Euronews YouTube Channel video: Euronews reporter Valerie Zabriskie speaks with lucky Abba fan club members selected to get a sneak preview of the new museum in Stockholm. Uploaded May 5, 2013. http://youtu.be/xbDW3FdtEgM
"A" is for Awesome and ABBA and the new ABBA Museum in Stockholm, which officially opens today at 1600 Stockholm time/10 a.m. Eastern U.S. Monday night's gala premiere brought Anni-Frid, Benny and Björn together, cheered on by a select group of invitees from across Swedish society and the music industry, who are, in the end, just fans of the band like everyone else, and very excited that this amazing museum is FINALLY a reality; #abba, #AbbaMuseum, #ThankYouForTheMusic, @stockholm, @swedenI could mention who some of these VIPs are and why they're important and why they're there,
Plus, I've had a very clear idea of how this particular blog post would look ever since I was there in January, so trying to explain to you all who Carola or Sarah Dawn Finer are and why they are in the video below iis, well, just a losing proposition today.
May 6, 2013. http://tv.aftonbladet.se/webbtv/noje/article11311.ab
Aftonbladet TV video: Här inviger kändiseliten ABBA-museet
7 maj 2013 00:12
http://tv.aftonbladet.se/webbtv/noje/article11311.ab
Just go with it.
Aftonbladet TV: Nu öppnar ABBA-museet, Björn Ulvaeus: - "Kan visa det för barnbarnen med stolthet" 6 maj 2013 15:31
http://tv.aftonbladet.se/webbtv/noje/musik/article11284.ab
SVT video: TV Abba-museet öppnades
http://www.svt.se/nyheter/article1203720.svt
NTDTV -ABBA Museum in Stockholm
("We have a vision of a cashless society, therefore we don’t handle coins and bills." )
Yes, sorta like in the future as seen in Star Trek, but not quite, since there's a 5% discount with MasterCard.
Björn's explanation on why abba-museet doesn't take bills and coins, largely to prevent crime, has a great introduction that only a real genius like him could get away with saying in his Big Picture way
There was a time when bills and coins served their purpose. They replaced cumbersome barter and made trade between people and nations possible. But do they still serve this purpose? Do we really need cash? Or is it a fixed idea like with Scrooge McDuck? Have we lost the ability to see that coins and bills are mere symbols and that those symbols easily could be exchanged for others? Cards and smartphones today and who knows what in the future.
Combining innovation, ideals, crime-fighting and Scrooge McDuck!
Dags för ABBA The Museum
by Lars Epstein
15:14, May 6, 2013
http://www.dn.se/blogg/epstein/2013/05/06/dags-for-abba-the-museum/
According to Lars Epstein's post yesterday, above, at his Stockholm-centric Epstein's STHLM blog at Dagens Nyheter, the museum is expecting about 217,000 visitors a year.
Yes, holograms...
ABBA Museum website:
http://www.swedavia.se/arlanda/om-stockholm-arlanda-airport/om-flygplatsen/official-airport-of-abba-the-museum/
For someone like me who has been a huge ABBA fan for more than two-thirds of my life, the biggest ABBA fan that most people I've known have ever met, as small as this exhibit at the airport was, in looking at it and reflecting back on everything, it was hard to get over the fact that for so long, like millions of other fans, we fervently hoped that there'd be a museum some day that would be shaped along the lines of,,, well, just what they seem to have actually done: music plus heart -musik plus hjärta.
Like those other fans of the band, over the past 20 years I've given up counting how many interviews I'd seen with the band members, especially Benny and Bjorn, discussing the idea
of it, but quite naturally, being somewhat unsure of how to answer such a question without seeming pretentious.
But it IS a weird question, isn't it, when you really think about it?
Should there be a museum that people pay to get into that's all about you and three other people you've known for most of your life?
How do you answer that?
Here are those January 10, 2013 photos I snapped at Arlanda before and after grabbing my luggage:
All original photos on this page by South Beach Hoosier. © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.
http://www.swedavia.se/arlanda/om-stockholm-arlanda-airport/om-flygplatsen/official-airport-of-abba-the-museum/