As the five people who know me who actually visit this place infrequently (I’m trying my best to get my numbers up), I have a thing for Scandinavia. Ok, maybe its more than a thing. But there are a lot of things about it that I find really unique. My favorite thing is the fact that every corner of every place seems to have been intelligently thought out to make people feel at home or cozy. A lot of it makes people feel good. I realized after just visiting that the metro stations there can look like the ones here, kind of dirty and drab. The New York City subway system is a place that people have to drag me into kicking and screaming, but when I go in there, I look at the tiling on the walls, I think they could do so much with it just to make going in there a happier experience.

So, here I present some of my favorites and my little commentaries.

On my first visit to Stockholm, I got off at the Solna Centrum metro stop and I couldn’t believe my eyes:

I think this is the guy who did the art for the place. The art seems to be organic and matches the surroudnings. Here’s another example:

That is a little model house built into the walls. Amazing.

I don’t understand what this plane is for, but it seems to be going somewhere:

And, this is the whole station:

This place I found because I overestimated my knowledge of the Stockholm metro system being jet lagged. But this is the one metro system in the world that I completely do not mind getting lost in. Have a look-see:

This station had to be my favorite on so many levels. I went to see the Olympic stadium in Stockholm, which was also amazing and there will be another entry about that.

But walking through this place I thought — this would automatically put a person in a good mood:

What about this? I smiled the minute I saw this:

This is Scandinavia and the Olympics, two of my multiple obsessions together. And this was almost the icing on the cake:

After looking like I was casing the stadium for a while, I took a walk around the neighborhood next to it. I kind of got lost on purpose just to find another station to photograph. My aching feet were worth it. This was the metro station next to a technical college.

Check out this lovely geometical solid figure that I am sure the engineering students know what is called:

I was a humanities major, so I am safe from math. Still, I walked around the station knowing that there was something else to look at and I was not wrong:

Unbelievable. I turned around at this place and thought — this is amazing:

Here are just some random examples of the various types of art that saw on the metro:

So, this is my suggestion for the urban planners of America — create inviting spaces in the undergrounds containing the trains and perhaps the people around would be less stressed out and much happier in general.