Stockholm
How to describe Stockholm? Small, just about a million people live there. Cold, temperatures drop to below 30 degrees F in the winter and frequently dips down below 10.
It is also a very good place to live in. If you are used to the level of civilization that California has, Stockholm is probably the closest thing in Europe. (Oslo, in Norway, is pretty close, but it is a bit too small.)
Trees
Unlike Southern California, Stockholm's temperate climate means a lot of trees just about everywhere. The general attitude to vegetation is that it should be left alone if possible, and so the suburbs of Stockholm are surrounded by, and sometimes half submerged in, forest. The photos below were all taken around our hosting center in Kista, a small suburb in the north-west of Stockholm. The rightmost photo was taken from the subway train going there.
Water
Stoclholm was originally intended as a "lock on the Mälaren", this being a very elongated freshwater lake opening up into the Baltic Sea. (Think of it as a very big fjord.) Stockholm basically straddles this lake, forming a convenient point to collect toll from trade ships going further inland. As a result, the city center is built on a set of islands with lots of water inbetween.
Old Town
On the middle - which also happens to be the smallest - island is the Old Town. This was all of Stockholm for a very long time. Now it is a place for quaint boutiques, tourist traps and the occasional residential building.
Work
Having dealt with junk such as where Stockholm is, its history etc. we can move on to important stuff - what about Inspire? Inspire (now Interchange Europe officially, but you can't keep a good name down) has its offices in the northwestern part of the city center ("vasastan"), right next to the Stockholm School of Commerce, and a hill called Observatorielunden. The first picture was taken from that hill, looking northeast, and the second one was taken in the office, facing east.
Home
I grew up in Husby, a suburb immediately north-west of Kista (where the hosting center is). Like Kista, it was built in the mid-70's when the government set out to build enough apartments to house a million people. The houses were simple, cheap, and uniform. Remerkably, they were also pretty well built. The houses in Husby were all built from the same basic module blocks, which you can see on the photo - the edges between the squares are the edges between the modules.
No, this is not Berlin.
2005-10-30 14:42