An Evening in Gothenburg

This week I had the chance to visit Gothenburg. A beautiful city on the west coast of Sweden. I must confess, that I have traveled a lot in one year, but in Sweden, I have traveled very less. So it was the second city I was visiting after Stockholm and it turned out to be a nice experience.

Ironically, I was there on the day of winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. So I had not much choice than to wander the dark streets, which is not a problem for me as I’ve been wandering at nights all the time in Stockholm as well.

The city was beautifully decorated with all the Christmas lights and the streets were empty because of the holiday season: an Ideal situation for a photographer.

10 Trip suggestions for this Fall

I’ve been getting frequent queries over the past one month like “how to manage to travel”, “where to go this season”, “How to plan low budget trips”. Though I’m not an expert in travel planning, I’ll share my experience from past one year of traveling as I talk about the above questions one by one.

When to travel !!

If you look from the perspective of a KTH student, apart from the long summer holidays, there are two probable times in every study period when one can plan a trip.

The first option is to travel as soon as the classes are over, usually there is a gap of ten days between the last class and the exam week. So if you feel that you need to refresh a bit before getting in the exam mode, this is a perfect time.

STHLM Guide #2 : Exploring Stockholm

The most common question I’ve been asked in past couple of weeks is: Tell me some places to visit in Stockholm. Now the normal touristy destinations are quite different than the way one can explore a city while living for a longer time. There is a possibility of exploring those far, secluded unspoiled places where no tourist would go and only locals would know about. Fortunately, I’ve been exploring Stockholm for past one year with my photography group comprising mostly of natives, so we have gone to a lot of places that I wouldn’t have been able to discover by myself. So here are some recommendations for places to go in Stockholm and around, and don’t bother about searching them individually on the map, at the end of this blog there is a Google Map with everything marked on it, just bookmark it and start exploring.

Reminiscing the Northern Lights

Being close to the arctic circle, Sweden is one of the best places to get visuals of the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis). But as Stockholm is not in the very much northern part of Sweden, it’s kind of difficult to catch a sight of Northern Lights; within past two months, I missed more than 5 chances to see the northern lights because of the cloudy sky.

March is said to be one of the best months to sight Northern Lights, as, after April, there won’t be many dark hours. However, I had my first visuals of the green skies back in October, and luckily I had enough time to find a place to set up my camera before the visuals occurred again.

Here are some pictures:

Watching Stockholm from the Top

One of the most intriguing thoughts that comes in a photographer’s mind while strolling through streets of any beautiful place is “how would this place look from the top”. The same thing happened to me when I started exploring Stockholm. The hilly terrain of Stockholm definitely gives chances to quench that yearning to observe the cityscape from above.

With my camera and a couple of friends I explored a lot of such places and out of all of them, I absolutely loved three places – Monteliusvägen, Katrinahissen, and Skyview (GPS Locations in links). So enjoy the views of Stockholm from these places in the following photographs.

Sigtuna: Exploring the Swedish Roots

Sigtuna is Sweden’s first town, founded in the 10th century. It’s a small-scale and pedestrian-friendly place, with charming wooden buildings by Lake Mälaren. This place has a good selection of stores, cafés, restaurants, and hotels, plus an interesting museum. To the fascination of history buffs, the district is rich in rune stones. Sigtuna can be reached by train, bus, or boat from the center of Stockholm and is merely an hour outside of Stockholm. The best part is if you have an SL-Card (Stockholm’s Travel Card), you can reach there without paying anything extra.

Sigtuna can be reached by train, bus, or boat from the center of Stockholm and is merely an hour outside of Stockholm. The best part is if you have an SL-Card (Stockholm’s Travel Card), you can reach there without paying anything extra. It is one of the most picturesque places to be and you can spend hours taking pictures and relaxing by the lake.

Midnight Wanderers: Night outs in Stockholm

A couple of months ago, just before exams of P1, when we were grappling with VHDL codes late night in Electrum, my friend Abu started reminiscing how he spent his last 6 months in India roaming around streets of Delhi late night, and now we’re all buried under books. And it just came to us, let’s see how is Stockholm past midnight.

As we traveled towards T-Centralen, nearly all the metro stations and streets were empty. And this ticked a thought in my mind. From the day I had landed in Stockholm, I’ve been craving to do a photo project on Stockholm tunnelbana, but getting a speckless picture was quite difficult because most of the beautiful stations are the busiest ones as well. So finally, I found this window of opportunity. So, from past two months, on Friday or Saturday, the two days when metro runs all night, we decide a random metro station and then explore the nearby areas as well.

Stockholm: First Impressions

KORT TÅG – Well this was the first Swedish phrase I learnt, when I ran with all my luggage to hop onto the “Short Train” to Kista. Once I boarded that train, since then another Swedish word has been reverberating in my head – VÄLKOMMEN!!

Yes! As you arrive here, you can actually feel that the city welcomes you and from day one just embraces you as another brick in the wall of this cosmopolitan megacity.

Since I arrived here, I am still in the awe of the fact that how can a place be so beautiful. The scenic imagery is so captivating, it leaves you awestruck. In an otherwise chaotic world, here is a hassle free city oddly enchanting its spell on anyone who comes here. It is almost like sifting through a book that is so vividly simple and elegant and never loses value. How an old city could be so well managed, how the capital city be so close to the nature, and how everything works in such a hassle free manner in this place.

Being a photography enthusiast, sitting at home was never an option for me, the best option was to explore and find out what sets this city apart, group all the regular activities with exploring Stockholm and that led me to cover a major part of this place in two weeks.

I spent my initial time socialising with my KTH batch mates, meeting the old KTH students and exploring places as far as Sigtuna with them, going on photo walks with the local photography groups and even exploring the thrift stores to get prepared for the winters. Though it’s a short time but the list could go on.

The classes have been an entirely new experience as well as its different and quite practical way of creating a learning environment here. For a place that has already left me spellbound, I am sure this journey is going to be one beautiful ride and this is just the beginning. I have a strong intuition that next two years (hopefully even more) are going to be really inspiring, and inspiration is the fuel for a writer, so I look forward to write and share my experiences for other people on this blog.