under the summer sun

Stockholm is comprised of 14 islands, with one dedicated to an amusement park. That alone should explain their joy for life. I arrived in the prime of summertime celebrations. A food festival went on in the main park, music festivals were held in churches around the city, graduation parties on the backs of trucks road down the streets and the Swedish national holiday was held which included the grand precession of the royal family in traditional attire.

The weather was idilic, the sun rose at 3:30am and set around midnight, and the people were jovial. If all three stayed the same throughout the entire year, instead of just one of the three, I would have placed down (temporary) roots there in a heartbeat.

top quality

The bus to Frankfurt had me arriving at the airport around 11pm. Then I waited. At 3am another bus pulled up to deposit me at the RyanAir terminal, some hour and forty-five minutes away. My flight left at 6:30am.

So it's easy to imagine my appearance as I walked down the streets of Stockholm looking for my accommodations.  But no matter how well I cleaned myself up, I was no match for the Swedes. My self-esteem went from normal to nothing from the moment I arrived until I left.

wherever the weather

Early June in Germany was cold. Excruciatingly so. And my mother bases when the heat should be turned on and off in her house according to the season, not the outside temperature. So there was only one solution to thaw out my frozen fingers: find somewhere warm to visit.

Weather patterns are a funny thing, though. Because as cold as it was in Southern Germany, it was perfectly warm in Sweden and Estonia. And Ryanair happened to fly to both. So I booked the flights and left for the airport two days later.

Ikea, meatballs and lingonberries

If there were any country inside Europe that seemed the most familiar to me, as if I wasn't in a foreign country, it'd be Sweden. It honestly felt as though I was in an extension of the North Western US, with a slight language barrier.

A few months back a friend of mine asked if I would join her on trip to Sweden to go to a singles conference for our church. I have never been partial to conferences like that, but went anyway since she requested I go. Besides, any excuse to travel is a good enough excuse to me.

We flew up to Gotenburg (South Western portion of Sweden) on Good Friday, and took a train 30 minutes north to a campsite that overlooked a lake. It was quite a surreal experience while taking the train since we passed through places that looked like Lake Tahoe. The houses were built in the same style that I've been used to seeing all my life in the US. And in a way, it slightly disappointed me. I'll always have a love for my home country, but when outside of it I'd rather experience something different than what I'm used to.

The weekend was nice enough. I was able to meet kind people from all over Scandanavia and the UK, and the surroundings were beautiful. But I was quite grateful for the few hours on Monday that we were able to spend in Gotenburg before our flight back to Amsterdam. Although the architecture was inspired by other cultures, such as the Dutch, German, and English, the European charm was quite strong. And it was the first time in the entire trip that I felt like I was in a foreign country.