Trip Report: Sweden

Visited in April 2016

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Sweden. A country that I am confronted with more than I would actually like. And not because I’m so often in Sweden. Quite the opposite. Many people abroad consider this country to be my home. “Oh you’re from Switzerland? Cool, I have a relative in Stockholm!”

Ironically, Sweden and Switzerland are not even neighbors. The distance between the two capitals is more than 1,500 km as the crow flies. Still, the two countries are regularly confused with each other. It’s a never-ending story. In Japan, someone once even handed me a flyer for a festival in Gothenburg. When I said that I lived in Switzerland and not Sweden, the woman told me I could still go there. As if it was just around the corner.

So, what are the differences between Switzerland and Sweden? Switzerland has Raclette/Fondue, Sweden has Köttbullar. We Swiss have Rolex, IWC and Patek Philippe, whereas the Swedes have Daniel Wellington. Switzerland has the Swiss Army Knife and Sweden has… well, a toolbox to set up an IKEA closet. Switzerland has Roger Federer, Sweden has Zlatan Ibrahimovic. The only real similarity that comes to my mind is that both countries are expensive.

I have visited Sweden twice (as of March 2024). My first visit was in April 2016, when I spent a weekend in Stockholm with two friends. The plan was a classic “boys’ weekend” with lots of partying.

However, I also wanted to see the city of Stockholm and do some cultural things. As a matter of fact, I’ve never been to Scandinavia before this trip. That’s why it was like a trip to a new world to me.

My impressions of this weekend were:

• Sweden has a reputation for being super expensive, but it wasn’t. Or rather, I didn’t perceive it that way. Sure, the country is more expensive than Moldova, but there was no comparison with Switzerland. I also found Oslo and Copenhagen to be significantly more expensive than Stockholm.
• Rarely have I seen so many well-dressed people, both men and women, as in Stockholm.
• Entering a bar or disco in Stockholm is relatively difficult, at least in a group of men. In most cases, we were told that we were too tipsy, which wasn’t even true. I asked a bouncer whether I was here in Sweden or Saudi Arabia, to which the bouncer replied that Sweden has laws like Saudi Arabia when it comes to drinking.
• The weather has a massive impact on the overall experience of a city trip. One day Stockholm seemed gray and dull, the other colorful and nice. On the “bad” day, we fought ourselves through the rain to see the highlights of the city. It wasn’t fun, to be honest.

• Gamla Stan, Stockholm’s Old Town, was in my opinion by far the best part of the city and many of Stockholm’s sights are located there, e.g. Stortorget, the oldest square in Stockholm, or the Royal Palace. You haven’t seen Stockholm if you skipped Gamla Stan.

• Stockholm is a walkable city. We explored most of the city by foot, as you can reach many of Stockholm’s sights by walking. Needless to say, we also spent a lot of time in cafés and bars in order to escape a bit from the rain.

• The Vasamuseet, the Vasa Museum, located on the island of Djurgården is a great museum. It shows an almost fully intact warship from the 17th century and is the most visited museum in Scandinavia. You can see the ship from three different floors.

I also revisited Stortorget in Gamla Stan, which looked much nicer now than the day before. The Royal Palace was the last sight I went to before I headed back to our hotel. The Royal Palace is one of the largest palaces in Europe and home to five museums. I didn’t went inside the museums, but I think that this is another attraction where you could easily spend a few hours.

• Since we could not enter any bar or club on the first night, I had to wait until Saturday to get an impression of Stockholm’s nightlife. This time, the trick was, that I registered at the venue’s website in order to be on the guest list. Most of the venues have an automatic system and you’ll receive a confirmation just a few seconds later. I have seen girls getting rejected at the door, so it seems that it doesn’t have anything to do with the gender but with registering in advance.

In 2024, my second visit to Sweden took place. Having already visited 166 countries in the meantime, I felt the desire to get to know Europe better. After all, I have only visited most countries once, and that was the capital.

A lot has happened in the meantime. While Sweden was a model European country when I first visited in 2016, I sometimes get the feeling from reading the newspapers that Sweden has become the Haiti of Europe. The headlines here are dominated by the fact that the crime rate has increased massively and that Sweden is plagued by gang wars.

Of course, that didn’t stop me from visiting. On the first weekend of March, I flew to Copenhagen, from where I took the train across the 8km-long Øresund bridge, which connects Denmark and Sweden. In Ystad, a small town almost at the southernmost tip of Sweden, lives Chris, who has traveled to all 197 countries in the world. He visited his last country in 2023. Chris and I have “known” each other for several years via social media and my second trip to Sweden was a great opportunity to finally meet him.

Over the next two days, I then visited southern Sweden, specifically the cities of Malmö, Ystad and Lund as well as Ales stenar, the Stonehenge of Sweden, so to speak. My observations on this part of the country:

• In Southern Sweden, there are several interesting places within a relatively short driving distance of each other. In addition to the places already mentioned, Helsingborg and Gothenburg are not far away.
• The train network in this part of Sweden is top-notch. Not only are all these places well connected by train, the trains also run at a very high frequency. From Copenhagen Airport to Malmö, for example, there is a train every 15 minutes. The trains are clean and comfortable.
• Malmö, of which I had pretty low expectations to be honest, wasn’t too bad. The third largest city in Sweden often has the reputation of being a ghetto, but it didn’t seem that way to me at all. I thought the city was actually pretty and also has a few interesting things to do for tourists. Most visit Malmö as a day-trip from Copenhagen, but I think the city is also a good idea for more than that.

• For me, the most interesting attraction in Malmö was the “disgusting food museum”, where gross dishes from all over the world are exhibited. And you can even try some of it. I love quirky places like this and for globetrotters it is of course all the more interesting as you have already seen some of this food somewhere on your travels. You’ll find things like monkey brains, guinea pigs, a variety of horrible smelling cheeses, surströmming, the famous canned herring, and much more.

• Southern Sweden is flat. Both on the train and on the car journeys between towns, I drove past endless fields scarred by winter. Every now and then there was a wind turbine, sometimes a few trees. Otherwise… Flat countryside and not a mountain in sight. According to my buddy Chris, the highest point in the south of Sweden is 200 meters high.
• Lund and Ystad are both beautiful little towns that are well worth a visit. I imagine Lund in particular to be beautiful in summer, when the ivy is growing on the facade of the university library and the sun is shining on the colorful houses of the town. It doesn’t take more than a few hours to visit both places.

• Like Stonehenge, Ales stenar are an arrangement of stones on a field. It has not yet been discovered what the stone formation was made for, i.e. whether it was a calendar or something else. Is it worth it? I guess everyone has to answer that for themselves. After this visit, I certainly know why I’ve never been to Stonehenge before 😉

• By the way, the weather on my second visit was even worse than the first time. Two days of fog, gray skies and drizzle. Next time I will definitely visit Sweden between May and September.

My travel experience in Sweden

So, Sweden was not only my first country in Northern Europe but also the first that I visited twice. My new favorite country in the Nordics? I don’t want to commit to that yet. Let’s just say that I like Sweden and would love to go there a third time.

The question would then be where to go. To the northern part of the country, perhaps? But to be honest, I imagine the north of Sweden as an area mainly covered in forest where you meet more moose than people. In any case, I don’t have a picture in my mind’s eye that would make me say I absolutely have to go there. Consequently, I could almost imagine that my next visit would take me back to Stockholm.

“Norway has the most beautiful nature in Northern Europe, but we have the best capital,” said Chris. And I think he’s right. For me, Stockholm is not only the best capital city in the Nordics, but also one of the best in Europe.

Perhaps Sweden is not the country I would visit again for the nature or other sights, but rather for the people, the architecture (I always associate Sweden with pale, yellowish houses) and, for me, the best cuisine in Northern Europe. Funnily enough, Chris told the food in the Ikea restaurants is authentic Swedish cuisine, which I didn’t expect. I mean, I definitely had better food in restaurants in Stockholm and Malmö than at Ikea.

Also this time, I was surprised that Sweden was anything but expensive. Coming from Switzerland and returning from Malmö to Copenhagen Airport, I thought that Sweden was actually quite cheap. A dinner for two consisting of a shared starter, two mains, two desserts and two soft drinks was SEK 750, which is about €65. In Zurich, you’d pay double the price for the same.

Having said all that, the overall verdict for Sweden is of course good. Best country in the Nordics? I don’t know. Probably not in terms of nature, I would still prefer Norway, Denmark (also because of Faeroe and Greenland) and Iceland, which I have not been to yet. But in terms of the capital and the food, it’s maybe the winner. In any case, I’m looking forward to my next visit.

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