On the Caper I’ve Come to Call “Wallet Walkabout”

A Vete-Katten box and a fancy soda on a bench on Stockholm Harbor

This is a story about fear, problem solving, and redemption, and it begins with a picture of a cake box and a fancy soda on a bench.

On my last day in Stockholm on phase one of my trip, I set out with no real destination. I’d spent the previous day touring the city hall and Vasamuseet with two friends who seem to visit Scandinavia with similar timing and aim to me. I decided to balance out this companionable day by spending the next day with no real plan, just wandering and seeing where my moment-to-moment likes and inclinations would take me.

I ended up having a mildly revelatory breakfast sandwich with kaviar paste and sliced egg, paired with my very necessary morning coffee. I wandered through Vasastan, past Vasapark, and then took a walk to the central station to stake out where tomorrow’s train to Copenhagen might leave from. From there, I walked to the more western part of the harbor, that edge where Norrmalm and Östermalm meet, where the hotels get fancier and I felt suddenly and not unpleasantly underdressed. I turned my phone data on for a moment and checked out where I was, wondering if something unplanned and worthwhile was nearby. Indeed there was – Historiska Museet was about a quarter-mile away.

I spent a nice couple of hours there and then haunted their lobby for a half hour, using their wifi to text with my best friend in one of those little social oases that made my solo trip so entirely joyful. By then, it was about three, and I knew I needed to get going if I was going to do anything else in the daytime hours. I wandered deeper into Östermalm and noticed some hot air balloon-shaped signs along the edge of a building. I headed inside and found one of the wonderful food halls that apparently are a thing in Scandinavia in particular and Europe in general. It was there that I saw a Vete-Katten kiosk and remembered that a friend with solid recommendations suggested making a point of going there.

Vete-Katten pastry box with ribbon

I got a chocolate torte instead of a princess torte (a rookie error to be sure). Many of the stalls are full of beautiful seafood and somewhat less-beautiful meats, all raw and waiting for someone talented to turn them into wonderful things. I just bought a fancy-looking French mandarin soda, picturing a decadent little snack on some likely bench on Stockholm Harbor.

Cake and soda acquired, I headed out the door, walking past department stores and late-afternoon throngs of people to get my sugar fix.

Vete-Katten box, no ribbon

A few things to know:

By this time, I had taken to wearing my camera under my coat, just to keep it out of the way. This means that getting it out and putting it back involved a fair amount of fidgeting.
I was getting a slightly The Misfit-style feeling of forboding from laughing gently at signs warning me of pickpocketing, considering what I had learned and heard about Swedish crime rates.
It was cold on that bench. My hands hurt after a few minutes. But there was no seating in the food hall not committed to the various cafes, so it was what I had.

But I was charmed by what I’d managed to collect, and I’m always charmed by the involved packaging of certain European pastries, so I stuck it out.

Vete-Katten chocolate cake

Barely pictured: the tiny piece of shiny tape the woman at the counter applied to ensure the cake wouldn’t shift during transport. Not pictured: a fork, because I didn’t have one. I ate it, cold-fingered and chocolate-dusted, with my hands.

And then, cake dispatched and clever soda gone, I set off for Moderna Museet, hoping to squeeze one last well-regarded destination into my last full day in Stockholm.

I walked along the harbor the way I’d come, tracing along sidewalks that blended with the adjacent driveways under a layer of packed-down snow. I walked briskly, because I walk briskly and because I just wanted to get out of the cold, back into a museum where I could shed my lumpy coat and walk around unimpeded for a couple hours.

About 15 minutes from the bench, I performed a ritual gesture that I performed about ten times more than usual after this day: I patted all my coat pockets and took inventory.

Right upper: flat key, sunglasses, ticket stub. Right lower: phone. Left lower: empty for hand. Left middle: guidebook. Left upper: unzipped, with about 19 kronor in coins, not even enough for a subway ticket.

What the fuck.

I performed it again in defiance of any kind of logic, panic now rising. Left upper: walletless.

Shit. Fuck. That it was unzipped left it ambiguous as to whether I’d been pickpocketed or if the wallet had fallen out during all of my camera futzing. This defused any possible fury at myself or some random and left me only with panic and practical concerns.

I patted the pocket again like some hopeful, feckless amateur magician, but it stubbornly remained empty. I interrogated my jeans pockets but found them similarly empty – I usually carry my wallet in my back pocket, but I don’t when I travel. Because of pickpockets and, on this trip, because I was afraid the base layer under my jeans would keep me from feeling if anything fell out of one of my pants pockets.

I had one reassuring thought: that morning, two days later than sense would dictate, I had taken my spare Amex, the one with cash withdrawal privileges and a PIN, from my wallet and left it in my bag at the apartment, as had been the plan all along. Their site promised it would work at the ATMs I’d seen all over. Well, I’d soon find out.

First, I retraced my steps. I jogged as best I could on the snow and came back to my bench: nothing. I retraced my steps to the food hall, all the way to the sympathetic guy at the treat counter where I’d bought my soda, where I’d last seen and touched my wallet. He was sad for me but couldn’t help.

Well.

I touched the inadequate coins in my pocket, felt the newly forming heel blisters that had sprung up while racing back and forth, and steeled myself for the walk home. It wasn’t far – maybe a mile and a half – but an unplanned walk and one my feet were not very pleased with.

Back at the apartment, I sat down and made a list of what I needed to cancel. My BECU debit card. The SPG Amex. The Chase card holding my next three hotel reservations. Oh god, the phone calls. And I’ll need to replace my driver’s license. That too would be a mess – I still had my Washington DL, but I was in California, and I had no idea of how to start fixing that one. Airfare would surely be involved. Shit.*

I got on Google Voice (blessed art thou amongst traveler-friendly technologies) and canceled the first two cards. But the Chase, the hotel reservations… Sigh. It could wait a minute.

I decided to go try my luck at the ATM, the success or failure of which would determine a lot about the coming days. There was one about two blocks from my flat; I shuffled over and got in line with people who looked to be just getting off work. I approached and chose English. I asked for about $200 in SEK. And… it worked. It worked, and I felt myself unclench just a little.

I stopped at the nearby convenience grocery on the way back to the flat. I bought this as consolation food.

Sad person food from a Swedish grocery

You have to get by somehow.

As I was taking this picture, my phone buzzed in my hand, the vibration suggesting it was a Facebook message.

Could it be

Did someone

Oh man

“Sorry this is very random but is there any chance you’re in Stockholm today? We found a wallet and you look like the girl in the driver’s license photo.”

“Oh my god,” I wrote back. “Yes.”

A British couple had come upon my bench in the 20-odd minutes between my departure and return, and beneath it, they found my wallet. Could I meet them at the central station in 30 minutes so they could give it back?

Oh my god. Yes.

I put my sad snacks aside, reassembled my outdoor gear, and half-sprinted out of my building. After a little frantic texting (well, frantic on my part), I found them and they handed me my wonderful, ridiculous, beloved Couch wallet. I offered beer money as thanks (the better to reward their goodness without requiring them to pass an unplanned hour with an overexcited, loquacious American on the downward slope of a two-hour adrenaline spike), but they said no. Sweetly and kindly and in a way that let all of the softness pruned away by the last couple of hours begin to return.

We parted ways with as little awkward spurting of repeated thanks as I could manage, and there I was, wallet restored, all cash retained, and me with an evening ahead of me.

I’d left my data on in all the hullabaloo, and my phone buzzed once more – my local friend. Did I happen to want to come to her place for dinner? She was making soup.

“Yes please,” I wrote back. “I’m going to be a little scattered when I get to your place, but bear with me, please. I have a story for you.”

*Dearest California and Washington,

I have since changed my driver’s license over and am in complete legal compliance in every possible way.

xo
breanne

A Boat, a Boat, I Stayed on a Boat in Stockholm

Af Chapman hostel, a boat on Stockholm Harbor

I had a couple options for my last night in Stockholm. I’d done Stockholm part one, been to Copenhagen, and had an unlikely stop in Järna, and now I had one more night to plan.

“Stockholm strange hotels?” I asked Google.

Some rigging on the Af Chapman

“Yeah, we got you,” Google replied.

Some of the deck of the Af Chapman in Stockholm

I briefly considered Jumbo Stay, on account of I could have slept inside a fucking jet engine, but the location was the clincher. My flight wasn’t until 3:30 on Monday afternoon, and while I knew I’d arrive semi-freakishly early, I didn’t want to wake up at the airport.

(I did pass it on the highway, and despite being airport adjacent, it is a surreal thing to see a 747 so close to the road.)

Af Chapman with ice shards on the water

So I chose the “strange hotel” Google yielded for me: Af Chapman, a hostel partially based on a boat moored on Skeppsholmen, one of the city’s museum-filled islands. I made sure they had private rooms, and once that was assured, I was sold. For about $65, I secured a private room with a shared bathroom. Not all the rooms are on the boat, as more lodging is in the building across the street, where breakfast, laundry, lockers, and other useful things can also be found. But I crossed my fingers and, fresh from Järna, made my way to the ship.

Masts of the Af Chapman

I’d walked right by it earlier in my trip, but I was busy being in that phase of things – where is the museum, where is the ferry – so I didn’t check it out. Instead, as I walked up, bag-laden in the way that happens eight days into a trip abroad, I saw a boat and thought, Please let that be it.

View of Stockholm Harbor from the Af Chapman deck

It was. And, better still, my room was ready for me, despite it only being just past noon. (There are perks to traveling in the off season.) Enormously relieved, as I’d already been awake for about seven hours at that point, I flounced across the street and into my room…

Officershytter door on Af Chapman

…Officershytter 1.

“Shytter” is Swedish for “quarter.”

The more you know.

Bed in Officer's Quarter on Af Chapman

The Af Chapman is not wheelchair accessible, and it would be difficult for anyone much taller than I am – at 5’8″, I did fine in this bed, but friends 5’11” or taller would probably have felt like aggressively folded origami by the time morning came.

Still, adorable, right? All those drawers, plus a little step up – I felt like I was mounting a horse. That bed was at about chest height on me.

The better to see through the porthole at the end of the bed, as it turned out.

Stockholm at dawn through an Af Chapman porthole

I woke up around six am the night I stayed there, first by the low creak of the shifting rigging of this 1888 naval ship, and then… ice. Sheets of ice, dragging along the hull, so beautiful in the thin light of the dawn that I sat so still you would’ve thought I was afraid of scaring it off.

That porthole could be opened too – I tried and then quickly realized that was not a great idea in February. In Stockholm. Surprise.

The room also included a sink and a cute li’l desk next to the second porthole, where I wrote postcards on my last morning, only some of which were headed, “Captain’s log, 22 February 2016.”

The walkway connecting the Af Chapman to land

And then: land ho.

Breakfast was good, but it is well established now that I like an included Scandinavian breakfast. It was strange to come from my fairly empty ship to the main hostel building, filled with 18-year-old Italians and the guy 50 years older than everyone else and staid older couples taking a nice, long trip and… me. Lockers and laundry and hostel business.

I preferred my vessel.

The Af Chapman at night, from across the harbor

I did the math. It wouldn’t be hugely more expensive to live on this boat than to live in my fine Oakland abode. I’m sure the cats would get used to it.

In the meantime, if you go to Stockholm and aren’t too attached to predictable lodging, go go go to Af Chapman. It’s relatively inexpensive, extremely conveniently located, and a remarkable buoy of mood. I’m sad today. But… oh shit, remember when I slept on a boat in Stockholm and watched dawn creep over the thin ice of the harbor and I was snug in bed and had an unobstructed view of one of the world’s prettiest cities?

Yeah. That was pretty great.

One Epilogue, Shambling and Ambling and Admiring the Moooooooon

I bookended my trip to Sweden and Denmark with two somewhat expensive dinners. I didn’t have dinner at all in Copenhagen, and I had more than one early night in Sweden, so it kind of equaled out, in that way of strange trip math.

The first night, I woke up at ten pm after a surprise six-hour nap and headed to the best-reviewed restaurant that was also going to be open for another hour (meaning I chose from two options and elected for the one that sounded the most Swedish). I talked them into making a one-person herring sampler platter, despite the menu saying that two herring lovers were required. I realized there was a $20 American beer on the menu. I ate myself stupid and ambled home happily, about $70 poorer but pretty satisfied with my choices in a pinch.

On the last night of the trip, I went to Fotografiska and then walked, sore of heel but glad of spirit, to Akkurat, which my guidebook promised held all manner of splendid Belgian beer. I sat at the bar (one thing I would have never done a few years ago) and had a nice, intermittent, meal-long chat with the bartender (another thing I would have not even thought myself capable of a few years ago). I started with a Cantillon sour, and even just typing those words makes my heart thud with the most expansive happiness. With that in my hand (and rapidly going into my belly), I studied the menu. It was then that I said some of the gladdest words I have ever said:

“I would like the kilo of mussels, please.”

They come in kilos.

Also: I can dispense of a kilo of mussels quite handily.

In the interim, my friendly bartender gave me a sample of a local IPA that he swore didn’t have the boring DNA of most IPAs (shockingly true), and I tried a local brown ale too. The Cantillon still sang in my veins, and I wanted to try even more of Stockholm’s finest, as I was very pleased with every local beer I had.

There was only one problem: if I had any more beer, the certainty of me being able to get home on my own two increasingly unsteady legs was going to diminish severely. To put it plainly: shit was going to get messy if I had any more.

So, in a deeply responsible move that I still grieve, I paid my check and swayed out, heading back to my boat/home for one last glorious night.

Darkness had fallen, and I meandered along Stockholm’s harbor, as leisurely as a person can be while deeply, seriously needing to pee. The moon was gently embraced by wispy clouds just this side of iridescent, and the water lapped against the seawalls in a way both pleasing to my ears and exacerbating to my bladder. I pulled my camera out and began to test the steadiness of my hands.

The Af Chapman across Stockholm Harbor

Behold, my ship – for one night at least. I like longer exposures (these are all a quarter of a second or so) because this is closer to what the world often looks like to me. This depth and richness, the glowing of the lights over the water: this is how it was.

The moon over Sodermalm and Stockholm Harbor

Gently blurry and glowing with warmth, I had just finished nine days across the world on my own, nine days where I proved to myself that I am capable of getting myself places, of finding wonderful things to do, of connecting with people wherever I go. I am more than able to create my own rich and nourishing path. And I took a joy in choosing my own direction from moment to moment that even I, comfortably solo visitor of movie theaters and restaurants alike, couldn’t have predicted.

And, animated with the joy of discovery, the pleasure of the previous days, and the singing ABVs of some of Europe’s finest beers, I walked myself home for the last time that trip.

Stockholm Harbor at night

I was fine. I was going to be fine. More than fine, as has become my refrain.

I walked from one island to another until I reached my boat. It was perhaps 8 pm. “You can go pee and go lay down for a bit,” I told myself, “and then you can go back out if you want.” I didn’t, and I didn’t want, as was my pattern throughout the trip. I’d had my day, and a morning of some last wandering was more important to me than one more bar, one more chilled wander through the darkness in some misguided quest for more and enough and making it worth it.

It was enough, and so was I.

Surprise (to Me) Humanity in Altar Carvings at Historiska Museet