Stockholm, I am going to miss the shit outta you.

So last night was the gala dinner for PLAIN 2011. The Van der Nootska Palace was a 17th-century decorative gem.

We started with some very civilised drinks in the garden before proceeding inside for dinner.





For your information, the reindeer mousse atop my chanterelle tart tasted rather a lot like beef jerky whipped with Philly cream cheese. Unfortunate, I thought, that there were no bagels lying around.

After dinner, coffee was served in the drawing room and there was an actual pianist (!) and actual songbooks (!!) and actual Swedes singing along to the piano (!!!). Heaven. But a little too demure for the Australians and before long someone had sorted out an iPod connection and we had an hilarious disco in the ballroom. It was horribly cliched, but it would be remiss of me not to mention that ABBA got a spin on more than one occasion.

A side note: why don't Australian men know how to dance properly? All the diplomats had mad skillz in twirling us around the ballroom. Chuh.

They also played a lot of fairly saccharine-sounding Swedish pop music. I asked a friend to translate and she said the chorus was "summertime, hey hey!" but in all honesty they could have been singing "We have the most attractive genes, suckaz!" and I would be none the wiser.

I turned into a pumpkin at midnight and, walking back to my hotel, noticed that even after 12, this is as dark as it gets in Stockholm midsumma. Bliss.


This morning I spent 90 minutes (ridiculous, unacceptably lengthy period of time) packing while having a disco to Graceland through my headphones. I went for one last walk through Sodermalm, this time in more residential streets, before stopping at my beloved Il Caffe Soder.









I am currently waiting to board my flight to Berlin, where I will be staying at the insanely stylish Michelberger Hotel. Apparently it is so hip that they felt it neessary to state in their marketing material that the people in the photographs are actual guests, not models. Good to know.

Hej da, Stockholm. I am going to miss the shit outta you.


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