Lost and found ... inside a vintage-clothes shop in the hip Sodermalm district.Credit: Getty Images
A city guide that matches travellers with locals gives Rhiannon Batten special access to Stockholm.
You can keep Elle Macpherson's legs and Angelina Jolie's lips. If I could change one thing about myself I'd be Swedish. I'd live in a flat decorated with Bruno Mathsson's Eva chairs, dress in Acne and spend my weekends driving a beaten-up Volvo to a lakeside summer house to drink coffee, eat cloudberries and jump straight from my Gustavian bed into cool, clean water.
It's unlikely to happen any time soon but living out the fantasy for a weekend is possible with help from a new company called Nectar & Pulse. Based in Austria, it publishes alternative guidebooks to Vienna, Stockholm and London (Barcelona and Paris will be added to the list later this year).
The guides - while not completely tailor-made - are a halfway house between packing a guidebook and packing another human being. Travellers can buy the ring-bound city guide, then scroll through the company's website descriptions to find local "soulmates", decide which personalities tally best with their own and buy recommendations from as many of them as they like. The cost is €10 ($13) for the guide, plus €6 a soulmate.
The company's co-founder, Tanja, has chosen my soulmates for me: "shopaholic, glamour girl, party queen" Emma Stolt; "bohemians, pop princesses, businesswomen" Johanna and Nina Piroth; "shop owner, fashion lover, Harley rider" Marcus Lindstedt; "collector, photographer, listener" Kristofer Hedlund; "business lady, mum, food enthusiast" Hanna Olszewska; and "jewellery designer, dancer, activist" Isabell Stolt. There they all are, waiting beneath my letterbox: a flurry of tousle-haired, edgily dressed, shiny Swedes bound together in a neat guide (though not so neat it can fit in your pocket).
It's rather cumbersome size aside, the guide is certainly useful, with recommendations for shops, bars, cinemas and activities I'd never come across before in years of visiting Stockholm, as well as a few that I had ("flirt with cute Swedes").
But I am going one step further. Though Nectar & Pulse doesn't normally offer a personal tour guide service, it agrees to pair me with soulmate Isabell Stolt for a day of sightseeing around Stockholm, so I can learn more about the concept as well as the city. As her description suggests, Stolt is a dancer and jewellery designer (waybackbitches.tumblr.com) but also works for a small independent publisher, Dokument Press, which specialises in books about street art. She is also Tanja's cousin.
Collecting me from my hotel, she walks me first towards Slussen, a busy transport hub between Sodermalm and the city's old town, and which Stolt accurately described as "the most disgusting place in Stockholm".
"There's a lot of debate about whether it should be knocked down and rebuilt in a prettier way but other people say it's a landmark as it is and that we should keep it," she says. (Foster + Partners are creating a new master plan for the Slussen area, due to be completed by 2022.)
But Stolt isn't taking me here to soak up the city's unloveliest scenery. Up some steps beyond Slussen is Sodra Teatern (www.sodrateatern.com/en), a concert hall, bar, restaurant, club and cafe with a sunny terrace overlooking a great swath of the city, as well as Malaren, the lake around which the city is formed.
"Stockholm is at its prettiest where you can look out with a view," she says as we sit down with a drink to enjoy it.
Does she think there will be a market for Nectar & Pulse? "I like being part of something that encourages people to explore beyond the usual," she says. "My personality is different from that of someone else so it seems absurd that, when we travel, we all traipse around the same places. Of course history is important and there are some things we should all see but for me the most amazing experiences happen at small neighbourhood cafes, not at the big tourist sites."
Following this philosophy, we agree to spend the day in her favourite district, the island of Sodermalm, hanging out much as she would on any other Saturday. "On a hot day like today I don't think we should try to do too much," she says, leading me past a restaurant called Carmen (Tjarhovsgatan 14, +46 8641 2470). "It's not pretty but the beer is cheap. So you go for the beer and then you leave."
Next stop is Sneakersnstuff (Asogatan 124, sneakersnstuff.com), a shoe shop cannily located opposite Stockholm's dance centre, Stockholms Stadsmission (www.stadsmissionen.se), followed by a vintage clothes and furniture shop near Nytorget Square that gives a percentage of its profits to homeless charities.
Then we're off to Nytorget Urban Deli (Nytorget 4, urbandeli.org), a deli-style food hall and cafe serving artisan apple juices and gourmet sandwiches by day and a hip bar by night.
We skip the deli in favour of goat's cheese and beetroot salads and non-alcoholic mojitos made with fresh lemonade and mint at Gildas Rum (Skanegatan 79, www.spottedbylocals.com/stockholm/gildas-rum), a cafe across the square.
On gallery-packed Hornsgatan, we window-shop our way past a vast vintage clothes shop, Judits Second Hand (Hornsgatan 75, judits.se) and one of high-end Swedish fashion brand Filippa K's non-profit second-hand shops (Hornsgatan 77, filippaksecondhand.se), before eventually coming to the end of the road (in Sodermalm at least) at the Hornstulls crossroads.
Below us is an inviting 1930s floating swimming pool and, just along, a sweet 1960s arthouse cinema, Rio (Hornstulls Strand 3, biorio.se). "It's one of Tanja's favourite places in Stockholm," Stolt says. "She said I had to bring you here." I'm glad she did. I'd never have come across it on my own.
But with the sun beaming, it isn't a day for being indoors. So we drop down to the waterside instead for a farewell drink on the terrace at Strand (Hornstulls Strand 4, hornstullstrand.se), a restaurant and club packed with beautiful people. "The city feels more alive when you have water around you," Stolt says.
As we flick through the Nectar & Pulse folder, looking for places I should stop at on the way back to my hotel, we read that one of the highlights is the walk from Hornstulls to Skanstull, around the south-west side of Sodermalm island.
A pretty waterside footpath takes me past tiny beaches, busy parks, an outdoor pool and pop-up beach bars. Pausing beside one of these - a bar in a blue caravan serving drinks and ice-cream on little painted tables - I sit with a book and watch groups of flaxen-haired locals jump in and out of the water. For a day, at least, I've been one of them.
Qantas/British Airways has a fare to Stockholm from Sydney and Melbourne for about $2041 low-season return including tax. You fly to Singapore (about 8hr), then to London (about 14hr), then to Stockholm (about 2hr). This fare allows you to fly into Stockholm and out of another European city. For information about Nectar & Pulse see nectarandpulse.com. For more general information see visitsweden.com.
- Guardian News & Media
Sign up for the Traveller Deals newsletter
Get exclusive travel deals delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up now.