The Stockholm Syndrome European International White Nights Nodermeet

will take place

in Stockholm, Sweden, on June 19-20, 2004.

Come rain or come shine. (Look for updated NEWS at the bottom of the page).

The Stockholm Syndrome is reportedly about hostages becoming enamored with their tormenting captors. Consequently,

all visiting noders are immediately taken hostage, in a most brutally captivating fashion. The city of Stockholm, the enchanting Queen of the Lake Mälaren, is going to be their gleeful captor for the duration of the nodermeet, diabolically assisted by montecarlo.

Possible travel arrangements:

Private jet Will probably land at Bromma airport, 20 min bus ride to town.

Private sailing yacht (no vulgar motor yachts, please!) Excellent mooring can be arranged in the middle of the city.

Ryanair jet Lands at Stockholm-Skavsta airport, 80 min bus ride to town. From London also to Stockholm-Västerås airport, 90 min bus ride.

Commercial airline jet Lands at Arlanda airport, 40 min bus ride to town.

Possible accommodations:

Grand Hotel Stockholm (+ 46 8 679 35 00)

the famous residence of the Nobel Prize winners, with a beautiful view of the Royal Palace across the water. It will set you back by 320 Euro/night in a single room, 480 Euro/night in a double. Highly recommended for noders of independent means.

On the other hand, the same view of the Royal Palace can be had from the portholes of a permanently moored 3-masted sailing ship (actually one of the Preserved Cape Horn Sailing Ships) some 200 m south of the Grand Hotel, now operating as a hostel, the

af Chapman (+ 46 8 463 22 67 /reception/; + 46 8 463 22 66 /bookings/)

af Chapman will charge you an average of 24 Euro/bed in a 3-10 bed cabin. As you may already have concluded from the porthole view, af Chapman is situated right in the middle of where everything is happening in Stockholm.

A multitude of various other hotels in different price brackets, as well as a fair number of reasonable, centrally situated hostels are at the disposal of E2 Noders.

Possible program:

In practice the program will be settled in the usual anarchic downvoting-upvoting E2 manner, among the nodermeet participants. But a menu may still be presented. To begin with – this is the setting:

Stockholm is a city on islands, situated in the middle of tens of thousands of other islands, in the Lake Mälaren as well as in the Baltic Sea. The time of the year is close to the Summer Solstice – sunrise is about 3 AM, sunset at about 10 pm. It will never get completely dark. Swedes, ordinarily a race of wooden-faced bores, are transformed into boisterous, playful fauns and elves. The females get by with an unbelievably small yardage of textiles. Everything is green and flowering, there is love and mischief in the air.

So this can be offered as a program menu, just for wetting the appetite:

Strolling around town: A most recommendable Stockholm summer activity. Pinching the bottoms of nice-looking specimens of any preferred sex, drinking beer, silver tea, wine, Absolut vodka or just plain water in sidewalk cafés, making chance acquaintances (remember – this is the only time of the year that chance acquaintances can be made in Stockholm – in wintertime the natives are an unsmiling, utterly introverted lot).

Excursions: Boat rides to various island destinations, e.g. to the Drottningholm Palace (where the Royal Family lives) on an island in the Lake Mälaren, or to some of the multitude of islands of the Stockholm Archipelago in the Baltic Sea. The Drottningholm tour will take half a day, archipelago tours a full day. But you can eat, drink and be quite merry on board the ships/boats. A 1-2 hour boat ride among the Stockholm city islands is a must in any case.

Cultural activities: At this time of the year there are any number of open-air concerts, theater performances, whatnot. A schedule will be provided when the occasion draws closer. Museums might seem a bit stuffy, except for the Skansen open-air museum of old Swedish country life, located on its own island, Djurgården. It was the first of its kind in the world (founded in the 1890’s), makes for a lovely stroll and has lots of cafés and amenities.

Post-nodermeet adventures: For noders with their sights set for faraway places in general, there are reasonable 24 hour cruises from Stockholm to the major Finno-Ugrian capitals of the world -- Tallinn (Estonia) and Helsinki (Finland). Such expeditions can hardly be crammed into the ordinary 2 day Stockholm nodermeet activities, but they will work admirably as an extension to the conclusion.



Busily preparing themselves for the Stockholm Syndrome European International White Nights Nodermeet:


montecarlo          Ex Officioascorbic          Ex Britannia
StrawberryFrog      Ex Britannia
spiregrain          Ex Britannia 
Albert Herring      Ex Britannia (ex-Ex Belgia)
haruspex            Ex Hibernia
cool beans          Ex Hibernia
Catchpole           Ex Britannia
Hugo Rune           Ex Britannia
bipolarbear         Ex Britannia
izubachi            Ex America
@ panamaus          Ex Monte Olympo
mdn                 Ex Svecia
beak                Ex Svecia
m96 frs             Ex Svecia
meidinhell          Ex Svecia

NEWS for SSEIWNN nodermeeters:

2004-01-22 ---- To facilitate communications with prospective hostages, particularly in the direction from Stockholm, the usergroup Eurohostages has been created, with all of the noders listed above as ex officio members.

2004-05-19 ---- Booking numbers, total cost and general info for noders staying at the af Chapman:

Those of you who kindly sent me their data are now firmly booked on the af Chapman hostel in Stockholm. The bookings are of course made to your real names, but on the list below I only give your E2 usernames. Cancellations can be made by phone +46 8 463 22 67, before 6 PM, June 17.

If you have a membership card from an international hostel association or the Swedish Touring Club (Svenska Turist Föreningen, STF), you will get a discount of 45 SEK/night and a 10 SEK discount on breakfast. A one year STF membership card can be had at the af Chapman reception for 175 SEK, so those of you who are staying 4 nights will come out a little ahead by buying the card. Breakfast is not included (they offer a breakfast buffet at 70 SEK, 60 SEK for members).

Most of you will arrive by airport bus at the Stockholm City Terminal, which is close to the Central Train Station (= “Centralen”). From Centralen (which is situated one level below the City Terminal by staircase, on the Vasagatan street) you can take the red city bus number 65 in the direction of “Skeppsholmen” and get off at the “af Chapman” bus stop. Walking on foot from the City Terminal to the af Chapman will take about 20 min. The af Chapman reception is located in a yellowish house on land, opposite the ship. The hostel is in general open 24 hours, but the ship has a lockout beween 11 AM and 3 PM.

Here are your booking numbers:

Staying June 18+19+20+21 (total cost 970.00 SEK):

StrawberryFrog	162042
spiregrain	162039
Hugo Rune		162040
Albert Herring	162038
haruspex		162035
cool beans	162036
Catchpole		162041

Staying June 18+19+20 (total cost 740.00 SEK):

panamaus		162043

What the af Chapman hostel looks like can be glimpsed at in the site http://www.svenskaturistforeningen.se/sidor/FolderChapmaneng.pdf .

2004-06-10 ---- First official meeting is set at Sat June 19, 10.00 AM, at the statue of King Karl XII in Kungsträdgården Park.

In addition, montecarlo will visit the af Chapman hostel reception (the yellow house on land, opposite the ship) at 22.00 on the night before (June 18). Other, particularly local, noders may want to turn up on Friday night too. A new pub is scheduled to open in the af Chapman reception house on Thursday June 17, so we could have a false start of the nodermeet there -- provided that they really keep to their opening schedule (which unfortunately is not certain, they tell me).

In any case we will meet by the statue of the Warrior King Karl XII (this part of the park is sometimes called "Karl XII's torg" (= the Square of Karl XII) at 10.00 AM on Saturday, June 19. Welcome!


2004-06-23 ---

Stockholm Syndrome Aftermath

All Eurohostages have now been released, a bit worse for wear, but mostly in one piece. We are hence pleased to present this brief

Report:

Meteorologywise

    On the day of arrival, Fri June 18, 2004, Stockholm was hit by one of the coldest, cloudiest weekends of any third week of June 2004. Polar bear sightings alternated with reports of German nudists convulsing in exquisite agony on supercooled waterways. Margheritas could only be served frozen at the Victoria sidewalk café, necessitating noders to rely on liquid alternatives.

    Miraculously, the arrival of calorific E2 noders warmed the Stockholm atmosphere to such an extent that weather predictions, having forecast even worse conditions, almost came to nought. Still, one torrential downpour late Saturday night may have caused widespread liver damage. To stay dry, noders had to sit for hours under the roof of the Victoria bar and were thus forced to imbibe unbelievable quantities of refreshments.

Confessionwise

    Conscience-stricken noders quickly found their way to the Stockholm Confessional Tubes -- divine mouthpieces for sincere regrets -- connected to Oceanus et al via the Baltic Sea. Ample opportunity was given and taken for repenting various mortal sins.

Viewwise

    Closer inspection was made of local land- and watermarks, e.g. City Hall bricks, the closed exhibits at Skansen, weeds of Djurgården, ancient beheadings in Gamla Stan, Charlie Chaplin at the Museum of Modern Art, vegetarian salads at the National Museum, etc. Groups of maritimely inclined noders boldly cruised among some of the visible as well as sunken islands of the Stockholm Archipelago.

Heresywise

    Heretic views concerning the desirable future workings of E2 were forcefully expressed by everyone present, particularly during an animated discussion in the atrium cafeteria of the National Museum. Due to the din of table-pounding and bad-mannered shouting, it remains unclear what was said, in the explicit sense of the word “said”.

    This reporter came under the impression that at least a need for more E2 Levels was emphasized, necessitating a new spiritual level of Saint (4.5, with sanctimonious powers) and a worldly level of Emperor (5.5, with typo-taxing powers). In any case, the debate resulted in a series of incredibly brilliant and ingenious solutions to all E2 problems.

Nobilitywise

    Courageous noders were conferred hereditary Swedish noble titles according to the following Scroll of Honour:

    von StrawberryFrog, de spiregrain, Albert von Herring, af haruspex, von Cool Beans, af Catchpole, Hugo de Rune, von izubachi, von panamaus, de mdn, af meidinhell and von montecarlo.

    The titles give their holders and their descendants the inalienable privilege of being executed by beheading with a sword, instead of the vulgar use of undignified methods generally practiced on commoners.

2004-06-23
montecarlo, Secretary


I would like to live in Sweden
When my work is done
Where the snow lies crisp and even
'Neath the midnight sun

Okay!

I can now report the following:

Stockholm was grand; montecarlo was consummate; Spiregrain was warm; izubachi was young!; mdn was, too!; panamaus was friendly; Albert Herring was crazy; meidinhell was smart; Catchpole was kindly; StrawberryFrog was elegant, as is said of code; Hugo Rune was funny, and he was also the noder I saw last, through my taxi window at three A.M., on deck to the aft of the Chapman being chatted up by a blonde in the white night of the Stockholm solstice.
Bye, bye, Sweden, I love you.

Bright and breezy, free and easy
Sweden, Sweden, Sweden, in Sweden

All of the above adjectives are more or less interchangable with the noders in question. Sadly, nowhere to be seen was the crowd of dolphin-fucking psychopaths I had assured cool beans populated the internet, prior to our departure. It must be said that I appreciate everyone being so delightful and generous, and unthinkingly indulgent of a lowly level-one noder like me. I now feel like I should get down to it, and finally make level two, though I've been told this is an effect that wears off soon enough, so let no one hold their breath, or their head in their hands at the prospect.

Tack så mycket!

My leet HTML skills have crafted a page of photos at http://homepage.eircom.net/~spinningcat/iw3n/iw2n.html. When I saw them, I immediately cut my hair.

I'll grow wings and fly to Sweden
When my time is come
Then at last my eyes shall see them
Heroes every one
Karin Larsson!
Ingmar Bergman!
Henrik Larsson!
Nina Persson!

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