City of Music

Its Wagner. In doll form. And he's a wind up music box.

Our first excursion of the day, besides to our classroom in the morning to take a midterm that included material we haven't actually gone over yet (eye roll), was to the Konserthus. This is where orchestral performances are held year round and where the Nobel Prize ceremony is held every year on December the tenth, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death. The hall was built in the 1920s and still has most of the original decorations and furniture, even though it is used by the public audiences who visit frequently for concerts. The tour didn't have a lot of information about the Nobel Prizes (which is understandable, as this is mostly just a venue and the Nobel Museum is the organization in charge of having all of that information), but it was good to take advantage of our Stockholm Cards (they get us into most places run by the city and will last until Sunday afternoon). I enjoyed taking pictures.

Staircase in the Konserthus

I loved this painting on the wall. Look below to see why.

Do you see the conductor?

Leaves = musicians

Part of an art exhibit downstairs. I really liked this one.  "Girl with Magic Cello"

Inside the concert hall. About 1000 seats in grand total. 

After the tour, we hung around for a while in order to hear a local high school a cappella group perform. Apparently the Konserthus hosts free music performances during the summer every year. I think it was a really nice addition to the whole Kulturfest going on right now.
As it turned out, the group was really, really good. I tried to record one of their songs, but I'm afraid that the recording doesn't do it justice in the slightest. These guys managed to draw a fairly large crowd and got called back for 3 encores. They should have been selling CDs!
Hannah and I spent some time wandering in Gamla Stan before heading back to the boat. The tube station tunnels have many musicians along their lengths, and we were delighted to see some performers we had run across before. We were still very excited about the group at the Konserthus and were happy to hear more talent as we traveled. Day for music!

Making Candy

Wrapping Candy

While in Gamla Stan, we ran across a very cool sweets shop. Inside, you could see the candy being made and wrapped through a glass window. Some customers were invited in to wrap their own candy. I think sweets are simply a theme of this trip. I'll probably head back there at some point. They have a lot of peppermint. Yummm….

CANDY

Its finally the weekend, so we'll be spending a lot of our time hitting the major tourist attractions using our handy-dandy Stockholm cards. Hopefully we'll be able to work on some of our projects at some point. Only one week of the program left! It's gone by so fast!