the following photos bring my little sweden holiday series to a close. no photos from thursday, but to quickly recap, thursday was spent exploring the city by myself. as you all already know, adelinn was sick and had to stay in falköpig and steffi had to work thursday and friday during the day, which meant having to do some quick on-the-toes thinking. i got in contact with friend of linnea's called karin and made plans for friday during the day. thursday i was left to my own devices, which in all honest was completely fine. exploring a new place alone can be relaxing and exciting. i was able to get in this very important thing called shopping and was able to do so at my own pace. visited beyond retro and basically fell in love. okay, okay, so thrifted clothing mainly shipped over from the us with a price tag that of 10 times the amount the item undoubtedly originally was priced at over in the bargain bin of some small town good will before being snatched up to be sold there did make me cringe a little, but the selection is pretty top, and hey, you only live once. i picked up a pair of shoes, a shirt, a backpack and a tote bag.
on friday karin showed me around the older parts of stockholm - karin had previously worked as a tour guide for exchange students so i basically got all the benefits of a tour without the i-think-i-am-so-funny-and-ironic-watch-me-make-some-uncomfortable-jokes-and-laugh-awkwardly middle aged tour guide. we also had a chance to see the david lachapelle exhibition at fotografiska, the photography museum in stockholm. it was unexpectedly crowded but we still managed to see what we wanted to see. if any of you are not familiar with lachapelle, i suggest you get informed or at least read his bio on wikipedia. here, i did all the work for you so now you have no excuses. his work is simultaneously beautiful, stunning, haunting, and downright uncomfortable. there is this sort of unapologetic objectifying of the human form in his work. his pieces do not only showcase the immense beauty of the human form. in many cases the form, physically perfect, is downright grotesque, due to its hyper-realistic presentation and almost too perfect physique. this creates a tension between the viewer and artwork where although the figures are displayed like objects, creating a level of passivity and vulnerability, they retain a level of control over the viewer due to their unapologetic often half nude or fully nude bodies. he also plays with a lot of interesting political and religious themes. but hey, do not just take my word for it, go check out his artwork!
later that night, steffi and i met up with her friend anna for dinner at this tapas restaurant in the city. pretty amazing food, but extremely greasy.
all in all i found sweden to be pretty amazing and will definitely be visiting again soon.
