Bloggers or travelers: 'You miss your cat back in New York? Let's watch this clip of Werner Herzog talking about chickens. '
What would happen if you traveled to a country you'd never been to and relied on suggestions from blogs and online locals instead of those from friends and guidebooks? Would you end up at a Star Trek convention? Trapped in a basement full of cat hair and moody Swedish folk singers? Not according to my visit at the Skeppsholmen.
I asked Emi if she had a theory as to why Stockholm has so many bloggers, and she said: "It might be partly our inferiority complex. We're feeling kind of alone, all the way up here in the north. We want to reach out and tell people that we're alive. We want to show people that we're on top of everything."
This naturally led to a discussion of hipster-riddled Sodermalm, whose cafes I had recently described to a friend as "laptoppy." Emi reported: "The Stockholm hipsters have gotten very nerdy about bread. And coffee is reaching Brooklyn levels." On the bread front: "Sourdough has gotten huge, especially for stay-at-home dads. The bakery of this deli that we're in has a 'sourdough hotel' where you can leave your starter when you go on vacation." (Sourdough starter needs to be "fed" to keep the yeast active. The "hotel" is a shelving unit that holds some 30 jars of customers' dried or live starter; the top shelf is labeled "Penthouse.") Emi said, "When I first heard about it, I thought it was a hipster joke."
My hope was that by taking tips from young bloggers I'd immediately be plugged into hipster Stockholm and neatly dodge any Millennium or Abba walking tours -- or indeed, any activity that might shed a light on sulky fictional hackers or the troubled marriage of Benny and Anni-Frid.