Mopping Up

 I've been on holiday.

Don't panic; this isn't the beginning of an eighteen part series on the underground stations of Buenos Aires.  (Although if anyone would like to give me the money to go to Argentina to write an eighteen part series on Buenos Aires, feel free.  I've been watching Celebrity Race Across The World and Argentina looks amazing).  No, this was a holiday with the BF in France, and it mostly involved doing this:

However, the trip to Nice meant I didn't finish the Sweden trip write up. Oh yes, there's more!  Try to conceal your excitement.  On my last day in Stockholm, my flight back to Manchester wasn't until the evening, so obviously I had to lark about on the railways for a bit until it was time to go home.  I'll try and keep this brief.

The Roslagsbanan: Stockholms Östra to Vallentuna

Stockholms Östra is the terminus of the Roslagsbanan, the light railway that goes through the north-east of the city region and which I previously yammered on about in the post about Universitetet.  One look at the station and you know that this is the unwanted child of the SL network; it's been done up recently, apparently, but it was still basically a few platforms behind a building with very little in the way of facilities or excitement.  (I will emphasise I was there on a Sunday morning, so maybe it's a throbbing hotspot on a Monday).

With it being the weekend, I expected it to be relatively peaceful there, but actually the station was abuzz with Gentlemen Of A Certain Type.  I'd followed two of them out of the Tengiska högskolan tunnelbana station, a pair of excitable teen boys who were definitely not the type to smoke fags and drink Mad Dog 20/20 on their lunch hour.  They had backpacks and big headphones and were chatting away to one another, almost over one another, and I recognised them as Railway Fans.

It seemed I'd arrived at Östra on a day when there was going to be heritage trains running, and an unfair part of me would say, "how can they tell?"  That rickety thing on the platform above is the normal engine for the service and it looks like it should be carrying a worried defector to the Russian border in a Cold War drama.  

In fairness, when my train turned up, it was a much newer model, with decent suspension and a less rickety air.  It was soundly ignored by the Men Who Like Trains, who were dashing down the platform in search of more niche thrills.  Good luck to you, fellas.

I took the train to Vallentuna, towards the top of the Karsta line (number 27).  Why did I pick this particular spot?  It was as good as any, I suppose.  It was a small suburb.  It had a bus that would take me away from the Roslagsbanan to my next station.  Why not?

Actually the main reason I went there was so I could make this joke on Twitter.

One like.  You people don't deserve me.

A brief turn around the block revealed a small pedestrianised shopping centre with a Coop and a library, a fire station, and some teenagers being dead excitable as they headed into town for hi-jinks.  Meanwhile, I waited at a bus stop for my ride.

Upplands Väsby

This is a commuter station and is in an area that felt distinctly down at heel.  I'm probably going to get a bunch of comments from irate Swedes telling me that this is in fact Stockholm's version of Hampstead but the buildings we passed on the bus looked tired and unedifying, and the people waiting with me on the platform had a vaguely grimy air to them.

The Pendeltåg is the heavy rail network around the city, the one that descends into a tunnel to go to Stockholm City and out the other side.  It was particularly well patronised that day, as I was about to discover.

Solna

I'd planned a little trip to Solna because it's fast developing into the Stratford of Stockholm.  What was just a single stop on the Pendeltåg has been joined in recent years by the terminus of the Tvärbanan, the cross-city tram line, and is about to get the end of the Green Line extension too.

One of the main reasons for this significant upgrade in facilities was the construction of what is currently known (for sponsorship reasons) as the Strawberry Arena.  This is the Swedish FA's new national stadium (which is why the new Green Line station will be called Arenastaden rather than Solna).  It's also the home of the AIK football team and, as it turned out, they were having a match not long after I arrived at the station, meaning there were crowds of people in scarves heading that way.  I decided to skip having a look at the arena and instead went into the nearby Mall of Scandinavia to find myself a sandwich.

It's a Westfield Mall and if you told me they'd copied and pasted the plans for Westfield Stratford and added Swedish subtitles I'd have believed you.  Inside it was the same copy book of dark malls constantly curving around on themselves so you couldn't see what was ahead, facilities hidden to the side, pointless kiosks getting in your way.  Lots of glowing lights and not much actual substance.

I ate my sandwich on the plaza outside, watching the crowds push by, then walked round the block to the back entrance to Solna.  This was a lot quieter, as it opened out into a residential district, and the only excitement here was some lads with backpacks being dropped off by a very battered car.

But wait!  There is a little more.  I couldn't let my final post about Stockholm go by without mentioning The Art.

By Olle Brand, it's this odd bronze shape on the platform.  It can't compete with the magnificence of Solna Centrum... but let's face it, what can?

Stating The Obvious

 

When you're designing art for a metro station, there's something to be said for being extremely obvious.  Sure, you might want to put in a mural that represents the deep agonies of the human soul, or a statue of a bent wing to symbolise the fragility of existence, but people are only going to be on the platform for ten minutes at most.  It sometimes pays to be blunt at to the point.  If your station is named after a venerable scientific institution, then you fill that station with venerable scientific motifs.

Tekniska högskolan is next to the Kungliga Tekniska högskolan, the Royal Institute of Technology and one of the top Scandinavian universities, and as such its platforms are swarming with fractals, formulae, and other things I'm not entirely clear on because I only got a B in GCSE Science.  (Incidentally, if you're wondering why the station isn't called Kungliga Tekniska högskolan as well, it's because the "Royal" part is conferred upon the university, while the station only serves it so can't claim the same.  It's a pedantic but quite sweet little note).  

Lennat Mörk, the artist, was also a scenic designer for theatre and opera, which explains how over the top Tekniska högskolan is.  Apparently in the part of the station devoted to the four elements he wanted there to be actual flames and shoots of water until it was politely explained to him that it would be a nightmare to maintain.  Instead he hung a giant apple from the roof, to represent the one that hit Newton on the head and gave him the idea for mavity.

If that fell on your head mind you'd be crushed to death.  I think that's how I want to go.  He died doing what he loved; standing on an underground platform beneath a piece of elaborate art.

There are friezes of works by Copernicus and da Vinci, and polyhedra for the elements, and it's all delightfully bonkers.  If you're going to go crazy with your design, go proper crazy, that's what I say.

I emerged on the Valhallavägen, a long avenue of trees that skims the top of the Östermalm district of the city centre.  It was still early on a weekend so the road was largely deserted of traffic and people.  Behind me was Stockholms Östra station, the terminus of the Roslagsbanan, still clinging on until they finally get to build that tunnel to T-Centralen and it becomes a lot of lovely valuable real estate.

If you've followed this blog for any length of time, you'll know I do love a stadium, and I especially love an Olympic stadium.  Stockholm hosted the fifth Summer Olympics in 1912, as well as the Equestrian events for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics (there were strict quarantine laws in Australia at the time so the horses couldn't be shipped over).  The stadium is the oldest Olympic venue still in use.

It's a curious building.  Designed by Torben Grut, it came at a weird point in architecture, where the elaborate Victorian Gothic styles were falling out of fashion, but they hadn't yet embraced the glamorous minimalism of Art Deco.  As a consequence, the stadium sort of looks like a Medieval castle, but at the same time, doesn't; it has buttresses and towers and arrow slits, but it's also elegantly understated.

They were in the middle of setting it up for an event so I couldn't go in and have a poke around.  It looks like it'd be a fantastic place for an event.  Stockholm 1912 was Sweden's only bite of the Olympic cherry, and it's hard to see it ever hosting a Summer Games again; I think we've reached the point where Only Cities Of Five Million People Or More May Apply now (unless Qatar decides to put in a bid, at which point the IOC will bend over backwards to accommodate them).  Sweden did apply for the 2026 Winter Games, with most of the outdoor events scheduled to be held out in Åre, and Stockholm hosting the indoors; they lost to Milan-Cortina d'Ampezzo, meaning that bizarrely, Sweden is still yet to host a Winter Olympics.  

A large inner city sports arena needs a large inner city metro station, and Stadion doesn't disappoint.  The subway from the street to the platforms is a lot of pictures of wholesome Swedish people winning medals and trophies.  Over the years the Stadion has been home to football teams, bandy teams, and ice hockey matches, while concerts have regularly played there.

At the foot of the escalators there's a poster for those 1912 games.  As I said, keep it simple, stupid.  Olympic Stadium?  Olympic poster.

There's also a giant S, to point you to the Stadion, in the colours of Djurgården, who played there until they moved to the Tele2...

...and on the opposite wall, an M made out of a musical note, to point you to the Musikhögskolan - the Royal College of Music.

It's the central, crossover chamber that really captures your attention.

There's no real reason for there to be a rainbow there.  It doesn't mean anything.  All it's for is to be pretty.  But aren't you glad they did?

I can't imagine anyone wandering off their train, unaware of the station's architect, and not smiling when they see that.  It's pure joy.  I love the T-bana for making me happy in a thousand ways.