And did those feet, in ancient times...

I am probably going to be a little susceptible to hyperbole during this trip, considering that this is the first time I've gone properly travelling and I have a carefully hand-picked round-the-world itinerary taking in a number of the world's great cities. But on this I am certain I am 100% justified: Jerusalem is extraordinary.

Getting to Jerusalem by crossing the border from Jordan was in itself quite a time-consuming and arduous experience. There is only one heavily guarded border crossing in the area, and to get there you have to get a service taxi to the Jordanian side of the border from Amman; have your luggage scanned and passport checked by Jordanian security; wait in an airport-style lounge for some time for the next bus across the border (there is no other means of making the crossing); sit while the bus crawls painfully slowly down the crossing road; get off on the Israeli (actually West Bank) side and join a chaotic, tense queue for some time just to hand in your luggage for the security check and have an initial passport check; put your person through a security scanner; submit yourself to the main passport check, which is by far the longest interrogation I've ever received [What is the purpose of your visit? Where are you going in Israel? How long will you stay? Will you be going to the West Bank? Where are you staying in Jerusalem? Where are you staying in Tel Aviv? What flight are you on out of the country? Can I see your flight details? Can I see your bank cards? What is your profession?]; if you have any interest in visiting Syria or Lebanon (which I now do at some future point), ask for your entry stamp on a separate piece of paper as any Israeli stamp in your passport renders it impossible - I'd understood this isn't usually a problem, but it won me an absolutely filthy stare and several more questions (Why? Which other Middle Eastern countries do you want to visit? When?) before the guard consented; queue up again to hand in the coupon you were given at passport control; lastly try to retrieve your luggage, probably a good 20-30 minutes after you last saw it, which gets literally thrown off the carousel and put into an enormous, chaotic pile of everyone's luggage.

I am not actually complaining too much since the need for the world's toughest security is obvious (and I did get a smile and a "welcome to Israel" at the end of my interrogation), but it's a little tiring. It was also the place here where Arab-Israeli tensions are most obvious, since the mood of the many Palestinian travellers around during this arduous and somewhat undignified process was clearly frayed to say the least - and whatever your politics it's less than surprising, given that this crossing was just an internal crossing between Jordan's East Bank and its West Bank until Israeli annexation of the West Bank in 1967.

Where do I even start about Jerusalem itself? Maybe with the Old City, where I was staying. Much of it is anything between 500 and 900 years old (my hostel was a 500-year-old building); it's constructed entirely (like much of the rest of the city) out of very light limestone which reflects the bright Middle Eastern sunlight dazzlingly; it's a completely pedestrianised warren of extremely narrow and asymmetric streets, a number of them largely covered and many only accessible via staircases; it contains something like 20 venerable places of worship, including the world's most holy Christian and Jewish sites and the third holiest Muslim site; the businesses and 30,000 residents are largely Arab rather than Jewish (as it was on the Jordanian side of the border until the 1967 Six Day War); oh, and it's actually only about a third of a mile square. You have to be prepared to get lost repeatedly, although you're bound to find something identifiable within a few minutes, and you have to be prepared to slow down and push past the throngs of tourists (a lot of them American, unsurprisingly) and politely brush off the many small stallholders who will try to attract your attention.

If the incredible and unique religious heritage of the city is your thing, you could probably spend at least a week exploring only that. It isn't entirely mine (for the avoidance of any doubt I am a committed atheist, albeit largely respectful of religion rather than Richard Dawkins-esque); so I largely limited myself to walking around, taking it all in, getting lost and observing the different quarters (there's a Jewish Quarter, Muslim Quarter, Christian Quarter, and specifically an Armenian Quarter of all things; the Armenian presence has been uninterrupted since the 4th Century). I also enjoyed a walk around the top of the incredible, imposing but beautiful city walls, giving some spectacular views and giving some insight into the diversity of life inside the Old City. 

One of the gates into the Old City, in the characteristically light limestone

However the least I could do for site visits were the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Western Wall. I didn't manage to get into the Temple Mount, aka Haram ash-Sharif, to which access by non-Muslims is a little more restricted. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the likely site of Jesus's crucifixion and burial, on which a church was first built in 326 AD and the current church largely dates from the 11th Century. It's a remarkably modest construction with similarly modest courtyard, jammed between side streets largely otherwise filled with small touristy (and Arab-owned) shops... and it's literally overshadowed by a rather taller mosque all of 20 metres away. Just to add to the peculiarness, the Muslim call to prayer was sounding loudly from said mosque when I visited. It was definitely one of those "I don't know what I was expecting but it definitely wasn't that" tourism moments. However, the Church has certainly made the most of what it has. It is possible to line up to touch the rock underneath the floor of the beautiful chapel on the spot where Jesus is believed to have been crucified, and the powerfulness of emotion felt by the many people present who appeared to be on a pilgrimage was very obvious to see and even to feel. Helpfully however the site of Jesus's tomb was closed for cleaning when I visited.

 The most likely site of Jesus's crucifixion and burial, at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

No less peculiar in my mind is the Western Wall, a non-descript outer wall of the Temple Mount, but Judaism's most holy site. It marks the spot of the Second Temple, which was destroyed when the Jews were sent into exile in 70 AD. When the Jews returned, the precise location of the site had been lost but they deliberately avoided the Temple Mount, as the inner sanctum of the Second Temple was barred to all except high priests. They started praying at the Western Wall instead, which rabbinical texts held that the divine presence had never left. The Temple Mount itself contains the rock believed to be the foundation stone of biblical creation, but it has been a Muslim site (Haram ash-Sharif) since the 7th Century - just to add to the mix, believed to be the location of 'farthest mosque' to which Mohammed had travelled. For reasons I'm not too clear about (peacekeeping?!), Israel allowed the Muslims to retain the site after the Six Day War - so Jews still limit themselves to the Western Wall, where they pray literally against it. Visiting is an interesting and slightly strange experience; unlike at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre I couldn't exactly feel the spiritual vibes but doubtless faithful Jews can and do.

 The Western Wall

Away from the Old City, I ventured into East Jerusalem to visit the Museum on the Seam, a pacifist modern art museum deliberately located (as the name suggests) in a former military checkpoint right on the border between West Jerusalem and East Jerusalem until 1968. It didn't entirely live up to its considerable reputation in my eyes, but it did nonetheless certainly hit me with a few of its punches about the horrific human toll of conflict in the region and beyond.

Also rather incongruous in East Jerusalem, wedged next to an ugly bus station, is the beautiful Garden Tomb, which has been claimed as a possible alternative location for Jesus's crucifixion and burial. Unlike at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the tomb is fully preserved a number of features described in the Bible "match" this site; unfortunately however the archaeological dating is largely against it and even the site's owners (an English Protestant charity) only claim it "could" be the correct site and that it's symbolically representative. However it's a lovely peaceful spot to come and relax for a bit, and as a Catholic priest once said, if it isn't the true site where Jesus was crucified and buried, it should have been!

The highlight of my time in Jerusalem was definitely an afternoon at Yad Veshem, Israel's main Holocaust memorial. As you might expect it's extensive and well appointed. The focal point is a huge museum chronicling the Holocaust from its early origins through to its ghastly conclusion. It was designed to resemble half a star of David, reflecting the fact that half of the Jewish race worldwide was wiped out by the Nazis. While the broad story of what happened is all too familiar, and still literally beyond comprehension, like with any big disaster it's some of the inhumane details which really 'get' you and make you most emotional: footage of skeletal bodies being piled up or dumped in open graves in the Warsaw Ghetto - by fellow Jewish inmates - like meat carcasses; the text of the desperate "Give Me Your Children" speech by Mordechai Rumkowski, the Jewish elder in the Lodz Ghetto, explaining the decision the Nazis had forced him to make on which inmates should be selected for extermination and which should be temporarily saved; eye-witness testimony from the 'death marches' of concentration camp inmates in the demented dying days of the Nazi regimes, that Nazi soldiers didn't "waste a bullet" on those who collapsed from exhaustion, but just pushed them with their rifle butts into the deep snow to die of hypothermia instead.

The terrible unwillingness of the rest of the world to accept Jewish refugees also makes you feel thoroughly ashamed - the quote that stuck with me was from the Australian Government that they largely didn't have a racial problem and had no desire to "import" one. The museum understandably focuses significantly on acts of heroism by Jews against all the odds. There were large numbers of Israeli soldiers being taken round - I assume this is part of their military service training, in the name of understanding what the Israeli military could ultimately be there for. Certainly, after I'd previously been seeing/hearing/reading a few things which hadn't entirely been improving the level of warmth I feel for the state of Israel, it reminds you in the most sobering way possible why it needed to be created in the first place.

I also took a stroll through the ultra-Orthodox area of Mea She'arim, where you can observe men wearing heavy black coats in full deference to the Eastern European Jewish tradition of the 1880s (apparently they do not take them off even in the height of the Middle Eastern summer). The high population density is obvious (ultra-Orthodox Jews believe it is their duty to God to have large numbers of children), and there are aggressive signs warning women and girls to wear "modest" clothing (i.e. exposing no skin). If that last point bothers you it's probably just best to steer clear of the area, since the locals are apparently not completely averse to throwing rocks at anyone who severely offends their customs. 

 

A very warm welcome to an ultra-Orthdox area of Jerusalem...

One other thing I enjoy doing abroad is checking out the main local market to get a slice of authentic local life, and Jerusalem's, Mahane Yehuda Market, is one of the more interesting I've seen. They seem to particularly like their soft white cheeses and their cakes here.

Overall I didn't actually find Jerusalem the most comfortable or relaxing place I've been to - the Old City is pretty stressful at the same time as it is unique and incredible, the hostel scene appears to be pretty poor, the lack of liberalism is obvious (e.g. the gay scene is virtually non-existent), I got aggressively and rudely shouted at to move a couple of times by apparently random locals when standing nowhere in particular minding my own business... and I got scammed a couple of times. One was very petty but one was severe, a cleverly crafted and patient confidence trick after I'd accepted what appeared to be genuine local hospitality. I don't want to go into the details; however there's nothing lost or damaged other than a one-off bank balance hit, and I've learnt a lot from the experience about how to avoid getting the balance wrong again in future between being open and applying the "never say no" principle but keeping oneself safe and secure at the same time.

Broadly, I would say Jerusalem fits broadly into the category of places that everyone should see - but maybe only once. If anything I've written whets your appetite, don't be put off giving it a go... and then make absolutely sure you go to Tel Aviv too. But more on that next time.

Hellooo! How are you? Welcome to Jordan!

I'm just about to leave Amman, capital of Jordan, where I've spent the last five nights. It's been quite an experience.

Just about the first thing you notice about Jordan is the legendary warmth of the people. As you mind your own business in the street, particularly back streets, local people will greet you warmly with something like "Hellooo! How are you? Welcome to Jordan!" and shake you by the hand. My personal best so far has been three such greetings in about one minute. I'm afraid that when I was in India a year ago, where such greetings were equally commonplace, I soon learnt to be at best extremely guarded, if not borderline dismissive, of them as they were usually (albeit not always) just a preface to an attempt to extract money from me. Here, that isn't usually the case - people just seem genuinely grateful that you are visiting their country (Amman isn't a major stop on the world tourist trail I guess) and they just want to say hello and find out something about you. They sometimes also ask where you are from - two of the more memorable responses I received to my answer were "Liverpool?" (Jordanians are apparently crazy for Champions League football), and, much less comfortably, "Tony Blair!" (how do you respond to that?).

Theft, violence and serious scamming is clearly rare here and there is generally nothing to be paranoid about, which is why for example I've managed to relax when a few times (including on arrival at the airport) I've ended up in the back of what have clearly not been official taxis but just enterprising locals wanting to make a few dinars.

Amman is not a conventionally beautiful city by any means. There is an impressive Roman theatre and remains also of a Roman citadel; however other than that sights are few and public open space seems to be virtually non-existent. Nonetheless I have found the urban landscape here fascinating. It's a city of 2.5 million people, yet I'm told that in 1946 the population was around 2,000. 65% of the Jordanian population is Palestinian, and nearly 10% are Iraqi Kurds - and the city and the country have been defined by influx after influx of refugees, for obvious reasons. The city is built on a large number of steep hills which means that (a) straight roads are virtually non-existent, but (b) you can see immense urban sprawl, mainly of greyish boxy buildings, in all directions. I hope that when I manage to upload some photos I will have managed to capture some flavour of this.

Beautiful? No. Remarkable? Yes.

There is a real buzz around the city, especially the Downtown area, always people around and plenty of traffic (crossing the road here requires full attention and a little bravery). People-watching is particularly interesting, especially the women who vary in their styles of dress from totally Western-esque, through elegant and colourful headscarves, through to a smattering of full burqas. Supermarkets and malls appear to be the preserve of the suburban rich, with long stretches of very small shops and souqs (markets) being the order of the day in Downtown. The city is clearly rough round the edges, but I've felt comfortable and everything seems to work - no sense of chaos. What is missing in terms of macro beauty is more than made up for, for me at least over a stay of a few days, by observing these many little details.

The countryside around Amman is simply stunning. Steep hills are typically all around (with the steepest roads I've ever seen), but the scenery varies quickly, almost literally as you turn a bend, from quite lush and tree-covered to sandy and semi-desert. The setting of Jerash, the very well preserved Roman city which made an easy day trip from Amman yesterday, was quite incredible. To this was added a touch of surreality when in one of the well-preserved theatres I heard a local band in full Bedouin dress play, er, the Scottish bagpipes...

Jerash

Just what you expect to see...?!?

I've also been to the Dead Sea, the lowest point on Earth, some 422m below sea level. This also has a truly stunning setting which looks mountainous, although the tops of the apparent 'mountains' are probably no higher than sea level. The Dead Sea is of course actually a lake which is famed for the extreme saltiness of the water and thus extreme buoyancy, meaning that humans can float in it. I took full advantage of this - great fun and incredibly relaxing, and there will be a photo of me reading a book while floating!

I've really taken to the food here also - I've enjoyed shwarma (made with kebab meat but served more like a thin roll, and with distinctive seasoning), kebabs and delicious grilled meat. All very cheap as well, sometimes as cheap as £1.50 for a meal. Jordanians have a sweet tooth too, as do I, so I've partaken of an interesting dessert called kunafa that appears to be made of fried cream cheese topped with caramel, syrup and a hint of apple - seriously unhealthy but different and very tasty and moreish.

A few of my friends hinted at some surprise that I wanted to spend so much time away on my own. Rest assured that so far I'm feeling anything but lonely - I've been staying in a decent travellers' hostel where I've met plenty of people, including several that I've hooked up with for different activities. If you meet someone at breakfast who wants to do the same thing that day, you can just very naturally end up teaming up for the day - and the same happened when I got off the bus at Jerash with one other European guy. There seems to be a real sense of travellers' community here - perhaps because this region is somewhat off the most well-worn track - and that's included getting very helpful tips by word of mouth. There is still the occasional initiative test such as trying to locate the right bus in a large local bus station when there are few people around and everything is in Arabic, and slight uneasy moments like being gestured to get off said bus at the side of a dual carriageway in what looked suspiciously like the middle of nowhere (thankfully the bus station for my connection turned out to be just round the corner) - but it's all part of the experience and hopefully it'll put the odd delay on the Bakerloo Line into context once I'm home.

Another part of the experience for sure has been experiencing Amman's gay scene! It was not entirely part of my plans to go looking for anything gay in an Arab Middle East country, as I didn't expect it to be an entirely safe/comfortable or easy thing to do. However, I did decide to go for lunch one day at a well located and well regarded cafe which Lonely Planet had hinted was gay-friendly - and almost immediately found the male waiter saying to me, "You should come back in the evening - there will be cute boys, cute girls, whatever you like, everything is OK, you understand?" I did understand! He later told me also that he'd recently emigrated to Jordan from the West Bank partially because of "problems with his family" (again, I understood) and when I asked whether Jordan is more liberal, he said still "no one here talks about it". He said he'd be there as a punter later that night and I should come along. Happily I'd also located another longer-term gay traveller in my hostel who already knew the place, so I thought I would give it a go with him.

I'm seriously glad I did, because apart from being a remarkably bright and cool venue, it was fascinating and uplifting to see a certain understated confidence amongst the local guys there. There was no kissing to be seen and touching was brief, but everybody seemed relaxed and the guys I got talking to seemed confident in themselves, and bemoaning the absence of a gay club (there was apparently one for a while but it couldn't pay its way). They were also very funny and decidedly dirty-minded (let's just say that there isn't exactly a British reserve there and when they do touch you they're not at all choosy about where they touch...!). Although their English was in some cases limited, I guess some things are a universal language. :-) As well as being invited to a house party the next night, I even got asked out, incredibly directly, for lunch the next day by a different male waiter, which left me a little speechless just because it was so unexpected. (I accepted the invite to the house party which was another great experience, but unfortunately declining the lunch date because it didn't fit with my plans for the next day.) I also got the phone number of a guy which I decided not to use, partially because I wasn't sufficiently sure I believed his friends when they assured me that his repeated talk of charging JD100 (£100) for any liaison was all just a joke...

Er, on a slightly different note, anybody with any political awareness at all can't really miss the defining role that political tensions play in this region - not least in Jordan due to the demographics that I mentioned above. For example:

• Police checkpoints appear to be common on the Dead Sea Highway because it's close to the border with Israel.
• Maps of the region on walls here mark "Palestine", not Israel.
• At the gay bar on Friday night, one of the guys I'd been chatting to was keenly watching footage of Palestinian border demonstrations on YouTube.
  
• The whole of the city's main modern art gallery that I visited, Darat-al-Funun, was given over to displays concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - most notably a parody exhibition depicting the unilateral declaration of a Muslim state called "Ishmael" in the middle of Switzerland, with not-very-subtle parodies of Israeli citizenship laws and historical claims on the region of Palestine. Food for thought indeed.
• A young Jordanian guy I talked to at the party last night told me that his entire family heritage is in East Jerusalem, but he has only ever been able to visit once, and then nearly got shot by Israeli border guards for his trouble. He said (albeit in a positive and warm way) he was jealous that I am able to visit Israel freely on my travels, which is really quite touching and troubling as soon as you start to think about it.
  

I'm heading now for Jerusalem, for the start of a week in Israel and the West Bank, before returning to the south of Jordan.

Farewell Europe, farewell friends...

Firstly please forgive the continuing absence of photos to accompany these blog posts at the moment - I will upload photos when I can but it's going to be dependent on the facilities to hand in any given place.

I'll have arrived in Jordan by the time you read this, but this was written on my phone during the long journey from Stockholm via Heathrow. The change is going to be immense to say the least, so best to tie up blog entries on Sweden before getting to Amman...

Since my last post, further music-related activities in Stockholm included:

• Heading with most of the rest of the British schlager contingent to a British pub which we'd persuaded to show BBC1 for Your Country Needs You, the UK's Eurovision selection. The pub was a bit confused when we initially rang, asking whether Eurovision was football or rugby! The less said about the quality of the BBC show, and the contrast with Melodifestivalen, the better...
• Meeting two more schlager acts, Lovestoned (now contenders for the accolade of my new favourite Swedish band!) and the fabulous Nanne Grönvall.
• Seeing the Melodifestivalen final at Globen, which was an amazing, memorable show even if I'm very unimpressed with the winner "This Is My Life" by Anna Bergendahl. I'm still not quite sure I understand, or want to understand, exactly what Alex claimed about his fear of heights to get our booked seats about half a mile up in the rafters swapped for good ones virtually on the arena floor, but we were all very grateful nonetheless!
• Going to Club Paradise twice (if I find a club anywhere in the world on this trip which I love as much, I'll be amazed) and the compulsory culmination on a boat called Patricia, with its legendary gay nights on Sundays.
  

To get some multimedia into this blog as I can't upload my own photos yet (...is that a good enough attempt at an excuse? :-)), and as a final word on schlager (I promise) until Stockholm Pride in late July, here is my favourite song from this year's Melodifestivalen. It's called "Jag vill om du vågar", which translates slightly awkwardly into English as "I want to if you dare". It's about as good an example as you can get of the Swedish schlager I love, even if it didn't exactly come close to winning.



Managing not to be schlager-obsessed 24/7, I also:

• Popped along briefly to a Couchsurfing social, my first one in Stockholm but something I envisage beng a semi-regular feature of my trip. If you've not heard of it, Couchsurfing.org is a worldwide community of travellers, centring around the provision of a free couch to sleep on at each other's places ("couchsurfing") but also individual and group meet-ups. There's a group meet in Stockholm every Friday, and there must have been around 50 people there, a mixture of locals and visitors.
• Went to Uppsala for an afternoon, Sweden's fourth-largest city - although that mainly shows how small and scattered Sweden's population is, as Alasdair and I reckon we "did" the city (cathedral, castle, university and river) in all of an hour and a quarter. It was pretty, but the highlight was seeing the river completely frozen over, something I've never seen before anywhere.
• Caught up with my British/Irish friends Karl and Richard who are now living in Stockholm and Uppsala respectively - they're both thoroughly enjoying living in Sweden and I'm rather jealous, although our chats did rather press home that with my circumstances it'd be challenging to say the least for me to follow in their footsteps.
• Had a bit of a holiday romance! I met a lovely guy called Phillip at Paradise on Friday night, and ended up seeing him again on Sunday and then Monday. He's flatteringly disappointed too that I don't live in Stockholm, and it certainly seems like I may have an option on further dates when I'm next there - we'll see!

Phillip is originally from Chile, not Sweden, which I suspect may not be a total coincidence. Although Swedish boys are utterly gorgeous (to the extent that hoping to find one to marry could be one motivation for moving to Sweden *blush*), they also, frankly, often seem a bit difficult. Body language and rules of engagement, at least in gay clubs, seem quite bafflingly different to anything I've ever learnt, doubtless connected to the infamous Swedish reserve - a source of discussion and some late-night bitching with my British friends on successive trips! If anyone reading this can provide any tips for future reference, they'd be very gratefully received...! I do need to put on the record though the loveliness, warmth and humour of all my Swedish friends and acquaintances.

I've done a fair amount of slipping and sliding around, as after a particularly harsh winter in Sweden (repeated lows of at least -14C I'm told even in Stockholm) the thick snow is now in retreat, but often only to reveal thick sheets of sheer ice which had formed underneath - much more treacherous I imagine than when the snow was there. When Rob, Chris J and I decided on Friday to climb to the highest natural point in Stockholm to admire the view, we quickly regretted being clad in trainers rather than something more sensible! However I only slipped over once on the whole trip and thankfully without injury, unlike one member of the extended London schlager contingent (who probably wouldn't want to be named!) who I believe is still in pretty serious pain from bruised ribs.

Outside Stockholm the scenes are still totally snowy, and the train ride to Uppsala, and the view through the window on the departing morning flight, were rather beautiful as a result.

That's pretty serious snow... 

On the subject of trains, is it just me or is there a trend at least across Europe for modern trains to be much less comfortable than the older trains they replace? The old-fashioned train seating between Stockholm and Uppsala felt relaxing and almost luxurious, something I definitely don't remember being the case in my previous travelling within Sweden (Stockholm-Rättvik-Örebro-Gothenburg in summer 2006) on shiny new trains. It's surely the same on the West Coast main line in the UK.

Anyone with even the most cursory knowlege of Scandinavia won't be surprised to hear that I've spent rather more money than I would absolutely have liked, even with a basic hostel, basic food and very limited alcohol. On top of the intrinsic expensiveness, especially of alcohol, what is the real killer is the weakness of the pound now. When I first went to Sweden in 2006 you got 14 kronor (SEK) to the pound; now it is 10 and still falling. Low points were spending around £7.20 (72 SEK) on a glass of wine, a scarcely believable £8.80 (88 SEK) on one vodka and lemonade, and perhaps worst of all, £4.20 (42 SEK) on a glass of orange juice in a cafe - not even in Stockholm but in Uppsala. Granted it was freshly pressed in front of you, but you'd expect gold leaf in it for that price!

One thing that I've noticed before when travelling is that your relationship with eating can quickly change pretty drastically. Basically I've somtimes literally been forgetting to eat, and then sometimes I've been eating just because I feel I should rather than because I've actually felt hungry - and sometimes only twice a day at that. I think that hunger, at least for me, is largely driven by daily routine, daily stress and circadian rhythms - the first two of those have now vanished, and the latter completely changed by all the late nights in Stockholm clubbing. But combined with the obvious fact that it's relatively tricky to eat healthy nutritious food as a budget backpacker, I do need to keep half an eye on not arriving back in London in August as some kind of skinny, emaciated wreck, even before you factor in the risk of serious digestive issues at some point in Asia.

Thank goodness for 7-Eleven though - the ultimate in convenience stores that actually sells healthy things like fantastic salads, fresh fruit and smoothies, day and night. They are everywhere in Stockholm and will be also in many of my other destinations, but are nowhere to be seen in the UK. Why not? Boo. It's also always striking in Sweden that the general standard of food to go, especially cakes and even burgers, puts the UK to shame, although that's doubtless not saying much...

I found it a little bit emotional to say goodbye to my last two London friends left in Stockholm, Rob and Dushyan, on Monday night (after a lovely, laughter-filled evening at Torget with our Swedish friend Axel), as from that moment I am cut loose and officially travelling solo. The real experience/adventure (/slight nervousness) starts here...

Stockholm, day 3

And so here starts my travel blog, which I hope to post a fair amount to over the next five months while I'm travelling the world. I do enjoy the odd bit of personal writing, but my line of work as a local government officer tends to suck this out of me - local government reports and briefings, of which I have to write a lot, are not exactly what you would call an opportunity to be imaginative, entertaining or personal! So hopefully this blog will be one of the many ways I get back in touch with myself over the coming months.

I flew out of London on Wednesday afternoon, having been running around desperately trying to get ready and tie things up in time until the very last minute. First lesson learned - if you're taking time away from everything for a big trip, make entirely sure you give yourself enough time to get ready for it! I had fondly imagined that I would be pottering around in a leisurely fashion getting ready, with time left over to contemplate what I was doing and to generally leave in a relaxed fashion, but alas it didn't quite work out that way. But then, with me it rarely does...

I'm now in Stockholm. For those of you who don't know, this is my favourite city in the world (based on the travelling I've done so far anyway!) that I come to regularly anyway, and I have a real if rather problematic aspiration to end up living here sooner or later. It's all about the sheer, indescribable beauty of the city and the surrounding countryside, the effortless style, the loveliness of the Swedish people (and, dare I say it, their attractiveness too :)), the hugely egalitarian and socially responsible nature of society here... and yes, by no means least about the pop music, easily the best in the world.

 One view over an icy, snowy Stockholm

The timing of the start of my trip here is no accident as it's the final of Melodifestivalen (in English, "The Melody Festival") this Saturday. This is the annual Swedish national song contest, the winner of which goes forward to the Eurovision Song Contest (one of my other great passions) in May. I'm very fortunate to have tickets for the sold-out show in the 16,000-seater Globe Arena. Unlike pretty much anywhere else, Eurovision is treated seriously and (up to a point) fashionably in Sweden, and Melodifestivalen has many of the country's top established pop acts and songwriters queueing up to enter every year. It's literally the most watched TV programme of the year, every year, watched by not far short of half the entire population, and the songs from the contest totally dominate the Swedish singles chart and the airwaves for weeks every year, with major album releases timed around it. And there are a number of bars and club nights (and not all of them gay either!) which exclusively play "schlager", the Swedish word for the type of happy, light, often ABBA-esque songs with which Melodifestivalen (and to a slightly lesser extent Eurovision) is most associated.

This isn't a solo hobby for me in London - to the amazement of some of my other friends with more, er, mainstream music tastes, there's a smallish but very lively circuit in London of devoted fans of schlager, a sort of offshoot of a larger community of keen Eurovision fans. So while after Stockholm my round-the-world trip is mostly solo, I'm in plenty of familiar British company here in Stockholm this weekend. I'm rooming with good friends (currently Rob, to be joined by Alasdair and Chris J today) and there's going to be quite a contingent of us here by the weekend.

The last two nights we've ended up in a schlager bar called Golden Hits. We've seen live PAs by Timoteij (one of the contenders to win Melodifestivalen on Saturday - for those who are interested, let's just say I'm not sure they really did much to improve their chances) and by schlager covers band Schlagerfeber. The ambience and decor of the place does have something in common with a gay club in somewhere like Middlesbrough or Blackpool... But once you've got over that, it's fantastic to experience and participate in the sheer unpretentious joyousness on the dancefloor, with a wide range of ages, genders and sexualities all coming together and singing and dancing along together to the fabulous schlager music. There has also been some randomness, I've been chatted up and asked to dance in a worryingly non-tongue in cheek by a chubby Swedish woman in her 50s, and later grabbed by an, er, flamboyant and possibly rather drugged-up man who I really wasn't entirely sure was actually a man. All in all it's been a great and rather memorable way to start my trip.

You can't really go too far around Stockholm this week without seeing Melodifestivalen-related things (e.g. tie-in adverts by official commercial "partners" of the event, music shop window displays), and a central Stockholm shopping centre currently has three days of PAs and signings by Melodifestivalen entrants past and present. I was delighted yesterday to get signed singles and photos with Ola and the beautiful, divine Eric Saade (photos hopefully to follow), who told me how much he loved London! I wished Ola luck in the final and he said, "I think I will need it!" (he's hotly tipped to finish last on Saturday).

 

Me with the divine Eric Saade :-)

I've also been enjoying the sheer indescribable beauty of Stockholm, if anything enhanced by the winteriness of the scene as there's a significant quantity of snow on the ground (although it's been melting in the almost unseasonably warm 5C temperatures this week). Everyone in the UK (and beyond) seems to vaguely know when you get talking about it that Stockholm is a beautiful city, but far too few ever actually venture here. And that's a very big shame. It also has the world's best, er, gay hot chocolate cafe, Chokladkoppen on Gamla Stan - absolutely fabulous in every respect.

I'm struggling at present to finish this post coherently (the day after I started it) because the computer in this hostel is next to Reception and the receptionist here has been chatting away to me about Melodifestivalen and schlager...! For those who were expecting intelligent cultural insights from me whilst travelling, well, I will do my best in due course... once Melodifestivalen in Stockholm has finished. :)