Sweden

  1. Destinations
  2. Europe
  3. Sweden
Sweden2012-0567

The trains in Sweden

We went to Scandinavia about half a year ago now, and here I find this dormant, half-written post. I'll take one for the team and finish it up, even though it's embarrassingly late, because this is worth seeing, over and again: We slid from Denmark to Sweden to Norway on trains--cutting through glacial hunks of icy mountain and past surging waterfalls. Here are some sights from the train (which I don't mean to be so Alie-centric, but someone else had the camera . . . even when I protested.) I l…

20120716_150857-700_9201

Stockholm

I'm not sure where it originated, but I have long imagined Stockholm to be a collection of squares, of monochromatic blocks of designer stores, sleek and clean. Instead, it was the full bodies of water that opened the city up, that cleaned our lungs and grabbed the sun to glitter in our eyes. We breezed across the full channels of the city on the water. They were wide and teaming, and what I will remember about Stockholm was how they held us up, and moved us forward, and underlined rows of str…

20120718_225953-700_9887

Sweden

I am in sixth grade, wearing a white eyelet dress with braids pinned in loops. The get-up is finished with a wreath in my hair. With candles. I carry a tray of cardamom-laced rolls in the shape of an “S” to country report day. Fourteen years later, I am in Dala-Järna, Sweden, a town so small that when we put its address into the GPS, the arrow dives straight into a forest. A little girl with blue eyes shiny as marbles scampers around her great-grandmother’s cottage where I notice a photo of her…

20120720_102808-700_0046

Scandinavia

It felt like a fairytale, with mossy forests, tall waterfalls, and huddles of primary-colored cottages huddled above fjords. Being back with cool wind, low clouds and light, and abundant pine was a bit Scottish, and completely freeing. We rested, we soaked up the sky and the cliffs, and I ate shocking amounts of fresh yogurt and cheese. We are back in New York, and I sat on the couch watching someone make human-sized soap bubbles which floated over the park tonight. Being in Europe was marvelous…