Kultur Shock!

This week is the Stockholm Kulturfesivalen, a free festival in the city centre with bands and cabaret acts and general randomness. I went with my flatmate and one of her work colleagues yesterday and one of the acts we saw involved a suitcase filled with pink smoke, lots of fire and a metallic pirate ship. Sadly I was far too short to be able to take any photos that weren’t mainly of people’s backs so you’ll have to imagine the spectacle for yourself.

I do, however, have photos of a couple of the stages that bands were playing on. First we saw a folk-punk band from Norway called Valkyrien Allstar. They started off mainly folky but got progressively punkier throughout their set. The lead-violinist’s orange trousers added to their punk credentials! This photo does not do justice to the orangeness.

We also saw a VERY happy band on the main stage, Cookies’n'Beans with special guest Peter Jöback. They were bouncy and happy and smiley and played tambourines. It was interesting and almost made me want to be happy and bouncy too (but only almost!).

I might have to go and see what’s happening at the festival over the weekend, see just how cultural I can get.

War and Music

Yesterday I decided that it was time to splash the cash and do something cultural (museums and art galleries aren’t all free in Stockholm, and having just stopped being a student I find “Adult” prices extortionate). I consulted my guide and found myself the perfect starter museum: The Army Museum.

I realise that picking a museum about war and weapons and death may not seem like the usual starting point for cultural exploration but my guidebook informed me that it was really cool (in less teenage language, it probably said something more like “this museum is very interesting and intellectually stimulating” and I translated that to “really cool”.

The first thing that struck me when I got to the museum was the fact that it was flying the rainbow flag which is synonymous with the gay/lesbian community. It’s Gay Pride Week in Stockhom at the moment (or it is next week, I’m not entirely sure) so the buses are all flying the rainbow flag and there’s special events going on but the last place I was expecting to see celebrating Gay Pride was the Army Museum – Americans have only just been allowed to be out and in the army and, although I know the Swedish are more open and liberal, I wasn’t quite expecting the army to be included in this. I chose to come to Sweden because I thought it sounded like a lovely and liberal society and now I think I’ve been proved right.

In the museum there were lots of creepy mannequins (I HATE mannequins and people in costumes and clowns and puppets) and guns and even some real remains of some dead soldiers. Although I had to be brave and face my fear of mannequins I thought the exhibitions were pretty cool. For Gay Pride week there was a special exhibition speculating about the sexuality of some of Sweden’s most famous monarchs, apparently some historians believe Queen Kristina may have been a hermaphrodite.

After filling my head with war (or mainly not war since the Swedish have been neutral for the past couple of hundred years) headed across the road to the Music Museum. I like how these two very differently themed museums are so close to each other, I wonder how many other people are interested in both war and music…

Once again I had to pay to get in, however the woman at the till seemed totally shocked when I asked for an Adult ticket. I wasn’t sure whether or not to be insulted at how young she thought I was, especially since she was still happy to charge me Adult price.

There was an exciting exhibition about drums…lots and lots of drums…

And then the main exhibition which included most musical instruments ever, as an oboe player whose oboe is currently residing in a different country I did consider stealing one of their lovely old oboes.

A theme of Swedish museums (from the 3 I’ve been to) appears to be creepy puppets/mannequins, there was a whole room of them in the Music Museum. If you wore headphones you could even hear them sing. Who wants to hear creepy puppets sing?!

And, of course, what Swedish Music Museum is complete without ABBA?!

And, once again from my limited experience, it seems that no Swedish museum is complete without a kitchen on display (there was one in the City Museum too next to the door knob exhibition…)

I will have to explore more museums and see how ubiquitous the museum-kitchen really is!