Our flight left about 30 minutes late headed across the Atlantic for Copenhagen, Denmark.
We had a two hour layover in Copenhagen and hung out in the SAS lounge before boarding an SAS Scandinavian Airline flight for the short one hour flight to Stockholm.
On arrival a little after noon on Tuesday, we collected our luggage and took a taxi to the Östermalm section of Stockholm, just north of the Gamla Stan or Old Town. We checked in to our efficiency apartment on Gravgatan street, about a ten minute walk from the shul and community centre, and also about a block and a half from the main harbour of Stockholm. The location, being centrally located, could not have been more perfect.
We had a two hour layover in Copenhagen and hung out in the SAS lounge before boarding an SAS Scandinavian Airline flight for the short one hour flight to Stockholm.
On arrival a little after noon on Tuesday, we collected our luggage and took a taxi to the Östermalm section of Stockholm, just north of the Gamla Stan or Old Town. We checked in to our efficiency apartment on Gravgatan street, about a ten minute walk from the shul and community centre, and also about a block and a half from the main harbour of Stockholm. The location, being centrally located, could not have been more perfect.
When we arrived at the apartment building, the Alters were already there. We unpacked and decided that this would be an early night. So all we did was walk to the JCC and have a very early dinner and then take a short walk through the centre of town.
Our initial impressions of the city is that it is very quiet and very clean. The buildings are very old but lovingly preserved. It seems that whichever way you walk, the road leads to water.
The people seem very friendly and it seems that everyone is in very good physical shape; lots of people using bycicles with many dedicated lanes and paths throughout the city; and everyone is tall and seems to have blonde hair and very long legs.
Irving and Ruchama had spent the time that they had prior to our arrival by visiting the ABBA museum, eating at the kosher street food falafel truck, and visiting the kosher cafe at the Bajit, which is the Swedish name for their JCC.
We walked to the Bajit, the JCC. My preconceived notion was not what I found. It was a large modern building with little Jewish markings other than a very non obtrusive Magen David on the outside, accessible only through a laneway with many security video cameras watching 24/7, and then you reach a solid metal door and you press a buzzer for access.
You can hardly see the Magen David in the photo above.
You never meet a security guard. He questions you over a speaker system and while he already knew the Alters, he questioned us. Even after Irving said to him that they had been earlier and that he knew who they were, he wanted to know who we were. Where were we from, he spoke to us in Hebrew...and finally he felt comfortable enough and buzzed us in. We had to wait till the heavy door opened automatically and then closed automatically before the next heavy metal door leading to the centre opened automatically.
He had given us instructions to stay on the main floor, as the upper floors are the home of the community school and school was still in session. The main floor has 1] a kosher store called Kosherien which had a fairly good inventory of products; packaged goods, frozen meats and chicken, fresh Israeli packaged salads and cold cuts etc., 2] a kosher dairy cafe called the Bajit Cafe and 3] a large lending library.
We ate dinner which consisted of a main dish of very good shakshuka and a main dish of a Swedish Herring recipe (which was not very good).
One thing we did notice was that no one in the school or among the parents collecting their children or patrons of the restaurant wore kippot. When we inquired about the morning minyan, the restaurant manager (originally from Israel) told us that we would be lucky to have a Minyan in the morning; Thursday morning would have a better chance and that there would be a larger minyan on Shabbat with a special occasion kiddush this week.
More on the school and the shul later when we report on our visit for Shacharit on Wednesday morning.
After dinner, we went for a brief walk thru town and found ourselves facing a memorial to Raoul Wallenberg z”tl, a Swedish Diplomat, who saved many Hungarian Jews from the Nazis. It is opposite the Great Synagogue of Stockholm, built in the 1860’s. It is now a Mesorati Synagogue.
Between the memorial and the Synagogue are actual train tracks from the cattle cars that transported Jews to Auschwitz, and along the wall of the shul courtyard are thousands of names of relatives of Swedish Jews murdered in the Holocaust. It is a very moving memorial.
We then walked a bit further to the King’s Gardens, a very green area with fountains and restaurants that was filled with people celebrating the absolutely beautiful weather and unseasonable (for Sweden) 26 C temperature.
By this time Irving and Ruchama were tired so they went back to their apartment and we continued to walk thru town, visited a local supermarket to buy supplies for breakfast and at about 8:00 we returned to our apartment.
We were very tired, but a good way to fight jet lag is to stay up as long as you can on arrival. It must have worked because we both slept about 9 hours on Tuesday night and awoke refreshed on Wednesday morning, ready for a very busy day.
More to come....
All the best
Fran and David
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