By Jon Minor and Emily Reisch

South Dakota and the United States are just youngsters compared to many other countries. Our last trip was to the capital city of Sweden, which was founded nearly 300 years before the United States even became a country.

Stockholm, the largest city, is sometimes referred to as “the Venice of the North.” It’s exactly the opposite of the land-locked prairies of South Dakota. The city is built on 14 islands and has 50 bridges connecting them.

The Stockholm archipelago is made up of 24,000 islands. The people are very attached to the water - 1 out of every 10 people owns a boat. The public transportation system even has ferries between islands.

We stayed in a boat that’s now a hostel. Our room came with two portholes with a view of the bay. Several other boats close by were restaurants, clubs and hotels.

Most of the islands have their own name. “Gamla Stan”, or “the old city”, is one of the oldest areas of Stockholm. It emerged in the 13th century and some of the buildings and sculptures still present date back to the 15th century.

The Royal Palace, with 608 rooms, is the largest royal palace in the world. We were fascinated with the enormous, elaborate rooms. It also houses the Royal Treasury, where we saw many diamond and ruby encrusted crowns for different members of past and present Royal Families.

The Royal Cathedral of Sweden, Storkyrkan, is noted for the 1494 sculpture of St. George & the Dragon. The pews where the Royal family sits has a huge gold crown above it, and is actually in front of the pulpit.

The mix of old and new is apparent throughout many European cities. We’ve noticed that everyone in Sweden seems to have mobile phones, including the kids. The Stureplan area of Stockholm has the highest concentration of cell phones in the world.

Stockholm definitely has no shortage of culture. It boasts the highest concentration of theaters of any city in the world. There are over 80 museums and exhibitions going all the time. We found it quite odd that most of the museums are closed on Mondays. They stay open on Sundays so the people of the city can come to enjoy them on their days off.

The subway system in Stockholm is considered the world’s longest art gallery. We spent three hours one evening just visiting the best stations. The most fascinating stop had Greek ruins and fountains. Murals were painted on the walls and piano keys on the ceiling above the escalator.

Another island, Djurgården, has the world’s first open-air museum. Skansen has over 150 traditional houses, exhibits and animals from all around Sweden. The park operates like a small old-fashioned city.

Apart from the historical exhibits, it also houses a zoo. Our favorite part was the huge saltwater aquariums.

We had a wonderful view of Stockholm atop a lookout point on Djurgården. As we were looking over the city, we noticed several police vans and a police helicopter hovering above. More police vehicles appeared, which we thought was odd. With Sweden’s low crime rate, we’ve only seen one police officer here who even had a gun. As we were leaving, a man told us to avoid the subway – there was a 20,000 person anti-war protest that had just ended, causing things to become “turbulent,” he said.

It is different to be overseas with the current events taking place in Iraq. Many people of the world are expressing their opposition to the war. Most views are not anti-American, but anti-war and focused the Bush administration.