A beautiful sunny day in Stockholm, Sweden. I'm going to head out today, and have a look around the old town. I'm staying in Ostermalm, which is not far from Stockholm university, one of the largest in Europe, so the area where I am is full of students.
Catching the train is fairly easy. There are 24 hour or 72 hour tickets that you load onto a blue plastic travel pass that you have to buy but lasts 10 years. The 72 hour pass was about $40 AUD. At most of the stations you don't have to tap it, but just walk through the barriers and they should pick it up. This is much faster without the traffic bank up you experience in Sydney.
Now, the all important McDonalds test. They have sweet potato fries instead of the normal potato fries, which are okay. This is the double truffle burger that was interesting. In Sweden apparently you have to pay to use the bathroom, and this includes McDonalds, which I haven't seen before. There is a sales tax, and that makes it more expensive than Australia. Interestingly, in these Nordic countries its the consumers who are taxed hard with sales taxes (VAT or GST) up to 24%, and the top rate of tax for example in Finland is 60%. Everybody I have spoken to don't mind paying these quite high taxes in exchange for free health, education and a quite broad safety net. However, company tax is only around 20%, much lower than in Australia.
Johan Norbert explains some of the myths and misperceptions about the Swedish utopia. He says it not a case of taxing the rich, but heavily taxing the middle class and the poor (and tourists like me) through high consumption taxes.
https://nordic.businessinsider.com/here-are-the-top-25-richest-people-in-sweden--/ - click if your interested.
I went shopping at the Galleria shopping mall downtime, and was just about to enter when Swedish police were wrestling this slim young man outside before arresting him against the car (note he is entitled to the presumption of innocence).
There are all these conflicting stories about crime in Sweden, particularly immigrants and crime. Headlines about Malmo being, 'The Rape Capital of Europe', and no go areas, even for police.
Even President Trump has commented about crime and immigration in Sweden. This is one commentators view backed up by some statistics (view above).
Personally, I don't feel unsafe, and I think you should critically review all the evidence (from politically left and right sources), and make up your own mind.
Travel tip: There are really nice free washrooms in the Galleria with their own washroom attendant!
Anyway, the old town is very cute.
Lots of narrow streets they had in the Middle Ages.
There are plenty of tourist traps, I mean shops, and restaurants in this area.
There are deep harbours for the big ferries and cruise ships to get in. Around this area there are lots of museums, historical buildings, and tourist stuff to do. Actually, there are lots of tourists, a shock to my system, after my laid back lifestyle in Finland.
My train to Oslo is on Thursday, so tomorrow, I'm moving to the trendy Sodermalm district to the South of the old town just for one night.
I'm hoping to check out the Swedish Army Museum. Believe it or not, Sweden once was quite good at warfare, before staying neutral (or collaborating with Germany in the World Wars depending on your opinion). I've heard some say that Sweden now can be neutral, because it hides behind Finland, but perhaps that is unfair :)
