Dear Gaby and Roz:
A most surreal moment: sitting in one of Stockholm's enormous, all-night McDonalds at 4 a.m. Outside the sun is shining and inside the place is packed with hundreds of noisy, drunk and hungry Swedish youth who, like me, have just come from the clubs. Clearly, this is the last part of a studied, Saturday night ritual. I am conscious, for the first time really, of the presence of Swedish police who are currently milling about, keeping an eye on things. But everyone seems surprisingly well-behaved and the cops look bored.
I've just been to Sture Compagniet, Stockholm's most well-known yuppie disco in up-market Östermalm. It was striking and eerie: never before have I been in a place where everyone -- and I mean everyone -- looked equally and inter-changeably gorgeous, immaculate and casually affluent (in a preppy sort of way). Perhaps you wouldn't like that. I found it fascinating (sociologically!).
These days, for better or worse, Sture Compagniet is most well-known for a horrible shooting that took place there a few years back, when some crazed youth just outside, perturbed for having been denied admission some 45 minutes earlier, opened fired on exiting patrons. More than half a dozen people were killed. Hotel staff always seem to mention this when you ask about the place.
Physically, the place is architecturally fun: a 3-level, U-shaped structure of various rooms and bars of differing themes and styles, all connected by little staircases everywhere. The center of the "U" is an atrium you can look down on from all the various levels and rooms around it. And at the bottom, there's a large rectangular bar, flanked at one end by a sitting area of upholstered chairs and sofas, and a small dance floor at the far end. The music varies with the room, from techno to 70's oldies.
Sture Compagniet is definitely not a place to go to alone. All the well-turned, Swedish twenty-somethings were there in groups, and I didn't get the impression there was much emphasis on picking up some overnight company, though I could be wrong. Given the way scores of inebriated Swedes were literally falling out the door at the end of the night, I don't see how anyone could be capable of anything at that point besides passing out in bed. With the possible exception, of course, of first wolfing down a quick burger and fries at McDonalds by dawn.
Must go before I myself pass out. Hej då!
-- Stan
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