FOR anyone wanting 'what I should call an Easy Abroad,
I should say that Sweden was an ideal country. For if there are no terrific gorgeousnesses of blazing colours, at least there are no terrific smells either ; _ and if there are no palm trees and no molten cauldron of burning skies, then neither is there any blare of noise. -It is'a very clean and quiet and decent country, and at least in Southern and Central Sweden the summer climate and colouring is almost English—with a difference.
They have a word that I think' is funklionalism, and it you translate it roughly as " suitability " then you have something like the key-note of the country. The Town Hall in Stockholm that so many people go to look at does not profess to be the most magnificent Town Hall in the world ; it does profess to be the very best bit of architecture that could possibly be erected for its particular purpose and on that par- ticular site. And so it is with everything there ; a Swedish station serving the humblest village will be neither a draughty shed nor an imitation market hall. It will be the ideal station and nothing else. And if in the corridor of a Swedish train there ought to be a bottle of water, then there will be someone to see that the bottle is always full and that the water is always fresh. Spell that word how you like, but Swedish Travel most certainly Functions.
There is gaiety, of course, and there are a hundred sea- bathing places where you can enjoy yourself to the full. But it is what I should call an Upper Middle-Class sort of gaiety, without either the noise or the crowds of democracy, or the toilettes or grandeurs of the super-rich. Or there is sport and golf ; the Swedes are very English in that way. Or there is archaeology and architecture, or mountains and mountaineer- ing in the Far North, Or cafés and shops in the cities ?, Stock- holm is a great capital that even runs to skyscraperh. And always there is eating ; the Swedish smorgabord is a feature which attracted at least my own attention. That idea of taking your plate and marching round an enormous table idly spearing selected odds-and-ends from one's own choice of perhaps -forty dishes was an ambition which came to. me at about the age of five ; it-was in Sweden that my dream came
true, though unhappily in the late forties. „ •
For myself I had entered Sweden by train ;" literally by train, on the cOlossal ferry which plies from Sassnitz in Germany. It is a 4-hour passage to Tralleborg, and for the tourist who dislikes the sea and does not mind the train- journeyw through Europe this is probably the best mute. Then from Tralleborg he .would go to Malmo and probably run across to take a look at Copenhagen, and afterwards he would take 'the Malmo-Stockholm express with a day, of wooded, rolling country and neat little farm-houses all gay in white-and-red. But most people will go by sea, to Gothenburg, a 85-hour trip from London on extremely com- fortable and quite large mail-boats ; and then they will take the famous Gothenburg Canal to Stockholm, with restaurant boats and jolly little cabins. • Or other toutes are from Newcastle to Gothenburg or even from London direct to Stockholm ; while at intervals there is • a semi- cargo service from London to Malmo. But the two latter trips of course take time, and for most visitors it is either Sassnitz and the train-ferry (£25 1st-return London to Stockholm, £16 2nd) or the ship direct to Gothenburg (from £12 lstzreturn upwards, according to cabin and with meals included). Or there are All sores of inclusive tours, and you can go from London to Gothenburg and then train to Stockholm and so back for a 10-day outing from £15 upwards, -with 1st-class on the steamer at that. While a 17-day trip which includes the canal-boat instead al the train costs from about £25 upwards. And there are other tours to take in Visby and the Islands, to allow for walking, for the seaside, for everything.
Then sooner or later, whichever route and tour they choose, almost all visitors will come to Stockholm. With its Islands and its Island restaurants and cafés and all the little steamers plying gaily round, that is the place of course that so often goes down in the books as the " Venice of the North." Per- sonally, I did not approve the simile. Stockholm is distinct
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