On Saturday (2/6), Hanna arrived in Seattle. And with her came my introduction to all the wonders of shopping. Hanna certainly had an influence on me. I’m not completely sure if it was good or bad.

So on Sunday (3/6), Miles took Hanna and me to the Fremont Sunday Market, a huge outdoor event with branches into big warehouses with everything from antiques to jewlery sold by the designer or t-shirts with cool prints on them.

For some reason, they’re really into Swedish stuff in Seattle. You can even eat Swedish pancakes at the Swedish culture center. I didn’t even know that such a thing as Swedish pancakes existed. (Kind of in the same way as the Americans don’t seem to know that what they eat for breakfast isn’t pancakes, but actually American pancakes.)

Well, anyway, after a couple of hours iN Fremont, I ended up being the new proud owner of five pairs of earrings, one purse, one wallet and a couple of gifts to bring back home. Maybe Hanna’s influence was bad, after all.

Then we obviously had to Seattle’s tourist attraction number one: Pike Place Market. It’s a big indoor market, residing in these old buildings pretty close to the waterfront. It’s beautiful with all the colours from the vegetables, flowers and the fish, but what I liked the most was the old neon signs and the worn aestethic of the place. It was really cool, even though the place was so crazily crowded with tourists that you could barely walk from one end of the market to the other.

I didn’t buy anything there.

And on my way back to Miles’ place, I walked past this pretty little second-hand bookstore.

Yeah, you might say that I’m partial to neon signs.

That is, Swedish fish. They taste exactly like Gott & Blandat. Delicious. But even more awesome is the box they come in. Is that cool or what?

In the guidebook, there was a short entry about Ballard, a quaint neighbourhood north of downtown Seattle, just by the ocean. It was described as the old Scandinavian fishing village, because that’s where most of the Scandinavian immigrants moved back in the day. They even have a Nordic heritage museum there. Well, as the history nerd Scandinavian gal that I am, I just had to pay Ballard a visit.

Miles said that a couple of years ago, there was still a Swedish store in Ballard, run by an old Swedish couple, where they sold Swedish food and other stuff. Now, that store had closed and the neighbourhood has become quite gentrified. Not very much left of the Scandinavian fishing village. I saw a couple of Norwegian flags, but mostly it was just cute wooden houses with lush gardens and with the ocean in the background. A beautiful neighbourhood, so relaxed and calm. A nice break from the fast pace of the city.

I ate lunch at a place called Paseo, down by the water. Whitney told me that they would serve me the best sandwich that I’ve ever had, so I ordered the one with tofu and god, was she right. Tofu, onion, garlic, peppers, sauce, crispy bread – divine. You know, that’s why you should couchsurf. Where else would I have gotten a tip like that in a city where I don’t know anyone? I would have just walked past that red shed and not known that I just missed the best sandwich of my life. But no. Not this time. Because I had met Whitney.

And out on the bay, boat owners were enjoying the beautiful afternoon too.

Controlling the boats going into and out of Union Lake and Lake Washington from Puget Sound (that is, the Pacific), is Chittenden Locks. I wasn’t impressed, because we have a couple of locks in Stockholm too – I even travel across a bridge that goes over one of the locks between Lake Mälaren and the Baltic Sea every morning when I go to university, or work, or just when I want to meet my friends. But they’ve made the area around it into a park, which I like.

But for some reason, I seemed to be the only one who wasn’t impressed by the locks. The tourists were flocking around the actual lock, where the water was pumped in or out to let the boats through. (Because, just as with Mälaren and the Baltic, the waterlevel in the lake is kept slightly higher than in the sea, as a precaution.) Later, when I talked to Miles about this, he said that it might not be anything special for me, but for most Americans it is. So many states in the US are landlocked, and many of the others don’t really have the conditions to allow those kinds of connections between lakes and the ocean. So, in that context, the Chittenden Locks are special. I just happen to come from a part of the world where we have even more of them.

It was a nice half day trip, to the tranquility of Ballard. Even though, to tell the truth, I didn’t see much there that reminded me of Scandinavia. For me, it seemed very much like a cute and quaint northwestern American neighbourhood.

1/6: After an entire day of walking, from Capitol Hill through Volunteer Park over the bridge to University of Washington and Fremont and then back again across the water to Queen Anne and Seattle Center, I was starving. My only intake of food had been an apple and the dried cranberries, raisins and walnuts that Lori gave me before I left Whiskey Creek. Every single place I found was just closing, had stopped serving lunch or only had alcohol on the menu.

Luckily, just before I was about to faint, I came upon a sushi place just a couple of blocks from the Space Needle. And guess what? It was one of those funny places where the pieces of rice, fish and vegetables are served on small, coloured plates on a running belt. It makes the eating so much more fun! (Even though I certainly don’t need to make eating more fun. Eating just as it is happens to be one of my favourite pastimes.)

The sushi might not have been the best I’ve ever had, but being as hungry as I was, everything tasted wonderful. And the lemonade I got with my food was so refreshing. Food should be fun, and this was certainly fun. A great meal indeed.

I could do a second blog entry about orchids dedicated to Richard, but I feel like that could be seen as slightly over the top. I don’t know him well enough, and most importantly, he doesn’t know me well enough to know that dedications and gifts and homemade pastries is just something that I do to people that I like, even if I don’t really know them. I’m bad at telling people in words, face to face, what I feel, so I compensate by knitting socks and writing short stories and making elaborate covers to mix CDs.

Well, anyway. Because I want to stay cool, this is just an ordinary blog entry with photos of the beautiful orchids and other flowers that they had in the extraordinarily cute Volunteer Park Conservatory.

Seattle is full of small parks and squares, that give life and contrast to the heavy concrete and glass monsters of downtown, and places to breathe for the cute residential neighbourhoods.

The first I came accross was Occidental Park down by Pioneer Square:

A little bit further north, in the middle of the downtown chaos, I came upon this strangely vegetated square:

(You may think I lack any kind of taste, because I like blue trees – but I love it. I absolutely love it! The blue and the early leaves’ green. Ah! It’s amazing.)

Olympic Scuplture Park, down by the water – something inbetween an art exhibition and a park:

A short walk from Miles’ apartment in Capitol Hill lies Volunteer Park and the Volunteer Park Conservatory, with free admission and completely adorable:

In Fremont, this odd art Mecca, I found Gas Works Park, an old gas work plant that was turned into a park with an amazing view of downtown Seattle over the water, and with factory structures still there as odd, industrial art.

For me, there is something very appealing in this rough, dirty industrial ugliness. I love how they’ve reclaimed this unfriendly place and made it into something beautiful and public. Kite flyers and pic nic-ers were enjoying the afternoon sun on the grass hill next to this huge piece of metal, and I just love how that feels completely natural in the wonderful city of Seattle.

But it’s not only the libraries of Seattle that caught my attention. Seattle is full of interesting architecture that I just couldn’t keep my camera away from. It made my total of 4.5 GB of memory cards fill up in no time.

Downtown:

Pioneer Square, the oldest part of Seattle:

In 1962, Seattle hosted the World Fair in what’s now called Seattle Center. This part of town is full of strange, futuristic seattelite architecture. For example the Space Needle:

Capitol Hill:

And the gardens in Capitol Hill are all pretty flowers.

The architecture department building at University of Washington:

Fremont, the artsy neighbourhood that after parts of Capitol Hill has the youngest and, in my opinion, the most interesting vibe in Seattle. Mostly, it’s the streetart and statues, but they’ve got some coom houses too:

And finally, Queen Anne, the slightly more fancy part of town:

(I wouldn’t mind that view…)

I really am a book worm. And my favourite building in most cities is the public library. I can’t help it, I judge a city by its libraries. Stockholm has a beautiful, amazing main city library, and a couple of really great public libraries both downtown and in the suburbs. The public library on Manhattan, New York, is overwhelming. Oxford is uncomparable. And now, Seattle has joined the group of my favourite library cities in the world.

Something that most of my favourite libraries has in common is that they are old. The actual buildings. Back in the day, the people with money and power still had an appreciation for books and having a good and well built public library was considered as a status symbol for a city. Most modern libraries just seem to be huge concrete boxes to store books in. Nothing to get inspired by.

Well, this is not the case in Seattle. The public library in Seattle was opened in 2004 and is a beautiful piece of modern, experimental glass architecture. Both from the outside and from within, it’s a masterpiece of light and geometry – and as an amateur photographer, you know I love that.

Especially on the top floor, that is solely furnished with study tables and groups of reading chairs, you feel the full advantage of the glass ceiling. Especially considering how prone to cloudiness Seattle is, the extreme amount of outside light that is let in is just perfect. Suited for Seattle like the hand in the glove (a Swedish saying that might or might not make sense to all you English speakers). On my first day in town, I spent several hours sitting there in a comfy chair, reading the guidebook, writing and using the free wifi.

Right there, in the afternoon of the 31st of May in the public library, was when I first fell in love with Seattle.

Of course I did my routine check. And even though it wasn’t as good as in Vancouver, they sure had a few Astrid Lindgren books on the shelves in the kids department.

But as if one awesome library wasn’t enough, Whitney told me to visit the University of Washington Suzzallo Library. The guidebook told me that it was named after the principal who commissioned it, and that he wanted it to look like a cathedral, because ‘the library is the soul of the university’. Oh, how I love the people with the power to build houses, who realise the great importance and power of architecture. It really looks like an old, European cathedral.

It even reminds me of Oxford, the old stone beauty of Christchurch Collage.

I could transfer to University of Washington, just to be able to sit in this reading room and study for my geographical information systems exams. As it were, I only had time to read a little in the guidebook and study the awesome free map of Seattle that I found by the library entrance. Considering that I’m a geography student, that could almost count as an exam study session.

I can have nothing but pure respect for a city that has chosen to build such beautiful buildings for its, in my opinion, most important artefacts of our shared cultural heritage: the books of the learned and of the world. Hats off for Seattle!

In Seattle I couchsurfed with Miles. He wrote on his profile that he liked languages and restoring old cameras – but what finally made me decide to send my Seattle couch request to him was what he wrote about his taste in music: “I like what Sweden is doing with pop music these days”. Well, as a Swedish music fanatic, I just had to meet this American guy with the slightly surprising, but oh so admirable appreciation for the music of my home country.

Miles lives in a brick building in Capitol Hill, a neighbourhood east and uphill from downtown Seattle. Finding my way there on my first evening in Seattle wasn’t hard, but the walk turned out to be a real workout. The hills of Seattle might not be comparable to the hills of San Francisco, but with my green, monster backpack I felt like I was climbing Kebnekajse (the highest peak in Sweden) at the very least.

But it was worth the effort. Capitol Hill is a beautiful part of Seattle, with low apartment buildings and wooden one family houses. There is a lot of greenery, odd street art and cute small boutiques. This is where the young and/or gay live, and if I ever were to move to Seattle, I would probably want to live in Capitol Hill (or Fremont, but that’s another story).

And then Miles. At first, he reminded me so much of this guy I once knew that it almost scared me. They looked so similar, had the same way of carrying themselves. The beard and particularly the ears. The kindness and very humble way of being. The same taste in music, both musicians. They even whistled in the same, very melodic and accurate way. Considering that my feelings towards this once-upon-a-time-friend are still very mixed, it’s not hard to understand that I felt confused.

But that didn’t last long. Pretty soon, I started seeing the differences too, his generosity and helpfulness and how he just welcomed me into this city and made me feel at home at once. He told me where to go and what to see – and most importantly, which bus to take. He even took the time to show me a few places. Already on the first night, he and his girlfriend Whitney took me to Seattle International Film Festival, which was running during my Seattle visit. There, we saw “The House”, a Slovak movie about an overprotective father and a daughter who just wants to brake free. Cute movie, and interesting because I so rarely see movies from eastern Europe.

We talked about traveling and couchsurfing and music, and seriously, I think he knew more Swedish bands than I do. He even listens to music with Swedish lyrics. His CD collection is huge, I mean, it certainly rivals my dad’s (and my dad has serious collector’s issues), and there were so many great and interesting bands and artists among his albums that I easily could have spent days just listening to music in his awesome and supercool studio apartment. We bonded over our love for Annika Norlin and Elias and the Wizzkids, and I made him jealous when I told him that I’ve ridden the subway with Annika and run into Elias in the street several times in Stockholm.

On Saturday morning, Miles and Whitney took me to this old style bagel bakery down the street from his place. I had a bagel with fig cream cheese, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that that was the best bagel I’ve ever had. Delicious. A perfect way to start a Seattle Saturday morning, with a fresh bagel and the crossword puzzle that the bakery owner makes and puts up on the wall as a huge, wall sized piece of art.

Miles in Capitol Hill, the perfect Couchsurfing host. With some excellent help from his knowledgable girlfriend Whitney.

31/5-3/6: I arrived in Seattle on a gray and cloudy, but rainfree Thursday. Finding a place to store my green, monster backpack for the day turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it would, and I ended up having to walk all through downtown for atleast three hours until I eventually found the Greyhound station and could leave the burden there.

The rest of my stay in this beautiful city by the ocean, I mostly walked around, from morning until dark, and tried to experience as much of the city atmosphere as possible. It rained a little a couple of times, but most of the time it was sunny – which, I believe, means I was extremely lucky with the weather. If there’s something that Seattle is known for, it’s the rain.

I could, of course, do the same thing with Seattle as with Vancouver, that I write about my days one at a time. But for some reason that doesn’t feel right. Now, in my memory, Seattle is the city of many originalities and special features, and the best way for me to tell you about my Seattle would be to divide all my impressions into different themes. Not chronological, but by subject. So, let us start with Miles.