Appreciation and Reflections About my Home Country Sweden
“What I especially appreciate now is the fresh air, the number of cars,… the flowers fragrance here in Europe, the birds singing in springtime – the blackbirds especially. Open fields. The light.”
When you live in Asia as a Swede after a large number of years, I often feel that I value different things in life now, than what I did before. What you felt like a tremendous adventure almost 20 years ago when moving abroad for the first time, you now find that certain things shadowing the glory of the expat life. The past year I even have written a book about our adventure years.
A lot of words and pages became a book that I also at last had gotten printed via Solentro.com as the main purpose to give it to our two daughters as a memory, a gift. Their mothers view on different things and happenings that we shared together as a family. It almost took a year to write it, read it, correct it again and again and finally decide and accept that it was “good enough”, which was the hardest part.
Southeast Asia is a jewellery box for sure and has so many diamonds inside when you open the box that it´s almost sometimes unbelievable. So many places there are to discover and travel to and that you want to explore. We will forever appreciate all of that. All the beaches, the islands, the people, the food, the culture, the climate. But. There is always that but, isn´t there? The last year(s) the pollution has been difficult to cope with for us, especially if you are born in countries where you never even think of something like air pollution, because it hardly exists. Not if you compare with real pollution. I am talking about the dangerous and terrible haze and smog in India and China but also in Vietnam and Thailand the recent years.
There might be other things that annoy us when living in Europe because we always need something to complain about, don´t we? What else should we talk about and discuss with each other. The positive things doesn´t create debates in that sense, sadly and ironically enough. As for myself I was rather sick and tired of air pollution already in February, all the chaos, the noise and too many people and was more than ready in early May to go home for my four month summer vacation in Sweden. This would be the very last one going back and forth since we will move home for good next summer.
When you travel to Sweden and especially to the southern part, in May you know almost for certain that you will go home to something really good. But this year I must say it was the best May I have ever experienced in my life. Not since 1947 when Sweden started carry out statistics of the weather, has the temperature been that high and the weather been as consistent as this year 2018. Every day sunny, a clear blue sky and 25 degrees – for five weeks. Five weeks! You almost felt that you were in Tuscany, Italy or in Provence, France. Almost too good to be true and people started to worry about their job vacation.
Should the summer end even before Midsummer this year, or what is happening here? The flowers like bird cherry and common lilac e.g. that normally starting to bloom and flourish right before or at least in time for the school to finish – they are already gone. Every day I took my bike and went out for a ride. Sometimes a very long one, like 40km and some days maybe 15-20km. But biking I did almost every day for 5 weeks. Now being home for 6 weeks I have biked 430km and yes, I keep track of the distance. I draw one diagonal line for each Swedish mile (10km) on a piece of paper on the door inside of the pantry(!).
The nature in Sweden is so beautiful and of course I knew that of course since in fact 58 years but I think, not until you travel a lot out of your own country and also live abroad for a longer period of time, you start for real to appreciate your home country for what it is and what is has to offer. You often find people back home complaining about a lot of different things that you find almost hilarious since you see so much that is worse, if you know what I mean.
“When you bring your camera you will find yourself seeing things with different eyes because you are looking out for and searching for the beauty, for details, flowers, small things, people, faces, kids laughing and playing.”
What I especially appreciate now is the fresh air, the number of cars, which is more bearable than in big cities, the flowers fragrance here in Europe, the birds singing in springtime – the blackbirds especially. Open fields. The light. The Swedish light is amazing and by Midsummer in the northern part it is almost not dark at all, whilst in the southern part we have the sun up between 4am and 10:30pm in the evening. You never get tired. Some find it even disturbing because they can´t go to sleep but I find it just amazing.
The light and the sun give me energy, even more energy than before. I almost feel a bit silly when I am biking around the yellow canola fields smiling to myself almost in euphoria. I am just so happy being at home again. Knowing that after all the wonderful memories in Thailand and other neighbouring countries we´ve visited, it is this country we will go back to.
Growing old in Sweden. Yes. Travelling of course we will do for sure as long as we can, but I truly feel that I will enjoy going back home. And this is a nice feeling, which gives me comfort and peace in my sometimes quite restless soul. I just spent a weekend in Malmö and walked around the city. Malmö is Sweden´s third largest city and I have lived and worked there twice over the years. I had a nostalgic walk and took a lot of photos and got the response later on Facebook “wow, such nice pictures of my home town, I don´t see it that way!!” Well, that is the problem.
We don´t see the beauty in places we live in every day. I always say to friends: Don´t forget to look up in cities on all the wonderful architecture, the fantastic buildings. We tend to only look down or right in front of us, because we are so busy, we stress too much and are always in a hurry somewhere. But when you bring your camera you will find yourself seeing things with different eyes because you are looking out for and searching for the beauty, for details, flowers, small things,
people, faces, kids laughing and playing.
Southern Sweden has so much to explore. Österlen in the south is sometimes called Sweden´s Provence. There are many small cities quite close to one another, just 20-30km in between them. Lund, Landskrona, Kristianstad, Malmö, Helsingborg, Ystad, Trelleborg, Simrishamn and SkanörFalsterbo are all within the distance of 100km. There is just so
much to see and this part of the country. And if you ever get tired of Sweden and live in the south, it is just 45 minutes by car or 25 min by train from Malmö to Copenhagen. Not bad at all to have this variety so close by.
Gothenburg and Bohuslän are also fantastic favourite places to visit and of course Stockholm, Sweden´s capital city and the number one summer city if you ask me. Stockholm has its archipelago and it is so nice to take the ferry out to Fjäderholmarna or to Vaxholm for example. To stroll around in Stockholm is simply fantastic. The Old Town, Haga park, Djurgården, Kungsholmen etc etc. I could go on forever mentioning favourite places and also restaurants in Stockholm.
Once many years ago I travelled with my friends that I know from our Singapore years as far up north as to Kvikkjokk. The distance from Malmö to Kvikkjokk is 1,750km. Sweden is in all around 2000km long. We always learned in school as kids that if you turn our country upside down you would come to the “tip of the boot” of Italy. It was simply wonderful, all of it.
We saw reindeers alongside the road, big preys flying in the sky, a moose swimming in a lake (yes that´s true!) and a nature that is magic. I will not forget this trip as long as I live. Now I guess almost all of you would like to come to Sweden and visit next year. And you know what? You are all very welcome.
