The definitive end of Aspudden public bath

Just one more post on this subject from Stockholm, so you know how the story ended.

On the night between Dec 9 and 10 the demonstrations to save the bath in Aspudden, Stockholm, were called off, since the responsible politician refused to discuss possible solutions on how to run the bath in the future. The demolition company had already wrecked much of the bath´s interior, and it was too late to stop the destruction.

The cars parked in the middle of the street outside, to prevent the excavators from reaching the bath, were moved. At midnight a large number of people from Aspudden (including myself) marched past the police guards to lay down roses in front of the bath. A very sad moment, and many of us had tears in our eyes. This bath has been in use the whole time since 1919, so this was kind of an era ending. A few days later the last walls of the building were torn down, and now the site is just a pile of dust and snow.

Big cities can seem so anonymous sometimes, and the people living there a bit jaded, and you often get a feeling that no one really cares what happens around them. But in this case both old and young – ordinary people! – stood up for their beliefs and laid down a lot of time and effort to try to change things for the better. Even if the struggle to save the bath failed, a lot of people got to know each other in the process, and I know Aspudden is a few degrees warmer now, in spite of the snow.

(If you missed the earlier posts on this subject, just click my name below this post and you can scroll through them all.)