Day 3: Skagen to Stockholm

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Another fine breakfast of toast and jam and salami sandwiches (Scandinavia and possibly the rest of Western Europe is a huge fan of salami and that makes me happy.) and then we departed for our morning ferry to Sweden. It looked a little rainy, but we managed to beat the weather.



Then the skies opened up and the sun poked its head out. The ferry was a lot of fun. I stayed on the back outside for a while, at least until the noise, the wind, and the occasional mystery droplet got to me. Then I sat and worked on a few previous sketches.



When we arrived in Gothenborg, it was straight on the bus for three hours to the Källemo Furniture showroom, where we saw tons and tons and tons of chairs.



Along with a foam monk.



And a table.



The Spencer table was designed by Nils-Ole Zib, one of our professors. It's a compression-molded table top made of birch and the legs are chrome. The woman working at the showroom told us that on one visit he made with students, he got up on the table to show how strong it was. Then he invited more students up to test it. Only when the 8th person got on the table did it fail. Wow.

Then it was another two hours on the bus to Löffstad Slot, a castle/restaurant where we had a lovely dinner of chicken and rice with tomato, mango, and pineapple amongst pretty pretty orchids.



After a leisurely stroll back to the bus, we started on our way to the hostel. Then realized Robert (one of three Danes in the program) was running behind the bus flailing his arms about wildly, so we proceeded to stop and let him on the bus, because we're nice like that.



Two and a half hours and one Danish movie ("The Celebration") later, we were at Zinkendamms Hostel in Stockholm. Since we didn't have to be up until 8:30 the next morning, everyone decided to go out and party it up. A lot of the time was spent actually walking to the clubs, but we found an extremely trendy one, Bauer, and I bought the World's Most Expensive Vodka Tonic^TM, 96 SEK, about $16. Good thing it's bad taste to tip bartenders or waitresses over here.

Around 1 I started getting tired (What, you want a piece of me?), so I headed back to the hostel with a few people. I'm glad I did, though, because it gave me time to write some postcards, do some laundry, and call the 'rents.

I got to hear about my brother and sister-in-law's one-year anniversary party/wedding reception (an interesting and very logical idea). I'm so sad that I missed it, and it was bittersweet to hear the stories from the evening, but I'm super-excited to see the pictures. Instead of a photographer, they rented a photo booth and had tons of props like mustaches and Groucho Marx glasses around to aid in photo hilarity. When I beg and plead enough to have them sent to me, I'll post them up–with permission, of course.

Today was the first day of working drawings. It started with a 3-HOUR LECTURE from Flemming. And god bless him, but 3 hours of anyone while sitting in those pre-school-sized torture machines masquerading as chairs would be enough for me to fake a stroke. No real tidbits of wisdom on this one–it was pretty much all about elevations and guide lines.

Then it was time for lunch, which Tristan, Elizabeth, and I picked up from the Netto down the street. Lasagna. Not bad.

Then about 4 hours were dedicated to drafting/sketching/looking at inspirational pictures. I feel like I haven't gotten anything done, but we still have four full days (no lectures) to get the drawings hashed out. And I'm pretty comfortable since my design concept is complete. It's just the beauty of the details now.