I feel like I’m doing Sweden all wrong.
I’ve now been to Stockholm four times. October 2017 (when I got engaged on a cold, windy bench on Gamla Stan. I said yes, lest things go sideways and I end up in the Baltic sea), once more in October 2022, then back again in October 2023. I got back from my fourth trip on Sunday.
The Stockholm I’ve come to know is bitterly cold and dusty grey. It’s the chill you get sitting too close to the door at Fabrique bakery — wax dripping off the tapered long candles and onto the brass candlesticks. It’s the (surprisingly good) filter coffee in every pastry shop, the smell of cardamon buns and almond paste (okay, maybe it’s because I spend 80% of my time in Sweden in bakeries, but bear with me here).
I know Scandinavian winters are supposed to be harsh. But we don’t talk enough about Scandinavian autumns and springs. They’re still pretty freaking unforgiving and at this point I’m not entirely convinced that summers in Sweden even exist. My time in Stockholm is spent on cold walks to warm places (hence why all the bakeries).
The worst part about the bitterly cold dip in the lake between sessions in the sauna is not how numb the soles of my feet get on the way to the dock, it’s the judgy geese that hang out on the shore. There’s a dark part of me that loves both salted licorice and pickled herring that emerges only when I go to Sweden and goes away just as quickly the second I’m off Scandinavian soil. Stockholm is a place that doesn’t reveal its secrets, even to repeat visitors. By contract, a place like Paris is deafening. The senses are assaulted by french malaise, heavy wooden doors, and the kinds of cafés made for people-watching. Sweden isn’t like that. The apartment buildings are nodescript. The plaster facades of the buildings blend into the dusty sky. Even the streets are eerily quiet. A 5pm sunset tends to do that.
But then you get these small glimpses of life behind the double-sided glass and you get the hype about Scandinavia after all.
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