Sweden
Talking about Sweden is like talking about someone you have been married to for 35 years, you love it but you also know all the flaws. I despised my home country before I started to travel, and I can see why. It's dark and cold for 9 months a year and people think everyone should fit in the same mold, and no one should think they are something special. Just go to your dull work for 65 years and then retire and be happy about it. Don't complain and don't try and become something more than ordinary, because then they will laugh when you fall. Well they can laugh all they want, because I'm travelling the world and they're just sitting in their newly renovated kitchens with mortgages to pay for the rest of their lives. Guess who will be the most satisfied of us on the deathbed?
As you can see I definitely feel bitter about some of the things with Sweden and the attitude here, but actually I have started to love it too. All I wanted to do before I started travelling was to move abroad, because the answer to the meaning of life isn't to be found in Sweden. Then I travelled to highs and lows, poor countries and rich, and in the end I started to see that Sweden is actually one of the best countries in the world. As a person I'm like Denmark and Sweden combined, I'm a happy go lucky fellow who thinks life should be taking lightly as a joke, and that life is a big creative adventure, but the other half of me just wants to live a still and ordinary life with no alarms and no surprises. Maybe that's what happens when you get born in Sweden while Denmark is just 20 minutes away by a ferry. The Denmark part of me is a bit stronger though so I prefer Denmark over Sweden even if it's a tough call!
Sweden for me is the summer and the winter, the rest is just a wait for it to come. The winter is memories of my mom Annika pulling me on a plastic sledge through the soft snow in my hometown Helsingborg. I can still hear the sound in my head of the snow softly crunching against the sledge. I lied down and closed my eyes and the street lights felt as a warm blanket while the cold snow was falling down on my face. I knew that when we would get home we would bake cakes and drink hot chocolate to get warm. I will never forget this and I hope that one day I will be given the opportunity to create the same memory with my kids, I just have to create them first.
The best spa I've ever been to was Arken Hotel & Art Garden Spa, it made me forget about the rest of the world. It has the ocean view and when we were there, the snow had been falling on the cliffs that leads down to the water. It was so beautiful and it has everything you could ever dream of. It has a heated pool outside and when you freeze too much still, you can go inside the saunas that's nearby. It has both a completely dark room with warm beds to dream yourself away, and a completely light room to make your senses come alive again. The room I remember the most is the big pool on the second floor with a fire burning next to it. It has a small stream of ice cold water which you can walk in to then plunge back into the warm water and it feels like your legs are burning because of the previous cold. It's painful pleasure! If I just had to chose one memory to live in for the rest of my life it would probably be this day, because me and Felicia were both so in love with each other as we were in love with the place.
Me and Felicia loved to go to the archipelago in the summer time and after we had been renting a cabin there for New Year's Eve I could see the potential in it, but the cabin had been stuck inbetween houses and it was winter. It should be summer next time we would rent a cabin, and this time I wanted it to be in the middle of nowhere with the sea as the only neighbour. I searched for the perfect spot for months and months and then there it was, on one of the smallest islands called Sjumansholmen. No tourists go there because almost no ferries go there, it's just about 30 cabins on the small island and we would be staying right next to the sea with a great view. We would even have our own rowboat to explore the island with.
We spent my birthday at Sjumansholmen and listened to old Swedish songs that are made to be enjoyed in the archipelago in the summer. We sang Sjösala Vals by Evert Taube and we misheard the lyrics and thought he sang about cat shit instead of the flower called kattfot in Swedish. We rowed the boat to an unexplored island nearby and made love in the nature, can't get anymore Sweden in the 70's than that. We understood in hindsight that the "unexplored island" was actually one of the biggest islands called Styrsö, we had just mistaken it for being a different island, so we were lucky no one caught us in the act. We were using the sauna that was for everyone living on Sjumansholmen and that was hanging over the sea. We rowed to an island where we saw a sign but we couldn't read it because we were too far away. So we went into the bay and found out there was some sheeps living there. We spent a lot of time there and when we finally got out of the bay and read the sign it said that this island was for military training and that it was dangerous to go near it since you might be caught by a bullet then. Make sheeps, not war I say!
Then we played football and table tennis and it was just the best summer vacation ever, I could go on and on about it! The only bad thing was that if you live in the wilderness you have to deal with what it brings too, and that was a lot of spiders and having to carry your poop in a bag from the dry toilet to the compost.
Since we had experienced all of the southern archipelago outside of Gothenburg we headed for the north archipelago the next summer. I wanted it to be special so I had rented a special bike for us where we would sit next to each other. It was made for disabled people so that they could have a driver with them, but I thought it was a love bike instead where couples could go riding together. It was such a lovely summer day and we started off by heading down to Fotö where we had a small break before we went up to Hönö and Öckerö again. There was this feeling in the air that this was the most perfect day ever when suddenly we heard children singing a classic Swedish traditional song that you sing when the school ends for summer vacation. It was too good to be true, it felt like a movie scene and me and Felicia just looked at each other and we didn't have to say a thing, we were in heaven and it was called Swedish summer!
* Best things about Sweden – nothing beats waiting for the summer for 9 months and then when it finally arrives you go by boat to the archipelago to eat strawberries with cream, it's worth the wait every year! I think it's probably the best place to be living in, if you only think about the society, because it's progressive and most of the things you take for granted are unique for Sweden, and you learn that by travelling
* Most mediocre thing about Sweden – it's the country of the expression that everything should be "lagom", which is Swedish for just right, or just enough, it's good in one way but it's also boring in one way
* Worst things about Sweden – the law of Jante has to stop where individuality is a bad thing, the weather is awful and you don't see the sun for 9 months of the year, so you wish yourself away almost 75% of the year, and that's why I travel the world
Best countries in the world according to the nerd (will be updated with every post):
1. Croatia
2. Montenegro
3. Andorra
4. Cyprus
5. Greece
6. Italy
7. Spain
8. Monaco
9. Malta
10. Netherlands
11. Iceland
12. Denmark
13. Sweden
14. Lithuania
15. Macedonia
16. Portugal
17. Slovakia
18. Slovenia
19. New Zealand
20. Ireland
21. United Kingdom
22. Belgium
23. Poland
24. Estonia
25. Switzerland
26. San Marino
27. Kosovo
28. Romania
29. Finland
30. Latvia
31. Moldova
32. Norway
33. France
34. Bulgaria
35. Luxembourg
36. Liechtenstein
37. China
38. Serbia
39. Bosnia And Herzegovina
40. Albania
As you can see I definitely feel bitter about some of the things with Sweden and the attitude here, but actually I have started to love it too. All I wanted to do before I started travelling was to move abroad, because the answer to the meaning of life isn't to be found in Sweden. Then I travelled to highs and lows, poor countries and rich, and in the end I started to see that Sweden is actually one of the best countries in the world. As a person I'm like Denmark and Sweden combined, I'm a happy go lucky fellow who thinks life should be taking lightly as a joke, and that life is a big creative adventure, but the other half of me just wants to live a still and ordinary life with no alarms and no surprises. Maybe that's what happens when you get born in Sweden while Denmark is just 20 minutes away by a ferry. The Denmark part of me is a bit stronger though so I prefer Denmark over Sweden even if it's a tough call!
Sweden for me is the summer and the winter, the rest is just a wait for it to come. The winter is memories of my mom Annika pulling me on a plastic sledge through the soft snow in my hometown Helsingborg. I can still hear the sound in my head of the snow softly crunching against the sledge. I lied down and closed my eyes and the street lights felt as a warm blanket while the cold snow was falling down on my face. I knew that when we would get home we would bake cakes and drink hot chocolate to get warm. I will never forget this and I hope that one day I will be given the opportunity to create the same memory with my kids, I just have to create them first.
A shadow of my former self reminiscing my childhood memories
I love the snow and the darkness in one way but it quickly turns into rain and a gray fog and you start to long to see the sun again, since it's been so long ago. Before I always got depressed during the winter but now I travel so much that I don't get the darkness blues. The day that usually kicks off the summer each year is ironically called Midsummer, because the summer ends almost as quick as it has began. We dress up with flowers in our hair, drink a lot of alcohol, dance and eat strawberries with cream. Everybody is happy and the country feels alive again. My birthday is about that time too so I celebrate both myself and the arrival of summer.
Summer evening at Sjumansholmen where I celebrated my birthday once
The best memories of Sweden have actually been made just recently when I stopped complaining about how boring Sweden is, and actually found the grain of gold that is to be found if you just search for it. Me and my girlfriend at the time, Felicia, discovered the beauty of going to spas and especially in the winter when you want to be inside a hot tub. Upper House is a spa in central Gothenburg, the city where I now reside. It has the amusement park Liseberg right at the door step and even though I would recommend for a spa to be out in the nature and not in the busiest streets of Gothenburg, I can highly recommend this. It was the first spa we went to, to celebrate 1 year as a couple, and we got hooked. It has a pool that's hanging outside the 19th floor in the air, and all that seperates you from a certain death is a millimeter thick glass bottom. You can see through it and it blows your mind when you see cars going by 19th floors under your feet, while you seem to be hovering in the air. I was both amazed and scared to death.
The best spa I've ever been to was Arken Hotel & Art Garden Spa, it made me forget about the rest of the world. It has the ocean view and when we were there, the snow had been falling on the cliffs that leads down to the water. It was so beautiful and it has everything you could ever dream of. It has a heated pool outside and when you freeze too much still, you can go inside the saunas that's nearby. It has both a completely dark room with warm beds to dream yourself away, and a completely light room to make your senses come alive again. The room I remember the most is the big pool on the second floor with a fire burning next to it. It has a small stream of ice cold water which you can walk in to then plunge back into the warm water and it feels like your legs are burning because of the previous cold. It's painful pleasure! If I just had to chose one memory to live in for the rest of my life it would probably be this day, because me and Felicia were both so in love with each other as we were in love with the place.
Me and Felicia loved to go to the archipelago in the summer time and after we had been renting a cabin there for New Year's Eve I could see the potential in it, but the cabin had been stuck inbetween houses and it was winter. It should be summer next time we would rent a cabin, and this time I wanted it to be in the middle of nowhere with the sea as the only neighbour. I searched for the perfect spot for months and months and then there it was, on one of the smallest islands called Sjumansholmen. No tourists go there because almost no ferries go there, it's just about 30 cabins on the small island and we would be staying right next to the sea with a great view. We would even have our own rowboat to explore the island with.
Sauna with a sea view on Sjumansholmen
I wanted to bond with my family again so I invited my mom and my sister Linda to stay with us for the week. I thought they would love it but at the same time that me and Felicia felt like we were in heaven I could tell my mom just wanted to go home again, so she and Linda left early. Me and Felicia had the time of our lives and we spent our days by doing nothing at all at the same time as we did everything. We forgot about time and the rest of the world and we laughed when we realised we had spent two hours trying to save some papers from the bottom of the sea because we thought it might be a treasure. We realised we had become kids again where everything is an adventure and all logic is nonsense. It was such a great feeling!
A view from the lighthouse of another island called Vinga
We spent my birthday at Sjumansholmen and listened to old Swedish songs that are made to be enjoyed in the archipelago in the summer. We sang Sjösala Vals by Evert Taube and we misheard the lyrics and thought he sang about cat shit instead of the flower called kattfot in Swedish. We rowed the boat to an unexplored island nearby and made love in the nature, can't get anymore Sweden in the 70's than that. We understood in hindsight that the "unexplored island" was actually one of the biggest islands called Styrsö, we had just mistaken it for being a different island, so we were lucky no one caught us in the act. We were using the sauna that was for everyone living on Sjumansholmen and that was hanging over the sea. We rowed to an island where we saw a sign but we couldn't read it because we were too far away. So we went into the bay and found out there was some sheeps living there. We spent a lot of time there and when we finally got out of the bay and read the sign it said that this island was for military training and that it was dangerous to go near it since you might be caught by a bullet then. Make sheeps, not war I say!
Then we played football and table tennis and it was just the best summer vacation ever, I could go on and on about it! The only bad thing was that if you live in the wilderness you have to deal with what it brings too, and that was a lot of spiders and having to carry your poop in a bag from the dry toilet to the compost.
Since we had experienced all of the southern archipelago outside of Gothenburg we headed for the north archipelago the next summer. I wanted it to be special so I had rented a special bike for us where we would sit next to each other. It was made for disabled people so that they could have a driver with them, but I thought it was a love bike instead where couples could go riding together. It was such a lovely summer day and we started off by heading down to Fotö where we had a small break before we went up to Hönö and Öckerö again. There was this feeling in the air that this was the most perfect day ever when suddenly we heard children singing a classic Swedish traditional song that you sing when the school ends for summer vacation. It was too good to be true, it felt like a movie scene and me and Felicia just looked at each other and we didn't have to say a thing, we were in heaven and it was called Swedish summer!
* Best things about Sweden – nothing beats waiting for the summer for 9 months and then when it finally arrives you go by boat to the archipelago to eat strawberries with cream, it's worth the wait every year! I think it's probably the best place to be living in, if you only think about the society, because it's progressive and most of the things you take for granted are unique for Sweden, and you learn that by travelling
* Most mediocre thing about Sweden – it's the country of the expression that everything should be "lagom", which is Swedish for just right, or just enough, it's good in one way but it's also boring in one way
* Worst things about Sweden – the law of Jante has to stop where individuality is a bad thing, the weather is awful and you don't see the sun for 9 months of the year, so you wish yourself away almost 75% of the year, and that's why I travel the world
Best countries in the world according to the nerd (will be updated with every post):
1. Croatia
2. Montenegro
3. Andorra
4. Cyprus
5. Greece
6. Italy
7. Spain
8. Monaco
9. Malta
10. Netherlands
11. Iceland
12. Denmark
13. Sweden
14. Lithuania
15. Macedonia
16. Portugal
17. Slovakia
18. Slovenia
19. New Zealand
20. Ireland
21. United Kingdom
22. Belgium
23. Poland
24. Estonia
25. Switzerland
26. San Marino
27. Kosovo
28. Romania
29. Finland
30. Latvia
31. Moldova
32. Norway
33. France
34. Bulgaria
35. Luxembourg
36. Liechtenstein
37. China
38. Serbia
39. Bosnia And Herzegovina
40. Albania
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