He wore a goalie mask on the ice but outside the rink you were just as likely to find Henrik Lundqvist on the pages of GQ as Sports Illustrated. Born in Sweden, he moved to New York in 2005 and spent his entire 15-year NHL career as a goaltender for the New York Rangers. He won the Vezina Trophy in 2012 and was just inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Now retired, the well-dressed Lundqvist is still a proud New Yorker and involved in numerous projects, including being a part owner of the restaurant Tiny's & The Bar Upstairs in Tribeca, launching a new fragrance ‘Next Chapter’ and hosting the ‘ Club 30 ’ podcast. Over Moscow Mules at Tiny’s, made with his favorite Ole Smoky Moonshine , I spoke with Lundqvist about his first drink, his love of New York and his talk with Paul McCartney about the difference between hockey and music fans.
Vasa Museum: See This Magnificent Failed Warship In Stockholm, Sweden
02.11.2023 - 11:51 / forbes.com
It was supposed to be the pride of a nation. Built in the early 17th century, Vasa was commissioned by the King of Sweden during a time of intense naval competition among the European powers. But rather than a warship of unprecedented power and grandeur, Vasa became a symbol of poor design and tragedy.
In 1628, just minutes after setting sail and less than a mile from where she was launched, Vasa was caught by a gust of wind causing her to list heavily to one side.
Water poured into her open gunports, and the great ship sank to the bottom of Stockholm harbor. At least 30 people died in the tragedy, witnessed by thousands of people lining the harbor in the Swedish capital.
Today, the ship’s failure is remembered in a Stockholm museum that is one of the most popular attractions in Sweden.
Because Vasa was intended to be the flagship of the Swedish navy, she was elaborately carved and adorned with ten sails, 64 cannons, and hundreds of statues, intended to symbolize Sweden’s strength.
This all contributed to a fatal flaw, however. Vasa was top-heavy, with insufficient ballast to balance her tall, heavy structure. Despite the very visible nature of the disaster, the incident was downplayed to a certain extent as an inquiry failed to hold anyone to account.
Vasa lay submerged and forgotten for over three centuries until, in the 1950s, her location was rediscovered.
After years of preparation, the Vasa was finally raised from the seabed in 1961. Archaeologists were stunned to find the ship so well preserved, a fact credited to the brackish Baltic Sea water, which prevented the growth of wood-eating organisms that normally destroy sunken ships.
Even with that promising start, preserving and restoring the ship still took almost three decades. During this time, a building was constructed around the ship that went on to become the Vasa Museum.
While she never achieved her intended glory as a warship, Vasa has found a different kind of fame as one of the most popular and fascinating museum exhibits in Northern Europe.
Stockholm’s Vasa Museum chronicles the construction, sinking, and the restoration of this remarkable vessel, with Vasa itself as the dominant feature.
Visitors to the museum are immediately struck by the sheer size and phenomenal carved detailing of the ship. The ship is surrounded by platforms at various levels, which allow visitors to get a good look from different angles.
Around the main hall’s perimeter, visitors will find interactive exhibits that paint a vivid picture of daily life (or more accurately, what daily life should have been like) for the sailors and soldiers aboard Vasa. Personal artifacts, clothes, and tools recovered from the wreck give a striking human touch to the disaster.
A
These Are the Absolute Best Black Friday Airline Deals We’ve Found
This year, airlines have been rolling out Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales that have us dreaming about everything from Scandinavian escapes (courtesy of SAS Airlines) to exploring even further afield (hello, South Africa and Seychelles).
The 15 best things to do in Kraków
Crowned with an impressive royal castle and dotted with church spires and world-class museums, Kraków combines the historic with the cosmopolitan.
7 Reasons to Visit Gothenburg in 2024
Gothenburg is ranked one of the world’s 100 best cities in 2023* (the only non-capital in the Nordic Countries) and is also the winner of the Global Destination Sustainability Index Leadership Award 2023* for the 7th time in a row. Here are 7 reasons to visit in 2024. There’s also a selection of new restaurants, bars, and shops to discover in Sweden’s second city situated on Sweden’s west coast. Experience World of Volvo World of Volvo, run by Volvo Cars and Volvo Group, will be both a landmark and meeting place with space for the new Volvo Museum, exhibitions, concerts and dining experiences. The circular, five-storey, 22,000-square-metre building is inspired by the Scandinavian landscape and will be located just next to Liseberg Amusement Park. It opens April 2024.
Vietnam Looks to Offer Visa-Free Entry to Indians: India Report
After Sri Lanka and Thailand, Vietnam is likely to be the next destination to offer visa-free entry to Indians. According to local media, Vietnam Minister of Culture, Sports, and Tourism Nguyen Van Hung suggested it allow Indians and Chinese to visit without a visa for a short period. As of now, only nationals of Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland can enter Vietnam without a visa.
How I learned to make and sleep in a Swedish snowhole – at minus 30C
One British childhood winter experience remains the same, despite all the changes of the past century. It’s the one where you gaze out of the window, mesmerised by the falling snow, and start fantasising about building an igloo or a snow cave, then sleeping in it overnight. A few fortunate kids get to follow that up, but for most the fantasy is quickly quashed. The blizzard stops, the snow melts, you lob some slush at your mates then go inside to watch Ski Sunday.
How To Experience Europe’s Northern Lights by Rail
Despite conventional wisdom, Europe is still a dream come true come wintertime. From the merriment of myriad Christmas markets to joyous carnival celebrations, the continent shines bright during the season of darkness. But nothing dazzles quite like the Northern Lights. At their best during the winter months, the Northern Lights are a thrill to those lucky enough to gaze upon them and happen to be entering a period of increased activity. While finding them is always an inexact science due to the famously fickle nature of the lights, many locations across the northern tier of the continent offer travelers increased odds all winter long. And since seeing Europe by rail is always a thrill and you can reach almost any corner of the continent on a train, why not combine the two things for a winter trip you will remember forever? Think days spent gazing out the window at winter wonderlands and nights chasing the magical lights outdoors and having fun staying cozy indoors. You will probably want to bookend your adventure with a stop in a city like Stockholm, Oslo, Gothenburg, Bergen, Helsinki, or even London or Edinburgh to make it a well-rounded rail adventure.
Booking Paid $90 Million Termination Fee For Its Failed eTraveli Acquisition
Booking Holdings, whose $1.8 billion deal to acquire Sweden’s eTraveli Group was blocked by European Commission earlier this year, paid out $90 million in termination fee this October, according to a nugget in its latest quarterly statement.
Riding the rails: Which country travels the most by train in Europe?
Increasing the use of public transport and minimising car dependency are two significant ways to help Europe reach ambition climate and energy-saving targets. At the heart of achieving both is the continent's railways.
Pickle Lovers Celebrate National Pickle Day On November 14
National Pickle Day, celebrated each year on Nov. 14 by pickle lovers throughout the country, recognizes the tart, sometimes sweet and even spicy pickle. On this day pickle lovers pop open pecks of their preferred preserved pickle. It may be a Dill, Gherkin, Cornichon, Brined, Kosher Dill, Polish, Hungarian, Lime, Bread and Butter, Swedish and Danish or even Kool-Aid Pickle. Celebrities like Matthew McConaughey are huge fans of pickles, and SuckerPunch Gourmet can possibly claim having the first pickle on the Mt. Everest Basecamp.
Rugs That Ripple Like a Stream
The fashion designer Marco Zanini’s mother is Swedish, but growing up in his father’s native Italy, he never gave his Nordic roots much thought. It wasn’t until he turned 30 that he “became passionate about anything Scandinavian,” says the Milan-based 52-year-old, who served as the creative director of Halston, Rochas and Schiaparelli before launching his namesake ready-to-wear brand in 2019. “I started to spend my summers there, digging into anything that felt and looked Swedish.”
The Best European Cities To Learn A Language, According To Surveys
With a new year approaching and new resolutions in mind, learning a language is one of those items that often appears on many personal lists. Travel experts and language institutions regularly publish surveys on the best destinations to do so, echoing the simple fact that in our interconnected, “globalized” world, the ability to communicate in more than one language opens new opportunities, experiences and understanding.