Stockholm 4
We breakfasted in the basement of Hotel Gama Stan whose walls and vaults formed part of the ancient City walls.
Further under ground on the way to City Hall, we rode an escalator 100 feet down to the Kungstradgarten Subway station
and were astounded by what we found down there:
We got the requisite portrait at City Hall.
While Jan stayed at the cafe, I roamed the grounds that I recognized from the Hendrik Willem Van Loon alphabet book I’d treasured as a five year old.
As an inscription in it shows, my parents rescued the battered volume and gifted it to our daughter Claire when she was 9.
I rented one of the ubiquitous Lime electric scooters, planning to ride to a beach along the shore a couple of miles away for a swim. But I soon lost heart because of the traffic and confusing road alignments and walked over to check out one of the Culturfest events:
Jan and I reconnected in the mid afternoon and agreed to visit the National Museum. We wound our way through the ever more crowded streets filled with young Swedes whose beauty appealed to my art conoisseur’s eye.
We arrived with just enough time to catch some highlights before it closed for the day.
Over the entrance we both found the PreRaphaelite mural by Carl Larsson visually appealing but bizarre in subject. “Midwinter Sacrifice” portrays a legendary naked king being willingly beheaded for his subjects by a red-cloaked priest in the effort to end a famine. Inspiring ongoing controversy, it was removed and then returned over a period of several decades.
Only briefly distracted, we hunted down the less controversial, but no less affecting Rembrandt portraits of youth and age.
With only a half hour or so left, we came upon the featured exhibit entitled “Hannah Hirsch Pauli, The Art of Being Free.” We both loved the work and the life story of this relatively unknown Swedish painter (1864-1940) who came from an assimilated Jewish family, spent several years in Paris with the Impressionists, married an artist and bore children, lived a sane and productive life and died before being exiled or murdered by the Nazis. Like Rembrandt’s, I particularly liked her portraits of Youth and Age.
This image of fulfilled exhaustion befitted our mood as we left the museum and hiked back to Kungsradgarden for dinner in a cafe tucked in a tight grove of linden trees.
Somewhat refreshed, we braved exuberant crowds gathered before the Opera House to hear a concert by a big star we didnt know, but whose lyrical enthusiasm I greatly enjoyed.
Jan and I again parted ways in front of the Royal Palace, she on her way back to the hotel and I in search of one last taste of mainstream Culture that I wished the one I was returning to in the morning was more like:
As I stood with the crowd, my phone dinged notice of a text from Jan. It was a picture and the caption, “Best dessert I’ve ever eaten.”
