Island City at the end of the world.

They picked oranges in Israel, kellnerte in London, was Statistin in Hollywood. But at no place in the world, the Swedish best-selling author Liza Marklund rather than in Stockholm - among other things, because they are only here right designer clothes there. A declaration of love.

 

If I have luck, the pilot selects an entry Schneise on the Stockholm city center.

I put his hands like a telescope to my eyes and press the face against the plane window, my heart is beating me at the top of the neck, and I breathe very restrained, so that the disc does not shoes.

Is it not for the E 4, the highway after Södertälje with snakes from toy cars? And now is a white Waxholmfähre clearly be seen in the bathtub of Saltsjö on the way to the archipelago belt. Here is the royal castle, the green land of Djurgården and Järvafältets gigantic Betonvorstädte. From the air since Stockholm is so palpable, so simple and affable, my very own city, my city in the world.

Stockholm is at the end of the world, like a barrier between Lake Mälaren and the Baltic Sea, like a heart, before the light and life in the polar night beating. Wherever I'm also had this feeling overwhelms me when I come home: how to price this city. How beautiful, and how lonely and isolated. How much they shaped our people has been the last millennium, three-quarters within their walls live, and how much they in turn has shaped us, how we think, gets what we do and what we produce. Our design, our music, art and literature? between city and human creativity is a constant give and take instead.

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Before the window of the Arlanda Express, the train from the airport to the main Centralen, roars architectural monotony of the suburbs with ugly industrial buildings over. Accidents, we think Sweden and verschränken happy hands on her stomach.

I leave the hustle and bustle of the central station behind me. At first glance may Stockholm to other old cities in Europe remember. The cobblestone streets of medieval Gamla Stan. The fountain in the shady park Kungsträdgården. The gilded statues and the magnificent pillars in front of the Royal Theater. But appearances are deceiving. There is something hard, which does not seem to agree, something Schwermütiges and Ungreifbares to Stockholm from its bigger brothers on the continent is different.

Maybe it's the water. It is darker than anywhere else. I do not know why. It is never blue. It's graphite, light yellow, olive green, but never as clear blue as in normal cities. It is everywhere in Stockholm surrounded by the water. It rustled, bubbles, swirls and undulates in Strömmen, the short connection between Lake Mälaren and the Baltic Sea, as a crowd of school children in the big break, and then to calm and leisurely dahinzufließen when dealing with Saltsjö united, almost dignified.

The weather rarely invited to picnic

Or it is up to the climate. Winters are dark, cold and damp. In the short hours the middle of the day when the sun over the horizon drags, protrude the bare branches of deciduous trees such as distorted rods into a ubiquitous bleigrauen sky. The earthy tones of the house facades with blurred background.

The contours of the streets in informal slush lost, and the salt is dissolved and road dirt. The summer days are endless, but the warm are vanishingly small. The Swedish climate invites rarely picnic.

Stockholm has been shaped by our extraordinarily harsh living conditions. Since the middle of the 13th Century, the city here in these islands, it was first mentioned in documents from the two Latin summer 1252nd At that time she was only a wooden fort But since one in the pits at the top of Bergslagen iron and copper gained, Stockholm was a necessity. The people needed the city as a port and export trading. And the politicians needed a high seat. Today, Stockholm more than 14 islands, connected by 57 bridges are.

Every time the city was expanded, the vision is greater than the capabilities of these ideas into reality. The Swedish population, spread over a barren and inhospitable landscape, whose total area is larger than Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands combined, had no great gifts, to build palaces and to build bridges. The solutions were brought from the outside, especially from Germany.

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Over the centuries, the Germans were the people to us before any other has inspired. The Stockholm Castle was designed by Nicodemus Tessin d. J., born in Sweden to parents from Stralsund. He visited the German school in Stockholm, he studied architecture in Europe later below. (I write my novels in my work room in the street Engelska Brinken, "Deutsche hill", and my window to Engelska kyrkan, the German church.) Today's Stone Town, which we see the classic inner city, it was in 19 . and 20 Century, following the example of Berlin was built.

Germany, but not quite. Continental ambitions, but not entirely successful. Sweden was too hard, too small, too cold. Stockholm has become a barren and closed little sister at the end of the road, and the ambivalence of will without the right skills was a very special kind of metropolis.

In Stockholm we see very few truly magnificent houses.