Vinayak Hegde

There are many palaces around Stockholm – Sweden historically being one of the powerful states in Scandinavia. I just blogged about Drottninghom palace where the royal family currently stays. The Royal Palace (Kungliga Slottet) is the official residence of the royal family and the changing of the royal guards takes place here. From June to August the changing of the Royal Guards with a military band takes pace in the outer courtyard of the Palace at 12:15 hours. Right at the stroke of 12 at noon, the guards who are positioned at the gates and the entrances come together and stand in the formation. The only exception to these are the guards to the entrances where the guards can rest and change.

There is an announcer who explains the significance of the ceremony and narrates the history of the royal guards which is one of the oldest regiments of the Swedish Army. Then the guards who are going to replace the current bunch march to the palace and then salute them. Both of them then stand side by side as one by one the guards in earlier duty are relieved as new guards replace them.

Meanwhile the military band enters the scene from one of the side entrance to the palace and this is the high point of the ceremony as the military band plays traditional Swedish music, classical music from masters such as Mozart and Vivaldi and even popular music from bands such as ABBA and musicals. It is a precision display and very well liked by the crowd as can be seen from the cheering that follows every song. For me, it was one of the high-points of visiting Stockholm. Best of all it is free, though they charge you to see the palace museums (There are three museums in the palace complex).

Back of the IETF 75 T-shirt featuring the Vasa (Parody of the ISO Model)

The Vasamuseet (“Vasa Museum”) is a maritime museum located on the island of Djurgården which displays the only almost fully intact 17th century ship that has ever been salvaged. The Vasa sank on her maiden voyage in 1628, just like the Titanic. The difference was that Vasa sank even before it could leave the Stockholm harbour.

Political decision leads to Engineering failure

The Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus ordered the construction of the Vasa and was impatient to see the completion of the ship so that it could join the Thirty years war with Poland. In doing so, several poor engineering decisions were made to satisfy the king as no one wanted to incur his ire by pointing out the several design blunders. The 64-gun upper deck of the Vasa was not offset by the ballast and it made the ship unstable as it was top-heavy. The Vasa was initially designed to have only one gundeck but it ended up with two adding to further instability of the ship (feature creep existed in the middle ages ). Also there was no way to estimate scientifically the stability of the ship and it all depended on the experience of the shipbuilder leading to the sinking of many ships and wasted effort (Software estimation still isn’t good enough – We are stuck in the middle ages of software development ).

The Catastrophic Maiden Voyage

On 10 August 1628, the Vasa to set sail on her maiden voyage to the naval station at Älvsnabben. It was a bright calm sunny day. There was only a light breeze blowing across the sea. At the first hint of the gust the Vasa swerved but was stabilized by the sailors aboard. Soon another gust of wind followed but this was fatal as the tilting of the ship caused the water to rush through the open lower gun ports which added to the instability of the ship and the eventual sinking of the Vasa. As the Vasa was an extraordinary ship, there were thousands of people who were present to witness the maiden voyage including ambassadors of different countries. The Vasa sank ingloriously in front of the gathered crowd.

The bronze cannons of the ship were salvaged in the 17th Century but the Vasa was forgotten till the 1960s when the ship was salvaged from the bottom of the sea in a major operation.

The Drottningholm Palace is the first World Heritage Site that I visited on this trip. The Royal Domain of Drottningholm was the first Swedish location to be placed on the World Heritage List. Other than the palace the place consists of the Chinese Pavilion and the Drottningholm Royal Theater which is one of the best preserved 18th century theaters in the world. It also has vast gardens with small ponds and lakes which were once used for receiving royal guest and special celebrations. You can reach Drottningholm by taking a boat from the quay outside the City Hall.

The Drottningholm Palace is the residence of the Swedish royal family. It is located in Drottningholm (“Queen’s Islet” in Swedish), built on the island Lovön. The building of the palace began in 1662, after the first palace on the site was burned to the ground. The palace is beautifully decorated in french rococo style and was inspired by the palace in Versailles. Unfortunately you are not allowed to take any photographs inside the palace or inside the theater.

The Drottningholm Slottsteater (Palace Theater) was built in 1766 and is very unique. It’s summer opera festivals are very popular and the theater is still in use. The stage has hand-painted decorations that can change instantly with stage machinery made of wood and operated by hand. I got a chance to look at the 200-year old theater equipment which is still used today to recreate natural scenes such as thunder and lightning. There were several chambers inside the theatre for dressing/makeup. One the rooms was unique and hidden from normal view as it was used to drink coffee. The person who built the theater died in penury as he had to pay for it for building it himself as the king refused to pay him for building the theater.

Apparently, during medieval ages in Sweden, drinking coffee was illegal and looked down up but it was okay to drink alcohol (even for children).

The unique Kina Slott (Chinese Pavilion) was built by the King Adolf Frederik for Queen Lovisa Ulrika’s Birthday in the 1750′s. The Chinese Pavilions had one of Europe’s best examples of rococo furnishings with chinoserie demonstrating the relations between Europe and Asia 300 years ago.

The King of Diamonds and the Queen of Hearts

Skansen is Sweden’s first open-air museum (also the world’s oldest) and is located on the island Djurgården in Stockholm. Skansen means ‘Fortifications’ or ‘Fort’ in Swedish. Skansen was opened in 1891 and features about 150 cultural historical building from all over Sweden. It includes a zoo with Nordic animals and is the venue for annual festivities, folk dance displays and several other events such as concerts and plays. It also features an aquarium and arboretum which features several animals from all over the world. Skansen is located beside Gröna Lund which is Sweden’s oldest amusement park. The picture above was taken at the entrance of Gröna Lund.

Green Tree Python	Lion Tamarin
Ring-Tailed Lemur	Snowy Owl

Skansen has several building from all over Sweden (some of them more than 100 years old). Almost all of these buildings are original and were dismantled, shipped piece-by-piece and reassembled at Skansen. From the northern end of Skansen, there are some fantastic views of Stockholm. It is also serviced by the Funicular railway (Skansens Bergbana) which takes you up/down from the hill towards the northern exit of Skansen.

The Windmill	The Hallestad Belfry
Kaknas Tower seen from Skansen	The funicular railway

The complete set of images for Skansen on Flickr

It all started with a faint memory in the increasingly transient nature of the Internet. I vaguely remembered reading about a datacenter which was based somewhere near Stockholm and was built inside an (decommissioned) nuclear bunker. A little bit of googling later I realised that I had read about it on the Pingdom site. I thought to myself that since this is a conference where networking geeks converge, there is a good chance that some attendee knows the people in the Bahnhof ISP. So I sent this mail. Initially no one replied, but then the number of people interested in seeing the datacenter just ballooned. Two people stepped forward to arrange the visit during the lunch break at the conference and the CEO of Bahnhof, Jon Karlung personally gave guided us through this fantastic datacenter.

The entrance to the Datacenter

There is actually a house on top of that hill and there is pathway from the datacenter that opens up onto the top of the hill. The datacenter is actually dug out of hard rock (granite) as can be clearly seen from the pictures of the server floor at the end of the post. It was originally a military bunker and nuclear shelter during the Cold War era. The Code name from the military days Pionen White Mountains can be seen in the photos of the entrance to the datacenter.

The Backup Generators

2 Maybach MTU diesel engines that produce 1.5 Megawatt of AC power provide backup power. The engines were originally designed for German submarines. There is a warning horn from a German submarine that add to the effect

The Conference Room

The Conference room and the pathway leading to it is made completely out of metal and glass and it hangs above the server flow adding tothe futuristic space staion look of the datacenter (as can be seen from the picture at the top of the post). There is also a Tintin theme rocket [ See Destination Moon for the Tintin Reference ]

The Fountains

There are lots of plants around the datacenter to reduce the claustrophobic feel of the bunker and make it like a more natural working environment. The Fountains at the entry also make up the decor of the place but are generally switched off as they make a lot of noise.

The Netops and the Leisure room

This is Bahnhof’s biggest facility in Sweden and this Network operations room is used for running the ISP. The leisure room has a huge fishtank to add to natural feel of the place.

The Server Floor

Some of the walls of the server floor are unadroned and are made of bare rock giving away the initial use of the facility as a Cold war Era nuclear bunker.

Bahnhof uses the unique nature of the datacenter for marketing purposes. IT is actually possibe to co-locate your servers here. The Pionen Datacenter gives a whole new meaning to disaster recovery backup.