brick. They were kind of IKEA-like inside as far as I could tell from peering through the front windows. There were lots of cafés and trees, everything was very green, and, of course, most of the signs were in Swedish (though I was surprised to see some in English too). As we got down into the main part of the city, the buildings got higher and more American-looking, more like we’d come to the business district of an important urban center. I recognized some American stores and brands too.
Then something kind of spooked me.
We slowed in traffic, and I noticed that a cross street was called Olof Palmes gata. I looked the other way and saw a little tunnel-like street across from it called Tunnelgatan. It didn’t have any traffic on it, since it was just for walking, and the ground was covered with some sort of square gray bricks. It was awfully narrow, and I could see, in the shadows at the far end of it, steps that led up toward another street. I had the weird feeling I’d seen this place before. And it felt like it was a bad place, for some reason. Then it hit me. This was where that Swedish prime minister Olof Palme was gunned down. It must have been really close to here, perhaps at this very spot. And Tunnelgatan was the street down which the mysterious murderer had fled! Everything in the Swedish streets had seemed so perfect until that moment, so sunny and wonderful and safe.
Our cab moved again (driven by a huge blond guy, who I realized hadn’t said a single word since we’d gotten in). I must have been turning a little white, because Grandpa, who had been blabbing on about Swedish architecture, suddenly stopped the lesson.
“Aren’t you feeling well, Adam?”
“I’m…I’m fine, Grandpa.” I tried to give him a smile. No weakness. As I’ve said, Grandpa is a good guy, but something about him makes you not want to show any weakness in his presence.
“It might be a little jet lag,” he said.
“Yeah, now that you mention it, it was a long flight and I feel a little…off?”
He put his hand on my shoulder, this time gently, looked a little concerned for a while but soon launched back into his lecture. I let his voice fade into the background (which is something I do often—Mom says I’m practicing to be a man) and watched the Swedes walking along the street. I told myself they didn’t look too scary. And it was true. In fact, they looked awfully ordinary—fashionable but ordinary. Then one of them caught my eye.
It was a girl. I’m not really into girls yet, but this one stood out, mostly because she was weird. I didn’t get a really good look at her because she was in a crowd and down a street, but I could see she was riding a bicycle with a horse’s head attached to the handlebars. She was wearing bizarre clothes and had startling red hair, almost orange like a lit pumpkin, strange pigtails and something on her shoulder that looked like a small furry human being or something. I couldn’t tell. Then she totally vanished into the flow of pedestrians. I wondered if I’d made her up. I have a pretty big imagination.
Grandpa’s voice was still there in the background but now getting a little more excited, like we were approaching something pretty cool.
And we were.
We turned a corner, and I saw heaven.
We had emerged into an open area near the river, one that I knew ran from the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland and Europe and flowed right into Stockholm. The city was actually on several islands.
Man, it was beautiful.
“Wow, that’s pretty, isn’t it, Adam?” said Grandpa.
That wasn’t a word I’d heard him use very often.
“I never get sick of seeing it. Maybe this will be the last time,” he said.
It wasn’t like him to say anything sad either, and he kind of zipped it for a few seconds after that, as if he’d said something he was thinking but hadn’t intended to let out.
We turned left and moved along the water past some really stunning buildings—really old, cool places that you’d think the Vikings might have made, if they’d lived until a few hundred years ago. There was a super-old one just over an amazing stone bridge in front of us. It was massive and long, and it had a big lawn with huge trees on it, and though it appeared to be made of some sort of stone too, it almost glowed.
“That’s the royal palace,” said Grandpa.
I’d forgotten about that. Right, they have a king. And he lives here in the middle of the city! My buddies back home would have been really impressed.
Flowers and trees bloomed everywhere in this wide open area, and people were walking along the streets, on the bridge and next to the water—lots of blond hair shining in the sun (three-quarters of the people I’d seen in Stockholm so far were blond, which was kind of unsettling, for some reason). They all looked weirdly happy, like they were pretending, or something.
“And there’s our hotel.”
I couldn’t believe it when I looked in the direction he was pointing. I was going to have to change my opinion about his spending habits. It was awesome and looked like it was really going to set him back a few dollars (or kronor, as they call the money here). And from the expression on Grandpa’s face, I had a feeling it was going to be even more impressive inside.
The Grand Hôtel was six or seven stories high and stretched along the street next to the blue water. It was a sort of reddish-brown color with a green roof, regal-looking with awnings over every window on every floor and a beautiful café that ran the full length of the building. We stopped at the biggest awning, one that extended out from the entrance, which was a set of big wide-open glass doors with shining gold borders. I counted eight gleaming wooden steps that went up into the lobby. Grandpa got out and motioned to a bellman to get our bags, then slipped him some money and we went inside.
The lobby nearly took my breath away. We were in a long room that looked like it was made for a king, as if we’d gone into the palace by mistake. There were cream-colored pillars and a huge crystal chandelier, beautiful old paintings on the walls, and a plush rug that was blue with specks of gold, Sweden’s colors, which I recognized from their flag and also from their national hockey team’s uniforms. Even the employees—blond, of course, and so healthy-looking it almost made you laugh—who welcomed us in English from behind an elegant, dark wooden counter and wore smart blue-and-gold ties and sleeveless sweaters.
I watched them closely, looking for hints of their dark side, perhaps hidden in their eyes. But if there was any darkness inside them, they did a good job of disguising it, smiling and calling Grandpa “Mr. McLean” and me “Mr. Murphy.” I had to admit that I felt pretty grown-up.
Our room was even sicker. We went up in an elevator that appeared to be made of gold and were escorted into a big space with two rooms (I had my own!), each with a big bed and tons of pillows. The walls were cream-colored, and the drapes were bright red. Nice old paintings lined the walls here too, and there were two killer bathrooms with huge showers. (I had my own shower too!) It was somehow both historical-looking and very modern, and it was hard to tell how they’d done it. Grandpa had a gleaming wooden desk to work at, and there were three TVs! There was a big one in an area between our rooms that had a table and sofas, and a humongous one on the wall facing each bed. I almost shouted out loud, but I controlled myself.
“Will this do, Adam?” asked Grandpa as soon as the bellman left, clapping me on the back.
“I suppose we’ll get by,” I said, staring out the big window that overlooked the water and gave us a picture-postcard view of the Royal Palace and the Swedish Parliament on the little island across from us.
And we most definitely did get by…for the first couple of days.