How should three tourists enjoy Valborg in Stockholm next week?

April 25, 2013 1:07 PM

Two friends and I, all Americans, will be in Stockholm next week when it is Valborg/Walpurgis/Vappu. Is there anything in particular we should see, or do you have any guidelines for how to enjoy this as foreigners? Open to all suggestions, except for going somewhere other than Stockholm.

I'll be visiting Stockholm next week. My vacation includes the evening of the 30th, which is apparently a major spring festival there. My companions and I aren't Swedish by any stretch of the imagination. This is our first time visiting Scandinavia. We don't know anybody in Stockholm. I'm not anxious about this, and neither are they, we're all just curious. We're 30-somethings who enjoy having a few drinks, eating (at varying grades of adventure), and live music. I live in The Netherlands and am used to experiencing a variety of cultures with an open mind. They're Americans who've traveled overseas a bit, but generally more in the one-week-tour-of-four-countries way. Our research has told us that Skansen is a good place to be.. but our research could be wrong.

Is this the sort of celebration just best observed by our wandering around aimlessly and watching the goings-on? If so, that's fine. I imagine it would be horribly rude for us to just randomly join a group of Swedes, and I imagine it's equally unlikely that they'll invite us without some kind of close social connection.

We're staying in Vasastan; we all have relatively early travel plans the next morning.

How do we best observe this foreign holiday as clueless, but eager, tourists?

posted by knile to Travel & Transportation around Stockholm, Sweden (2 answers total)

Response by poster: I thought I'd post an update on my experience. The weather that day wasn't great, but cleared up by the evening. We went to Skansen around 6pm and discovered that many of the regular daily portions of the park were closed for the day. So we walked around to see the animals and a few of the buildings that were available, listened to the chorale sing, heard a very old mean speak at great length, and saw the bonfire get lit. To beat the crowds, we left shortly thereafter. We didn't see any fireworks, which we were expecting, and it wasn't very rowdy. The event at Skansen seemed fairly well-attended, though there must have been more going on elsewhere that we never found.
posted by knile at 3:11 AM on May 10, 2013

Go to the India shoppe
posted by lotusmish at 11:12 PM on June 29, 2013