Tuija Kuusela: Exploring Stockholm without a dog

Stockholm's city centre (Innerstaden) is divided into five neighbourhoods: Gamla Stan, Norrmalm, Östermalm, Södermalm, Kungsholmen and Vasastan. While having tried to get a general view of the whole, I must say that Stockholm manages to be both cosmopolitan and maintain a small town feel. For being such a big city, the center area is surprisingly humane. It consists of a group of islands so you can see water almost everywhere. All the possible pieces of land are not developed — there is a lot of vast or smaller green areas and parks. Cycle path networks are widespread, and here and there some idyllic/trendy/romantic/stylish outdoor restaurant or coffehouse pops out. Although the warmth feels to be over for this year, the Swedish seem to be very persistent outdoors sitters with blankets (offered by the coffehouses) on.

One of my funny projects in Bonnier Fakta has been Dog Promenades in Stockholm (Hundpromenader i Stockholm). It's going to be a nice little book with advices for walking routes in Stockholm. It's meant to people with dogs, but for me it has been useful also for guiding my friends — I've had Finnish visitors almost every weekend.

Last weekend it was my art historian friends' turn. After having seen Gaspar David Friedrich in the National Museum, we visited Stockholm's Royal Armoury (Livrustkammaren). 2009 marks the bicentenary of the so-called Finnish War, and the Royal Armoury is marking this with an exhibition called 1809 — A kingdom divided and a new beginning. It is a collaboration project with the National Museum of Finland and one of these friends of mine belongs to the exhibition team. So, we got a very special private guiding of the last moments of Sweden and Finland as an unitary kingdom (which had lasted for 600 years).