So after more than two years of absence, I returned to Stockholm last weekend to visit my sister, her husband and two unruly but fantastic little Swedish kids. Contrary to my usual ways of taking at least 5000 photos, bugging everyone and their grandma to death, I actually took but a moderate amount of pictures, saving myself from being slaughtered by an angry mob of Swedes and half-Swedes.

As always, my days were dominated by my quest for food and drink, which is nicely reflected in some of the pictures I did take. I also met up with an Austrian friend, whose cousin introduced us to traditional Swedish saturday-night entertainment highlights such as one-room appartment skinhead parties somewhere in the outskirts of Stockholm, complete with pint-glasses of Captain Morgan’s and face-tattoos. One thing I learned that evening is that nights out tend to be so much better when suddenly your only hope is getting out alive. I need to find myself some perilous places in Vienna for jolly good evening entertainment.

Anyway, I did survive the party as I did drinking (another Swedish specialty) at Kvarnen, a pub/club in the heart of Stockholm’s Södermalm. Which reminds me: if you go and smoke a cigarette outside that place, make sure to not sway in any way, because security guys might think you’re too drunk and bar you from going back in. Which in no way happened to me, of course. Oh, and if it happens to you, simply walk away and go back in. Which I heard might work.

And finally, just to prove that I did not spend my days and nights on food and booze only, here’s something for my fellow Stieg Larsson fans. There are tours organized by the city museum called, aptly, Millennium-tours, where you’ll see many of the places featured in Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy. They are Sundays only, but you can buy a map of the tour, complete with explanations of the spots’ relevance in the books. Which is what we did, and, yes, I did take a few pictures. I felt like a fanboy, which, I’m unfortunately obliged to say, I guess I am.

Well, that was my rather concise but nonetheless extremely witty, entertaining and as always dramatic recount of my three day weekend in probably the cleanest city of Europe, if not the world. Enjoy the pictures.