Because of course

We all know what Saturday means

I finished yesterday’s entry saying “gotta run”, which was of course very literal. I’d got up on Saturday morning very early, to have breakfast not long after 7am. The restaurant was empty and I got a seat by the window, looking out at the grey, bleak-ish scene. Had some cheese and some pate and a LOT of sugary stuff, plus some juice and an “energy shot”. Then, back to the room to write all about Friday.

Left the hotel at about 0810, which as we’ll soon learn was considerably too early. But I had places to be: Saturday is parkrun, innit. In fact, doing parkrun here was the entire centrepiece of my weekend, the whole reason I’d come to Stockholm at all. It was here or Bedford, St Albans, or Gravesend.

Stepped out in my running kit and, oof, it’s cold. Pretty bitter, because the wind was harsh. Not good. Thankfully the nearest metro station was just around the corner, past the horses I’d forgotten that I was briefly obsessed with on Friday night on the way back from Barrels. Anyway, the station has a weird doorman.

And inside, holy shit, the whole station appears to be carved directly into rock. And there’s this, like, I dunno, grotto or something? Also the metro is deep, the escalators are long and curiously ad-free, which I honestly found a bit disconcerting.

Line 11, I think, to somewhere or other and then change onto line 19, where the station is literally about 100 yards from the start of parkrun. I arrived at perfect time, about 0850, had start time been 0900. But it’s not, it’s 0930. I knew this, it wasn’t a mistake, but even so I hadn’t quite thought the journey would be so quick. The first train left almost immediately as I got on it, and the change midway was only about 2 minutes which, as it proved, was just long enough for me to pick the wrong item from a vending machine because I typed in the price (32), not the right code. Fail.

There are multiple parkruns in or near Stockholm, but I’d headed out to Judarskogen (the Jewish forest), a parkrun in a nature reserve and which, you’ll have noticed, begins with the letter J. It’s my second J, ‘cos I’m trying to finish my second “alphabet”.

The nature reserve was very pretty, and the forecast rain had taken place overnight but now conditions were dry. Bitterly cold and windy, but dry. Lots of puddles on the ground though, not to mention a big fuck off lake. I killed a bunch of time walking around looking for red squirrels and not seeing any, and taking a load of pics that make this beautiful nature reserve apparently resemble Morden Park in south London, at least according to my brother.

To be honest I was glad just to have made it here. I nearly properly crocked myself in the middle of the night, forgetting that there are two steps in my hotel room down to reach the loo and navigating only by the dim light of my dim watch. Could’ve done myself a proper injury there, d’oh.

Anyway. 0930 start means 0830 UK time and I did wonder if I could finish my run just before those back home started, but since the briefing didn’t even start until 0928 there was no chance. Judarskogen is only about 1.5 years old and hasn’t exactly blown up, the average attendance is in the high 30s and I think a lot of them are tourists collecting the letter J. Still, it meant that even after the inadvisable breakfast and just general lack of fitness right now, I got my 5th highest ever finish as I came 24th. It’s a brilliant route and I enjoyed it, but oof, I need to run more frequently than just parkrun.

Here’s where I would normally shill 5kViz and embed a shareable image. So I will!

Let’s ignore the current bug that doesn’t do the gender counts correctly in non-English speaking countries. That’ll be fixed soon. Hat tip to Mike for raising the bug with me late at night when I was … ah, we’ll get to that.

Because of the GIANT sweat patch on my shirt, I chose to walk to the second closest station, a good 15-20 minute walk away, in the hope that it would dry out. It did not. Nonetheless the walk was good, the wind a little less chilly, and I got to see a bloke on skis on wheels using the cycle lane. You heard. He was cross country skiing but his skis had wheels.

There was a nice view on the way back that I’d missed on the way out.

And more interesting stuff at the interchange station, that I’d missed first time round.

The station nearest my hotel is a terminus, and has (at least) two exits/entrances which are miles apart from each other. I know this because I unwittingly chose the one furthest from my hotel. There’s an Ikea connected to the one I used, because I’m in fucking Sweden so why wouldn’t there be an Ikea connected to a city centre tube station.

Shower check: water pressure acceptable. Not the best, far from the worst. Feeling good, I got changed and consulted Claude about the walking routes it had thrown together for me. I told it to fuck off all the culture stuff it was suggesting and just get me a picturesque route to Omnipollo’s Hatt. Loaded it into Google maps and off I went.

Let’s do too many steps

It started off well. The skies were clearing yet more, though the wind was still windy. There were a lot of people our walking the same route in one direction or t’other, and everyone was very bloody slow so I had to weave in and out a lot. But that sounds grumpier than it should. It’s fucking lovely around where I was staying, and indeed everywhere I’d been and was yet to be.

After a while came to bridge to Djurgården and, oh, a whole load of cultural stuff. I mean I didn’t go inside any of the, but this was full on museums and stuff. Vikings. Ships. Wrecks. Abba. Drinking. All the Swedish things.

.

Interlude to rage about Adobe

Oh god I hate Adobe so, so much. It feels harsh to say since their support folk have been kinda helpful recently, albeit I shouldn’t have even needed them. But this is doing my head in. For now, I’m still using an Adobe app to write my blog posts but then I translate them into my new thing and that’s all too technical to care about. But what’s happened is: their app no longer reliably works offline. That was the BEST thing about it. I wrote a bunch of stuff while tethered to my phone on the train to the airport, and now I’m in the airport and IT’S ALL GONE. ALL OF IT. And while I’m sat here trying to do it all again, photos won’t upload and it just keeps throwing my work away. I’m so angry.

Back to walking around Stockholm

OK where was I. Oh yeah. Djurgården. Lots of museums and culture and all the stuff I was trying to avoid. But also lots of nice walking and outdoors things (no red squirrels). The one museum I considered going in was SPIRIT MUSEUM, the museum of Swedish drinking culture. But it looked like you needed to do a guided tour, and I wasn’t in the mood for that. Also smelled like an advertising vessel for Absolut more than anything else, so, nah.

It looks like I was a week early for a more authentic guide to Swedish drinking culture anyway.

By now I was immersing myself in Swedish music, too. I’d got bored of podcasts I was taking no notice of, so switched to an album called “Swedish death metal” I think. It was … poor. Lots of B and C tier bands I’d barely heard of making acceptable rackets, but nothing outstanding. Switched instead to “Essential Swedish metal” Apple Music playlist and things got much, much better.

At the end of my walk on Djurgården was a funfair, and a boat stop. Two boats, in fact, leave from here. Or was it three? I dunno. I know I wanted to get the 82, so I joined the queue, got on, nabbed a prime space outside given the wind had died down and thoroughly enjoyed the 10-12 minute two stop journey over to, er, wherever it was. Slussen? Stussen? Anyway, at that end there was an enormous queue holding considerably more people than could possibly fit on the boat. Definitely did this journey in the right direction.

Essential Swedish metal started to become a little less essential, but off I went following Google’s walking directions to Omnipollo’s hatt. This was my second goal for the day after parkrun: revisit the taproom of one of my favourite breweries, 8 and a bit years after my last visit.

And so I walked. And walked. And walked. Not all of it was picturesque.

Some of it was quite train-y.

Carlings did not sell Carling. Bastard burgers did tempt me briefly, as I recalled how nice the food was in the Malmö branch, but I’d had that burger the night before so I carried on. To Omnipollo!

At least, I thought I was going to Omnipollo. But every few minutes or so I had the nagging feeling I was going in the wrong direction, so I consulted my phone and Google maps recalibrated and went, oh, yeah, Omnipollo’s back the way you came. Essentially it felt like it was walking me in a massive spiral like water circling a drain. I didn’t need this! But, eventually, I got there.

Let’s have some beer

Hej! Omnipollo! No-one recognised me from my previous visit, and there were no seats inside so I sat outside in the cold with a rice IPA that proved a poor choice. Nonetheless, of the literally thousands of selfies I have of me drinking beer I think this is one of my favourites.

The group of absolute wrong ‘uns who were being loud and twattish behind me left pretty soon after I arrived, thankfully. Having instigated a conversation with Ian about Swedish metal, we carried on chatting as he was rightfully jealous of my location. I went inside to take my glass back and, huh, there’s now a seat at the bar. Well, it’s warmer in here, how about I try that 12.5% stout?

Obviously it was bloody delicious. But even though I’d had less than a pint of beer in well over an hour, I was starting to feel a bit drunk. Probably because I hadn’t eaten since 0730, before parkrun let alone all the walking, and it was now gone 2pm. Omnipollo’s hatt is famous for its pizza as much as its beer, but I didn’t fancy pizza so I ordered some chips which come topped with parmesan. What I got was crisps topped with parmesan. Not what I wanted, and not filling.

Tried to leave but I got trapped in my seat, so had a third beer along with the crisps. And then finally managed to escape their specific gravitational pull and head towards Mikkeller. My friends Tom & Simon are in the orient these days, and coincidentally were at a Mikkeller beer festival in Beijing. I’d said I would try and remotely cheers them from Mikkeller Stockholm because, I dunno, reasons. I did end up doing it, but I’m not sure either of them remember it. Sounded messy over there.

Mikkeller wasn’t busy, and was warm. As with Omnipollo though, my first beer was pretty average so I had to order a second. And by now I really, really, really did need some solids so to hell with it, I’ll have a pizza with kebab meat on it please.

This was a mistake. A delicious, expensive mistake. The second beer was not a mistake, though, delicious as it was. However, by now AFC Wimbledon were playing Sheffield Wednesday and were 3-0 down at half time, the commentary referring to two of them as “disastrous”. Not just the fact they were conceded, but the manner in which it happened. Oh dear. Gave up on that and left the pub in a moderate drunken huff.

Walked back to the hotel, trusting Google maps far less than before. Lesson learned, but anyway I also knew where I was. Took some detours through the streets of the old town (Gamla Stan) for added beauty. Also lots of statues, and lovely sunset lighting. Really nice walk tbh.

Also a palace of some sort.

Computer, enhance! Are there armed guards there?

And so back to the hotel, finally. I’d got a diet coke en route but it did precisely fuck all to keep me awake, because as soon as I got to my room I nodded off. Deliberately, I might add. I was ~27000 steps in by now I’ll have you know. The view was nice as I closed the curtains.

So my brief constitutional became a bit longer, and my hoodie zip broke so I couldn’t do it up. I also didn’t want to go to a busy city centre bar but what choice did I have?

Well, turns out I had the choice to go to a quiet city centre bar. Side Pour was loud in terms of music, but quiet in terms of clientele. I got a seat at the bar and a tank pour Pilsner Urquell, which they are rightfully proud of, and some chips. Actual chips this time! Then, another beer and Mike popped up to ask why there were no women at parkrun.

Damn it! I hadn’t even noticed. I’d completely avoided diligently testing all the internationalisation and localisation required to make 5kViz work properly in non-English speaking countries. So, time to get to work: I got Claude on the case, and asked what the guest IPA was. Turns out it was a fucking phenomenal Omnipollo beer I’d not had before and wasn’t on sale at the hatt. He was telling me about how those guys really know what they’re doing, and I agreed enthusiastically.

Also Google finally thought I might want some food in Stockholm, about 28.5 hours after landing.

Claude wouldn’t fix the bug, but it did set up a testing harness for me to run next time I’m at a real computer. And with that, and the amazing Omnipollo beer to finish my landside Stockholm boozing for the weekend, I wandered back to the hotel.

TL;DR: Saturday was mostly parkrun and brewery taprooms because of course it was.

Alarm set for 6.30am ‘cos I had stuff to do before going to the airport on Sunday. Just needed the weather forecast to hold, and the pillow mist to have no effect.