Stockholm Day One.
The long awaited long study tour has arrived. As I am writing this I cannot believe that it has happened already. The study tour in my head was always so far away, and now that it has came and went it is making me realize how fast time moves here!
I guess I will start at the beginning, I was a little bummed when I saw the tour lists and pretty much all of my friends were on one and I was on another. I had pretty low expectations for the trip as I woke up at 5 am to hop on the metro and race to the airport to catch our flight to Sweden. It was pretty much naps to sweden, but as we touched down in Stockholm, we saw the frost had frozen the forest surrounding the airport, and the sun was just rising in the sky. If thats not a good omen than I don’t know what would be.
We took a bus from the airport into town meanwhile listing to our professor Kelly talking about the design of the Stockholm airport. Though its apparent the distaste Danes have for Swedes, it was interesting to hear his perspective. He was a designer of the Copenhagen Airport Terminal Three, and comparing that piece of art to other airports across Scandinavia made me being to think about architecture as identity.
We began to explore the old town, Gamla Stan and the medieval qualities seen there. 
After wandering around sketching, eating and realizing we were in Stockholm, it was time to compare these winding narrow streets to the modernist movement of Urban Design in Sweden at Sergels Torg. 
This space was created in the 1960s and largely separates people from cars which in theory sounds good, but this area is often darker from no cars and thus has become dangerous at night. We then wandered around the Kulure Huset, a building that houses a library, dance studio, cafes and lots of other community engagement activities. Oh and these awesome chairs: 
After this we headed out to some museum and pretty much all exhibits were closed but they had a great book sale going on, one book for approximately $70 USD. Way within my budget.
For dinner we were treated by DIS to a traditional Swedish meal of Meatballs berries and potatos. A great end to the day.
