Written by Satu
28 Mar 2016
I have a friend living in city of Jönköping, 324 km away from Stockholm. During my first month in Sweden, I plan to visit her. But knowing that the place is kind of far, and the first month studying is a little too busy to leave the city for some days, she deliberately offer to meet me for a daytrip in Norrköping, a city between Stockholm and Jönköping.
moreSuci and Yudha joined me and we leave Stockholm in the morning. It was not really a good sunshine day when we start the trip, but it was all right because we get sunshine later in the afternoon. I and Suci bought our ticket since a week before. But it’s a good to know that actually there is this kind of last minute ticket which offer you a very cheap price, plus you can ride any train goes to your destination (or pass that station on its way). It did not guarantee you a seat, but I’m pretty sure one empty seat will be easy enough to find. The train ride is about two hours long.
Norrköping turns out to be a peaceful and beautiful small town. My kind of destination. We get there two hours before our meeting time so we took the chance to walk around the city.
My favorite thing in Norrköping is the waterway. Near the train station, a big river named Motala Ström River welcome us. There are benches alongside the river. I like this kind of concept. The city make it easy for the people to enjoy the nature in the city. We also see some people fishing on a small pier.
We try following the river upstream. The river get smaller, we saw many few canals. Then there is several small waterfalls from dams. Most of them are long and this is probably just me, but I really enjoy looking at the line of water falling. Oh we saw many ducks try to swim upstream too. They don’t do well in that.
Like other city in Sweden, Norrköping also have many green parks in every corner of the city. I love that parks in Sweden is always green, with good soft grass and there are no trash laying here and there.
We found that some street’s name are similar to Stockholm’s street name. Drottningsgatan is also one of the main street, the busiest of all. More people, more shops in there than in other street in Stockholm and also in Norrköping. However the feel I get from walking in Norrköping’s Drottningsgatan is closer to a street in Helsinki, Finland, rather than to Stockholm.
The main transportation seems to be buses and trams. We did not try it because we get the impression that we can just walk to go around the city.
More attraction
Since we are on a daytrip, we didn’t have time to visit more attraction of Norrköping. But there are quite some cool stuff we can find in there. Like this cactus plantation Carl Johannes Park during summer, where they say 25,000 cacti planted there. There is also a high-tech industry park called Norrköping Science Park. Then there is this an open park of Himmelstalund, where they have big collection of petroglyphs, the ancient drawing.
Looking at my statistics of visiting smaller town in Sweden and how I like that city, I plan to do this kind of trip more often. You think the smaller the better?
