[photos from this leg of the trip can be found right here]

At Icelandair’s gate at John F. Kennedy International Airport, the status notification telling you whether or not your flight is boarding must be on a timer. There’s no other explanation for its behavior the night of August 20th, when a large crowd of us found ourselves waiting for the gate to be opened and watched the status change from “Boarding” to “Departed”. Given that no one had opened the gate as of yet, we were all pretty certain that this was some sort of error. Thankfully, it was. And Icelandair has a seemingly foolproof way to defuse any kind of stress once you board the plane: play Sigur Ros. Utter genius.

Six hours and change later, we touched down at Keflavik. It was morning in Iceland; just after dawn. The airport doesn’t look like most airports: it gives one the impression that one is walking through a hunting lodge from the future. I looked out the window, and my sleep-deprived eyes saw fields of cooled lava as far as the eye could see, and dawn breaking at the horizon through a panoply of clouds. Have we been routed through Purgatory? I asked myself. Was the connecting flight through Mordor? And then I boarded my flight to Stockholm.

It was on the flight to Stockholm that I first saw the children’s television show Lazy Town. Watching it without any context or audio is an incredibly surreal experience. First, some of the characters are played by actors; the rest are animated. Second, the villain of the program resembles Bruce Campbell with a pompadour and wetsuit. Third, one of the other characters seems to travel exclusively via handsprings. When you’re watching something like this out of the corner of your eye with about forty minutes’ sleep…..yeah.

***

Stockholm. Arrived in the early afternoon; caught the Arlanda Express to the city center, and took mass transit from there to my hotel where I promptly passed out until around 8 pm. Woke up and got some street food; wandered around Gamla Stan for a while, passed by Debaser, and ended up having a couple of beers at a bar near the hotel called Carmen.

Woke up on Tuesday and made my way back to the city center to buy a 48-hour Stockholm Card. My first order of business was to head out to Djurgarden, an island that I’d been told boasted an abundance of museums, plus lemurs. First stop was the Vasamuseet, in which one can see a preserved 17th-century warship. This is in and of itself pretty damn awe-inspiring, but the story of how it came to be preserved and salvaged is nearly as compelling all over again. I spent two hours and change there, floored by the sheer scale of it.

Wandered around the island for a bit, and eventually made my way to Skansen, where I rode a funicular railway, saw some Swedish wildlife, and tried unsuccessfully to locate a reindeer. Walked from there to the Biological Museum, where I saw a taxidermied-but-still-terrifying bear and….um…..this. I made my way back to, er, one of the other islands of which the city is comprised, did some record shopping, ate tasty Swedish food, and made my way over to Debaser for their hip-hop night. Which was astonishingly good.

Wednesday. Wednesday was my day for museums: notably, the Historika Museet and Stockholm Stadsmuseum. The latter had a pretty fascinating exhibit on the evolution of the design of urban objects (mailboxes, street signs, etc) over the course of the last century. Outside said museum, one could purchase reindeer meat from a street food stand; I opted not to do this. Also visited a number of cathedrals, and other historical-esque buildings. And after spending the day running around like a madman, avoiding the occasional squall and soaking up the history of the city like the proverbial sponge, I decided to cap off my last night in Sweden by, well, going to Debaser. Because it’s that good of a space: a large outdoor area with DJs spinning good music, affable bartenders, and a fine performance space inside. My plan was to get a beer or two, listen to some music being spun, and head home. This was not to be how things went down.

So I’d seen earlier that a band called Still Flyin’ was playing Debaser that night. What I’d been able to glean from their myspace page didn’t look all that interesting. But then, just after buying my second (possibly third) Carlsberg of the night, I turned around and saw someone sporting a Cause Co-Motion shirt. Interesting, thought I. And then I spotted a familiar face or two in the crowd — strange, given that I don’t know anyone in Stockholm. Long story short: Still Flyin’ is a massive reggae band with a rotating lineup (including folks from the Lucksmiths and Aislers Set), and said lineup for a brief tour of Sweden included some folks I knew. I talked to some of the guys in the band and hauled ass towards an ATM so that I could buy a ticket.

By the time I got back, Blind Terry were about halfway through with their set. Think warm, jaunty pop that’s not too far removed from what Crystal Skulls are doing. (In my book, this is a fine thing). And then their set concluded and Still Flyin’ took the stage, and it was fucking amazing. You’ve got more than a dozen people on stage, some of them with instruments and some without, most of them are singing. There’s smoke everywhere, lights, people dancing. It was one of the best times I’ve had at a show in recent memory; weeks later, “Never Gonna Touch the Ground” remains embedded in my brain. It’s very difficult to convey just how enjoyable the show was, but believe me…

The next morning, I woke up with the worst hangover I’ve ever had. On to Estonia…